Diet & lifestyle

Bubbles87

Hi everyone 🙋🏼‍♀️

I’m new to the forum and have been reading through the threads already which are all very informative and helpful. I have recently been diagnosed with Psoriatic arthritis and advised to start methotrexate asap! I’m very nervous and anxious about it and just wondered if anyone here is not taking any medication and able to manage their diagnosis with lifestyle changes only? I know diet and lifestyle play a big part even with medication but just really trying to understand if the medication is always a must.

Arciere

Hi @Bubbles87

I hope you don’t find this annoying, but I am going to give you an overview of diet and lifestyle changes, that I am convinced have made a difference to the severity and frequency of RA PsA pain and fatigue…..despite the fact I take a biological medicine. I have no evidence to support my claims and they are of course personal to me.

I think it’s completely normal to be anxious about medication. I hadn’t needed to take medication for anything before so I was very apprehensive about. All I’ll say here is that if it doesn’t suit you - please fight your corner to find something that does work for you. It seems there are lots of options, but they seem to always start with methotrexate - not sure why.

I hope this is useful in any case.

Gut Health -

I’ve worked hard to improve my overall gut health. This started when I bought a RA cookbook from Amazon and I watched a documentary called Hack Your Health on Netflix. I landed on the fact my diet, although I felt it was a Mediterranean diet, was actually dominated by wheat (toast for breakfast, sandwhich for lunch, pasta for suppper etc). So I stopped all gluten.

I also loved Guinness and Beer, so stopped that too :-(

I then removed synthetic sweeteners , my go to drink was Diet Coke. I loved it. Now it’s sparkling water and I love that more!

Then I started to learn about the Micro Biome - gut bacteria - and started taking probiotics and increasing the amount of fibre through veg that I consumed. I swear I feel good when I’ve eaten sauerkraut or drunk a Kefir.

After making these changes I felt brand new.

I went a few steps further and removed the Deadly Nightshade things (so potatoes, tomatoes, aubergines, peppers etc). Looking back, not only was my diet dominated by Wheat, but every meal usually also included potatoes (or pasta), tomatoes and peppers.

I also try my best to avoid sugar or things ending in “ose” glucose etc, as I think this helps too.

Essentially I’m trying to really respect my gut.

My latest experiment is all about hydration. I’m using electrolytes in water to see if that helps me feel more hydrated. I think being dehydrated contributes to stiffness.

So it’s been a complete shift in thinking, but I feel really good for it. Although I do dream about a bag of chips and a pint of guiness… occasionally :-)

I was using a sauna on a weekly basis this time last year, but haven’t felt the need to yet. I found the warmth really soothing.

I know you wanted to hear from people not taking any medication so I hope this helps in any case. When I started my biologics I was still suffering terrible fatigue. (The only other thing I’ll add, is that distancing myself from a stressful scenario I think helped too).