Health Boards
Sat-15-12-2012, 13:40 PM
At Fred's request I'll start a new thread on this subject, by pasting what I've written elsewhere on this board.
In a nutshell, in the mid-1990s I had extremely bad psoriatic spondylitis, & was headed for crippledom according to my rheumatologist. I changed my diet & lifestyle fairly radically, & in a year or so I was free of all symptoms & my ESR (blood inflammation) readings had dropped from 43 to 1.
Here is the post:
My arthritis cure:
The first thing I did was get blood tests for inflammation (the ESR at the time - a good basic test still in use), so I could keep objective track of progress. My ESR reading went from 43 down to 19 down to 6, then finally down to 1 - the lowest possible reading. (Normal range for middle-aged people is 1-15; 1-10 if young.) That took less than a year. All symptoms disappeared for good. I haven't had a problem since - tho the rheumatologist at the time said I'd end up a cripple.
From the notes of my 1997 visit to the rheumatplogist:
Q: What is the inflammation? And what causes it?
A: A pathological chain of events within tissues. White cells moving into tissues. For me, mainly characterised by the presence of macrophages and lymphocytes (from the immune response). No-one knows what causes it.
So I take it this was autoimmune.
These days I do get the occasional twinge in a finger if I eat a lot of fruit or drink a lot of beer. (I.e. too many sugars.) So I just stop doing that for a day & it goes.
I was in agony from head to foot: 20 digits swollen like sausages; spine fusing up; even breastbone extremely painful; couldn't turn over in bed at night. So it was a big turnaround.
To do this I went off acidic food - was eating a lot of tomato paste at the time; and off gluten grains; and off alcohol and cigarettes & pot. And cut way back on the sugars, including fruit. And no dairy.
The regime varied from time to time. Sometimes I found that animal protein was making symptoms worse, and making my tears stingy & acidic. So I went off all animal protein - & those symptoms went away. Other times I just cut down to chicken or fish every second day. That's something to experiment with. (I eat a ton of meat now - no ill-effects: but when one is in a critical state, trying to subdue the autoimmune response, one needs extra measures. Therapeutic diets can be different from maintenance diets.)
I took anti-arthritis herbs, & got mobility exercises from a physiotherapist.
My fastest rate of cure came when I went to live on a quiet beach for a few months, & exercised & swam every day.
Some of my ideas came from an English herbalist named Rowland. I didn't follow every item - excessive fastidiousness is counter-productive, as it causes you to rebel at some point. I also don't agree with him allowing bread and coffee. Other people's laundry lists are for picking the eyes out of, not following fanatically.
My hunch is that for me lowering the intake of sugars was the biggest factor. Cutting out/back on bad fats, gluten (& much grain of any sort) & red meat were also curative I think.
Modern fruit is not the low-sugar, fibrous fruit we evolved on, so there's a good rationale to being careful with even natural sugars.
Fish oil! There's even some science on it for arthritis. MAX-EPA absorption is improved by replacing polyunsaturated fats in the diet with monos.
n-6 fatty acids tend to be pro-inflammatory, a scientist told me at the time.
I also took quite a few supps, tho can't recall which ones. There'd be websites on this now. If you can't take any supps that shouldn't be a barrier to getting well, if her diet is in order.
It's of tremendous practical & psychological benefit to keep track of your ESR - get it measured regularly. Seeing those numbers fall is a real boost.
Going off anything that I reacted to for a while (until the allergic response settled down) was helpful. Some people find rotation diets useful, tho I didn't need one. I tried an elimination diet once, which picked up a couple of things (e.g. more pain after eating chickpeas).
Some writers say going off nightshades is very important: I never had any problem with them (except the acidity of the tomatoes) - but I didn't eat a ton of potatoes either, to keep starches/sugars down.
General points:
1. Medicos will be useless. This is not their field.
2. Pain is your friend, as it tells you you are sick & (when reducing) shows you that what you are doing is working. So I never took painkillers or anti-inflammatories. It's a good spur to try hard.
3. Acting early is a good idea, because the calcifcation caused by the arthritis isn't reversible.
4. If progress is slow, gene testing & fixing methylation is worth exploring. But this is a whole 'nother ballgame, & shouldn't be needed.
5. Most sick people don't want to get well. It's about 1 in 100 IMO. Only very few will follow through with what needs to be done. You would be a rare bird if you made the kind of effort implied in the above.
