I’m in the process of listening to book entitled 'Wheat Belly" written by Dr. William Davis. I picked it up because I want to make an attempt to loose a few pounds including reducing what I carry around my middle. In the book the doctor makes the case that he considers wheat as the major contributor to the obesity problem in this country and among other things is a significant contributor to developing diabetes. He also makes the claim that wheat contributes to arthritic pain flare-ups. His argument sounds pretty convincing but I’m no doctor. Has this been looked at closely and have others found that foods containing wheat have a tendency to ramp up the inflammation and PsA pain?
I have looked at reputable sites to see if I can find any connection between diet and symptoms, but every site I have visited states that there is no connection between food and symptoms. They recommend a healthy diet and maintaining a healthy weight to reduce strain on joints. On the other hand, I have seen many individuals who state that they have found that certain foods do trigger PsA symptoms. It may be that there haven’t been many studies on the impact of certain foods on arthritis symptoms.
For me, it is important to try to live healthy because of the many other lovely things our PsA makes us more succeptible to ie. diabetes, heart disease.
Its the hottest "thing" right now. I can't remember all the root of all "evil foods" over the last 60 years or the number of "Dr. So and So's" who have made a fortune (or tried) with their revelation. They all have a common them in that all disease, illness malfunction etc is somehow related to the "gut." Yeah I imagine it is...... Everything gets into you body through the upper "gut' (Stomach liver, intestines) and gets out through the lower gut (bowel kidneys and liver) At least things have improved sins the sixties when the cure for everything was a high colonic (enema) with assorted counter foods. A coffee enema supposedly could cure arthritis. (and latter became very popular in San Francisco "bath houses" as and aids preventative) That was replaced with other alternative medicine (I would imagine so as its more pleasant to make money off a handful of supplements than lining up folks for enemas. BTW I'm being VERY serious.... Enema bags were more common than Gluten free foods today......
There have been some trigger foods, but there is no particular reason or pattern. Wheat is high in gluten and carbohydrates. Folks with diabetes need to watch their carb intake because it raises their blood sugar. growing up in the fifties kids were told not to eat candy because it caused diabetes, not much different than 'wheat" today. Chrones and especially Celiac disease are wheat related. They are cousins of PsA.
What is known is that some folks have food sensitivities that can flare PsA. Research has pretty much determine these "triggers" are the cart not the horse. The may be salt in the wound but they don't cause the wound. Take the salt away the wound is still there.....
To me its pretty simple (an old grouco marx routine adapted) "Dr. Dr., every time I eat tomatoes my fingers swell up.." Don't eat tomatoes
Ditto what tntlamb said. If there was a simple, peer reviewed study that could be replicated consistently, we could all do that diet modification. There isn't though. Studies just don't hold up.
Right now we seem to be in an era of fetishising food as a moral choice. Eating certain foods or diets is seen as a better way to live, when in fact a variety of healthy food is the only diet that holds up over time.
I have certain trigger foods, which are super obvious, like lamb says with the tomato example.
btw, I have tried some of these special diets over the years....the gluten free experiment actually made me worse. By the end of 6 mo. EVERYTHING I ate made me flare. I went back to a more varied diet and things settled down.
I know many of us are desperate for SOMETHING to help, and I think a lot of these diet gurus are taking advantage of that, just as patent medicine salespeople did in travelling shows. It all sounds so good online!
The reality is, there is no hidden cure, no conspiracy to keep pharmaceutical companies in business by hiding a cure, no x y z solution. There is healthy diet and exercise and a medical merry-go-round.
The good news, you have this group! :)
I don't know...Adam ate an apple and now we're all scared to be naked! Wheat may change us back!
Thanks for the feedback. I guess I am like everyone else, I'm looking for a solution. Having said that, I think that in pursuit of losing a few pounds (around 15) and getting rid of my stomach, I am going to reduce my carbohydrate intake paying particular attention to the gluten content of the foods I eat. I was on a low-carbohydrate diet about 25 years ago and ended up losing quite a bit of weight. As I progress on this dietary change I am going to pay particular attention to my PsA symptoms and will report back to the group.
tntlamb said:
Its the hottest "thing" right now. I can't remember all the root of all "evil foods" over the last 60 years or the number of "Dr. So and So's" who have made a fortune (or tried) with their revelation. They all have a common them in that all disease, illness malfunction etc is somehow related to the "gut." Yeah I imagine it is...... Everything gets into you body through the upper "gut' (Stomach liver, intestines) and gets out through the lower gut (bowel kidneys and liver) At least things have improved sins the sixties when the cure for everything was a high colonic (enema) with assorted counter foods. A coffee enema supposedly could cure arthritis. (and latter became very popular in San Francisco "bath houses" as and aids preventative) That was replaced with other alternative medicine (I would imagine so as its more pleasant to make money off a handful of supplements than lining up folks for enemas. BTW I'm being VERY serious.... Enema bags were more common than Gluten free foods today......
