|
I was a young and pregnant mom at the time -- probably Dr. Bluestone's
youngest patient. Most of the others in his waiting room were grey-haired
and much older arthritis patients. (Dr. Bluestone headed the Southern
California Arthritis Foundation.) The first time I saw Dr. Bluestone,
he asked me bluntly, "What's a young woman like you doing coming
to my office?"
Dr. Bluestone used a blood test, among other ways, to help confirm
a diagnosis of RP. After getting a diagnosis, Dr. Bluestone said
that while there wasn't any cure for RP at this point, they could
teach me how to live with it and provide medications that could
ease symptoms. Because I was pregnant and then later breastfeeding,
I wanted to keep the drugs to a minimum as much as possible.
Fast forward about six months. I was having blood tests to track
my SED rates, and periodically having episodes where my ears got
red and painful, sometimes blistering. My husband, kids and I went
on vacation to Hawaii and I got some sun on my chest, and the sunburn
began to feel like it was burning on the inside. I had an episode
where I could barely breathe, and I remember laying awake one night
all night on the couch struggling to breathe. It was terrifying.
I called Dr. Bluestone from Hawaii and he said to stay out of the
sun, that my chest area might be becoming involved in the RP. I
saw him right away on my return.
Several months after that, in August of 1996, we were returning
from another trip where I'd had another flare up, and so I was upstairs
resting while my husband unpacked. I happened to pick up a book
my sister had given us as a Christmas present called "The McDougall
Program," by John McDougall, M.D.
I guess she had chosen this book 8 months earlier because it had
vegetarian recipes in it and because we were vegetarian, having
gone veg six years earlier after reading about animal suffering
in Diet for a New America. But I realized, in reading through
Dr. McDougall's book, that it was a lot more than just recipes;
my eye caught a mention of autoimmune diseases in the lupus family.
Dr. McDougall said that a number of autoimmune diseases have responded
very favorably to the elimination not only of meat, fish and chicken
(a vegetarian diet, which I already ate), but also especially by
eliminating dairy products and eggs (a so-called "low-fat vegan"
diet).
This got my full attention. I remembered Dr. Bluestone saying (a
year earlier) after I had mentioned that I was vegetarian that "vegan
is best" though I didn't think much about his offhand comment
at the time -- and didn't even know what vegan meant when he said
that. I got up from reading the book and walked downstairs and told
my husband what I'd just read, and I said: "That's it; we're
vegan."
So my husband and I started eating vegan, just like that -- no
meat, chicken, fish (vegetarian), and no dairy products or eggs
(vegan). In short, no animal proteins in any form whatsoever.
It wasn't that difficult for us to make this transition, though
I suddenly had to learn new recipes and become aware of ingredients,
including things like "casein" and "whey" which are dairy proteins
used to thicken up a lot of products. I became a label fanatic,
and when in doubt, I didn't eat it. (We eventually looked around
and discovered all kinds of really delicious foods, fake meats,
soy and rice milks and all kinds of stuff we eat all the time so
we never feel deprived.)
We started out by following McDougall's low-fat vegetarian diet
in his book, which gives a 12 day menu and has recipes for every
meal during the 12 days. That helped to make the change easier.
I did actually feel better after eating this way for a couple of
weeks, maybe in part because I started losing some of the weight
I'd gained from my recent pregnancy (hate those plateaus!).
One month after my husband and I went on Dr.McDougall's diet, I
went in for my checkup with Dr. Bluestone.
My SED rate was normal.
The anti-nuclear antibodies in my blood which signaled the degree
of activity of the RP -- were not present for the first time since
Dr. Bluestone had started taking my blood samples a year earlier.
I had also begun a mild exercise program when I started Dr. McDougall's
diet, including going to the gym and working out lightly, and walking
on a treadmill. I had also started doing cross-stitching as a way
to relax and control stress.
After three months and three bloodtests where my SED rate and other
indicators were normal, Dr. Bluestone declared my RP "in remission."
That was in the fall of 1996. I have had no more recurrances of
RP since that time. I don't think I'm just "in remission,"
but that as long as I don't eat dairy (like cheese or ice cream),
eggs, meat, chicken or fish, I'm "cured."
And I'm not saying that I believe these foods caused my RP. Nobody
seems to know what caused it, although Dr. Bluestone mentioned a
theory about my having had chicken pox as an adult, and then the
disease becoming active when I got pregnant and was under a lot
of stress. But I think that eliminating these certain foods allowed
my immune system to start working right again. Dr. McDougall explains
from a medical point of view why he believes eating this way helps.
In improving our diet, my husband and I both lost weight, and another
nice side effect was that our cholesterols went way down. Mine is
135. According to the Framingham Heart Study -- the longest running
heart study in the world which has set standards used by the medical
profession for heart disease risk factors -- no one in the Study
whose blood cholesterol was less than 150 ever had heart disease.
My advice to anyone suffering from an awful disease autoimmune
disease like arthritis or like mine is this: look into nutritional
strategies to improve your condition!
