Hi Bilko and John
The evidence you presented in your last messages was new and unexpected and the plaintiff (affirmative) side has had to retire to consider its position. There was no urgency anyway - your comment that "...NSAIDs make you stupid..." seems to have overtaken the original debate.
The environment you describe at the time of Ebringer's studies would suggest he had a good chance of having something of a cross-section of AS sufferers. But you could hardly say it was a certainty. Perhaps even then there were some anti-diet people who refused to take part in the studies. Can you say positively there were not? The fact that subsequent studies have have not generally vidicated his results suggests a level of doubt.
I suggested a two group model originally but I accept that the model suggested by Zark of a range of reactions to diet is probably a better one and one probably all of us would accept. If you look at what has been written on this thread there is clearly a spectrum of responses to LSD/NSD within those interested in diet. One of the arguments used against the two-group model was that my own direct diet-flare reaction was not typical and some people took years before they noticed the connection. Even from what you have written of Ebringer's studies there seems to have been a range of responses there too. Is it unreasonable to suggest that at the extreme end of this range there are people who have little or no response to diet? If you were to plot severity of response against numbers you could draw a vertical line at the point where left of which the response was insignificant (dividing the 2 groups). The debate then hinges around at what point lies the division and what proportion lies to the left (you would say none).
I wonder at John's comment "..don't give up on us". Of that range of reactions described above I expect I am at the pro-diet extreme. Two years before I had any arthritic symptoms I used fasting to rid myself of back-pain which occurred on waking. Before I was diagnosed AS and before I knew what NSD stood for, I was speaking to my family doctor about symptoms caused by "energy foods". During my late teens, when I was skinny, fit and good at sport, I occasionally went on food binges after dinner (say 4 bowls of wheat cereal with milk and sugar). I would wake in the middle of the night in discomfort. I can't recall the exact symptoms because it was many years ago but I know they affected my skin and perhaps my flesh but not joints or movement. I learned that when I took a 2 mile run (yes, at 3AM) or the equivalent in exercises the symptoms would disappear.
So I am the last one to think about giving up on diet. This posting was really started on behalf of those who sincerely believe that diet doesn't help them. I am quite happy for you to prove to me they have no case whatsoever.
Thanks for going to the trouble to enlighten me about Ebringer and thanks John for the offer of information on his studies. I will certainly Email you shortly.
Wally
