On cooking shows likeThe ChewandBurgers, Brew and Que, the charismatic Chef Michael Symon, with his signature bald head and contagious smile, whips up mouth-watering dishes with what seems like boundless energy and enthusiasm. What’s not so apparent are his painful hands, aching knees and ankles, and lurking fatigue.
Symon, 51, was diagnosed in his 20s withrheumatoid arthritis(RA) and discoid lupus, a form of lupus that primarily affects the skin, but also the joints.
“Literally one morning I woke up with these two enormous butterfly splotches under my eyes,” Symon recalls. At first, he and his dermatologist focused on managing the lupus by staying out of the sun. But when his joint symptoms persisted, his dermatologist sent him to a rheumatologist, who diagnosed RA.
Growing (Older) Pains
Symon’s arthritis pain and stiffness affects his ankles, knees, elbows, wrists, and hands. Some of his joint issues stem from broken ankles and reconstructive elbow surgery from wrestling in high school and college – the reason he insisted his own son choose a different sport, he says with a laugh. The pain in his hands is worsened by “30-plus years of cooking, holding a knife butchering – doing a lot of that in coolers, 35-degree temperatures,” he says. Now that he has others do the precise cutting needed in the restaurants, he’s more than happy to give his hands a break at home by buying precut produce and using a food processor.
His primary care doctor suspects he also hasosteoarthritis. “’There’ll be a point where you’ll have to get both knees [replaced], and your hips aren’t great either,’” he told Symon.
As Symon got older, he found himself taking increasing amounts of over-the-counternonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs(NSAIDs). “When you’re younger, you tend to grunt through some pains more. As I got older, I don’t know if the aches and pains increased or my pain tolerance decreased – one of the two [happened],” he says.
His Personalized Pain Therapy
Symon, whose grandmother had RA, knows the disease will continue to cause damage if he doesn’t take adisease-modifying medicationto address it. “My grandmother, by the time she passed, it was crippling. I understand that certainly is something the future may have for me, but at [my age], I’m going to continue to do things as best as I can and still continue to enjoy it,” he says.
相反，与大多数医学专家的建议相反，他利用自己的专业知识，试图通过饮食来管理自己的整体健康和关节炎，结果好坏参半。他尝试了纯素饮食(他不喜欢，尽管他的妻子是素食主义者)，试图降低他遗传的高胆固醇倾向，但这并没有改变他的数据。他最后服用了降低胆固醇的药物。
But for his RA, he focused on reducing the foods that cause his joint pain to escalate. His hands are a little “crooked,” he says, but he can generally manage the pain.
“I’ve thought about taking something for the RA, but there’s a point [where] I’ve been able to control the pain, I’ve found, with diet. So – right, wrong or indifferent – my choice would always be to take less medication,” he says. “I started playing around with my diet to see if Icould reduce the aches and inflammation through diet. That’s what led to me trying to figure out what my own personal triggers were that affect how I feel.”
It also led to a new cookbook he co-authored,Fix It With Food: More Than 123 Recipes to Address Autoimmune Issues and Inflammation, released in late 2019. He is currently working on another volume ofFix It With Food, which will be released in November 2021.
食谱很简单，即使对我们这些不懂厨房的人来说也是如此。“里面有红薯和椰子炖菜，做起来真的很容易。在商店里很容易找到切成丁的红薯，其他食材也是如此。”“你把所有的东西都放进锅里，慢慢炖，味道会很好。从味道的角度来看，这可能是书中我最喜欢的食谱，要吃到感觉特别的一餐并不需要太多的努力。”
通过调整饮食，他的关节疼痛减轻了约80%，但“这不是治愈，而是维持。”只有他坚持下去才会有帮助。
Unfortunately for Symon, who has a particular love for cheeses and other dairy products, he discovered that what triggers his arthritis symptoms most are sugar and dairy. So now, instead of eating ice cream three times a week, he’ll indulge in ice cream (“a double whammy because it’s sugaranddairy,” he says) or cheese every couple of weeks.
“I’ve learned that dairy makes me feel pretty [bad]. That being said, ice cream makes me feel pretty happy, so there are times where I make a decision [that] I’m going to have the ice cream, and tomorrow I’m just not going to feel great,” he says.
“如果我做了正确的事情，我每天都感觉很棒。早年我有(关节炎疼痛)，我被它加重了，并试图克服它，”他说。“现在我明白了，我必须以某种方式生活才能感觉更好。现在我不再感到沮丧，而是回到了正轨。”
Adjusting to the Pandemic
在疫情期间，他的饮食不像往常那样健康——“比正常情况下吃得更多，”他说。他拥有和/或管理着15家餐馆，这些餐馆不得不适应大流行病的限制和经济后果。大多数城市已经重新开放，但现在面临着防护装备短缺和冬季天气的挑战。
《美食频道》的拍摄对他来说也发生了巨大的变化。He already had given up intense competitions likeIron Chef, but he’s a regular on other shows and has his own string of productions as well. He shot the latest,Symon’s Dinners, with help from his culinary director and social media manager on a cell phone at his home. “In 25 years of doing TV, that was a first,” he says, laughing. “The shows actually came out really good.”
作为一名厨师和餐厅老板，他通常会不停地走动。他说:“我很少有一天走不到2万步的。”随着疫情的爆发，他不再经常出现在餐馆里，但他和妻子今年早些时候收养的一只小狗正在帮助他弥补活动的不足。
“We’ve always had mastiffs and those kinds of dogs that you walk them to the end of the driveway and they’re exhausted. This is our first terrier. I walk him two or three times a day and he’s never tired,” Symon says, so he still clocks more than 20,000 steps a day. “I try to play golf twice a week just to keep my mind straight,” he adds, and “I do a lot of stretching and a lot of meditation and breathing. Once you realize it makes you feel better, you just get in the routine.”
A benefit of the pandemic is the extra time with his wife and his son and daughter-in-law, whose baby is nearly 2 now. “I’m not a huge fan of all the travel that sometimes work brings,” he says. “Our granddaughter only lives about five minutes away, so I get to see her several times a week and spend time with her, which is great.”—JILL TYRER
Chef Symon’s Holiday Cooking Advice
Plan ahead and start preparing your holiday meal a week in advance. “There are a lot of things you can do five days in advance so you’re not on your feet 10, 12 straight hours or whatever trying to get it all done the day before and the day of,” he says.
Consider what you can make ahead and freeze, like casseroles, he suggests, so you’ll just have to warm them up before serving. “Get vegetables cut, make your stock, do the kinds of things you can do in advance,” he says.
“If you’re super stressed, that doesn’t helpthings,” he says. “Really, at the end of the day, one thing COVID’s taught me is to enjoy your family, so the last thing you want on a holiday is to be stressed out and achy and in pain and not enjoy the people around you.”
Check out these holiday-appropriate dishes Symon and his culinary director recommend fromFix It With Food–Slow-Roasted Salmon,Loaded Greens With Walnuts and Mushrooms, andPumpkin Pie.