The correlation seems like it would be hormonal. More fat equals more inflammation. So obesity doesn't cause PsA, but it may well make things worse. Cheryl asked about sleep, yes, not sleeping well definitely affects your weight, as well as your overall health. I'm not looking for studies right now, but they are definitely out there, and there is a definite connection.
sybil said:
I found this article quoting Dr Gladman which again says there's a correlation between obesity and PsA, no more than that as yet. But also that obesity is associated with more severe disease.
hello as for me I have had psa for many years I have never myself been on the obsessed side matter of fact I have never weighed over 100 lbs the only time I did was when I was pregnant with both my beautiful daughters I was a LNA for 25 years and very active my work did a toll on my body I had to give up my job that I loved last year and go on disability that was hard for me matter of fact I am the opposite I have a hard time managing my weight to keep it on I think what I was told that the large size is not helpful on the joints just like the exercises I keep active as much as I can but most days it so very painful hope this has helped god bless
You can't win unless you go to extraordinarymeasures with pesticides in almost everything, all the flour and sugar and processed meats. Eating out you get more calories at one meal than you should get all day. One candy bar I is 1and a 1/2 hours on a treadmill. If you have pain you can't burn that much.
Really, the way we eat in America, and the food we have available is at the root of the weight. You don't have be out of control, just eating what is ordinary will get you in a lot of trouble.
We do probably have less energy to eat right since it is so hard to do. And maybe the foods that cause inflammation affect us more even before diagnosis. I looked all over for a link to diet ( didn't find one) and became vegan, I think I felt better but I had to drive a long way and go to three grocery stores to get what I needed and I live in a pretty large city That is why I don't do it anymore, you just don't have the time when the disease has you.
I did gain a lot of weight once when I was on steroids for a month. It was necessary to halt the progression of my first terrible flare. The royal rheumatologist said the weight was the disease on Scott Orn's video on this site. It was a small mention but he seemed convinced.
I have been clearing my throat for several days and couldn't come up with a way to phrase a response that wouldn't offend those who may be "overweight"
So instead I will talk about something else near and dear to my heart............... BOOZE. I love it.I drink it I make it, a certain part of my social life is wrapped around it. I have a wine cellar with nearly 1500 bottles of wine (I am not a wine snob incidently-I find them boorish at best.) I have several hundred bottles of Single malts. I have traveled through out Scotland and Ireland and bought many single barrel productions etc etc. The highlight of my month is the Keats Club where similar minded collectors share from their collection and we write checks for charity per tasting. I am not an alcholic and my overall consumption is less than 15 units a month. I know some alcoholics. They don't frequent my circles. I have won multilple contests with both my brews and wines (and few meads) and have one brew in commercial production (a sorghum free gluten free ale)
I would not take a drop and quit tomorrow if I had too. I did it with pain meds.
My uncle on the other hand WAS an alcoholic He had a disease and every excuse to drink. he went 60 years sober and died at age 99 from a stroke while "in the saddle" an hour after a meeting. (PM me if you need an explanation. He knew he shouldn't drink for his health and didn't even though he had an excuse. My sister on the other hand who was also an alcoholic didn't make that choice. She died at 60. "The Booze helps me relax (from the PsA pain) and I'm an alcoholic which is a disease" The alchol still killed her.
The weight will still cripple us. There is only one way to keep alcohol from killing you. At least with weight there are TWO ways to keep it from crippling you. If one doesn't work the other will. (in the spirit of full disclosure there was a period where this former athlete justified hsi being obese from lack of exercise, After losing 150# by the other method, eating less, he is no just overweight)
Seenie said:
Ah, I hear Lamb clearing his throat and imagine him assuming a professorial posture. LOL I'm voerweight too, as are a lot of PsA sufferers. I'm not sure it's maladaptive behaviour, or a response to pain, though. There was a study done of people with PsA and people with RA, very similar diseases in terms of physical impact. They found that, on the whole, the PsA sufferers had higher BMIs. I've read other things suggesting that PsA has some kind of an impact on metabolism. Chicken? Egg? Correlation? Causation? Who knows.
I’ll be honest, I’ve always been a comfort eater, chocolate,biscuits, sweets, fresh crusty bread dripping with butter, always made me feel better as I hid my hoard in my bedroom as a child…I was 5 foot 4 inches and weighed in at 8 stone dripping wet (thats 112 lbs) when I started to gain weight in my early 20s I was diagnosed with PCOS and I had to change my eating habits. Is it incidental my tendon issues started at the same time? Who knows?
I know being over weight is not good for me and I do try to keep my weight as stable as I can and have had a BMI of 27 (down from 29) the last 6 months or so, but know I could do better.
