Green Tea & Exercise VS RA Biologic Drug

We take a look at a fascinating study that involves green tea and exercise vs an infusion style biologic drug for Rheumatoid Arthritis patients.

In this episode you will learn

A study of 120 RA patients split the participants into sub groups that examined the impact of different interventions including infliximab (Remicade biologic drug), green tea consumption, and exercise
After 6 months the results were analysed
Surprisingly, it was not the biologic drug that had the best outcomes for RA patients

Good day! In this video, I’m going to talk about a fascinating study that involves an intervention of green tea or a infusion style medication and exercise for people with rheumatoid arthritis. This is fascinating. Before we begin, if you have a green tea in your pantry, I recommend going and grabbing one right now and getting yourself a green tea because the evidence behind green tea for rheumatoid arthritis is very convincing. Okay, pause the video or what you’re listening to, go grab a green tea, come right back. Okay. Hopefully you have a green tea in hand. Ladies and gentlemen, this is a fun one. So in 2016, a study called Green Tea and Exercise Interventions as non-drug remedies in geriatric patients with rheumatoid arthritis was conducted. They took 120 folks, who were on average 60 years old and who had rheumatoid arthritis for many years. They split them up and put them into different categories where some just got green tea and exercise, some just got the drug, which was Infliximab or Remicade, and some just did exercise and so on. They actually mixed and matched so that there were splits within all the different categories. I’m going to say what was found in a minute. First of all, look at some background here about why they thought that each of these interventions would be helpful. First of all, keep in mind that we know that medications can help. We don’t need to have background justification as to the biological drug Remicade. However, with exercise, we know that in patients with rheumatoid supervised exercise, interventions have been shown to improve physical performance, cardio, respiratory fitness, and muscle strength and do not worsen joint inflammation. In fact, this study goes on to explain many different studies that have involved exercise that has been conducted on RA patients over the years. Then, goes on to even point out that exercise of high intensity that falls within the physiological range was more effective even at increasing physical function compared with low-intensity exercise. Consistent with what I’ve shared in the past, consistent with the studies, as long as it’s safe for you, the more exercise, the better. Okay, So that’s the first message here. Now, let’s have a look at some information about green tea.

Well, there’s been a lot of interest over the years in green tea based on animal studies. One study back in 2008 the Journal of Nutrition called Green Tea protects rats against autoimmune arthritis, showed that green tea played a preventative effect on reducing the likelihood of developing autoimmune arthritis in those animals. So they thought, why don’t we put this to the test and include green tea as one of the variables in this particular study. It is because the biological activities of green tea as a non-drug therapy for the rheumatic disease are due to the antioxidants and anti-inflammatory properties of its polyphenolic compounds. We know and what I’ve shared in other videos that oxidative stress is in high prevalence with rheumatoid arthritis. It’s because the autoimmune activity creates free radicals as part of its processes. So with those of us with inflammatory arthritis are running a higher production of free radicals when in an inflamed state. Therefore the aim to source antioxidants is a very valuable objective. With those two things in mind, the process was laid out where Infliximab was given to a portion of patients at baseline and it’s an infusion. Then, two weeks, six weeks, eight weeks people getting these infusions whilst green tea was just drank 4 to 6 cups a day for six months. Then, for patients with RA who went through the exercise plan, all they had to do was aerobic exercise for 45 to 60 minutes three times a week on a treadmill. It was just walking on a treadmill and it’s very simple stuff. By no means a big, exercise intervention. What happened was amazing. Let’s go and have a look at this. When patients, remember six months, were subjected to combined treatment modalities. Patients treated with green tea plus supervised exercise showed a significant improvement in disease activity parameters C-reactive protein, SED rate, and disease activity score. After six months compared with patients who were treated with the infusion drug plus exercise or plus the green tea. In addition, the tender joint counts were reduced and the swollen joint counts were reduced after six months. If we take a look at this, I want to include some extra commentary here around bone protection. Now, this is where there are major limitations with only using the medication as the single strategy for inflammation reduction if you have inflammatory arthritis. It is because it’s not addressing the potential improvements you could make by adding an anti-inflammatory diet and exercise as strategies to help with bone mineralization. The green tea here if you’re looking at the video, plus exercise had the most significant reduction in the markers associated with bone resorption. What we’re trying to do is prevent bone loss and it was found that the biomarkers that indicate the quality of the bone mineral density. Its protection was greatest before and after when people were following green tea plus exercise as their modality. Compared to the infusion drug Infliximab plus exercise or the infusion drug plus green tea. Thus, exercise plus green tea showed the best outcomes for C-reactive protein SED rate disease activity, swollen joint count, tenderness, joint count, and bone mineral density markers as well.