There have been some trigger foods, but there is no particular reason or pattern. Wheat is high in gluten and carbohydrates. Folks with diabetes need to watch their carb intake because it raises their blood sugar. growing up in the fifties kids were told not to eat candy because it caused diabetes, not much different than 'wheat" today. Chrones and especially Celiac disease are wheat related. They are cousins of PsA.
What is known is that some folks have food sensitivities that can flare PsA. Research has pretty much determine these "triggers" are the cart not the horse. The may be salt in the wound but they don't cause the wound. Take the salt away the wound is still there.....
To me its pretty simple (an old grouco marx routine adapted) "Dr. Dr., every time I eat tomatoes my fingers swell up.." Don't eat tomatoes
I'm not scared to be naked, but if i were the folks around me would be VERY scared.
The whole diet thing is in reality nothing but a sophisticated form of denial. We are not willing to accept the disease. (we don't have to accept what it DOES) Somehow we delud our selves into thinking there is nothing REALLY wrong with us that can't be easily fixed OR that it can be fixed but someone is keeping the fix a secret from us because the phaemeceutical companies nned to keep all these secret cures a secret. (they kept watergat a secret for what 10 minutres with fewer than 30 people involved by the Pharmaceutical companies have maintained secrets for decade with MILLIONS involved.
Of course denial and the human mind is an interesting thing. I know a guy with Anklyosing Spondylitis who is so twisted he can hardly walk who spends the bulk of his time blogging on every support site how it was all caused by the NSAIDS he took 20 years ago, but now he has cured him self with the no starch diet. he has websites books etc etc. he got a little up tight when I asked him what possibly was left to fuse?? near as I could see - nothing, there wasn't anything more the disease could do for him. Every time he has a flare he goes on a fast (after eating pineapple for three days) Funny in tragic sort of way. Back before there were "seals" we had "rangers" we were taught to induce vomiting and/or fast in number of circumstances to control pain or to eat something acidic to increase endorphin production. In any event John believes he is in control of that which as defeated him.
We have some things that work. Use them. THEN if painting yourself purple and and standing on your head while naked in a public park while licking a frog helps do it.......
Both my wife and I drink 100% whey isolate shakes for breakfast or lunch. If you do some research you will learn a lot. They are low in calories and provide you with a healthy form of protien. They will curb your appetite and after a few weeks your body will recognize the added protien slowing the fat storage. It's easy on the digestive system because whey is fast to digest. Whey is milk protien and is one of two main protiens (the other slow digesting being creatine). It has little lactose, being that it is an isolate and a byproduct of cheese processing, making it more tolerable.
It has really helped us with energy and muscle fatigue. Be careful not to be fooled by fancy shakes that are fortified whith rainbows and smurf juices. We like chocolate from GNC, or Walmart. It's just 100% Whey or Whey isolate. You can add your own fruit or whatever you like. We just drink it plain with ice cold water (fridge water).
A side note...if anyone buys some read the label...if it has more than two hundred calories or so per serving it's not the right stuff. The more "isolate" the better the quality and the higher the price. The walmart stuff is good and aroung 25 for a big jug (2lbs?) and the GNC is like $50-60 for a 5lb jug. We think chocolate varieties taste best and vanila taste a little "OFF"?!
You can buy the Whey powder dirt cheap at Costco too. My wife makes all manner of smoothies in addition. Believe it or not Avacodo with the vanilla is pretty darn good and a bit of olive oil with the chocolate is nice too..... We are BIG lo carb fans (and I think many/most here are too)
GrumpyCat said:
I have looked at reputable sites to see if I can find any connection between diet and symptoms, but every site I have visited states that there is no connection between food and symptoms. They recommend a healthy diet and maintaining a healthy weight to reduce strain on joints. On the other hand, I have seen many individuals who state that they have found that certain foods do trigger PsA symptoms. It may be that there haven't been many studies on the impact of certain foods on arthritis symptoms.
