Tag Archives: diet

Sweets, Swelling and Selfies

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This post was going to be called “Man Boobs No More”, but I changed my mind at the last minute.  I will, however, come on to my man boobs later.

Er……oops, that could be read a number of ways!  What I mean is, I will refer to the subject of my man boobs a bit later on.

I’ve been feeling a wee bit guilty about not writing.  I do love writing my blog and I was VERY surprised to find that my last post was in May last year.  Last year, 2013!  I would say, in my defence, that life has been awfully busy in the last 8 months or so.

So, what has happened?

Well, first of all I left one band and joined 2 others.  This meant getting down to quite a punishing rehearsal schedule and, in total, I had to learn around 50 new songs and be gig ready pretty quickly.  In the last 8 months, I’ve been in more random rehearsal spaces and done more music stuff than I can shake a stick at.

RehearsalSpaceMontage

Practise

Mad, brilliant fun but completely knackering.

It has also meant a lot of practise on my wee electronic kit at home, which is supposed to be the quietest way to get some practise in.  I still manage to disturb everyone in the house, though!

Then we had our summer family holiday in France, which was awesome.  I’ll get to that in a moment.

Then after months of delays, we were finally granted permission to extend the house.  We appointed a builder and the work started.  This introduced a load more distractions in the 10 weeks that followed.  The build was finished on the 20th of December, so Christmas brought new bedrooms for the kids, BUT, it still isn’t completely furnished or decorated and there is still some internal work to do (which is my job) so I have a few more distractions.

With all this going on, could I have found a couple of hours to write some stuff for my blog?  Yes, of course I could but I kept putting it off.

Then, this week, I received a reminder that my blog was due for renewal.  So I logged on and found a message from a fellow arthritic dated July 2013.  I hadn’t seen it.  Now, I make a point of replying to everyone who gets in touch via the blog, so I felt really bad that I had failed this time – and that it was from so long ago.

Closing her message, Sue wrote, “Please do keep posting.  Your blogs are incredibly helpful and inspiring.”  I suddenly remembered why I started this thing in the first place and felt quite humbled, so thank you Sue for giving me a wake up call.  And thanks also to Jono (my wife’s cousin’s husband) for telling Sue about my blog.

Right.  The last time I blogged I had reached the point of no return and had felt the need to take my medication.  This has happened twice since then and I seem to have settled into taking the drugs every 3 months.  I still haven’t had the courage to sit through one of these ‘mini flare ups’ and see if my joints settle down.  I get a bit scared.

I know that, at some point, I will have to try powering through these tough times but life just gets in the way.  There is always family stuff to do, my job, a rehearsal, a gig, stuff to do around the house and a whole bunch of other stuff that demands attention and action.

Lots of stuff!

And, let’s not lie about it, it’s bloody painful.  I lose all the strength in my limbs, I have no power in my hands, even to the point of struggling with cuff links and not being able to turn down my shirt collar.  I have trouble with stairs and my ankles and feet are sometimes too painful to carry my weight.  Enough really is enough when you have to ask your daughter to help you get dressed.  So, I give in, inject, and within days I’m feeling better.  Whether I would feel better anyway without taking the drugs is something I’m just going to have to think about trying – but I really am a bit of a scaredy-cat.

But, I could be helping myself a bit more.  Since France, I’ve been in and out of eating clean and I have the results to show for it – this is the Sweets and Swelling bit.

I know that eating wheat is bad for me.  I have an immediate reaction to it and it’s not pleasant.  Everyone should read a book called Wheat Belly – everyone!  Anyway, at a very nice restaurant in the tiny French village of St Avit Senieur, I ordered a pudding which was lovely but made with flour.  The kids told me off.  My wife shot me a disapproving look.  I knew what I was doing.  I had a leaky gut for a couple of days after that.  I stay away from wheat.

Processed sugar also has a very bad affect on me and I’m finding more and more that the longer I stay away from processed stuff, the more extreme the reaction when it gets into my diet.  I don’t have much willpower.  My colleagues at work will tell you, if there are ever sweets on our desks and I have one, you can kiss goodbye to the rest because I’ll have the lot.  I fall off the wagon now and then.