6. Following my regime exactly may not be optimal: you'll need to experiment a bit. But the broad guidelines should be useful.
In a nutshell, in the mid-1990s I had extremely bad psoriatic spondylitis, & was headed for crippledom according to my rheumatologist. I changed my diet & lifestyle fairly radically, & in a year or so I was free of all symptoms & my ESR (blood inflammation) readings had dropped from 43 to 1.
Here is the post:
My arthritis cure:
The first thing I did was get blood tests for inflammation (the ESR at the time - a good basic test still in use), so I could keep objective track of progress. My ESR reading went from 43 down to 19 down to 6, then finally down to 1 - the lowest possible reading. (Normal range for middle-aged people is 1-15; 1-10 if young.) That took less than a year. All symptoms disappeared for good. I haven't had a problem since - tho the rheumatologist at the time said I'd end up a cripple.
From the notes of my 1997 visit to the rheumatplogist:
Q: What is the inflammation? And what causes it?
A: A pathological chain of events within tissues. White cells moving into tissues. For me, mainly characterised by the presence of macrophages and lymphocytes (from the immune response). No-one knows what causes it.
So I take it this was autoimmune.
These days I do get the occasional twinge in a finger if I eat a lot of fruit or drink a lot of beer. (I.e. too many sugars.) So I just stop doing that for a day & it goes.
I was in agony from head to foot: 20 digits swollen like sausages; spine fusing up; even breastbone extremely painful; couldn't turn over in bed at night. So it was a big turnaround.
To do this I went off acidic food - was eating a lot of tomato paste at the time; and off gluten grains; and off alcohol and cigarettes & pot. And cut way back on the sugars, including fruit. And no dairy.
The regime varied from time to time. Sometimes I found that animal protein was making symptoms worse, and making my tears stingy & acidic. So I went off all animal protein - & those symptoms went away. Other times I just cut down to chicken or fish every second day. That's something to experiment with. (I eat a ton of meat now - no ill-effects: but when one is in a critical state, trying to subdue the autoimmune response, one needs extra measures. Therapeutic diets can be different from maintenance diets.)
I took anti-arthritis herbs, & got mobility exercises from a physiotherapist.
My fastest rate of cure came when I went to live on a quiet beach for a few months, & exercised & swam every day.
Some of my ideas came from an English herbalist named Rowland. I didn't follow every item - excessive fastidiousness is counter-productive, as it causes you to rebel at some point. I also don't agree with him allowing bread and coffee. Other people's laundry lists are for picking the eyes out of, not following fanatically.
My hunch is that for me lowering the intake of sugars was the biggest factor. Cutting out/back on bad fats, gluten (& much grain of any sort) & red meat were also curative I think.
Modern fruit is not the low-sugar, fibrous fruit we evolved on, so there's a good rationale to being careful with even natural sugars.
Fish oil! There's even some science on it for arthritis. MAX-EPA absorption is improved by replacing polyunsaturated fats in the diet with monos.
n-6 fatty acids tend to be pro-inflammatory, a scientist told me at the time.
I also took quite a few supps, tho can't recall which ones. There'd be websites on this now. If you can't take any supps that shouldn't be a barrier to getting well, if her diet is in order.
It's of tremendous practical & psychological benefit to keep track of your ESR - get it measured regularly. Seeing those numbers fall is a real boost.
Going off anything that I reacted to for a while (until the allergic response settled down) was helpful. Some people find rotation diets useful, tho I didn't need one. I tried an elimination diet once, which picked up a couple of things (e.g. more pain after eating chickpeas).
Some writers say going off nightshades is very important: I never had any problem with them (except the acidity of the tomatoes) - but I didn't eat a ton of potatoes either, to keep starches/sugars down.
General points:
1. Medicos will be useless. This is not their field.
2. Pain is your friend, as it tells you you are sick & (when reducing) shows you that what you are doing is working. So I never took painkillers or anti-inflammatories. It's a good spur to try hard.
3. Acting early is a good idea, because the calcifcation caused by the arthritis isn't reversible.
4. If progress is slow, gene testing & fixing methylation is worth exploring. But this is a whole 'nother ballgame, & shouldn't be needed.
5. Most sick people don't want to get well. It's about 1 in 100 IMO. Only very few will follow through with what needs to be done. You would be a rare bird if you made the kind of effort implied in the above.
6. Following my regime exactly may not be optimal: you'll need to experiment a bit. But the broad guidelines should be useful.