For me, it is important to try to live healthy because of the many other lovely things our PsA makes us more susceptible to ie. diabetes, heart disease.My one and only visit to a specialist disappointed me. He diagnosed me with PsA and talked only about future visits and the control options he could offer that might help. Nothing about exactly why it occurs or how to shut it down. I never went back because I am not a fan of enlisting in a long term relationship with anyone that can't give me some hope of recovery. I'm not afraid of getting old and having to living with the misfortunes of age. If my genetic cards have left me with this disease, I accept it. If there is something I can do about it, I'm willing to try. Quarter appointments for check-ups with no hope of relief is not my idea of a coping strategy. I hope this doesn't sound harsh.
If that is the "hope" your doc gave you, he was an idiot. Not so many years ago people were twisted and crippled (some forms in particular) My sis was one of them. One thing we have learned is that early AND aggressive treatment can control slow down or even prevent permanent damage. (Pain is a completely different matter and subject)
Not so long ago I was chair bound (the kind with wheels) and in constant pain. Last summer I backpacked across Glacier national Park (and I'm old)
Of the thousands of known diseases out there. Do you know how many there are cures for??? (I don't) But at one time our med students were told NONE although we had developed treatments for many the best we could do was give the body an environment to heal itself.
Thats exactly what treatment does for this disease..... Couple the change in environment from any of the four known ways to do that (combined or seperate) decent fuel (a car needing premium isn't going to run well on diesel or regular) Exercise is critical (what doesn't move WILL rust.
I'd give the meds a try Dave, Literally millions of us Have gotten relief. Just the NSAIDS is a case It took SIX before I got one that worked......
TNT
The smoothies are gooood!
The only problem I have is that I get lazy and when I want one I think about gettin the stuff out, mixing it up, cleaning my mess, blah, blah....Then, I just don't even have one period. Now, I just dump a scoop in and add some water. But, I love the bannana, strawberry and chocolate.
I'm pleased to see that several people are looking at the issues of diet and autoimmune diseases from a scientific perspective. I don't want to encourage anyone to abandon a diet that they believe works for them - if it works for you, more power to you. Whether it works because you have some kind of allergic reaction to particular foods and you've stopped eating them, or through a placebo effect doesn't matter. Placebo effects are real. I recommend Daniel Moerman's "Meaning, Medicine and the Placebo Effect" if you want a fascinating read on this subject, and it's good for small talk. For example, studies show that red pills are most effective for a lot of problems, probably because red appears "potent" to a lot of us. But a blue sleeping pill is more likely to help people sleep, perhaps because blue looks tranquil to people in our culture. Interesting studies show that if a doctor gives you a medication and tells you it does wonders for most of his/her patients, it's more likely to work for you than if he/she says his/her patients haven't had much luck with it. A medication "talked up" by a doctor is more effective than one talked up by a nurse. In a study that could't possibly be approved by an ethics committee today, cardiologists found that they were about as likely to cure angina problems in heart patients by making a simple incision and sewing it up as by doing actual heart surgery. I've lived in cultures where I've seen debilitating diseases apparently cured when a person we might call a shaman ties a special kind of bracelet around the left ankle. Our minds do interesting things.
Celiac disease is, of course, real. Its "epicenter" seems to be Ireland, with people who have it radiating out in smaller numbers through the British Isles and Western Europe. But it is not a common disease, and I may nod politely when someone tells me they have celiac disease, but I don't take it seriously unless they have the celiac disease blood markers and a positive GI tract biopsy that confirms the diagnosis. I hope that doesn't offend anyone who has self-diagnosed celiac disease. My next door neighbor and friend has confirmed celiac disease and I make her a lot of quinoa.
As a service to people with celiac disease, many food products are labeled as "gluten free." What does the average consumer make of this? The average consumer doesn't know what the heck gluten is, but it must be bad if a manufacturer makes sure that their packing says GLUTEN FREE! Right? Like FAT FREE or LOW IN SUGAR.
Some people tell me they feel better when they go gluten free, and feel terrible when they re-introduced gluten into their diets. I believe that part about feeling terrible with reintroduction, because digestion is a process that depends on a symbiotic relationship with organisms that help us digest our food. If we starve out the organisms that help us digest gluten, yeah, we have a hard time digesting it when we start eating it again. If you've ever taken a broad-spectrum antibiotic, you probably know that it kills off lots of beneficial bacteria in your digestive system, that you often get diarrhea, and it takes a while for your GI system to get back to normal. That's because it takes a while for the beneficial bacteria to recolonize your system and digest particular foods.