SportsMixWhen this happens, I’ll drop into Sainsbury’s or Tesco on the way home and pick up a bag of Sports Mix – they’re my favourite.  Give me 10 minutes and they’ll all be gone.

I’m just a sucker for them.

In the last few days, my wife has been at a networking event for people from her industry.  There were bowls of sweets on the tables and, because her friends and colleagues know we have 3 kids, she kept being given sweets to bring home for them.  We ended up with tons and tons of sweets and they were all like this, just processed sugar on a stick.

SweetsFor me, that’s a red rag to a bull and I ate quite a lot.  The result, crippling, painful swollen fingers and eczema.

Sugar really is nasty stuff.  Here are the results of my lack of willpower.  A beautifully swollen pinky joint and the nastiest eczema breakout I’ve had in ages.  If I stay clean, the condition of my skin is amazing.  If I don’t, this happens.

Finger and Hand

So, that was today, Thursday 6th February.  Give it a few days and my joints and skin will be back to normal.  Sugar really is poison and we should all stay away from it.

So, I’ve covered Sweets and Swelling.  What about Selfies?  Back to France.

Our holiday in France was amazing for so many different reasons.  We had a beautiful villa with a private pool, the weather was superb, the people were lovely, the little bastide towns were gorgeous, the countryside was beautiful and we discovered that the Dordogne is one of the most fabulous parts of the world.

I did what I always do.  Completely in love with the place, I was in a fantasy, talking about buying a farmhouse, selling up and retiring there and I slowed the car at every ‘for sale’ sign we passed.  All nonsense, of course, but great to let one’s imagination wander.

The food was a big surprise.  I found that I had a huge choice.  Ordering in restaurants was easy.  I did make a few poor choices, but I knew what I was doing and anyway, the kids let me know about it so I was shamed mercilessly.  For the most part, I was able to eat like a horse!  When in France……

Anyway, here are some of the things we ate.  Lots of meat, lots of veg, lots of fruit, just what paleo man would eat.

Food1

We ate a lot of food – everyone did.  But, it was all good stuff.  We had a large cooked breakfast every morning, we drank LOADS of the local wine and ate a big lunch and dinner.  The entire holiday was really just hopping from one eatery to another, but, I have never felt so good and I actually came home 2.2 kilos lighter than I was before the holiday.

When does that ever happen?  People who lose weight on holiday normally have a dose of the squits or some other tummy troubles.  I caught myself in the mirror having a shave one morning and I thought to myself, “Blimey, you don’t look too bad”.  Following in my eldest daughter’s footsteps, I reached for my phone a took a selfie.

Selfie1With Twitter and Instagram at her fingertips, Catherine is definitely one of the selfie generation and we’re always trying to give her good advice, trying to keep her safe and generally giving her a hard time about it.  So, here’s me not taking my own advice, with clothes and without.  

selfie2I think I look OK for a 47 year old chronic arthritic who takes little to no exercise.  This is all diet, nothing else.

Which brings me to my man boobs.  3 years ago, I was growing a pair.  Now they’ve gone.  I’ve done nothing except change what I eat.  Aside from a few misguided lapses of willpower, I have kept my diet as clean as I can and I’m now at a steady 73 kilos, just perfect for my height.  My BMI is smack bang in the middle of normal.

3 years ago, my BMI put me in the overweight category.  Not now.  Even better, I know that I can control my arthritis with food.  I know what works and what doesn’t.  I’ve moved on from constantly experimenting – I don’t feel I have to do that any more.  I just have to do better and stay clean.  Maybe I can still be free from the drugs completely.

Maybe.

90% of heart bypass patients……

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…… revert back to their old ways within 2 years.

That was the interesting, if alarming, statistic I learned recently.  It’s been an interesting time all round since I last wrote.  Until this morning, my health had been pretty stable, I’ve been feeling pretty good, my knees, feet and elbows were all excellent and I was walking with confidence!  A result of my medication?  Maybe, but the drug will have left my system by now as it has quite a short half life, so I was feeling pretty cool.

The band had a gig – another wedding.  Here’s me waiting to rock the party.

