Hello and welcome to the site!
I'm in my early fifties and I'd thought I'd add a little longer term perspective for you so if you meet someone who tries to scare you with all those horror stories you'll know that does not mean it has to be your path in life.
Since I am female the disease will tend to work upon me in slightly different ways, I'm stiffening up slowly but not outright fusing quickly as some men tend to do. Since many doctors here in this country have no idea what they are doing when they see a person that is female, with arthritis which is not rheumatoid, they frequently try to tell me I cannot possibly have this until they see a x ray or a scan, especially since I've done range of motion exercises almost my entire life to keep myself from freezing up.
From my experience taking the antibiotics for the disease helped a great deal. I was very vulnerable to infection and I was regularly treated with the sulfatrim antibiotics by a DO (doctor of osteopathy) for many years. I always noticed my flares became less on the antibiotic. Unfortunately in spite of years of having a very cantankerous digestive system and trying various diets I did not try a low/no starch diet until 4 years ago when I found Kickas and this section of the site. I did a marathon reading session over several days when I found the NSD forum here and could not believe how all the symptoms matched mine.
I got a lot of my life back since that time. I'm not "normal" but at least I can pass on many days. Besides some drug allergies, I have sensitive kidneys and I cannot tolerate prescription strength NSAIDS used daily, they totally wreck my kidneys. Because of some other medical conditions I have, and plus the fact that there is a good chance that it won't work for me anyway, I doubt any doctor would ever try to proscibe me the anti TNF biologicals, and I'm not bad off enough for painkillers, which leaves me sort of screwed in the medical department.
Now as to the diet, what I have found for myself from trial and error
is that
also avoiding all trace amounts of wheat, rye, barley and wheat gluten (protein) is also a very, very good idea for me. So if I cheat a little, I just try to make sure that at least it's not a wheat cheat and that lessens the reaction. I've seen a lot of people on this diet forum the past few years go out for a restaurant meal on weekends and have some beer (made with wheat) and maybe a slice of pizza, and they're in here by Tuesday morning, they think they're dying,
and they can't figure out why they feel so rotten because it was just one slice of bread crust pizza. They forgot the beer. Or they're using some sort of yucky protein powder supplement in drinks as a shortcut and they don't realize from the labels that it contains wheat family products because the manufacturer used another name for it like maltodextrin or starch glycolate, but they don't say which grain the starch was made from. Or they've just started a new supplement but then the diet does not seem to be working for them anymore, and they can't figure out why. Starch in this country used to be pretty much corn starch, but that has changed now with the consequences of a global trading economy. Now it can be wheat starch, which makes some people sick.
Also, a lot of these protein powder supplements can come from China and there has been a BIG ongoing scandal with them being either adulterated with toxic chemicals (resins from coal manufacturing) or with being deliberately mislabeled as to actual type of grain content. They were adulterated to falsely provide a higher chemical analysis for protein. Because the Food and Drug Administration in this country had not been inspecting and testing each shipment carefully, a lot of this bad protein grain powder imported supplements made of soy, wheat, rice, and pea powders had gotten into the pet food manufacturing process. Before the pet foods were recalled, thousands of cats and dogs have died in this country from the tainted feed because their kidneys were not able to handle the melamine resin in the bad protein supplements. The manufacturers when they first learned of the problem had then quietly recycled a lot of the bad pet feed into hog and chicken feed manufacturers, and now it's in the human food chain as well. The FDA is claiming that the hogs and chickens that ate the bad feed should be safe for people to eat.
A writer on another board I post on is a vegetarian and eats a lot of protein bars. He contacted the manufacter and after much digging around they admitted that the protein powders used in his favorite bars was made of soy protein powder imported from China, but it was not from a company involved in the pet food recall scandal so it "should be safe."
I write all this to let you know that if you take any sort of over the counter supplements, like many of us do here, you should be reading your labels VERY CAREFULLY as to content and making informed decisions for yourself. A lot of these supplement manufacterers also use imported grain fillers in their products, and there is no way of knowing sometimes easily what the country of origin was for the rice, soy, wheat, corn or other protein powders.
I'm not trying to frighten people into abandoning their supplements but I wanted to give you and others some background as to my concerns before I told you that this is also a calcium from the bones- sucking disease and you should start taking calcium and magnesium supplements, and a multvitamin with a B complex, to help fight it.
As to the diet, you just need to remember that you will need to up your consumption of proteins(eggs, meat, chicken, fish, hard cheeses, tofu, nuts) and fats (like olive oil,real mayonaise) and vegetables to compensate for the loss of the grain carbohydrates. This is not a problem so much for the guys but a lot of women have been so brainwashed by our culture here that they attempt this as a "
low fat" diet or as a vegetarian diet and that just does not work.
Almond meal breads can also be made fairly easily once you have the hang of it. Some people also use coconut flour they purchase from the internet shops.
Coconut milk can be substituted for real milk in tea and coffee, and it's also a good fat source.
Try to eat a vegetable at every meal, so your meals go protein,fat, vegetable, fruit . This helps the rest of it last longer. The fruits will give the quickest energy but you need the proteins and the fats for slow burning fuel.
The easiest things I have found to eat are hard boiled eggs, organic cheeses, nuts, dried fruits, almond bread made in advance so I can just put stuff on it, and any sort of pre washed vegetable mix that comes in a bag, and any leftover meat or fish. Carry nuts and raisins with you as a homemade trail mix for emergencies. Here I have found some coconut macaroons called Jennie's that are only coconut, egg white, and honey, and they are very dense and also very good, not to mention almost no starch.
Also, when cooking, just automatically cook double or more the amount of meat, so you can just put the leftovers in the refrigerator and have it pre cooked and ready. A whole chicken is 3 servings you didn't have to worry about.
.
