How I reversed rheumatoid arthritis with diet
My road back to health through food
This is the start to my day – just one of these will combat the over-indulgence of the last month, right??
Actually, I have this type of vegetable smoothie every day & have done for about six years now. Often it’s often not pleasant – cavello nero is a tough act, tumeric sour and raw ginger spiky – and it always has tumeric, ginger & seeds in, while the vegetables change.
Facing autoimmune condition diagnosis
I do it for my health as about six years ago when I was diagnosed with an autoimmune condition, rheumatoid arthritis. The doctors offered me lifelong strong drugs, while the ‘internet’ where I could research a million things, offered me people who had reversed conditions through radical changes in diet.
RA is hereditary and my grandmother had it. Research says is about 25% genes and about 75% environmental, ie, the life you are leading is contributing to the disease.
Gut-friendly, Anti-Inflammatory diet
At first I wasn’t sure I was strong enough to follow such a diet – removing sugar, gluten, dairy, alcohol, meat, citrus and all deadly nightshade family (potatoes, tomatoes, red peppers and chillis). While I didn’t eat meat, the rest seemed impossible.
But I knew food was a problem as after a meal my skin on my hands and feet, sometimes entire legs and arms, would redden as if in direct objection to what I had just eaten. This approach to diet treated the core problem as coming from the gut. My gut was inflamed, it was leaky, and causing inflammation in my body.
It is amazing what you can do if you want to. And I wanted to get rid of the pain in my joints, and get back to the sport which is a huge part of my life. And once I started it wasn’t long before I began to feel better… very slowly, but each month or so I would notice an improvement.
I wasn’t totally strict on the diet – I certainly had a glass of red wine every now and again, & would be more casual at friends’ houses – but if I broke the diet for long, I would pay for it in pain, so I soon learned to be careful. Within two years, apart from a few aches I was mostly better.
RA free – in remission
For the last three years I have been RA free, and can eat most foods again. I still stick mainly to a plant based diet, but full of tomatoes and red peppers, and with a small amount of gluten and dairy etc.
I am not cured – there is no such thing – but it is firmly in remission so long as I eat very healthily, and look after my gut with loads of fermented foods, and avoid trigger foods.
Find out more
If you would like to know more then listen to Clint Paddison on Ted Talks ( I listened to him talking over and over again, but didn’t join his programme), look at forksoverknives.com and google ‘how i reversed autoimmune with diet’. Also for the best forum with the most fabulously helpful people, check out roadback.org – you will learn about minocycline here and how it can also help. I took this for two years. And if you are in the UK, and want to know a clinic in the south east that can help with diet, then look up The Burghwood Clinic – a very knowledgeable doctor helped keep me on my diet, and encouraged me when I despaired.
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