Does your joint pain and swelling move around? One month it will be in my left knee then the next 2 months in my right knee. Now it is right knee, right wrist. I should be grateful when I got dxd with RA it was both knees and both wrists, maybe I am getting better,with normal sed rate.

Do any of you with AS get both knees and both wrists swollen at the same time?
Those of you with RA does your joint pain migrate from joint to joint? How often does it migrate?

Thanks!

Mine is AS and tends to go in sides usually any aches/stiffness I have are all on the left hand side SI joint, neck, ribs/chest/, feet including my iritis, that has been 7+ times in my left eye (lost count) but only once in my right though I have had what I have felt as starting symptoms that have never progressed.

This weekend my neck ache which has always been on my left side swopped to my right?? I dont know what that is about and my hip and SI joints were sensitive too for a day. My neck is still stiff on the right and completely gone for now on my left which lasted at least 6 months.

I tended to find that if I had iritis then I didnt hurt anywhere else but general stiffness tends to start in one place and then 'grow' to others on the same side.

I didnt realise until I was measured that my movement was more restricted down my left which was a bit depressing however it has improved with the NSD. So far my wrists aren't affected and my knees rarely (appart from when my son was a baby and I put it down to always getting up and down from the floor) but again at the weekend my right knee had sharp pains.

i'm dx'ed with undiff spondy.

for me, its usually in pairs, but one side always much worse than the other.

so symptomatically that seems somewhere between the description of the two diseases.

but i also have the whole SI thing flaring. that's kinda classic spondy. and the bowel stuff, though i'm learning that can also be RA. and then i get much more "generic" "autoimmune/autoinflammatory" symptoms (eye stuff but not uveitis, mouth and tonuge stuff, skin rashes).

sometimes i think its hard to know for sure when our symptoms aren't "classic textbook". so glad i have a rheumy that is most interested in treating me, see if what we try works, use that as a dx tool as well.

one difference, you talk about joint swelling. my joints get fluid in them, the doctors can feel that. but they don't hugely visibly swell. though i can't get my rings on and off anymore. but maybe if i lost some weight?

Grumpy Ally,

Thanks for letting me understand your disease. Right now my left side is swollen(wrist, knee and elbow)(but not that bad) and my left eye is red, however I have never had a eye diagnosis, but the past year there have been several days where I had red eyes.

Sue,
My knee cap is swollen and since I'm thin it looks goofy, my wrist looks bigger than the other one. Somedays I wonder if my RA has morphed into AS, I know-- I don't think it can, but Its not symetrical. Since it is something I have to live with everyday I am curious why it does not seem like textbook RA. I know a disease is just a bunch of symptoms, right.
Thanks for sharing Sue.

I used to only have AS affect my right SI/Hip for the first 3 1/2 years. It was really strange because when I switched to NSD and then cheated, it swapped over to my left side. Now if I cheat on the diet, it can flip-flop from right to left overnight! The good thing is that between the diet and the switching of sides so quickly, flares never really develop into a full-blown flare.

HI Lauren,
That's good that your flares don't develop into full blown flares with NSD. On Easter Sunday I ate a lot of cookies, some hashbrowns and whipped cream with strawberries I paid for it big time, everything hurt for days. Finally I got over it, I won't forget that flare for awhile it hurt too bad. Did you have elevated sed rate with your AS? Did it come down with NSD? Mine is normal, after being in the 50's. I have been doing NSD since August, I cheat a tiny bit , but basically I eat 90% NSD.
Take care!

Hi ValsMum,

Yes, the memory of pain is a good motivator to stay on the diet. I would seriously rather go hungry until I can find my next No Starch meal in order to avoid the least amount of pain.

I don't think I am what you would call an "indicator", because last time I went to the rheumy I was in a flare (as I always was, even when I didn't think I was in one because I was so used to the pain), my sed rate was normal.

There is no way I can cheat. I have found that I am highly sensitive to starch. The only time I experienced eating low starch and didn't have pain was this weekend. I pretty much didn't eat anything at all, and what I did eat I ate very small portions and I do believe a couple of the things I ate had starch and definitely dairy which normally sets me off.

Hi Lauren,
I avoid starch some days all together and I am really sensitive to grains too. I have been in a ton of pain when my sed rate was close to normal or in normal range, so that does not matter much.
I just asked becasue I am curios and mine did come down a lot after being soo high. It took months to come down and dairy makes my knees swell like nothing else.
Sed Rate is a nice tool when you start a diet like nsd and then it comes way down and the only thing you can attribute it to is diet if there were no new medicine started.