Hey John (and Molly)

I hate to go head to head with you on this one, John, but I always thought that Carol Sinclair and Alan Ebringer independently discovered the connection between no starch and relieving IBS/AS symptoms.

I found this excert from a blog by Carol Sinclair that I think proves this to be the case. It's under the heading "How can diet reduce the pain and symptoms of arthritis."

I know it doesn't really matter who it was but I just wanted to continue the discussion to see what you thought for interests sake! Whatever, it's all interesting stuff isn't it?!

I didn’t make the scientific discovery behind this breakthrough method of treatment – I just independently discovered the diet. The science was done by a Professor of Immunology, Professor Alan Ebringer. Professor Ebringer is a Consultant on Autoimmune Diseases to the National Institute of Health (NIH) in Washington. He’s also an Hon. Consultant in Rheumatology.

When a group of his patients contacted me via the internet to tell me that mine was the only book they could find about the problems of eating starch, how to cook low-starch meals (over 200 recipes) and live a low-starch life, they told me about the professor and their disease, AS. I was stunned. To think that someone in the medical world was actually validating my diet, was amazing. But I still didn’t know that I had the same disease – not until Professor Ebringer told me the about the arthritic symptoms, and I realised that I had had them – but they’d disappeared after I went on the Low-Starch Diet.

I have had the blood test which confirms that I am HLA-B27 positive, and Professor Ebringer has investigated my family history, which I discovered is littered with AS suffers. My father and grandmother both had the symptoms, and other living members of my family have been diagnosed with AS. All this confirms that although I’ve been on the diet for over 25 years and have no bone degeneration visible on X-rays – which are still the final diagnostic proof – I have the pre-AS condition. If I went off the diet I would develop full-blown AS.

It is such a pity that rheumatologists will not even get their AS patients to try a completely safe, drug-free method of treatment. Unfortunately they have no incentive to do so in the UK, because the NHS is so drug orientated, and medication for serious conditions is subsidised or free for patients. But in Australia and New Zealand, where patients have to pay for their medication, doctors are now beginning to recommend the Low Starch Diet.

http://www.lowstarchdiet.net/blog/[/i][i]

KickAS and help others do the same!