Reducing RA and Sjogrens symptoms with diet changes, swapping out inflammatory foods, Autoimmune Drugs

One of the hardest things you'll ever do is change your diet especially if it's FOREVER. Grocery stores have unlimited choices of deliciousness. It's so simple to rip a bag open of fluffy goodness, carve into a gallon of ice cream or pop a ready made dinner into the microwave. Add on the ease of driving up to a window and ordering a quick lunch and you basically are eating everything you shouldn't. May be you eat a few healthy things during the day, but top it off with sugar, caffeine, and salt to get a burst of happiness. I've whittled down to an afternoon cup of coffee and dessert to get my daily fix. I feel like I've come a long way but still am searching for that trigger that keeps my body inflamed!

A pot of health at the end of the rainbow.

Living with rheumatoid arthritis for 20 years has become second nature. It's not something I've been fortunate to kill off but I have controlled it by taking various drugs. Not taking drugs is not an option for the level of disease activity that I have. I also suffer from another auto-immune disease, Sjogrens, which actually is worse than RA. An absolutely annoying disease that requires you have water and eye drops on hand 24 x 7. My optometrist asked me If I had to use eye drops once or twice a DAY! I really didn't think she was serious, in a DAY, the question should have been once or twice every 30 minutes! I absolutely panic if I don't have both of these objects on hand. A royal pain in the A**. Superstar tennis player Venus Williams has Sjogrens. You may have noticed how she has trimmed down and is back on the court. Her vegan diet has reduced all symptoms! Amazing! Proof in the pudding that diet most certainly can play a role.

A little taste of my gardens on Forsythia Hill.

When I first developed my autoimmune diseases, diet was mentioned but not as accepted of a treatment like it is today. If you can not figure out your diet trigger I highly recommend you not wait too long to get on some sort of drug. I applaud anyone that is lucky enough to be able to control this disease without drugs and initially I tried the grape diet (read my first blog on this topic) and all sorts of recommended herbal concoctions. Never finding anything that could stop the pain like drugs. You can say it's just a way for the drug manufacturers to make money and a host of other conspiracy theories but the truth of the matter is that without drugs I have zero quality of life, I can not move, garden, hike, lift, or do anything that brings me joy (other than eat). I take drugs to have a quality of life. Long term your joints will become permanently twisted due to the inflammation. To protect joints drugs stop the inflammation but my goal has always been to get off the drugs. It's my own fault for not taking diet change seriously. I've toyed with it for years. For me, diet change is one of the hardest things but in retrospect, what I've changed so far as not been as horrible as what I imagined.

Raspberries, lower in sugar and easy to grow!

If you have a busy schedule, it's not going to be easy to just go cold turkey. Pick something you can easy swap out and DO IT TODAY! I started with dairy. I'm not 100% on the dairy removal front but my biggest consumption was milk and yogurt. I don't miss either. Yogurt was really hard but I ended up substituting just a little of my neighbors beehive honey on my oatmeal instead of the yogurt. Done, gone, don't miss it. Flavored yogurts are your enemy - Dairy + Sugar = Highly inflammatory. Honey is a sugar so tread lightly and support a local hive!

~ Rebecca



   

Dangers of a common antibiotic Levaquin / Cipro / Fluoroquinolones

First snow of the season!

We finally had SNOW in Charlottesville, Virginia. I've been a busy bee all winter long selling mainly on Etsy and Ebay. It's my peak season so I tend to not have much time for anything else.

I did run into some health troubles after Christmas. I'm not sure if it's from working online so extensively or if something else is up. I've been experiencing lasting, severe red eyes that my eye doctor said was severe dry eyes (which worsen in the winter and are due to RA / Sjogren's Disease which I've had now for 15 years). I was diagnosed by my general doctor with a Sinus Infection and prescribed Levaquin, the generic for Levofloxacin. It is in the family of drugs called fluoroquinolones along with Cipro among others. These drugs are the most prescribed antibiotics in the US.

Mr. Squirrel appears with the first flake panic eating bird food!

Before taking Levaquin I read the warnings... tendinitis or even a ruptured tendon. I'm so used to hearing the laundry list of possible side effects on TV that I've become numb to them so I proceeded to take this drug, thinking my doctor certainly knows best. I never thought that I would actually experience any of the side effects (three doctors have told me that it's quite uncommon). I was given a course of 1 pill for 14 days and on the 6th day my calf muscles began to feel stiff. I talked myself into thinking that it was just psychosomatic so I took another dose. The next morning I could hardly walk from the bed 10 feet to the bathroom. My calf muscles were so tight I could not bend my ankles. I was dragging my feet on the floor for 2 days so as not to have to bend them. I made my husband stay home from work as I was unable to go up or down the stairs. On day 4 I decided to rake a few leaves and my heart began to race (5 swipes of the rake) and stopped. I began to research this family of drugs more online and based on consumer comments, the potential damage is extensive.

Sure, people do have reactions and when I read a handful I don't worry but when there are pages and pages of accounts then I start to worry. There is even a tag line given to it called floxing or I've been floxed.

My neighbors horse in the snow.

It's been a week since I stopped taking this drug and my legs have improved but my tendons still feel like a rubber band being stretched. I can now go up and down the stairs but I'm fearful of putting any additional stress on my tendons and am not taking my daily walks down the street which was my form of exercise for the health of my body and bones. I've not pushed much exercise but my heart has not raced with normal daily activity. It has been mentioned that tendons have ruptured months after stopping this drug and especially if a lot of stress is put on the tendon, like in running. Interestingly, a friend mentioned she took Cipro without any issues and then it dawned on me that months ago she complained about peripheral neuropathy, another possible side effect of this drug that she never equated to taking it.

Please, please, please have the sense, because I did not, to ask you doctor for something less powerful if they attempt to give you this line of drugs. I would classify this line of antibiotics as one to take when all others fail. I have not taken an antibiotic I would estimate in 10 years and another one with less side effects could have been prescribed. I wish I had taken the risks seriously given I already have health issues. Now I have to wait for months and possibly years in fear of rupturing my Achilles or developing something worse. Read this and especially the comments from Consumer Reports if I have not convinced you, too risky to take.

-Rebecca