Kickas.org Forums Treatments, Drugs and Alternatives NSD and diet-related; AS symptoms - how soon after eating a bad food?

Greetings all

I have recently been diagnosed with AS and have been experimenting with the low starch diet for the past 3 weeks.

Because I'm an exercise nut and cannot face eliminating starch entirely I'm limiting myself to 1 starch only (white rice) and eating as little of it as possible. I'm keeping a daily note of what I eat and the severity of my symptoms with the aim of learing what foods are bad for me.

My condition has definately improved - last week I had a 48 hour pain free spell - something I have not experienced for a long time.

I have a couple of questions, which perhaps anyone who is experienced with the diet could answer.
1. After eating a food which is bad for your condition (provokes AS symptoms) how long does it take for the unpleasant symptoms to appear?
2. If you immediately stopped eating the offending food how long would it be before your symptoms disappeared?

I accept that everyone is different and will respond and recover at different rates. It will nevertheless be helpful for me to know what others experience.

Many thanks

I have been on the NSD for a whole year now. It has drastically improved my symptoms. Once it started really working, which took about 3 months, I have been almost pain free for the past nine months! The only time I get pain is when I start experimenting with new foods, like yoghurt or garlic. I think about it like this. Your body has a certain tolerance for the kleb bacteria (or whatever triggers this thing) and once that is reached your immune system reacts and you get inflammation. For me it can take a few days in a row of eating the bad food or just one day if its really bad. It generally takes 1 to 2 weeks to be pain free after a flare like this. That seems to be how it works for me anyways. Take it FWIW.

Good luck with this,

Jake

For me the pain/stiffness starts at about 4 hours.

It then takes about 4 days to get it out of my system. This depends upon how regular your digestion system is, ie: how often you have a bowel movement. For me, taking a Calcium/magnesium/zinc pill every day helps me stay very regular. If I get constipated then the pain lasts much longer....think of it as a 24 hour buffet for the Klebs.

Some things (natural anti-bacterials) help shorten the duration of the pain/flare from bad foods: tea tree oil and oregano oil both in pill form.

Congrats on your improvement. Pretty freaking amazing isn't it?? A very experienced Rheumy dispensing a $15,000 per year med couldn't help me but changing my diet worked miracles.

Take Care,
Donette

I've never been able to see a direct connection with eating an offending food and hours later noticing and increase in symptoms. I react more like Jake. It seems to build up after eating something for several days. It would sometimes take weeks to get over once I was in a full blown flare, but now my flares are milder and don't last as long. It takes me a long time to add a new food because of this, plus I'm chicken and so introduce it really slowly.

Great that you can see improvement already, especially while eating rice. Most people have to go really strict at first.

Good luck,
Annette

Hi,

I have been doing the diet for over a year now and now only have a few mild symptoms when I stick to it.

I have had a break from the diet on two occasions just to convince myself and my consultant that it works.

On each occassion I went from very little starch to eating whatever I like (i.e. lots of starch - those first roast potatoes tasted really good after months without).

Both times I had symptoms after about a day and a half that got worse the longer I was off the diet. When I returned to the diet it took about a week to ten days to feel I was back to where I was before I went off the diet.

When I originally went on the diet it took a couple of months (maybe a bit less) to get the maximum benefit.

Hope this is useful.

Jon

Many thanks all for sharing your experiences.
I think I have a long way to go to learn what I can and can't eat. There are so many possible influences. But it's good to have this website for help and support.

I've been on NSD - no sugar for five months now. At the beginning I think symptoms took a bit longer to appear, between 24 and 48 hours, but now it is a quick reaction, something between 6 and 24 hours.

If I eat the wrong food only once, symptoms usually disappear in 4 days or so, it depends on how well my bowel is working, but if it takes more than one week I think there is something ele causing the flare. The severity of the flare depends on the amount of the wrong food I've eaten.

Even though the relationship between the food I eat and pain is so clear for me, it is not so easy to find out what food triggers my AS. Be patient.

Thanks Tuxa
In my brief experience of the LSD I think I have experienced similar times. Which are: about 24 hours for the reaction to start after eating a wrong food (an oaty flapjack) and the flare lasting for about 4 days.
Cheers