Reddit reviews Diet and Arthritis: A Comprehensive Guide to Controlling Arthritis Through Diet

Are you seeing a rheumatologist? The infection almost certainly triggered an autoimmune condition. These are weirdly difficult to get a diagnosis for (as an example, the average time from onset to diagnosis for ankylosing spondylitis is 8-11 years), but a rheumatologist should get it pretty quickly.

You should know that fatigue, depression and digestive issues are common symptoms of autoimmune arthritic conditions like rheumatoid arthritis. In my experience, even many rheumatologists don't know this.

AFAIK the best data we have from clinical trials say that about 1 in 3 people with rheumatoid arthritis see significant improvement in symptoms when they remove one or more trigger foods. Unfortunately, the only way to find out which foods these are is to go through a complete elimination diet. One such elimination protocol is described in this book.

If you're unable to do this, IMO the second best thing to try is an autoimmune paleo diet, i. e. a paleo diet without common allergens like eggs, nightshades and nuts. If you try that for a few months, and see significant improvement, you can reintroduce the excluded foods one by one and see if they trigger any symptoms.

Another common (as these things go) option is a lamb + white rice + pear diet.

Since you have digestive issues, you can also look into the GAPS diet.

If you get a diagnosis of ankylosing spondylitis, you should research the no-starch diet (http://kickas.org/, basically paleo without starchy fruit or tubers).

Unless you're overweight, your rheumatologist will deny that diet is important, and will not support you in this. This is normal, and an extremely common symptom of studying rheumatology.

Your rheumatologist will give you immunosuppressives. These work well for many people (at least in the short term), but you should know that there are alternatives (http://roadback.org/). There are others, too. If you want to discuss it, you can PM me.

Good luck :-)

Implementing an elimination diet

Information on implementing Gail Darlington’s elimination diet can be found in this document (Nutrition and Arthritis, pp.237-244).  To briefly summarize the approach:

• The first stage involves eating the ‘safest’ foods:  trout / salmon / cod, fresh pears, carrots (fresh or frozen), mineral water (tap water will be tested later), and sea salt.
  
• No smoking.
  
• No coffee, tea, etc.
  
• No cheat days.
  
• More foods are slowly introduced to see if they lead to increased symptoms.
  
  If you’re interested in trying out the elimination diet, you may find these resources to be of interest:
  
  
• Details of Gail Darlington’s elimination diet, which I’ve mentioned previously.  That appendix comes from Nutrition and Arthritis by Margaret Rayman and Alison Callaghan.
  
• The newspaper article “Out went pizzas and pasta – and with them, the pain“.
  
• Darlington’s 1998 book Diet and Arthritis.
  
• The book Diet and Immune Function, which Darlington co-wrote.  Here is the preview for the chapter on RA.
  
  However, there’s one aspect of Darlington’s protocol that we haven’t figured out yet: why isn’t it as effective as fasting (not eating)?