I’ve been diabetic too since the beginning of the year, I know the risks I run from not controlling blood sugars, my weight…at the end of the day I can only blame myself if I eat things I shouldn’t and am only cheating myself.
At some point there was something about the biologics correlating with weight gain / weight retention. Is that still something considered plausible?
I know that when I was on Simponi I put on exactly 1.5 lbs a month, for the 11 months I was on it, no matter what I did. Right now, I've been off my Cimzia over a month (waiting for a new med), and lbs are dropping off for no reason, despite being on Prednisone part of the time.
It is probably just coincidence. Just thought I'd toss it into the fray!! :)))
Its plausible but it doesn't mean you don't have to adjust your intake accordingly. But what a better time than the Holidays to be able to eat more????
There are some of us, me included, that cannot lose the weight - or lose some only to gain without changing a thing. I have so many things going on medically - not just PsA, but autoimmune hepatitis, possible kidney issues, still-healing damage from celiac even though my diet is CLEAN, hypothyroidism that changes depending on med levels in my body so I can't get it stable, etc. etc. etc. I've been working with doctors and a nutritionist to try to figure out what will work as far as diet and exercise goes, all limitations considered. The only thing that worked for sure was when I gave up and ate ice cream every day for two weeks and lost six pounds. LOL
I'm now concentrating on being as healthy as possible and losing FAT not losing WEIGHT. I need to put on muscle mass and lose fat, so I'm not going to worry much about the scale, but about my overall health.
There you go. See you can lose the weight. You could write it all up make it nice and purty and sell it as the Ice cream diet and become a bajillionaire.
nym said:
...... The only thing that worked for sure was when I gave up and ate ice cream every day for two weeks and lost six pounds.....
Sold! Nym, sign me up for the first copy, but you have to figure out how to do it with chocolate cake, butter cream icing, and french vanilla ice cream. Oh, and also figure out how to keep me from making myself sick on it. Thank you.
This is my weakness. Gluten and FODMAPS free be damned, I still have no power over the chocolate cake with butter cream icing! *sigh* There is a cake upstairs, as described, and it is calling to me. I better go throw it away. *double sigh*
Oh, how I wish the ice cream diet worked all the time! LOL Unfortunately not so much. I don't even like sweet stuff most of the time, but had major butter pecan cravings those couple weeks.
Six months of history...I was told by my General Practice Dr. that all the corticosteroids that my Rheumy is giving me will change my blood sugar which in turn will increase my weight. He said that I would be come diabetic at the rate that I was getting the shots. He was concerned. My Rheumy keeps giving me shots. I am now on Enbrel as well.
I am now pre-diabetic, 40 lbs. up in 3 months no matter what I ate or did. I am working to loose the weight gain, but my mobility is less than adequate to burn fat. I hope to reduce my weight with diet. I bought a pair of pants that was a size larger than I needed. It took me just a week to outgrow them. I am now stable weight wise but my waist is still expanding. In 6 months I went from 36" to 44+. It seems to be effecting me at the waist line more than anywhere else.
I kept my weight down while on pain medication...I could stay some what active. But now without pain meds I can not do any activities that I could. But I can function brain wise.
I’ve never had a problem with my weight, but I do bloat extremely easy. I can easily put on a good 12 pounds of water weight! And I tend to gain weight around my midsection.
This is an interesting point. When I went to my most recent rheumatologist he commented on the fact that I am not overweight (BMI is 24 for whatever that matters, I just looked it up). He said I am in the minority, and that there is current research on the connection between the two. This link here is of an interesting study that finds a positive connection between obesity and PsA, but it only studied women. Interestingly, obese women were more likely to get PsA, even if they didn't already have psoriasis when they began the study. This link here is just an article that discusses other studies, but I think it's a super important one if you are interested in the link between obesity and PsA. That article reviews major studies involving over 75,000 participants (through electronic medical records). It suggests there is a clear link between the two, and offers some insight:
Obesity leads to increased inflammatory cytokines (IL-6, TNFα) and changes in related molecules such as leptin and adiponectin, which may contribute to the development of multiple disturbances in predisposed individuals. However, in most cases the relationship appears to be bi-directional, as comorbidities seem to increase and perpetuate the proinflammatory status associated with adiposity.8 Therefore, the ‘obesity of psoriasis’ is thought to be a key link to the increased risk of diabetes, metabolic syndrome and cardiovascular disease, but the proinflammatory molecules produced in these conditions also increase susceptibility to psoriasis and the severity of established psoriasis.
Basically, what I *think* that is saying is that although the two are linked, it is likely that they re-enforce each other, rather than one causing the other. This makes logical sense since, as they say, adipose tissue (fat) has high levels of inflammatory cytokines. In other words, it is very likely that your diet is making your symptoms worse, but may not be causing those symptoms to begin with.
