Kickas.org Forums Treatments, Drugs and Alternatives NSD and diet-related; HLA-B27 negative vs diet

Two cups of coffee a day may not be too much... but here in Portugal, we do it very, very, very strong... I've tasted coffee in U.K. and in France and ... it was terrible.

And thanks for everybody's help.

Zélia

Oh, that's right!! I'd forgotten that our American coffee is considered a very weak imitation of REAL coffee! Oh well!

Paula

OK... I have decided to give the LSD a chance (not the NSD... at least not for now). I've cut off the starchy stuffs that I found in the Bilko's list that had more then 6 to 8 grs of starch for each 100 grs.
I think it's a good start. What do you think?
And I solve my problems with the cakes and sweat things, trying a lot of recipes using almond flour, nuts (not the chesnuts!!!), raisins. Done well so far. Everything came back very tasty.
What I really miss is bread. Tried a recipe of almond bread, but it isn't the same. Maybe I'll get used to it with time.
As for my health with the LSD, I'm not experiencing differences... so far!!! Didn't lost weight, neither energy, since I'me trying to follow the suggestions there are here in the KickAS forums about the diet. Except for the eye pain (that as already gone away, and wich I had before starting the diet), I felt good these past 3 weaks.
I'm having a problem with my mother. She doens't understant how can a person survive without potates, pasta, rice, bread... Says I need for energy... Well everytime we eat at my parents I have to pretend I play along, and when she's not watching I just pass to my husband's what I don't want to eat. But this is not going to work for many time... She only did primary school, she suffers from chronic depression, always put a lot of pressure on me, still doesn't acceptthe fact I've grown up and got married. She treats almost just like my three year old son. Grrrr...
Any tips of how to deal with this?

Best regards

Zélia

I'm glad you are feeling good the past 3 weeks!
As to your mother, I am not sure what to suggest but I give you my full sympathy.
Your description of your eating meals with your family has me laughing so hard I have tears in my eyes. I am thinking of a cartoon I saw in an old book called "I Hate To Cook" by Peg Bracken. She has a chapter titled, Leftovers, or Every Family Needs a Dog. The dog in the cartoon is looking at the cook with a big smile. When we eat out, I pass the the bread things to my husband, he wraps them up, and then when we go home he feeds them to the dog, who is always very happy to see him.

Maybe you could say, hey, this is great, I'll just wrap it up for later, and she doesn't have to know where it's really going?

Good start Zelia, patience should be your watchword. Patience with the diet, give it time to work. And patience and fortitude with your mother. She is never going to understand and so there is little point arguing with her. Adopt what I call the Russian technique; when she starts off ... blah blah blah ... listen impassively and do not respond. Just relax. She will think your nuts and that there is no way to reason with a nutter! It's how I deal with members of the public who are trying to pressure and hassle me in my job and it works very well. They just sort of deflate.

Yes, Zark.
I have periods when its absolutely horrible. I'm in one right now. I had 4 episodes of Candida since August, did all kind of treatments. It seems it's another fungus. I do use anti-fungicides, it helps a little, but it always comes again.
I done some thinking about it, and I realized I have this episodes at least since I was teenager. Wonder if they have any conection with the AS. I also always suffered from constipation since children.
I'm trying to check what foods make me worse, and I'm really beleaving starch is definitly one of them. Last week I had to eat a little starch at my mom's (some chestnuts, and I also believe that the sauce in the fish dish she made was full of corn flour)... she almost forced me... Grrrr!!! The result... my bowel turned upside down, had a lot of flatulence, and the ithy got real worse.
About flatulence, I'm also a bit curious about other opinions on this. Since I remember, every episode of back pain I had came also with flatucence. Specially at night, in bed. Always found it bizar and once I asked my family doctor about it, and she said it was due to muscle spasms, caused by the inflamation done by the AS. I can understand this point of vue, it makes sense, but ins't there also a conection betweem gut and etc. problems with AS?
This doubts are some of the reasons that made me decide to start a low starch diet, to see what changes do I notice.

Zélia

>> I do use anti-fungicides, it helps a little, but it always comes again.

Yes, same here they helped but absolutely never cured me. The infection would come back as soon as I was finished with the bottle / tube of antifungal. To make matters worse the infection would become resistant to the antifungal after a few weeks of use and I would have to switch to another brand.

Oddly, I found the most effective thing for my skin fungal infections was peanut oil. Best of all the infection never ever became resistant to the peanut oil. Perhaps something that goes through the gut undigested could be used to carry the peanut oil deep down into the gut, eg: soak something fibrous in peanut oil.. like coconut fiber, wheatgerm, psyllium husk, etc. (not sure if psyllium is safe though)

Actually I never got to find out if peanut oil helped anyone else with fungal infections / candida.. but it works like a charm for me and would love to know if it works for someone else.

>> I realized I have this episodes at least since I was teenager.

Me too, perhaps even younger in my case

>> I also always suffered from constipation since children.

Wheatgerm is a great laxative.. and has helped my overall health a great deal. ..
On the other hand dairy is pretty well known for causing constipation.. I hear it is because of the cassein content.

>> ins't there also a conection betweem gut and etc. problems with AS?

Absolutely! Whenever I eat starch I get mouth ulcers, and of course that is a good indicator that the same will be happening below also. When gastroenterologists go and have a look in the guts of people with AS they often find it is in an unhealthy state.

Quote:

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increased quantities of such microbes are found in fecal samples obtained from AS patients and such patients have Crohn's like lesions in the ileo-caecal regions of the gut.
-- Clin Rheumatol. 1996 Jan;15 Suppl 1:62-66. .. Ebringer A, Wilson C. .. PMID: 8835506


"Several papers support an infectious cause for ankylosing spondylitis. People with ankylosing spondylitis are more likely to have genital ( 20) or intestinal symptoms (19) or infections with mycoplasma, chlamydia and ureaplasma (1). Virtually all patients have ulcers or changes in their gut similar to those seen in Crohn's disease ( 2,20,21,22). "
-- from: http://www.drmirkin.com/joints/J103.htm

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I think I'll search the supermarket next time for peanut oil. Don't know if it will be easey to find. Because here in Portugal we are great producers of olive oil, and that's what we use most. Besides that we have refined vegetable oils, but the labels don't say what are the vegetables!! We also have much oil made with the seeds of that big yellow flower (I don't know the english name for it - it's the one that follows the sun during the day).
Thanks Zark for the links. Very helpfull. But still most of this studies that suggests the link between bacteria and AS, are very concerned with the HLB-27 marker. I tested negative, but I do remember VERY, VERY well a severe gastroenteritis (is that how you call it?) a few years before my first back pains and sciatica, and some months after that episode I also had an infection in my mouth, with lots of ulcers. Every doctor that looked at me then made strange faces. They didn't know what do to with me. Even though I had cancer. I ended up treated with antibiotics prescribed by a dentist.
So, I'm now deffinitly believing it was a bacteria that caused my AS. Wich one, I don't know. What was wrong with my immunity, I don't know. But I got it.
I wich I could find more answers - like everyone else, I know. Sure finding conections...
Let's hope the diet helps me. So far so good.

Zélia