Friday 3 October 2014

Changing My Diet Has Reduced Symptoms Of My AS

So, it has been a while since my last post. I intended to keep things up to date but I didn't

My last post gave a brief over view of the history of my AS and the last part talked about how I controlled the AS with my diet.

Using diet to control the effects of my Ankylosing Spondylitis has continued to be really successful. There are loads of resources out there which help, one especially is Autoimmune Paleo by Mickey Trescott. I used her advice as well as looking at reducing my starch intake in my diet and it helped massively.

I did one month of hardcore giving up everything where I pretty much only ate lettuce and some fish. I ate hardly any starchy vegetables such as Sweet Potato or Squash, I also cut out most sugars (had one bad day where I ate two whole easter eggs!). I didn't eat any wheat or grains and drank no alcohol. It was hard to stay strong, the hardest was the sugar. But what I realised was that I was in control of my disease, and once you realise that you are in control then it makes you very focused. If you want to not have pain, than you have to be strong, it is your choice. You can cure (or over come most symptoms) if you are willing to put the effort in. So I did and after a month I felt fantastic.

After having my flair up in February, I really never thought I would be at a point where I could surf, and at some points during the flare up I really wondered if I would ever be able to walk properly. Hopefully this gives you an idea of how bad things were, and hopefully you can get an idea of how good things are now. It is totally possible to do the same.

I really feel that the drugs that I was on (Humira - Anti TNF injection) had a massive negative impact on me. They covered the problem up and reduced my pain a lot but at the same time they had such an enormous impact on my immune system.

I believe as do many others that a lot, if not all Auto Immune diseases are as a result of your gut health. If you have a healthy gut then I believe you can overcome stuff.

It is really worth looking at AIP diets as well as low starch diets and to start with if that all seems a bit overwhelming, which it can then have a look at Paelo diets, which are a bit more manageable and don't seem as severe.