Tag Archives: inflammation

Hands, Knees and Woops, My Shoulder!

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Well, it’s a week since my (mini) flare up, following some less than Paleo food while on holiday.  Am I any better?  Mostly.  My hands are still a bit of a problem, though, and I have been rather silly again!

I was at a funeral last Monday offering some support to a friend who had lost her Mum. Although very sad, we had some fun looking through a library of old photographs and recalling some good times everyone had spent together.  Coffee, tea, a wee snifter and some food.

I had my daft hat on again.  Now, Paleo as I am, I do love a good sausage roll.  Oooooh, sausage rolls!  The ones on offer were particularly nice.

I had 3…………..followed by a sandwich…….

……and 2 cakes.

People who know me will be either shaking their heads or snorting loudly right now.  In my defence, I would say that I’m the same as everyone else, a wheat addict.  Having wheat addiction means that when you have wheat, you must have more wheat and more wheat and more wheat.  That’s why I couldn’t have just one sausage roll, couldn’t stay away from bread and then had to have a cake or two.

Wheat is the only major component of our food that has an addictive effect.  I’ve said before that wheat (pastry, bread, cakes – just what I’d been eating) releases endorphins.  This isn’t strictly true.  Endorphins are produced by the brain – but gluten exorphins are produced by the ingestion of wheat.  Similar effect on the brain, different route.  No other food does this and that’s why it’s addictive like no other food.

That’s why you can’t just have one piece of that ‘moreish’ bread.  You say, “moreish,” I say “addictive.”

If I was an alcoholic, my long-term recovery would depend on me cutting out alcohol completely for the rest of my life.  With wheat, I need to treat myself like the addict I am and stay away from it completely.  The reason?  Well……..

…….the reaction to my loss of control was nothing short of spectacular!  Now, I should have shown a little more intelligence after my experience with holiday food, but let’s treat this as another experiment, for science’s sake.  That’s my excuse anyway!

By the time I drove home (just half an hour) my hands, knees and my right shoulder, which hasn’t been a problem for well over a year, were indescribably painful.  Especially my shoulder.  I was genuinely shocked by this.

I had overdosed!

I went through almost 2 years of dealing with a seriously painful right shoulder, which was a big problem at gigs, caused some vascular damage and disrupted everything in my life, most of all my sleep and my ability to give my kids a ‘carry.’  There is a unique joy to be had from lifting your children into your arms and really giving them a cuddle.  I found doing that really difficult.

My shoulder had been OK for about the last year – getting better around the time I changed my diet.  Coincidence?  I think not.

Since Monday evening, I have been back to my usual diet and I’m almost back to my normal self.  I have been really amazed how quickly, with a clean diet, I have been able to reverse the horrible effects of a diet with wheat in it.

My hands are almost back to normal, my knees are good, my feet are fine, I don’t have a sore ankle any more and my right shoulder has settled, just as quickly as it flared up!

I can do this now.  Holding my hands together like this is almost impossible when my fingers swell up.  I couldn’t do this a week ago.

And I know now, categorically, that it is wheat. I’ve had a moment of clarity!  I’m not coeliac, but I know enough to know that one can have an intolerance to wheat and have a different autoimmune response.  Me – rheumatoid arthritis. Other folks – eczema, psoriasis, IBS, etc, etc.  Try a wheat free diet for a month (and I mean a REAL wheat free diet) and let me know how you feel?

One highlight of the week was seeing Muse in concert at the SECC in Glasgow.  Here’s a picture I ‘tried’ to take.  Great show, great lights, superb visuals.

I do love Muse.  They remind me a lot of Queen, in that they can do anything, covering R&B, Rock n’ Roll, Progressive Rock and big Orchestral pieces, even really weird shit (like ‘Unsustainable’ from their new album and the show’s opening song) and completely get away with it.

Their sound is big and complex but the engineers did an amazing job, it was clear and dynamic.  Really interesting to see the sound guys using a big old school analogue mixing desk with lots of outboard signal processing – rather than the ‘all on board’ big digital desks that are more common these days.

Woops, sorry, just dropped into Geeksville for a minute there!

Anyway, they were a real joy to watch and listen to.  Every time Dom slammed the kick drum, it hit me in the stomach.  Gorgeous!  As a drummer, I love watching great drummers do their stuff and Dom Howard is a great drummer.  There he is, look, drumming away and being great!

I did have one worry, though, with sore feet, a dodgy ankle and grumbling sciatica (yup, I have that too – people with a chronic disease don’t have JUST the disease, remember) I was thinking our standing tickets maybe weren’t such a great idea.  But then, the whole show was standing, so that was that.

So Scott, just shut up and watch the show!  I needn’t have worried.  In my recovering state, I was grand and I even managed a small mosh when they did Plug In Baby.  Well, you can’t not!

