You and your surgical team share responsibility for achieving a long-lasting implant. Patients should realize that healthy exercise, pro-health nutrition and achieving ideal body weight (or close to it) can add 5 years or more to their implant life.
The positive habits outlined below will often improve function and reduce pain in other joints like the opposite knee, the hip joints, lumbar spine and even finger joints.
Minimize Inflammatory Foods
The typical American diet is deficient in fruits and vegetables and contains excessive amounts of meat, refined grain products, and dessert foods. Such a diet can have numerous adverse biochemical effects, all of which create a proinflammatory state and predispose the body to degenerative diseases. An inadequate intake of fruits and vegetables can result in a suboptimal intake of antioxidants and phytochemicals and an imbalanced intake of essential fatty acids.
Pro-inflammatory foods include:
- Trans fats
- Desserts
- Soft drinks and sugary juices
- Animal fats
- Cheese
- Fried/greasy foods
- High glycemic carbs, e.g. white bread, white rice, white sugar, etc
- Immoderate amounts of alcohol
- Feedlot cattle
- Milk chocolate
- Processed foods/meats
We often recommend multi-system nutrient supplementation which includes anti-inflammatory, connective tissue, immune system, eye and other nutrients. Optimal omega-3/fish oil preparations are beneficial. We usually recommend non-profit Nutriex products which may be reviewed at nutriex.com. Patients can also achieve a gradual reduction in some prescription drugs.
Progress is revealed by increasing your carotenoid index and improving/reducing your baseline hs-CRP blood test which measures your degree of chronic, unrecognized inflammation Hs-CRP test not reliable if taking statin drugs, NSAIDS, HRT or drugs for type II diabetes.
