Kickas.org Forums Treatments, Drugs and Alternatives NSD and diet-related; Starting the NS diet. Help!

Hi. This is my first post. I have been diagnosed with AS for about 5 years. Sacroilitis is fortunately the worst symptom and my Xray said Grade 2 what ever that means. What it means to me is 3 days of the week I can't run or play football. My sleep is disturbed but I am no where near the sufferers on this site. Further more I have swelling in my heel but that is only uncomfortable.

I'll cut to the chase. I can see where AS is heading. I am 41 now and I have had mild flare permanently for about 6 months, with painful flair in the sacro iliac joint half of the week.

1.What is the quickest way to get things under control?
2.If I fast on apples what apples should I eat (I live in Sydney, Australia)?
3.If I start NS today can I have a beer to support me through giving up my favourite food, bread and potato?

Cheers.

G'Day, keit_nufc1:




1--FAST; water only. Seven to ten days should help very much.
2--The redder the better; red delicious and related.
3--Yes, the liquid bread is not too starchy; albeit avoid "Tuskers" brand and anything that is not filtered and clear (at first).

You need to get into remission in order to be a good food detector. No NSAIDs because they will greatly slow down the healing process in the tract.

Cheers,
John

Hey G'day from another Aussie!

John is the Man with ALL the knowledge - the rest of us just have experience...

I can vouch for the Aussie apples - red delicious are OK (but I hate the texture!!!) as are Pink Lady and Jonagolds. I have had Sundowners test a little starchy so I steer clear of them.

Bottom line is to get yourself a bottle of iodine from the pharmacy and TEST EVERYTHING before you put it into your mouth!

There is no getting away from the fact that there is NO substitute for delicious chewy bread, so just tell yourself it is a thing from your painful past. Embrace all the safe foods that do not feed the Monster that lurks within!

To be honest, I would still like to eat many of the starchy foods on both a sensory and intellectual level, but I do NOT miss them and the degree of pain that I had before I went NSD *enough* to give up and go back to sandwiches, rice, potatoes pasta and AGONY!!! I have more than halved my pain meds, have more energy and way less stiffness, muscle pain and plain old 'cranky'!

Come here often for encouragement and good company with whom to share your celebratory beer! (Beer, did somebody say "Beer" ???)

Louise in Melbourne but a banana-bender by birth

Thanks for such a quick response.

My instinct is always to fight so I am delighted to find that there is another option to slow and miserable degeneration. The tablets I took (sulfazadine I think) were useless as they ripped my stomach. For me they are not an option.

I must admit I was a little concerned when I saw the immunologist a few months ago. I hadn't been back for 5 years after 2 bouts of iritis. I sort of thought it had gone away...silly I know. He identified different parts of my body that were affected. It freaked me out a bit. After that I thought I could combat it with exercise as I am very fit for my age. Unfortunately the inflammation in the sacro-illiac seems to be undoing that theory as well as my heel.

However, I am not too far gone so I am hoping I can halt the degeneration through diet. I think I will use Stage 1 and 2 of the Carol Sinclair diet for 1 week. If I see no improvement I will eliminate the 3rd option and go fully NS. I don't think I could survive 7 days without food so I will go 3 days apples next week. If I see no difference I will ramp it up and go fully NS for a few months.

Thanks again. I brew my own beer so today I will start the LS diet (I sort of yesterday but ate the wrong things unwittingly)but will reward my self with a well earned beer for resisting beautiful bread. As I said if things don't change this week I will radically alter things over the Christmas holiday while I am off work. I reckon I will eliminate everything , but beer will be last. After a misspent youth I finally learned how to become a moderate drinker (i.e.under the 21 units about 5 years ago) so I would be gutted if I couldn't enjoy 1 or 2 beers 3 or 4 nights a week.

Anyway thanks Louise and John. I will take your wise counsel and report back over the coming months.

Last question. What success rate is out there? To be honest it doesn't make any difference to me. I just couldn't bring myself to passively accepting AS without going down with a fight.

Cheers

Keith

when i started nsd, i choose to go strict, and it was the quickest way out of pain for me. within a few days inflammation and pain in my sacrum were gone.

after 6 months, i realized the pain that remained in my neck, shoulders and upper back, would only be relieved by eliminating all sugars, including dairy and fruit. so, if this is the case for you, you should eliminate them as well.

when you done enjoying being pain free for a while, you may want to start testing some "fringe" foods, to see what you can tolerate. if something causes the return of symptoms, you know not to eat that again. test only 1 food at a time, and test it for at least 4 days, before testing another food. some foods with trace starch, can be eaten once without a reaction, but if consumed daily it will build up and cause a flare after a few days.

after about a year of healing, I could tolerate fruit again.

so, for quickest results, i would recommend eating M.O.V.E. Meats (and fish), Oils (butter, coconut or olive), Vegetables and Eggs. use iodine to make sure everything is starch free. no processed foods. processed foods contain starch in small amounts, even if they are not listed in the ingredients.

generally foods for me to avoid are plums, apple, bananas, citrus, imported fruits, root veggies, winter squash.

spices are starchy, even pepper, use fresh herbs instead.

use only starch free supplements.

Hi guys.

I live in Sydney. Where do I get iodine from? It drew expressions of surprise when I explained what I needed and its purpose.

Cheers

Keith

Hi Keith,

Regular pharmacies here in Melbourne have it...

Hey, Keith:

It is 'tincture of iodine' at 2-5% usually. I like the edible kind called "Atomidine" (or Atomic Iodine) from the Edgar Cayce people; they can tell You where to obtain it in Australia. This is a 1% solution that is alcohol free.

Good Luck with it,
John

Thanks for the help everyone.

I bought some Iodophor from my home brew store. It turned bread black but when I put it in cooked tomatoes it didn't change colour.
Would this substance be OK? Or did it not detect the more subtle variants of starch?

I have picked the worst time to start an elimination diet. As a consqeuence I have decided to use Carol Sinclair's diet section 1 and 2 i.e. I will maintain cooked vegetables until January 2nd. Am I wasting my time? Is it essential to fast first?

Cheers, thanks for the support everyone.

Keith

No change Day 5. So I need to have a more radical look at things.

So today Day 6 hard core! Grapes for three days (I can't stomach red apples...I tried). I am absolutely starving (it's lunchtime in Australia). See you on Day 9 when I will introduce other foods. So far today I've eaten 1kg of green seedless grapes. Ye ha!

Laters.

Goal...after playing Open Age Football until last year when continuous injuries destroyed my season...play another season. We'll see.