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It took my savings and 14 years but I’m about to beat arthritis

thetimes.com

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Re: It took my savings and 14 years but I’m about to beat arthritis

#151
post #68

Tangential question: as I now start suffering from arthritis in my hands, I was wondering if there is anything linked to diet that could help reduce it? I had read that fatty fishes were a good source to reduce pain but in your experience, is there any other food/lifestyle changes that can help alleviate it before resorting to medication?

I have psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis which I take biologics for. The biologic I am on now is working wonders but the others have been hit or miss. In my experience, removing sugar has helped. Tumeric and Glucosamine have been known to help with anti inflammatory ailments. My sister in law takes bone broth and it has helped a lot with issues.

> psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis

Does stress play a role in flare-ups for you? A family member has this, and aside from joint shocks .. kicking a thing too hard resulting in knee flare ups .. his stress level impacts his flare ups. E.g. "This thing in my life is going badly and I cannot escape it." .. when he does escape it, there are fewer flare-ups. ?

Re: It took my savings and 14 years but I’m about to beat arthritis

#152

Has anyone treated arthritis with diet? I feel way better when I get off processed foods for a few days. (Not sure if I have arthritis but really sore hips and lower back.)

How old are you? This may be sacroiliitis. It can be diagnosed with an MRI scan.

Re: It took my savings and 14 years but I’m about to beat arthritis

#153

> The drug is based on a molecule he discovered while working at Pfizer, and can be delivered via a once-a-month EpiPen-style injection, where it restores protective processes to diseased joints and enables the regeneration of affected tissues. It works by blocking a compound that supports the nerve cells involved in transmitting pain signals to the brain. So, it restores lost tissue by numbing nerves? This makes no…

It's actually way more complicated than I think the article can explain to the audience it's targeting. Nerve Growth Factors turn a bunch of different "dials" in the body. The main ones of course are the growth, maintenance, and survival of neurons in different parts of the body however some other "dials" they adjust are inflammation and immune response.

So it affects the nerves in a much more complex way than simple numbing and on top of that it also plays a part in regulating inflammation and auto-immune activity that may worsen arthritis and prevent the body from healing what it can.

And this is a gross oversimplification but it gets the function across a bit better than the article.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nerve_growth_factor

Re: It took my savings and 14 years but I’m about to beat arthritis

#154

Has anyone treated arthritis with diet? I feel way better when I get off processed foods for a few days. (Not sure if I have arthritis but really sore hips and lower back.)

I have a sero-negative inflammatory arthritis. The only thing that makes it better is meloxicam; that shit is AMAZINGLY effective, completely makes my symptoms go away for 2-3 days if I take the full 15mg. Unfortunately due to the risk of stomach bleeding and my sensitive stomach, I only take 7.5mg every now and then and only 15mg when I really need to do something active (walk long distances). Note: I tried celecoxib and it did nothing, but some people have luck with it over meloxicam.

Now there are foods that make it worse: generally anything with high sodium like pizza, fries, fast-food/restaurant food (Chinese food especially). Caffeine also makes it slightly worse. By far the worst of them all is alcohol though. After the alcohol wears off, I'm in so much agony that I can barely walk.

Re: It took my savings and 14 years but I’m about to beat arthritis

#155
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like, even in the best case scenario, the drug doesn't really cure arthritis but just blunts the pain. I was thinking it would be something that helps the worn ligament grow back. That I would consider a real cure.

A cure for much arthritis is possibly a Nutritarian Diet promoted by Dr. Joel Fuhrman which reduces inflammation and helps the body rebuild: https://www.drfuhrman.com/blog/119/a-progressive-approach-to... "The traditional treatment of rheumatoid arthritis revolves around medications which typically include steroids and chemotherapeutic agents such as methotrexate, Imuran®, Gold®, Plaquenil®, Arava® and Remicade®. The…

Methotrexate is the most vile substance (made one day per week about as useful as a full day hangover) It did help but honestly only as much as the effort I put into a diet change. I completely agree with parent comment.

Anyone with an autoimmune disorder or chronic inflammation who has not experienced an elimination diet is doing themselves a huge disservice.