Now, something that’s even more interesting has been reported. When we look at the study and look at the results of the ACR 20, ACR 50, and ACR 70 results. Now, what are they? So what they are is they reflect the degree of improvement as a percentage in two points of time. If you started in January and then looked at results in, June, you’ve got two data points. Then if you are ACR 20, it means you’ve had a 20% improvement. Then, ACR 50 for a 50% improvement, and ACR 70 is a 70% improvement or greater. If we now go back and look at the data here, it was found that the green tea plus exercise group had the most significant proportion of participants who ended up in the ACR 70 category. Thus, the most significant percentage of people who had the most significant degree of improvement. I think that’s also crucial because all showed improvements. It could be drug plus green tea or drug plus exercise or exercise plus green tea all showed improvements. However, the greatest improvement was for the green tea and training. If we come on down and look at just a little summary here and then I’ll wrap this up. It says, and I quote In this study, the patients who received green tea plus the supervised exercise program are combined non-drug modalities. It showed significant improvements in disease activity parameters beginning after the initial treatment compared with the patients treated with either Infliximab plus green tea or exercise only. Then, the mean levels of NTX, DPD, and SBAP were significantly correlated with the improvements in disease activity parameters. Those are related to the protection of our bone mineral density. Again, what they’re saying is that the worse the markers of bone mineral density also correlated with the weakest results for inflammatory markers. In even simpler terms, the more inflammation, the worse the bone mineral loss.

Then, if we jump down to the very conclusion here in conclusion in the present study. The clinical improvements in disease activity, health, quality, bone resorption, and formation biomarkers were observed in all RA patients following green tea and exercise therapy interventions. The data suggests that green tea and exercise might be of interest in RA therapy depending on the patient’s needs and disease activity status. In this study, they were doing 4 to 6 green teas per day. Thus. it might be something you wish to look at. Of course, I want to make the obvious point that this study does not mean that you should go out and look to drop your current medical treatment and go only with exercise and green tea. This study provides insight into the potential anti-inflammatory effects of green tea plus exercise done in conjunction with conventional medical treatment. It is because of the polyphenols in green tea to combat oxidative stress. The benefits of exercise from all different angles include improved VO2 max, which is your cardiovascular activity, reduced risk of cardiovascular disease, improved physical functionality, and muscle tone. This is crucial for a reduction in oxidative stress. If we exercise at a moderate to intense level, we increase the free radicals in our body temporarily. Then, our body compensates for this by increasing our internal antioxidant defenses. So these are things like glutathione, which is often discussed in longevity circles, podcasts, and so on. Glutathione is our master antioxidant. With the exercise, we’re gradually incrementally increasing our glutathione superoxide dismutase and catalase and all antioxidants that are related to our endogenous or internal antioxidant system. Then, we’re bringing in the external antioxidants in multiple formats. If we’re eating a plant-rich diet, most notably the Paddison Program for Rheumatoid Arthritis, and consuming additional antioxidants. Wherein, we can get as shown per the study with great effect through green tea. I hope this has been useful and if you would like to take your healing to a whole new level and explore all the avenues for inflammation reduction, head over to rheumatoidsolutions.com where we’ve got a complete program for you. Please subscribe hit like and we’ll see you in the next video.

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