Yes, it is interesting isn't it. But I guess with these autoimmune conditions it's not the same as a typical infection...I dunno. There does seem to be quite a lot of success with it.

I'm not sure if you'll have much success with amoxiclav and esp just for one week. Jon has taken it in the past (for something a non-AS infection) with no affect on his AS. However the doxy did help. So I think the type of antibiotic is important. I know you mentioned amoxiclav was anti-kleb as fas as you knew but I guess some antibiotics are more effective than others on different bugs. If you wanted you could ask Dragonslayer for his antibiotic protocol...he has had quite a bit of success with antibiotics. After Jon's trouble last time we haven't been game enough to try again with another antibiotic and as it turned out he was fortunate enough not to need them after all.

Hope you start feeling better soon, either way

pspondylitis...have you tried fasting Yet?

So far, nearly one month into the diet, looking at it objectively , it has not made any difference to me. The last four days or so, I have also taken antibiotic. I will continue the antibiotics to a total of one week.

My next step is to revert to a normal diet, but i will try high dose vitamin D treatment. When i start that, i will put my progress somewhere on this forum as well, and tell yo details.

meanwhile , i will take a online vitamin D test. Apparently in the UK it costs twenty five pounds. I will take the test.

here is the link to the university that sells the test :

http://www.vitamindtest.org.uk/vitamindbackground.html

So from my reading of your thread this is what I have gleaned:

1. you have not fasted

2. you are eating things that are suspect, as far as starch
content.

3. you have made a few adjustments, but have not seen an
improvement

4. You are taking antibiotics, but they were not Rx'd for what
your gut issue is and maybe left over from some other
problem.


I am truly sorry you don't seem to want to give this a real go.

I disagree to some extent.

1. I have been essentially eating scrambled eggs, bacon, salads, steaks, cheese, occasionally pears, occasionally oranges, walnuts,loads of grapes, and a one melon. This is less than the original ebringer diet, which you will remember is not no starch, but low starch. So I do not think you can say i have not followed a low starch diet.

2. No I have not fasted. That is not part of the low starch experiment.

3. Augmentin (co amoxyclav) is,as far as i know (you can correct me) is effective against Klebsiella.

Now, in MY opinion, if the kleb theory is true, i should see "some" improvement. I would expect the kleb to die. Maybe a day or so of transient worsening symptoms, but after that one would expect some improvement when the immunological trigger is gone. I am looking only for slight noticeable improvement, which I am sorry to say, I do not have.

Believe me, I am desperate for relief, but will only try what I think makes sense.
In my opinion , the starch diet is in a very confusing situation:

1. Not everyone agrees , what constitutes a starch diet. Different people say different things about what is okay and what is not.

2. People are combining various other things, making interpretation difficult. For example, some are fasting, some restrict other sugars, some are adding antibiotics (like me).

3. and the disease is highly variable in its behavior , making it difficult to rule out natural remissions.

So, I think the best we can do , is to experiment, and post results in this forum ....

Hello Pspondylitis,

Some comments regarding your feedback.

1. I have been essentially eating scrambled eggs, bacon, salads, steaks, cheese, occasionally pears, occasionally oranges, walnuts,loads of grapes, and a one melon. This is less than the original ebringer diet, which you will remember is not no starch, but low starch. So I do not think you can say i have not followed a low starch diet.

Ebringer did not live with AS, I can attest LSD does nothing for me unless I continued with medications as well. I live without medications now and solely NSD for my AS. Ebringer I believe still advocated use of azulfadine for his patients as well.

Are you making medications currently along with the trial of the diet?

I would eliminate the bacon, also are you eating the salad plain or adding a dressing? I ate a lot of turkey burgers for breakfast in States early on, unsure if you have them where you are.

For me at first with diet, the slightest bit of starch could set me off.. especially with processed foods. I worked for processed food company, you would be suprised what is under 2% and not on label. I took a vitamin a naturopath suggested... tried in on 3 separate occasions, set me off each time because had starch in capsule. I could barely walk on right hip again after 3 days of taking 1 pill a morning.

2. No I have not fasted. That is not part of the low starch experiment.

I believe fasting helps heal the intestinal tract... it is not part of the No/Low Starch Diet. But if you are open to alternatives this is a good one. The Alternative Medicine Guide to Arthritis is a good reference book if looking to pick up ideas.