Re: It took my savings and 14 years but I’m about to beat arthritis

#156
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like, even in the best case scenario, the drug doesn't really cure arthritis but just blunts the pain. I was thinking it would be something that helps the worn ligament grow back. That I would consider a real cure.

> It sounds like, even in the best case scenario, the drug doesn't really cure arthritis but just blunts the pain. > I was thinking it would be something that helps the worn ligament grow back. That I would consider a real cure. As far as I can tell, that is what it does: > The drug is based on a molecule he discovered while working at Pfizer, and can be delivered via a once-a-month EpiPen-style injection, where it r…

The featured article contains mixed messages:

It is hoped the drug — which is not a cure but will make the condition much less painful for sufferers — could also be used to treat rheumatoid arthritis and chemotherapy-induced pain in the future.

As a writer myself who has watched journalism dying, crap articles being written by underpaid freelancers, the enshitification of the internet while everyone objects to any means used to monetize content creation, etc ad nauseum, I don't really feel like trying to figure out just how much this "really does" for patients.

The medical industry in the US tends to be about profit and I think people should, in fact, profit for their work but in medicine sometimes profit motive tosses the baby out with the bathwater. And I'm super burned out on trying to have any kind of meaningful discussion of that issue online.

Re: It took my savings and 14 years but I’m about to beat arthritis

#157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know this is a lil more extreme and Dr Greger does have an agenda of Plant based diets but he always has a decent explanation of the possible triggers. https://nutritionfacts.org/video/why-do-plant-based-diets-he...

I know this is well-intentioned, but please keep this stuff out of health threads about serious health conditions. This kind of material lacks rigor, dramatically misrepresents the state of scientific and medical thought, cherry picks studies, overstates the effect sizes and passes off speculation and easily digestible explanations (for laypeople) as emerging medical truths. Long-term sufferers of RA - and the people…

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Re: It took my savings and 14 years but I’m about to beat arthritis

#158

Has anyone treated arthritis with diet? I feel way better when I get off processed foods for a few days. (Not sure if I have arthritis but really sore hips and lower back.)

I have a sero-negative inflammatory arthritis. The only thing that makes it better is meloxicam; that shit is AMAZINGLY effective, completely makes my symptoms go away for 2-3 days if I take the full 15mg. Unfortunately due to the risk of stomach bleeding and my sensitive stomach, I only take 7.5mg every now and then and only 15mg when I really need to do something active (walk long distances). Note: I tried celecoxi…

Huh, is a pill the only delivery system that works for that drug?

Re: It took my savings and 14 years but I’m about to beat arthritis

#159
post #68

Tangential question: as I now start suffering from arthritis in my hands, I was wondering if there is anything linked to diet that could help reduce it? I had read that fatty fishes were a good source to reduce pain but in your experience, is there any other food/lifestyle changes that can help alleviate it before resorting to medication?

Not exactly diet but maybe earthing/grounding could help.

Re: It took my savings and 14 years but I’m about to beat arthritis

#160
post #68

Tangential question: as I now start suffering from arthritis in my hands, I was wondering if there is anything linked to diet that could help reduce it? I had read that fatty fishes were a good source to reduce pain but in your experience, is there any other food/lifestyle changes that can help alleviate it before resorting to medication?

If I was in your position, I would ease in to a whole food, plant based diet. What this means is a lot of cooking from scratch, which means hands! So how about a whole food, plant based diet that requires very little preparation? This is serious, so please do not waste time with 'cut out teh carbz' bro science. Do not take advice from anyone that talks of 'seed oils' and other keto talking points. Keto and carnivore…

> Keto and carnivore diets are fad diets that are just another way to get to calorie restriction

I wouldn't be so confident in publicly discouraging my fellow human beings from trying these diets.

Speaking personally, I tried various diets -- raw milk diet (drinking 4L of raw milk a day), vegan diet, fruitarian diet, keto diet, caloric restriction, etc. -- before discovering that the carnivore diet helped my own condition (induced by antibiotic abuse), and I wrote about it here: https://srid.ca/carnivore-diet

Diets are personal; people should experiment and find out for themselves. In the long term, therapies like FMT should become widely available, enabling many of us to eat a wider range of food stuff.

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