Remember that most of us - though not all of us - have ancestors who domesticated grains and other foods thousands of years ago, and that before that, those ancestors ate wild grains. If a lot of the foods that various books call no-no's were bad for us, our ancestors would not have survived because they would have been selected against in the process of evolution. Grains, which have been, and are, dietary mainstays in many parts of the world, are something that a population has a definite evolutionary incentive to thrive on.
Lactose intolerance is an interesting example of this. Most Africans are lactose intolerant; until the domestication of livestock, humans stopped consuming milk when their mothers weaned them. But in a few places in Africa, the environment is excellent for herding, and pastoralists thrive on a diet heavy in milk products and over time became lactose intolerant populations. Say that you were a Fulani herdsperson in Africa a few thousand years ago. If you were only mildly intolerant to lactose you'd have a real advantage over others in your group who couldn't digest milk at all. You were better nourished and more likely to live to adulthood and reproduce, giving your lactose-tolerant genes to your descendants. Your friends who were extremely lactose intolerant were less likely to survive and reproduce. So a lactose-tolerant African group developed, just as lactose tolerant groups developed in Scandinavian countries and Western Europe, where the environment is good for raising cattle.
I think a balanced diet heavy on fruits and vegetables is the best bet for most of us. I'm not saying that some people don't have definite food allergies. Some people do. But probably most of us don't. However, our diets are something that we can control, so manipulating them does give us a sense of control, which can be important to us if we feel we've lost control over other parts of our lives.
Again, if some dietary change seems to make you feel better, more power to you. We are all genetically unique, and you may have found something that truly helps you. Just be sure that you're getting the nutrients that you need.
Standing Ovation Gardener! You've hit every point eloquently.
Oh, thank you, Marietta. That's kind of you to say.
But I forgot to mention something about tomatoes. A good number of people with autoimmune diseases do believe that tomatoes are trigger foods for them.
Tomatoes are plants that botanists put in the very large Solanaceae family. Botanists subdivide this family into several genera, which are like subgroups. These subgroups have very different characteristics from each other. Some of them include extremely toxic plants that I wouldn't grow in my garden until my kids were old enough not to browse: plants like datura and nicotiana (nicotine). A lot of medications were derived from plants in this family that are now made synthetically. But different solanaceous plants can do things like dilate your eyes, act as truth serum, sedate you, prevent motion sickness, make you very ill, or kill you.
People in Europe were well aware of the potency and deadliness of many solanceous plants. Whensolanaceous plants from the Americas such as chili peppers, tomatoes, eggplant and potatoes were introduced to Europe, most Europeans wouldn't eat them. They recognized them as solanaceous plants and assumed they were poisonous. A lot of Europeans grew tomatoes, but because the red fruit looked so pretty - nobody in their right mind would eat a tomato, because it would probably kill you, like its more familiar native cousin, deadly nightshade, could.
Eventually, Italians did make tomato sauce, poor people everywhere grew potatoes for daily food, chili peppers became favorites with those who like it hot. And a lot of people grew, and became addicted to, nicotine (tobacco). But an underlying uneasiness about solanaceous plants has persisted in the minds of European descendants, and only a couple of generations ago, folk medicine and home medical guides published in the early 1900s were down on plants like tomatoes. My grandmother believed that tomatoes and eggplants were unhealthy plants. So we might find tomatoes, eggplants, etc. suspicious foods because of some cultural messages we've gotten, or some people may be responding to the complex chemicals in these plants that aren't yet studied or understood.
This discussion is making me hungry.
Hey Robert, my wife thinks I'm helpless (and that was before the Ps. She has a custom smoothie mix in little seal bags for in the frezzer at home and both offices for me. Fruits cut up powder in, even ice cubes. I need pull the bag out dump it my blender with a bottle of "vitamin water" (she doesn't trust me to add the right amount of water either) and voila, a smoothie, No muss no fuss
Hry TNT, That's awsome!
If my wife tried that she would find a way to burn it! Nothing against her, by any means. I knew this when we first met. I also know she gets it from her mom! Both my father-inlaw and myself do all the cooking. It's kind of a runnung joke and very much out in the open as well. I guess it's like job security. When I go out of town she survives on sandwiches and chips only and when I get back she can't wait for a real meal.
And they say to a man's heart....It should be to a whom ever is hungry's heart! Plus, she knows I can fix stuff. So, I'm pretty much set (haha)!
Funny story...my wife was talking to her mom yesterday and found out her father was out of town. She asked her what she had for dinner and she told my wife, "microwave popcorn":( Of course we laughed at her!!!