Kickas.org Forums Treatments, Drugs and Alternatives NSD and diet-related; 14 year old son - help please

A suggestion about the yogurt-I've made my own yogurt for years and it's incredibly simple to make. If you make it yourself, you can control what ingredients go into it.
If you or anyone else wants more info about making your own, I'd be glad to write more about the process.

Karen

karen

Thanks Karen

I've also made my own yogurt and have also found Rachel's organic brand which is the only one in the UK which doesn't contain starch.

Hi....do you test your son's food with iodine for starch?

You have a bread that is non-starchy in the UK????? can you post the list of ingredients? I would be very interested to know how they manage to make a bread with absolutely NO STARCH.

By the way, congrats on being such a good mom to your boy, and for helping him to do something that most kids would never do! The NSD! How do the others in the family react to the diet?

Cheers,
Rita

James, 12, Adrian, 10, Elisabeth, 3, my babies!

Sorry to let you down Rita, but I said brand (of yogurt) not bread. Now if you do ever find that bread, I want to be the first to know!!!! We're all going low starch in the family and do miss bread.
My other son isn't doing the diet, but my husband and I are as we didn't feel we could make a 14 year old try and not accompany him. My husband has no back pain, but both he and more especially his father, have the classic AS shape and have lost a lot of height in recent years. He's hoping the diet and exercises will help him uncoil and regain more flexibility. We're actually enjoying eating more healthily and apart from missing sandwiches at lunchtime and potatoes with a meal are all coping well.
Yes, I test his food with iodine. I've been in touch with Prof Ebringer who was brilliant and sent loads of his papers, plus the London AS diet sheet. We've decided to go low starch on that diet rather than total NS at the moment and will review in a few months if the symptoms aren't much improved. I was making his life a misery, worrying about every bit of carrot he was eating, so had to step back a bit.

I've just returned from a visit to my son's new rheumy. He's been 7 weeks on a low starch diet. She examined him and found no evidence of arthritis. Watching him during the exam, he certainly wasn't flinching when his feet were examined in the way he was last time, but he also denied that there had been anything much wrong anyway, so his answers to her questions were different from those given to the first rheumy. He's had a hard time dealing with all this and his way of coping has been to deny everything and blame mum for making a fuss. We're still awaiting the result of the HLA-B27 blood test.

So that's left me with 2 possible scenarios. Either he was wrongly diagnosed in the first place or the diet has worked really well. (I should find out in the near future as she told him that the diet wouldn't make any difference. Being a teenager, he immediately asked her if he could eat potatoes again and promptly ate toast as soon as he got back.) Personally, I'm convinced that the diet has really helped.

Either way, I can't thank everyone involved in this forum enough. He may be lucky and not have arthritis, but if he does the LSD works really well for him, so we know exactly what to do to keep things under control.

Thanks so much to you all for the time you put in to this forum and for the hope you give to those newly diagnosed!

enthesitis can flare and subside very quickly. In 7 weeks it could have quieted on its own only to flare again in the future. I pray he, and you, are the lucky ones and he does not have nor will develop AS

I didn't know whether to laugh or scream when I read your post. Fourteen year old boys can be so exasperating, can't they? They have no past and no future, only right now, and if they don't hurt right now, then everything is okay.

It sounds as if he undoubtedly had arthritis. Whether the LSD or time made him better remains to be seen. After a few days of starch, he and you may have an answer.

Meanwhile, my heart goes out to you as you try to deal with a teenager who seems to have a chronic disease. Teenagers are rarely easy and one with health problems presents special challenges.

I wish you the best in dealing with him!

Karen

remember Dr.'s know very little about nutrtion. They dont study it much in medical training. Its too much of a variable. They can't control it and correlated it to people conditions and there is no money to be made in it.

At the very least you know if your son flares up the LSD can control his symptoms.