Discussion Board

Yes, unfortunately...

I have been off methotrexate for several months, still on prednisone and plaquenil, and recently I have been having joint pain in random places. Today it was extremely noticeable, being in both hips, and knees.

I don't know what's wrong, I don't think I'm eating anything different than I have been. I'm just so confused, it seems like this WOE isn't working anymore, or it just didn't work to begin with.. :/

Anybody have any ideas of what could be causing these flare ups?
Thanks, much appreciated.

Brandon

I've heard that weather can affect arthritis. Has there been a change in your weather - the temperature, barometer, humidity, etc.? There's a lady down the street who says she can tell when it's going to rain.

Could it be a food sensitivity? I'm thinking gluten in particular.

RRC

Are you sure you haven't changed anything in your diet? You may be sensitive or reacting to something that has recently been a bigger part of your diet than it was at first. I keep a food and health journal and it's so helpful in figuring out things like this.

I second the suggestion to eliminated gluten for a few weeks and see if that helps. You have to be really careful though and eliminate every last bit of it or it probably won't make a difference.

Otherwise if you haven't changed anything, it could be that now that you are healthier, your body is reacting to something that it wasn't able to muster the energy to react to before. I've experienced that. It's a sign that your body is doing well, but of course it seems like you're not since you feel worse. So in this case, I'd recommend an elimination diet to figure out what is causing it. Reading Burgess' blog was very helpful to me. And here's the link about doing an elimination diet. The specifics are at the bottom but I recommend reading the whole thing through.

http://www.drmcdougall.com/med_allergic.html

Good luck!

The weather has been fluctuating recently. It'll go from relatively warm, to cold and rainy in a day or two.



I might try this, although I don't think I eat that much gluten. I definitely used to eat a lot more gluten than I do now, and I wasn't experiencing any pain at that time.

I just started keeping a food journal. My starches have been sweet potatoes and brown rice. I think it may be citrus that causes it, but If so it'll be hard to cut out the citrus (I love the SNAP meals with tomatoes).

Thanks for the help.

Tomatoes are definitely a trigger for me, and the more I eat the worse it gets. You might try eliminating them for a few weeks (at least 4) to see if that helps. Good luck!

Tomatoes and potatoes both cause lots of inflammation in my body, including bursitis of my hip which was causing this grinding pain with every step. It was just awful. Needless to say I was thrilled to figure out that it was just a couple specific foods, and even though I was very sad to give them both up, but nothing tastes as good as good health feels. I hope you won't have to give up your favorites, but even if you do, there is life after tomatoes.

I think I'll try eliminating tomatoes starting very soon, it'll be fairly easy. Would sweet potatoes trigger the same inflammatory response as regular potatoes? If I have to give up sweet potatoes I may cry...not kidding.

Brandon

Each food must be tested separately to really figure it out, but most people do just fine with sweet potatoes, whereas tomatoes and gluten are common trigger foods.

The trick is to find a small group of foods that you can eat and be symptom-free. Then test one food at a time. If you react, go back to your safe foods until you feel you have recovered, then start again. Each time you find another safe food, you have a larger group of foods to return to, which is nice. It's hard to be disciplined and not add to many foods, but in the long term it's faster if you are good about this.

Here's a link to Burgess' blog to give you an idea of someone who did this successfully:

http://anti-itisdiet.blogspot.com/

Burgess has it down! That's crazy strict. I guess I'll have to just try eating potatoes and low-sulfur veggies/fruits for a little while..

Hi Brandon
One thing to keep in mind is that it may take up to 2 or 3 days to react to a trigger food. So like Burgess said, a careful elimination diet is key. I used such a diet and determined sensitivities to dairy, msg, and soy pretty quickly, because those give me reactions in as little as 10 minutes. It took me longer to determine that gluten was a pain trigger, too, because my reactions to it often take as long as 48 hours.

I've had good luck in drastically reducing my pain levels and length of pain flares since beginning this way of eating back in September. Now whenever I feel a pain flare coming on, I go back to my restricted list of foods, and find that quickly resolves things.

Good luck to you. Keep us posted!

Blue

Thank you Blue, I appreciate all the support

You're welcome, Brandon.



Sometimes I get discouraged, too, when the pain flares up, especially after the initial drastic improvement I had (80% reduction in pain after 3 weeks on the diet). But I'm finding that what sweetlover posted above is true, things that in small amounts wouldn't have bothered me so much earlier on in this WOE, I find bother me more now, such as gluten--now that my diet has been "cleaner" for longer, I'm more likely to react to it strongly, if that makes sense. Kind of like my tolerance to it is lower the longer I eat this way.

The nightshade family that you mention (tomatoes, potatoes, peppers) are known to be inflammatory. Thru the elimination diet I did, I have not noticed any reactions to these things, thank goodness, because I love to make Mexican hot sauces! I more easily gave up meat and cheese than I could salsa lol. But I'm not eating near as much of these things as I used to, just to be on the safe side.

Anyway, hope this helps. I'm pretty new here, so hope I'm giving you good advice. We do have the pain issues in common, so its good to swap stories on what works/what doesn't, but you'll find you're own road I am sure, as you stick with it.

Blue

The former paragraph makes a lot of sense actually, but I never would've expected that to happen. It seems like I do eat a lot of supposed inflammatory foods (tomatoes, sweet potatoes, oranges [if these even are?] and nuts fairly often).
I think this is just an overly daunting task because most of the food I eat, according to Burgess' list of no-no foods, is on the list! It would mean coming up with an almost completely new meal plan.

Baby steps I guess, tomatoes and gluten first.
Thanks for your personal story, like you said, all I want is to get confirmation from somebody who has been through this.

Brandon
It seems sweet potatos are excluded from this group, as they are often included in anti-inflammatory diets and seems they are generally considered safe. I guess what you would call "white" potatos (new, russet, etc.) are the ones that may cause problems so worth eliminating for a while.

I didn't mention before but I did have a reaction to oranges and grapefruit (nausea and diarrhea) when I reintroduced them, but haven't had a problem with lemons, limes, or tangerines.

Though the elimination diet I did was pretty strict, it wasn't as strict as Burgess's. As I am still having some pain issues, I may edge towards his type of diet eventually, but I am not looking forward to cutting out beans, b/c as far as I'm concerned, that's the food of Gods lol. But like you said, baby steps. Now that I'm more accustomed to this WOE and have seen improvements, I'm much more open to further restrictions, if necessary.