My only issue at the end of the gig was a slight tightness in my right knee – otherwise fine.

So, my resolve has deepened and a wheat free diet it is for me and I heartily recommend you follow one too.  Oh, and if you get a chance to see Muse on tour, grab it.

Awesome!

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Why Bread Really Isn’t Good For You……

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…..and yoghurt too!

“Bloated, inflamed, stiff joints and a bit sore” is how I’d describe myself today.  Oh, so your diet isn’t working after all then, Scott ya big liar?  Actually, yes it still is – if I had stuck to it!

The family had some excellent fun on Saturday visiting my sister’s place – it’s always a houseful, loads of kids, a lot of noise but great craic when the family is together.  One big draw is the food.  My sister and her husband are great cooks and Indian cuisine is their forte.

This time, though, we were being treated to something a bit different – tandoori chicken and homemade nan cooked in their new wood burning tandoor oven.  This thing is a beastly, massive, heavy thing that sits about 4 feet high and can get up to 500°C.   When I stuck my hand in it – well, you have to really – it was a mere 320°C.

Why on Earth would anyone stick their hand in this?  Well, one has to get the dough into it somehow and I hadn’t had a shot.  After losing most of the hair on my right arm, I had a good few nans cooking beautifully inside the tandoor, as you can see….

Now – and this is where I put my stupid hat on – you can’t go through all of this without trying the stuff you’ve had a hand in cooking.  So I did.  3 actually.  AND some raita (yoghurt based condiment in case you didn’t know – I didn’t know what it was called until I looked it up just there).

So there’s me, paleo, clean, eating primally, feeling great and stuffing my face with the kind of food I know is very bad.  My wife did warn me – several times!  Even the youngest of my children drew an audible sharp breath when she saw what I was eating.  “I’ll be alright,” I said, “You just pay attention to your own food!”  There was no alcohol involved, this was my sober decision.

And now I feel like crap!

I was very busy all day Sunday too.  My band were having a technical rehearsal as we have a new mixing desk – always a good idea to spend some time getting to know the equipment (especially important stuff like the mixer) before getting to a gig and realising you can’t work it!  Anyway, it took about 5 hours to do everything and we ended up playing quite a lot.

This is when I noticed I wasn’t feeling so good.  I was a bit lethargic, a little sweaty after very little effort, slightly out of breath  and my right arm was getting quite sore.  My right elbow is my barometer.  If that’s sore, I’m generally under par.  It was sore.  I was way under par and not in a good golfy sort of way.

My skin was itchy too.  That’s what the slightest sniff of dairy does to me.  By the time I returned home from the rehearsal, I was completely knackered, feeling bloated, etc, everything I said right at the start.  Why?  Because I ate shit that’s no good!

Wheat inflames the gut.  People generally don’t notice this – but loads of people complain about feeling bloated after eating bread.  And it feeds your pleasure centre, releasing endorphins and making you want more.  Ever found a really nice loaf, french stick or speciality bread that you simply MUST HAVE MORE OF?  That’s what wheat does.  All we do is keep our guts inflamed.  Makes us fat too, but that’s another story!

In people like me, predisposed to autoimmune problems, an inflamed gut can trigger the autoimmune response.  Rheumatoid arthritis in my case.  So, cut out the crap food and reverse the disease – that’s the plan anyway.

Or it would be if I stuck to it – which I generally do, to be fair!

Dairy, on the other hand, is just simply perverse!  I have a memory from about age 5 when I thought, “It’s very odd that we drink another animal’s milk.”  Surely – this is me back to the present day now – we are designed to drink our mother’s milk up to a certain age and then never have milk again.  After all, our paleolothic ancesters didn’t milk cows and they lived during the time when the modern human genome was fixed.

We’re the only animal on the planet that does this AND we’re not genetically designed to take milk – no-one can argue that our genetic makeup has caught up since we started farming and milking livestock between seven and ten thousand years ago (depending what you read).  It’s a good source of protein, though, and it’s sustainable and available!  But, anyone who cuts out dairy for any length of time and goes back to it will have a bad reaction – end of.  Why would that happen if it’s so good for you.  The slightest sniff of dairy gives me a sore head and makes me want to have a wee barfamundo!

All of this nonsense that we call ‘healthy food’ is just making us sick.  Coeliac Disease, Lactose Intolerance, Vitiligo, Eczema, Rheumatoid Arthritis.  None of these would exist if we ate what we were designed to AND can you imagine what that would do for our crumbling healthcare system?

Well, my healthcare system is going to benefit from me.  My treatment costs upwards of £12,000 each year.  If I’m drug free and well, the NHS would save that money and I’d be WELL into the bargain!  Just by eating the right stuff.

So, no more wheat, dairy or anything else that’s not natural.  I will be drug free by the end of the year.

I will.