Kickas.org Forums Treatments, Drugs and Alternatives NSD and diet-related; NSD Not working for me

The NSD did not work for me either. What seemed to be a game changer was the Autoimmune Paleo. It is very hard, but worth it. So many have seen reduction or even complete reversal in autoimmune conditions . It is very strict but after several weeks you can begin to add in some of the possible problem foods to see how you react.

Diet just doesn't work for everyone, sometimes no matter what you change or do. I've been on it for a year and a half and tried nearly everything to make it work; its done absolutely nothing. That said, you really haven't been on the diet very long, and it sounds like you've been cheating a little bit, and that's probably not a good idea if you trying to get a true assessment of whether or not diet is going to help you.

Hey Mike,

Did you go extreme and try the apple fast or any other fasting? I was going to try the apple fast soon. It's hard with so many holiday parties this time of year. Just curious how far you pushed the dietary restrictions.

Do you still try to cut out starch, or did you go back to regular eating when you discovered that the LSD/NSD didn't work for you?

Yup I tried the apple fast--that actually made my symptoms worse. I tried a 5 day water fast as well, that didn't really do anything either.

And yes, I still cut out all starch. Still use iodine on questionable foods. That said I'm really near the end of my rope with the diet. It just doesnt seem to do anything for me. I may switch to low starch just to open up my food options a bit.

Hi, Soco11:

Well, You have certainly exhausted many of our most trusted therapies and tricks.

When NSD absolutely does not work after so much effort, I am sometimes reluctant to kick it up a notch, especially if the fasting provided absolutely no relief!

If, however fasting did show some symptom reduction, it may be useful to find some relief using chelation. This is a controversial procedure, but it really helped me at my worst and there is an ulterior motivation, as some of us have not had results with diet have had heavy-metal issues, so if You have been tested and found not to have this, perhaps it is not the best approach.

However, what I have found in many cases when nothing else works is an antibiotic protocol. The Road Back Foundation has a list of physicians willing to work with their patients to see whether this approach would help.

I would take tetracycline just before each meal, or Rifaximin at some high dosage a couple of times daily, and do cycles of the Ciprofloxacin.

Important to take the GLA in high quantities and EFAs throughout the day.

It is difficult to find people who do not respond to fasting or strictest NSD, but there have been a handful and I regret very much I did not have the answers for them. People who have RA instead of AS have taken down their inflammation through the NSD, also; it seems to have great anti-inflammatiory effects.

Hope You find the answer, but always know that with AS it is all in the gut--so even anti-parasitic and anti-fungal things could help and eating gut-friendly foods and take the right supplements for LGS. HGH has helped some of us, also.

HEALTH,
John

You know spondylitis is inflammatory
Food is inflammatory
I don't see diet lowering permanent inflammation, hell medication has a tough time with this one.
But I don't understand how someone with an inflammatory disease does not benefit from eating a cleaner and healthier diet.
I sometimes wonder if they have the same disease I have
1 thing should be readily apparent with spondylitis(or any other inflammatory disease) and that is that food activates the inflammatory process.
Now maybe the disease has not got to the point where this extremely important or maybe it is past the point where this is very beneficial but at some point if you experimented with diet/fasting one with AS would notice a difference.
And there is fundamental science behind this so much so that it doesn't leave the classroom much.

And most physicians I know know this. I've wondered when I've seen others say their docs don't buy into diet, I've wondered how they got their md. The good ones are especially keen on it/exercise. The main problem with diet is convenience and compliance. And a lot take this into account and feel like they've got to do all the heavy lifting.

My opinion though!

Hi Paul, that sounds like us, we've been on nsd for about four months, with significant decrease but certainly no pain free days. We eat sour cream and grated cheese consistently, and eggs every day. Are these causing pain, perhaps?

Hi all,

I'm the original poster on this thread. I started the LSD on Nov 4 and it has now been over three months.

I rarely strayed from the LSD diet, but I never felt any relief. In fact, shortly after I went on the LSD, my symptoms got worse and I found myself having to sit up to sleep at around 4am almost every morning. Eating bad food would make the flares worse. So I felt like I was "stuck" in eating LSD just so my pain wouldn't worsen upon eating bad food.

On Sunday (4 days ago), I decided to go on a juice fast. I had been debating on going on an apple fast vs. juice fast, but I chose juice.

I have been drinking green and red juices, juiced at home with a masticating juicer. I put in vegetables like kale, broccoli, spinach, beets, carrots, etc. The only fruit I put in is apples.

Consuming the juice hasn't been a problem - I haven't had any headaches or ill effects. The worst part of the juice diet is juicing the vegetables. it takes me almost two hours to make enough juice to last me the following day, so I can bring them to work.

It has now been 4 nights on the juice fast and I have felt little or no relief. The first two nights I felt no difference. The third night (Tues night) I thought I had a breakthrough - I woke up at 5am with no pain! I went back to sleep and the next two hours were relatively pain-free, but when I woke up, the pain just magically appeared. It was definitely an improvement over baseline, though, and made me hopeful for Wednesday night.

I went to sleep last night (Wednesday), hoping to have an even better night. But no such luck.

Pain started at 4:30am and got progressively worse until I woke up at 7. Very disappointing.

The past two nights, I also drank chia seeds soaked in water, to help clean out my insides.

I feel like maybe I will just give the juice diet just one more night, and if I don't see any results, then just give up. On almost every account I've read on the web, I have heard people say they have felt a difference within the first 4 days.

However, I feel no better than I did 5 months ago before even starting NSD, I've lost almost 20 pounds (this is a bad thing - I don't want to lose weight), and my wife is upset because she thinks I look like a skeleton and we can no longer go out to eat and enjoy meals together.

I'm not on medications but sometimes I want to just give up and deal with the pain or take some medication to handle it.

Please let me know if you have any other suggestions, or if you see reason why I should continue on this diet. Should I try apples for 3 days??

I think the answer is that the AS beast manifests differently in each of us. From all my reading of research and posts, there is no one thing - diet or drugs - that helps everyone.
Personally, humira helps me the most overall but not 100% and doesn't last the fortnight, methotrexate helps my hands alot, and low starch eating helps my spine and ribs etc somewhat.

In addition to what Shirley said, the length of time for healing is different for all of us too. As you progress with your research on what is really in foods, you see that the history of ingredients you ate (which some was and still are hidden from us) was counterproductive to what was eaten prior to the convenience boom of grocery stores and mass production. All that history of counterproductive food adds up and some of us take longer to heal our digestive system. For example, I retooled my diet over two years ago and swore to get off of a biologic (Enbrel). Now I've learned that I NEED to be on a biologic (for now I'm on Humira) while I heal my body with the right foods and clean environment.

Although this is frustrating to hear, you are not alone. If you need proof or want to see what worked for me, read up on my 2nd year autoimmune review. I've even got a chart that shows my inflammation rates & how much I bounced around based on what I was doing.