But Wally:
Either a person has AS or does not. Ebringer did his studies with controls who did not have AS as well as test groups who did have AS, so a valid conjugate analysis would be performed on this basis.
If a test subject does not have AS, and his ESR is not elevated, how is starch restriction going to be measured? There is a way he used, but the expectations were that he would probably not cause healthy persons to become more healthy (measurably).
We have gone round and around on this topic. The problem is not starch, bacteria, AS and Ebringer's results--the problem is the subjective nature of diets demonstrating just how very confused the average person is. It is not instructive to ask anyone whether diet is associated with AS: Doctors do not even know this fact and patients cannot be expected to have real wisdom from their experiences. It took fasting for me to understand this--not for a couple of days but up to 20 days. Ask the guy who suffers whether they have even considered fasting. Even if they believed it would work, how many would do it?!
This problem has been covered before--it centers upon our event horizon. The time constants involved in AS have implications against any probability of an individual gaining an understanding of the food connection. The stimulus (starch) and resultant response (flare) are characterized with the following constraints: Stimulus event (consumption of starch) plus between one and six hours initiates response (pain of inflammation, sometimes severe and other times distributed and 'niggling'). This response lasts about TEN DAYS. Ingestion of ONE CRACKER/hours later a flare that lasts for HOW LONG? Ring a bell, now the sound trails off in a matter of seconds. Our bell does not stop ringing!
Ask your AS friends whether they have gone 10 days without starch. "I NEVER eat STARCH." Ok, how much do you have to modify your question to get to the truth? Those fellow ASers aware of the good news want to keep asking the question until they get an answer they want to hear! GOOD NEWS: AS can be cured. BAD NEWS: YOU can't do it! YOU will prefer waiting for a magic pill, asking "Can I eat starch 'till I need glasses?"
There is just ONE AS, but a LEGION of dissenting opinions.
In the future, when you ask a person with AS whether it is related to diet, if they should answer in the negative just tell them the good news that they do not have AS (it would be just as valid as their trusted observation!); they are, after all, paying their doctors to lie to them about everything else.
Cheerio,
John
A punk stopped me on the street and said: "You got a light Mack?"
