Antioxidants in vegan diet and rheumatic disorders

Plants are rich natural sources of antioxidants in addition to other nutrie nts. Interventions and cross sectional studies on subjects consuming uncook ed vegan diet called living food (LF) have been carried out. We have clarif ied the efficacy of LF in rheumatoid diseases as an example of a health pro blem where inflammation is one of the main concerns. LF is an uncooked vega n diet and consists of berries, fruits, vegetables and roots, nuts, germina ted seeds and sprouts, i.e. rich sources of carotenoids, vitamins C and E. The subjects eating LF showed highly increased levels of beta and alfa caro tenes, lycopen and lutein in their sera. Also the increases of vitamin C an d vitamin E (adjusted to cholesterol) were statistically significant. As th e berry intake was 3-fold compared to controls the intake of polyphenolic c ompounds like quercetin, myricetin and kaempherol was much higher than in t he omnivorous controls. The LF diet is rich in fibre, substrate of lignan p roduction, and the urinary excretion of polyphenols like enterodiol and ent erolactone as well as secoisolaricirecinol were much increased in subjects eating LF. The shift of fibromyalgic subjects to LF resulted in a decrease of their joint stiffness and pain as well as an improvement of their self-e xperienced health. The rheumatoid arthritis patients eating the LF diet als o reported similar positive responses and the objective measures supported this finding. The improvement of rheumatoid arthritis was significantly cor related with the day-to-day fluctuation of subjective symptoms. In conclusi on the rheumatoid patients subjectively benefited from the vegan diet rich in antioxidants, lactobacilli and fibre, and this was also seen in objectiv e measures. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.