It was a strange set up.  Usually, we try to be in when the room is being prepared, get the gear ready, check the sound so we don’t have to interrupt the proceedings by turning up with a van full of boxes!

This time, it was quite a small room and the wedding party were using the whole space.  We had a 45 minute window to get in and ready to rock while the room was being prepared for the evening celebrations.

So, we set up as much as we could under a gazebo in the car park.  It was dark, cold, damp and not very pleasant.  By the time we got inside, my hands were like ice and we were all a bit grumpy.  Especially my bass player – a wee hug, though, and he was OK.

Anyway, all that aside, we were up and running almost within the time, it was another fab gig and loads of fun, as usual.  My hands were still a bit dodgy but everything was working pretty well.  We kept the dance floor filled and our clients were very happy.

Then, at the end of last week, I was at a seminar/forum/event thingy with the ‘process folk’ from across my company.  I work in Business Change and my employers are very keen to build a community of connected change professionals in the organisation.

OK, now, before you start yawning, I’d just like to say that I think it’s a good thing and it works.  My colleagues work all across the company and you can go for months without seeing people in your team.  So, every three months, we get to see each other ‘en masse’ at a forum.  I like these things, I’ve presented some of my work at one, it’s good.  So there!

This time, we had a couple of guest speakers and the guy who had my attention (totally) was Craig Smith from Flint Consulting.  Now, this wasn’t just because he had a really funky presentation (I do want some of that, though, I do!) but because he was a very engaging speaker too.

He started his talk with the above statistic and related it to how a lot of change programmes in companies fail.  Due to the fact that people go back to their old ways, the stuff that’s comfortable, easy, the path of least resistence, etc, etc.  I have experienced this kind of thing in my workplace first hand and I couldn’t help relating it to what I’m trying to do right now.

My wife said that I’m trying to undo 46 years of habit.  She’s right and I suppose that’s what it must also be like for heart patients.  Now, you would think that, faced with death, people with a dodgy heart would take note and put being alive before anything else.  It just goes to show how complacent we can be and how comfortable old habits are, even if the risks are great.

If I was complacent, my path of least resistence would be to start injecting my meds again, start eating rubbish again, start not getting better again and be quite happy to pass this off with a, “Well, it would never have worked anyway” or a, “All these bad things’ll never happen to me” kind of throw away remark.  So, Craig’s talk struck a chord with me on a personal level.

To succeed, I have to be stubborn, stoic, relentless, learn from my failures, drop my complacency and never give up – just how you would lead an organisation into making a change for the better.

For example, this morning (Wednesday 21st November) I woke up with a very painful swelling!  Oooh er, missus!  Not what you might be thinking, my right wrist had swollen up overnight.  This does happen, although, it hasn’t for ages.  To be honest, my wrist had been grumbling for a couple of days, but this morning was dreadful.  I couldn’t move my wrist or my hand.

Here it is as of midnight, 21/11/12.  Compared to my left side, you can see that the right wrist is still swollen (although eased off enough to allow me to type) a bit red and it has an arthritic ‘heat’ about it.  Anyone who suffers with rheumatoid will tell you that when it’s active, joints can feel like they’re burning.  I can move my fingers now, although they’re pretty crunchy!

Anyway, back to earlier today.  I had to delay going into work because I couldn’t do anything.  Shaving was almost impossible, brushing my teeth was almost impossible, putting my cufflinks in was almost impossible, shoe laces – bloody hell, they were a nightmare and putting on a tie, that was COMPLETELY IMPOSSIBLE!  Today was the first day I’d gone to work without a tie.

Now, I could’ve jumped the gun, thought that the diet isn’t working well enough and reached for the syringe.  I nearly did.  BUT, that would be allowing complacency to rule my head and I would be merrily careering down the road to failure.

I think I’m better than that – I think we all are.  I’m not completely cured, but I have come a long way so why start doubting now?  I could easily go backwards, put back the weight that I’ve lost and resign myself to injecting medication every week and maybe not feel so good while posing a risk to me and costing the NHS a small fortune.  I don’t think I should settle for that and I don’t think anyone else should either.