I was searching for any answer when I had to come off of medications due to liver side effects... I have tried colonics, fasting (3 days at most), garlic and ginger that I have found all help. Colonics and fasting tell me that my AS is tied to intestinal tract somehow.

Now, in MY opinion, if the kleb theory is true, i should see "some" improvement. I would expect the kleb to die. Maybe a day or so of transient worsening symptoms, but after that one would expect some improvement when the immunological trigger is gone. I am looking only for slight noticeable improvement, which I am sorry to say, I do not have.

Some take longer than others, may be for many reasons. I responded within week, others I know have taken 1/2 year. No two of us are the same, much of it will depend on the health of your intestinal tract I believe.. and some will not respond.

Also you could be battling issues with candidas... if so, than anything with sugar is also an issue until you get your gut healthy again.

If you are really desperate and open to alternatives, look into the Alternative Medicine Guide to Arthritis book.. I read it 10 years ago and that is how I eventually looked into colonics. A bit uncomfortable, but I felt like new man afterwards. I ran into issues with candidas and cleared them up same day I had procedure.

Just some things to think about. We are all trying to find our relief from the AS monster.

Tim

I started a modified Low Starch Diet a little over 3 months ago and can tell you this stuff takes more time than we'd all like. I really don't want to be another person telling you to "try this, do that", but when I was going through this on the 1st month, I learned how important healing the gut.

IMO your gut / intestines are like swiss cheese. And your gut is leaking bad stuff the Kleb & other bacteria has left behind. NSD / LSD helps because it's starving the Kleb, but you've got to find something that's going to heal the damage now (and bacon ain't cutting it!).

I took an autoimmune seminar and learned about Gut Repair I. Along with taking the Pyloricin, I was feeling better within a few days. If you want to investigate this theory, my blog has some details (http://100percenthealth.us/day-22-to-6-months/autoimmune-disease-and-inflammation-seminars/) and you can always contact me.

Wishing you the best on this journey and completely understand what you're going through. Keep running the marathon with healthy whole foods, gut healing, herbal antibiotics, and low-starches and you'll get there.

You are right E1 different people say different things as to what works for them. Yet it seems to be a common thought that testing with iodine can and does detect starch.

Food for thought: if tapioca starch in 6 little candy worms (bottom of the list of ingredients BTW, and still learning..even now) can put me in a flare so bad I can not get up off the couch w/o help for more than a week while being NS (usually 1-2 the past 5 months). Imagine the pain I was in eating bits of some sort of small amount of starch every day (7-9)for the past 3.5 yrs. The only time I had zero pain was when I was sick with the flu...NPO except for H2O...Honestly...when I came here 5 months ago I was very desperate..

pspondylitis,

Perhaps it is time you migrate from this particular forum. It is clear, to me at least, that you are not interested in making the diet work for you. You only seem interested in arguing/debating whet evidence exists regarding the efficacy of the diet, the structure of the forum, who knows what else. You have received the input and advice of participants of this forum yet choose not to adhere. While you may continue to take advantage of the participants of this forum, I will offer you no advice since I perceive that is not what you seek.

Medical research is currently very focused on fairly shallow studies with (more or less) large groups of people, so that their favorite methods of statistical analysis can be applied with some success. For now there is much less focus on in-depth case studies, where each subject is tracked in great detail. I think case studies can be equally valuable, and that is what you will find here. I have picked up many ideas here, and methodically tried out several, discarding the ones that did not work out well in my specific case.

The challenge is to design experiments on yourself so that you can tell which things help. One reason to try a short fast as part of diet experimentation is that it is a simple case; normally you are trading certain foods for different ones (or larger quantities of some subset of normal foods), and if the replacements turn out to be bad for you (for whatever reason) it can completely ruin the results. If you do a brief water fast, you are not taking ANYTHING to irritate your gut (assuming you stay away from contaminated water of course).

Now there are some people who have blood sugar problems and can't fast for even a day or two; that is a disadvantage, but can be overcome with persistence and imagination.

One more comment regarding assumptions to the effect that "if no-starch really helps, low-starch must at least produce noticeable improvement after X weeks":
it has been my experience that disease response can be very non-linear. There seem to be certain "knees" (mathematical sense, not anatomical) in my own starch-vs-pain curves; areas where starch can be lowered or increased with little impact, but at the very low levels (almost none) I do *much* better, and at the very high levels (day after Thanksgiving feast) I do *much* worse.