By Michelle Fletcher

Staying healthy and active also means putting oneself in harm's way. Sure, the alternative to participating in sports or challenging outdoor activities is increasing your risk for obesity, high cholesterol, and heart disease, but there are some risks to playing soccer on weekends or hitting the indoor rock climbing gym on Tuesday nights.

One of the most common worries for athletes is the development of osteoarthritis - a condition in which low-grade inflammation results in pain in the joints. This is caused by abnormal wearing of the cartilage that covers and acts as a cushion inside joints, and can lead to the destruction or decrease of synovial fluid that lubricates those joints. As the bone surfaces become less well protected by cartilage, the patient experiences pain upon weight bearing, including walking and standing.

However, before you call off next week's game and take up knitting, continue reading.

According to research from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, ingesting selenium may help prevent osteoarthritis. Selenium is a chemical element found in foods like Brazil nuts, kidneys, crab, lobster, light tuna, and enriched grains. "Researchers assessed the selenium levels in 940 osteoarthritis patients and compared those levels to x-rays of patients' knees. Patients with the highest selenium levels had 55 percent lower odds of having moderate or severe knee osteoarthritis. It doesn't take much to reap the benefits - 55 micrograms of selenium daily is enough, says study author Joanne M. Jordan, M.D."1

"Our results suggest that we might be able to prevent or delay osteoarthritis of the knees, and possibly other joints, in some people if they are not getting enough selenium. That's important because the condition, which makes walking painful, is the leading cause of activity limitation among adults in developed countries."2

Your diet has a great deal to do with your risk for osteoarthritis. "Most people get enough selenium in their diets in the United States if those diets are varied and include foods that come from different regions,"3 Jordan said in the article. "If you were just growing most of your own food in soil that did not have much selenium and you weren't eating vegetables and meat from elsewhere, you could potentially get in trouble with selenium deficiency," Jordan said.

A German study confirms selenium's role in helping to prevent osteoarthritis. "A diet supplemented with vitamins/selenium might be important in the prevention or therapy of mechanically induced osteoarthritis."4

Similarly, a Turkish study explored combining selenium with vitamins C and E to aid in the prevention of osteoarthritis. "The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of heparin on osteoporosis initiation, as well as the effect of selenium plus vitamins E and C, and the sole combination of vitamins E and C on the progress of osteoporosis induced by heparin through histologic means…. Our results suggest that a combination of sodium selenite with vitamins E and C was more effective than combinations of single vitamins to prevent structural alterations in these model bones." Clearly, this element could be essential in keeping the joints of athletes healthy.

As a New Year resolution, aim to add a selenium-rich food to your diet at least once a week. These foods include snapper, halibut, cod, tuna, salmon, calf liver, barley, crimini mushrooms, and most whole grains. Aim for about 50 micrograms each day for healthy joints and bones. OM

Endnotes

1 "Knee Food" Women's Health. April 2006; www.womenshealthmag. com
2 "Study Links Low Selenium Levels with High Risk of Osteoarthritis." www.emaxhealth.com
3 "Study Links Low Selenium Levels with High Risk of Osteoarthritis." www.emaxhealth.com
4 Dietary vitamins and selenium diminish the development of mechanically induced osteoarthritis and increase the expression of antioxidative enzymes in the knee joint of STR/1N mice. Osteoarthritis Cartilage. 2002 Feb;10(2):119-26.