SUMMARY:
A starch free and low animal diet lowered my pain levels by 95%. I mostly eat fruit and non starchy vergetbales, some fat (oils / olives) and a bit meat/fish. Unfortunatelly a starch free high meat diet was not sufficient for feeling better.
MY HEALTH PROBLEMS:
Since 2007 I have backpain to varying degrees. My achilles tendon inflamed the first time 2009 so I wasn't able to walk for weveral weeks. 2012 I got severe backpain which prevented me from sleeping. After 2-3 weeks with extreme pain and maybe 1-2 hours sleep I was pretty f*ed up. On doctor suspected AS 2012, due to HLB27 and high inflammation levels in my blood. AS was finally diagnosed 2015.
FIRST DIET EXPERIMENTS - cutting out the worst garbage:
Due to my bad health 2012 I searched for AS (in German Morbus Bechterew) on youtube found one person who ditched animal products, bread etc. He ate fruit, vegetables, green smoothies, sprouts occasionally a baked sweet patato. Since I felt pretty miserable I was willing to change my life to feel better. I found more people on youtube which changed their diet, due to various health problems. Some went vegan. Some went raw. So I tried to eat as healthy as possible. No bread, no cakes, no animal products. Insead I ate green smoothies, fruits (including bananas), nuts, sprouts. My health improved significantly so my rheumatologist concluded that I don't have AS since my inflammation levels were low again. After maybe a year or two, I still ate a lot of vegetable and fruit but also fried eggplant, potatoes, chickpeas etc. I had only very low levels of backpain.
HEALTH PROBLEMS GET WORSE:
After two very stressful years in a new job my health deteriorated sigifinificantly by the end of 2015. I could neither sleep nor walk, due to raising pain levels. Beginning of 2016 AS was diagnosed. After reading about the side affects of the proposed medications I refused most of it. I searched again for solutions on the internet. I found several diets that promised to improve health (e.g. London AS-diet, Autoimmune Protokoll (AIP), GAPS, SCD, 30 days autoimmun reset, elimination diet of Paddison, elimination diet of Dr. Mcdougall, Whals, Nutrian Diet of Dr. Fuhrman, Raw till 4, Westonaprice, Nutritionfacts.org). For every diet you can find some reviews that some people get better and some did not. Diet was definetly a factor for healh since it already worked in the past and also I felt better painwise if I didn't eat. But which diet should I choose?
FURTHER DIET EXPERIMENTS:
1.) MEAT&OIL&VEGETABLE: Since AIP sounded pretty well researched to me, I started with AIP. However I restricted this diet further and avoided starch since the starch&Klebsiella-theory also sounded realistic. I ate meat (game, grass fed beef, wild salomon, chicken), oils (coconut, flax and olive) and low starch vegetables& sauerkraut. I also avoided furit (except berries)since eating high amounts of fructose increased existing inflamations. Unfortunatelly health become worse and worse. I cold not walk, sleep or lift up my son. All tendons and joints hurt. The joints at my hands become more and more swollen every day.
2.) OIL&VEGETABLE: After 4 months I cut out all animal products. My caloric content was derived almost entirely of coconut oil and olive oil, which I added to my starch-free vegetables. My pain levels became much better during this 6 weeks. However I was always low energy since my caloric intake was only around 1600 calories a day. I could not increase my caloric intake since eating significantly more than 150g of Oil a day was too much for my digestion. So I tried another diet strategy again.
3.) STARCH&VEGETABLE After a 3-day fast I reached the lowest pain levels I since maybe half a year. I tried to introduce some starch in accordance to some elimination diet mentiones above. I came to the conclusion boiled white rice and steames sweet patato would be the least bad option of starch. So I ate leavy green vegetables plus high amounts of rice or sweet potatoes for almost two weeks. My back became worse each day until I was not able to sleep any more and my disks sliped while trying to lie into my bed. So the elimination diet did not work and I could confirm starch as one source that cuases me pain.
4.) FRUIT&VEGETABLE In my folloging experimentI tried a diet constisting mostly of raw and dried fruit as well asraw/steamed/fried starch-free vegetable with a lot of leavy green vegetables. My pain level was a lot lower than during the starch&vegetable experiment but worse than during the oil&vegetable time (since I atevery ripe bananas during the whole winter).
4a.) FRUIT&VEGETABLE DURING WINTER
Last winter I eate maybe 1Kg of peeled very very ripe banana blended with some berries for breakfast. For lunch I had organic salad blended with berries and dates or a meal of oranges (maybe 2Kg pealed). For dinner I have cooked (non-starchy) food. Even very very ripe banana sometimes contains some starch, which leads to backpain. However the level of backpain is lower than in case I would eat more starchy food bread/beans or potatoes. If I have low level of inflammation by eating bananas then I try to restrict my intake of omega 6 foods.
4b.) FRUIT&VEGETABLE DURING SUMMER
During summer my diet is less difficult. The fruit and vegetable diet workes very well in summer. During day I eat lots of fruit (melon / peaches / nectarines / grapes / diet dates and figs). For dinner I eat around high amounts of vegetable (e.g. asparagus, zucchini, brussel sprouts, cabbage) with some raw dried olives, some oil, some spices, some pickeled stuff. I eat only maybe 400g of fish/meat/eggs a week. Every time I eat animal products my joint hurt somewhat.
One of my best times in terms of pain was a vacation to Thailand. Here you have plenty of ripe tasty fruits available (Mango, Jackfruit, Durian). Here you don't have to worry about starch.
I'm open for questions and comments