Sugar free!

Greetings Claire,

I have polymyalgia rheumatica and have found that sugar is an immense cause of inflammation.  I do much better without it.  I have been wheat free for 25 years and it has not been much of a problem as there are many good substitutes.  I do not need to be dairy free according to a blood based allergy testing done at a specialty lab in the US.  However, they did find a whopping 48 foods that I had to avoid for a year.  That was hard, but I managed and am feeling better, bringing back the suspect foods one at a time.  Have followed a book called To Quiet Inflammation by Kathy Abascal and find it really helpful.

I have been gluten, dairy, and egg free for almost a year.  I was sugar free for several months and I still don't have it too often.  I'll have alcohol occasionally but I make sure it's gluten free.   My LS  has been gone for about 8 months and I feel really great otherwise as well.  I tried to reintroduce dairy and wheat and I had horrible digestive issues.  When I tried to reintroduce eggs my LS flaired up terribly.  It's my opinion that you have to cut things out completely for a good chunk of time then reintroduce them and see what happens.  If you don't do it completely, you don't really find out if it's the issue.  I also make sure I exercise and I try to keep a handle on stress.  

The adjustments haven't been easy, but as I said earlier I feel great, and my sex life had not diminished at all.  I think these conditions happen because something in our system is off and our body is letting us know.

I do my best but don't punish myself...

Cancer Cells love sugar....I keep that uppermost in my mind....

Strong Moderation.

I drank wines/spirits all my adult life, and just stopped it all.

No dairy milk and bits of cheese....

No bread in my house.

Hi Claire,

I have been doing the autoimmune paleo diet. While I don't see a change yet in the LS (I think because I was eating too much watermelon), I definitely see improvement in some of my other autoimmune disorders and my bloodwork (such as Hashimoto's antibodies, Chronic Urticaria, Lupus or Smith antibodies).  So, I need to knock off the excessive fruit and see what happens with the LS.  I indulged in a lot of fruit this past weekend and hash browns (no nightshades allowed on my current diet) and had hives under my eyes on Monday and felt crummy for a couple of days--direct feedback.  I've been doing successive approximations of this diet for at least the last three years, doing better as I've removed some additional items like eggs and nightshades.  It's not easy, but the feedback in improved health and well-being has been reinforcing. If I had to pick just a couple of the changes that I made that might make the biggest initial difference, sugar is probably the biggest culprit for me and the thing that I was most addicted to.  Gluten would be the other big change that I would recommend trying for people with autoimmune disorders (I have celiac disease, so it's not an option for me anyway). It's been a whole paradigm shift for me--even if I were suddenly well tomorrow, I would ease up on the diet but probably never go back to the SAD (standard American Diet) that I grew up on.  I eat to live now and actually get pleasure out of eating healthy, nonprocessed foods now--something that I wouldn't have considered possible a number of years ago.  It takes a little time for our brain to adjust to feeling that it's a gift to eat this way and not that it's deprivation.

--Suzanne