Diet and PMR - Words of Encouragement

 I just wanted to share a recent experience of mine in the hopes that it will be helpful to someone out there.   MIne is the typical PMR tale of woe - started at 15mg of Prednisone, went down and up a few times, got discouraged, suffered, cried.  Last winter I got down to 2mg and could barely walk so I went back up to 4 - cried again.   At that point I came out of denial and started to pay closer attention to my diet and was able to wean down to 2mgs.  It wasn't perfect, still had stiffness and general soreness but put up with it because I felt better later in the day.   Last month I went to visit my son who lives in Costa Rica.  Where he lives is a health retreat off the beaten track.   Because I didn't have a car, I couldn't get into town where the tiki bars and french fries were so I had no choice but to eat at the center where I had 100% organic food every day for two weeks - not one gram of sugar, zero wheat products, zero alcohol (well, okay, a beer in town one afternoon), zero coffee and zero dairy.  I also was forced to drink a jungle juice concoction that my son made me every morning containing organic tumeric extract.   By the end of the two weeks I had no symptoms at all - no stiffness, no aches anywhere, not even in the morning.  I felt amazing.   Since I've been home I've continued to be vigilant about staying with a healthy, organic diet and have been able to drop down to 1mg.   I've had three rheumatologists and not one has said a word about inflammatory foods, which is idiotic because there is absolutely a correlation!  So I'm just throwing this out there as hopefully a ray of light to anyone who is suffering and hasn't discovered yet the connection between what we eat and how it affects our bodies and aggravates this dreaded condition that we're dealing with.  It's been frustrating to feel that PMR has control of my life, but I'm pretty convinced now that I'm back in control.  As Martha Stewart would say, "And that's a GOOD thing!"

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