I was wondering what medicine are recommended to take in combination with NSD. I tried Sulphasalazine, which was having starch, but anyway I had to give up as I was having headaches, and now I'm taking meloxicam (NSAID) once at 2 days to reduce the pain and inflammation, but apparently this one is having lactose. Of course, I'm not supposed to eat anything with lactose, so do you have any idea what else I could try?

Hi there.
I was on meloxicam for 4 yrs .After reading these forums I became concerned about side effects of the NSAIDS.I worked on healing my gut and slowly weend myself of the meloxicam,I got to the point where I had just as much pain with the nsaids as without.I started taking curcumin now for 3 months and so far I take no pain meds.For me the NSD ,curcumin and some supplements for now is working. Hope this helps

Good Day
Tim

I take 2 things for inflammation, LDN (Low-Dose Naltrexone) and boswellia 5-loxin (brand that advertises starch free). Actually the 1st more helps recover from inflammation, while the second is a mild anti-inflammatory that doesn't upset my digestion (but unfortunately doesn't provide immediate relief like naproxen did, took like a week to build up its mild benefit enough to notice).

I take the Naltrexone - would also take the Boswellia, but it is contra indicated for hypertensives (blood pressure). Nuisance. Curcuma is good and I can get the fresh tuber here - I use a lot of curcuma. Also L'Arginine for vascular dysregulation - hoping it will do summat for the vascular problem. Prefer L'Arginine to drugs.

Could you try another biologic? I see you've already been on Enbrel...how about Humira, Simponi or Remicade?

NSAIDS can be very hard on the gut. Some people tolerate them better than others. There is a theory among some members here that they can make AS worse by further damaging the gut so the best case scenario would be if you can get off them and avoid any other meds that can have a bad effect on the gut like prednisone.

My husband Jon slowly weaned himself off them as he made progress on the No Starch Diet - it took about 9 months for him to get to the point that he felt he no longer needed them. He still had daily pain at this time but it was greatly reduced and he could cope without meds. The small amount of starch or lactose in your daily meds should not be enough to mess with your progress on the diet...unless you're taking a large amount of pills everyday. So if you need them, take them.

I assume you're iodine testing your food for starch? If not, you may want to start doing that as there may be more starch in your diet than you realize which could be inhibiting your progress on the diet. Also, it important to realize that the diet is not a miracle cure and it takes time to improve - you may experience gradual improvement and this is typical of most people. Also you may not get to the point of diet-induced and diet-maintained remission of your AS symptoms...many people get very close though but not everyone.

If you keep your goal realistic it will be helpful and then anything you achieve above that will be a bonus. For example, perhaps a good goal is that in 1 year's time you will be able to manage your AS with diet alone without meds or with greatly reduced meds. This doesn't mean you wont have any daily pain at all but just that it will be reduced significantly. You see where I'm going?

Hope that helps.

I read here so many positive thoughts about curcumin, therefore I decided to go with it. Currently the only one that I found it here in Finland is this:
http://www.solgar.com/SolgarProducts/Standardized-Turmeric-Root-Extract-Vegetable-Capsules.htm. They advertised them as 400 mg of 93% curcumin, so let's see.
But as I understood, the one from http://www.turmeric-curcumin.com/ is really doing miracles, so I will order it tonight - let's see how much it will take to ship it here:) I can't feel any improvment from the one that I'm currently taking it now, but it's only the second day so I would say it's normal. Even though I'm in pain every day, the good part is that I gave up at NSAIDs (last one took on Friday).
By the way, thanks a lot for sharing from your experience - it really helps me a lot.



I already gave up at biological as I didn't want to take the risk anymore. It's a really good medicine, but it has catastrophic side effects. And on top of that, we're thiking to have a baby, and even though the doctors are saying that it's safe to take Enbrel when conceive, I'm not so sure.

Thanks again for your feedback, and I'll keep you posted on the progress with curcumin.

Andrei

Andrei,

It sounds like the 400mg of 93% curcumin would likely do the trick.

I first started out with 80mg of 95% curcumin, and it barely did anything, so I ordered the 500mg of 95%, and that truly is working for me along with diet. But in my case, the 500 is over 6 times more potent than the 80 I started with. But I would think the 400 you have should be noticable. Are you taking 2 capsules, 3 times per day?

I started out with 1 or 2 capsules 3x per day, but now hardly need them, (yay!) so I sometimes skip a few days or just taken them in the morning. They have worked really well for me.

-Andrea

I'm taking 1 capsule, 3 times per day, because this is maximum prescribed on the container. Maybe it would be a good idea to take more at the beginning to make it more efficient, but I'm a little bit worried that these are not recommend to be combined with NSAID, and the last NSAID I took it 5 days ago, so I don't know how much is still staying in my body...

Andrei

At the beginning I was testing the food every now and then, assuming that all recommended aliments are safe, but lately I discovered that is not like that. So for the last 2 months I became more strict and I started to test everything, when I realized that so many "safe" vegetables and fruits have starch. I was so upset that so many type of fruits were starchy, like strawberries, apples, pears, nectarines, peaches, watermelons, melons, mango, mandarins... So now I have just a few alternatives, but keep going and trying

I continue with the diet, but since I'm not feeling so good anymore (I started to limp, having inflammation in my heels and toes) I want to keep the inflammation at a certain level - therefore the need to take medicines, and to replace NSAIDs.
Now I hope that curcumin will do the trick, so I'm very positive about it

The 500mg curcumin bottle I have says you can take 1 - 4 at a time with meals, but I found up to 2 at a time to be plenty. The Guy with AS who told me about them takes 3,000 mg per day (6 capsules) spread out over the day, so likely 2 capsules 3x's a day.

Hope they work for you with the diet!!

-Andrea