If you want to try what worked for me, go to your library or bookstore
and get John McDougall's books ("The McDougall Program"
is the best and most practical, and "The McDougall Plan"
is also very interesting reading about the relationship between
diet and disease). Also, I suggest you write to Dr. McDougall, write
to me if you want, give it a try and stick with it a month or two.
I hope it helps you as much as it helped me.
Dr. Bluestone said most of his patients will not commit to the
kind of diet I followed. Personally, I am convinced that switching
to a diet devoid of animal proteins saved my life. I have been able
to fully return to life as before. To me it seemed far more inconvenient
to live life on medication and in pain than to make some changes
in my diet and develop some new tastes. And trying a dietary change
was a whole lot less radical than many of the powerful drugs people
often must take to get only temporary relief. (It also doesn't cost
anything extra just to eat different foods!)
In other words, it cannot hurt you to try and it might help.
You can visit Dr. McDougall's website at http://www.drmcdougall.com.
If you're an RP sufferer or know someone who is, I would get his
book and if it makes sense to you as it did to me, consider trying
his diet for a couple of months. If you do, do it right and don't
cheat. Give it a chance.
Here is a link to some interesting info on Dr. McDougall's site
about arthritis, much of which he believes applies to RP and other
autoimmune diseases:
Diet:
The Only Real Hope for Arthritis (be sure to see
the second page.)
More
on Arthritis
Feel free to write to me using this form
and to Dr. McDougall at drmcdougall@drmcdougall.com.
Educate yourself about nutrition. Unfortunately, many MD's aren't
as educated about nutrition as they could be. I contacted the famed
Dr. Trentham in Boston who has studied hundred of RP sufferers and
published papers. I offered to send him my medical records and cooperate
in any way for him to examine my case to see if what I did might
help others.
Dr. Trentham called me after I wrote to him, and said in fact he
knew my doctor, Dr. Blueston, very well. Dr. Trentham said he wasn't
aware of anyone else who had tried a vegan diet, as I had, though
he said he knew about the diet. Of the diet he said, "Well that's
great if you can stand it; it's pretty stringent."
I was thinking -- "Stand it? I love it!"
Dr. Trentham had no questions for me and didn't express interest
in seeing my files. He said, "The disease waxes and wanes. We can't
know for sure whether the diet was a contributing factor."
I replied, "Yes, well but so many of my vital numbers changed when
I eliminated animal proteins, and over three years is a very long
time to have the disease in remission, don't you think?"
"Yes," he replied, "and I'm not going to jynx it, so
I'm going to get off now and wish you continued good health." That
was pretty much the call. Pleasant and fairly short.
Of the hundreds of RP patients Dr. Trentham had studied, I would
have thought he would be very interested to study one who got better
by doing something as simple as changing their diet, but...
I was lucky because Dr. Bluestone was very supportive. If your
doctor is one who pooh-pooh's the essentially risk-free strategy
of changing your diet to try to improve your condition, you should
ask: How many patients of yours have had their RP, or lupus or arthritis
put into remission for years using the strategies you employ? What
is your success rate and can I speak with those people?
I know the answer as far as Dr. McDougall is concerned: people
with a number of diseases following his advice have gotten better,
not sicker, myself included.
By the way, I can definitely understand the skepticism that anyone
with RP might have in hearing my story, and I know that people definitely
do not want false hopes. I am selling nothing and have nothing to
gain by telling what happened to me. I don't know whether someone
else who does what I did will necessarily have the same good results.
I do know that no doctors are studying me and how I got better,
and as far as I know, no doctors are setting up studies to see if
a diet like the one I believed helped me could help others with
RP.
Someone asked me recently whether it's possible my changing my
diet and my going into remission were just coincidence, whether
I would have gone into remission at that point anyway even if I
had kept eating the same way. I guess anything's possible; you could
take a medication and improve, and say it's just a coincidence,
too. Maybe someone else will try what I did and have their own "coincidence."
I hope so!
I was also asked whether it's possible I had a "mild"
case of RP compared to some others, so that maybe what worked for
me wouldn't work for others. As I said, I don't know whether it
would work for others or not, though I think it probably would
help at least some others. That's my opinion, and if it would just
help some people, then that would be fantastic -- and very
telling. Also, while it's possible I had a "mild" case
of RP, it sure didn't seem that way at the time. And if it was
mild by whatever measure, is it possible that might be because I
was already vegetarian at onset, and not eating that much animal
protein as other people to begin with?
If you or someone you know with RP looks into this and decides
to try what I tried by eating this way, please let me know and let
Dr. McDougall know. If three or four or six other people get improvement
or remission from changing to this diet, we must all definitely
make certain this information gets out to as wide an area possible
in the community of RP sufferers.
I am a 33-year-old mother of three. What worked for me nearly four
years ago was getting on a low-fat pure vegetarian diet, getting
my stress under control, and keeping my body fit. From my personal
experience, those three things are key to regaining as well as maintaining
health. I wish anyone suffering from very serious health problems
the same good luck I have had.
|