That’s why I am happy to tell anyone with anything autoimmune to try changing their diet before doing anything else – and be stubborn with yourself because you owe it to yourself!

So, on that note, I am taking my diet a step further by following an Autoimmume Protocol for the next 30 days.  Really, it’s just the diet I follow just now but cutting out tomatos, eggs (both of which have become staples in my diet) bell peppers and spices.  All of these things have been shown to affect people with autoimmune problems.  It should be interesting.

I’ll leave you with a quote from Thomas Edison, which I found quite interesting.  He said, “The doctor of the future will give no medicine, but will interest his patients in the care of the human frame, in a proper diet, and in the cause and prevention of disease.”

Hmmm, haven’t had that experience yet!

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Got To Get Off The Meth!

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My wife sent me this link recently.

http://robbwolf.com/2012/04/23/battling-rheumatoid-arthritis-paleo-diet/

A very interesting read from someone who is using paleo to deal with arthritis. Interesting for me as the story of her journey (there you go, I’ve used that word) was similar to mine. I recognised some of the things I’ve been through and I like Robb Wolf – it was his book that started me thinking differently about what I eat. Try it – The Paleo Solution. It has changed my life!

What pissed me off a wee bit was the way she made Methotrexate look really bad, dangerous, toxic, scary and generally so awful that it’ll kill you! This is all a bit of scare mongering, really, and I don’t think it’s all that clever or creative to just copy the information card that comes with the stuff. Have some bloomin’ imagination!

Most people on Methotrexate don’t have any issues at all – like me. Patients are monitored so closely that, if anyone does have a reaction, they’re off it before you can say “cancer inducing Anti-TNF therapy is much worse.”

I’m on both. I am supposed to give myself an injection of 25mg Methotrexate and one of 40mg Adilamumab (Anti-TNF bad stuff) every week. The latter is the drug I really want to stop taking. Why? Anti-TNF drugs are brilliant, they work and Adilamumab really works for me BUT they’re new, they’ve not been around long enough for anyone to really understand the effects of long term use. There have been some reports of melanoma in patients taking Anti-TNF. That’s why. My surgeon, the guy that looks after my dodgy hip, calls it poison and I am inclined to agree with him.

Now, I said earlier that I’m supposed to be taking my drugs once a week. Well, I have lapsed a bit. Since the end of April 2012, I’ve injected four times. Pretty much once every five weeks. The last one was a disaster – I’ll tell you why in a minute!

My diet is working. There is no doubt. It’s been a year since I started. I’ve not always been strict with myself and I have suffered for those times. I’ve lost weight, gained muscle, inflammation is slowly disappearing, I feel strong, I have stamina. I feel much better than I have done in years. I don’t suffer from my annual post winter chest infection and the amount of time I spend away from work due to health problems has fallen sharply.

So, what was the disaster? I had gone for 6 weeks without an injection. Some days my feet were sore so I’d say, “I’ll inject this weekend.” Then my feet would get better and I wouldn’t. Then my fingers would feel bad for a couple of days and I’d say, “I’ll inject this weekend.” Then my fingers would get better and I wouldn’t do it.

My band were playing a gig two weekends ago. It was one of those gigs where we wanted to do well, put on a good show, people may be there who want to book us again. I had sore wrists and my feet were a bit painful (nothing too bad) and I hadn’t been that strict with my diet. Dick!

So, 2 days before the gig I took my injections. Big mistake. I should have just let my body recover naturally as it had done countless times before. What happened was a horrible reaction to the poison (my surgeon would be proud) that I was pumping into myself. I had stomach cramps, cold sweats and only just made it through the gig. I had a day off work on the Monday because I felt so bad.

Oh, the irony! No drugs, feel great! Have drugs, feel like pish! I think my system is so clean that any form of artificial anything gives me an extreme reaction. Now, I’ll probably have to test this out again soon – not looking forward to that but, in the interests of science, “I’ll roll up my sleeve” (Renton, Trainspotting).

So, is my wife right? Do I need to “get off the meth?” Oh yes indeed and, more so, off the Anti-TNF and I’d like to have that done by the end of the year.

This stuff is poison after all.