Kickas.org Forums Treatments, Drugs and Alternatives NSD and diet-related; Is LSD making me worse?

Hi everyone,

I just discovered this forum a couple of weeks ago, as I've been purposely avoiding the lure of "Dr. Google" for my chronic spinal pain.

I'm 42, male and in otherwise decent health. I work as an orthopaedic physical therapist.
I started having gradually increasing mid back pain 2 1/2 years ago. Blood work, X-rays negative initially, but given what I do for a living, I knew something was up. Got my self referred to one of the better rheumatologists in the city. More specific blood work showed a postive HLA-B27, but no increase on any inflammtory markers. MRI of cervical/thoracic/lumbar and SI joints were all negative. Rheumy gave me a diagnosis of AS because of my symptoms and history, but not confirmed by the MRI. Started naproxen and omaprazole and have been on them since.
Until recently, pain has generally been mild. Typically mild stiffness and pain in the morning. Would not really notice it during the day, unless I moved my back specifically into extension and rotation. If I overdid some physical activity, I could get some pain into my fingers, wrists, back and heels.

I wanted to see if I could get off of the NSAIDs so after reading some of the success stories, I decided to try the LSD. Normally I eat whatever I want. Lots of starches! 2 weeks ago I completely cut out wheat, potato, and rice products. 1 week later, I cut out milk products. And as of 2 days ago, I started being much more strict, bought an Iodine dropper and tested everything and cut out pretty much everything with starch in it. Read every label meticulously and searched this forum for specific foods to see if others had problems with it.

Unfortunately my symptoms have gradually getting a little worse over the past 2 weeks. Not horrible, but more pain than I recall having over the past couple of years. I sit here typing this, and I have a general dull ache in my thoracic/lumbar spine (which I usually don't have in the middle of the day). My stomach has also been very bloated. Quite uncomfortably so.

Possibly this is all a coincidence, and my AS is starting to flare simultaneously with my LSD/NSD trial? Though my gut (pun intended) tells me that is not the case.

So my first question is, have many of you found that the LSD/NSD has made your symptoms initially worse?

Additionally, I have a fear that refraining from starches will make me extremely sensitive to them, should I want to reintroduce them to my diet in the future. I have a friend who went gluten free to support her husband who has Celiac disease, and a year later, she cannot tolerate any gluten herself. Yikes!

I really appreciate the personal and informative nature of all of the posts I've read on this forum. What a wonderful resource for many, many people out there!

Thanks.

I felt relief fairly quickly....within 4 days. I was in astronomical pain though and desperate to find a solution. I went on an elimination diet though and pretty much only ate plain meat and eggs on those 4 days. I struggled to find things to eat and skipped meals as well. It was all or nothing for me whilst I was quickly trying to find out what had starch and what did not.

About 2 years prior to my first full on AS flare (which came with a nasty bout of food poisoning), I had minor amounts of pain developing in my spine. Enough to be annoying, but not enough to think I had a problem developing.

Age 40 would be considered quite late to start developing AS from what I've read. Have you recently taken a course of antibiotics. I'm convinced its all about gut bacteria imbalances. Bloating would hint at a possible gut bacterial problem/possible SIBO/leaky gut.

csp-
Hi
Nice to meet you.

Yes, for years my pain always got worse when going NSD.

But for me, the loss of belly pain was well worth it.

keep us posted.

An occasional ibprofin when fasting or nsd may help- with plenty of water!

>> Additionally, I have a fear that refraining from starches will make me extremely sensitive to them

Unfortunately there is some truth in that. Yes, the diet worked well at bringing my inflammation under control, but it aint quite a silver bullet. I had no more AS pain when following the diet strictly, but still some other health issues continued which I have since found are due to gut dysbiosis / SIBO.

Anyway back to increased sensitivity - it isn't a one way trip. You can build up tolerance again. For instance I had problems with foods containing inulin causing inflammation (garlic, onion etc) but by introducing it at first in tiny amounts and then increasing I found that I could tolerate onion and garlic again without issues within about a week. Now, I don't think that method will grant you full tolerance to amylose starch - but I reckon you can return to roughly pre NSD tolerance if you desire.

Thanks for the comments so far. Encouraging!

dlee - I have not tried a course of antibiotics as I have not previously had any symptoms requiring me to do so, nor has it ever been suggested. The bloating is an unpleasant phenomenon only noted the past 2 weeks. I've always been adverse to antibiotics with all the suspect foods in our North American diet.

I'm going to stick it out with NSD over the weekend (have 2 birthday parties I need to attend) and I'd like to attempt the 3 day apple fast beginning Tuesday (works with my schedule). I have no idea how I'll react to fasting.

I did a PubMed search yesterday and my spirits were completely buoyed by that recent Fasting/Immunosuppression study
Prolonged Fasting Reduces IGF-1/PKA to P...munosuppression

I'm excited to fast, but a little nervous that I'll feel like *!@#!.

dlee - Just noticed you posted the results of that study in a different forum. very cool!

Yeah a few of us ended up posting it. News travels fast these days. Thank goodness for the Internet.

The reason I asked about antibiotics is because research is showing they kill off a lot of gut bacteria both good and bad and if you have taken a course of them, you need to be careful to reintroduce good gut bacteria again afterwards to colonize a healthy gut bacteria to ensure fungus and non desirable bacteria don't dominate causing leaky gut etc. Bloating after eating has been linked to having the incorrect bacteria in your gut to digest the food you have eaten. Or, the bacteria is in the wrong place - has made its way up from large intestine into small intestine - causing bacterial overgrowth.

WELCOME, csphysio:



Perhaps the pain increase corresponds to some reduction in NSAIDs? These drugs are effective at reducing pain, but they can wreak havoc, long-term.

If I had my way, there would be several stages to work up to full or modified diet, and these would include courses of antibiotics which are so demonized now, but I refuse to allow medical faddisms to get in the way of my health.

The Road Back Foundation can be very helpful, supplying names of physicians local to us who are able to use antibiotics to help treat autoimmune diseases.

However, there are many aspects of dietary control alone, including supplementation, but most important are cleansing regimens: Fasting and fruit monodiets.

I remember my first fast after I began using NSAIDs: I began this with such trepidation, knowing absolutely that I would again suffer the familiar pains, but also knowing that these pains would soon enough relent--by day five or six and I continued to 11 days for good measure.

The digestive tract is a complex and dynamic thing, and we can be confused by the character of our content versus simple things we never consider as factors. I am certain, for example, that the longer we have AS, the larger our bacterial colonies become outside of the gut, so factors in our formula include the element of 'ambient' AS levels not caused by gut bacteria, but by established colonies outside of our tracts. Couple this with too many variables from detected versus unknown starches in our foods and medicines, and it becomes obvious just how flawed our subjective analyses are.

I hope that You will try some cleansing regimen and then be very strict; You have already made some commitment to this approach, and we don't want to see You fail if getting close to success but not sensing it enough--I can't tell You how many times I 'almost' got the secret of starches, but my powers of personal observation were then inadequate.

HEALTH,
John

I don't know if its coincidence... When I first started the NSD my pain quickly worsened as well. Just gotta remember, everyone is different, nothing works the same or as well for everyone.

The comments are making me more interested in exploring the literature associated with antibiotics. I had no idea that this was actually a viable treatment option. I'm in the Toronto area, so I'll have to see if I can find a physician experienced in this protocol

I'm actually starting to get quite excited to try the apple fast. I'm going to do the minimal 3 day fast and see if I can make it to 4 or 5 days. It's remarkable that some people out there are doing 10 and 11 days!!