Eek .. Who would have thought I would be saying *that* .. but I am.
For the record I LOVE bread .. so much .. so this is not an easy decision. The more I go down this path though, it seems to be a good one for me.
Let’s talk about it.
First things first. I have rheumatoid arthritis. Boo, hiss, sigh, grumble. All of that and more. When I found out a few years ago I *freaked* out because my baby sister has it to the point where it intrudes with her life pretty significantly. Here I was, active as can be, thinking that my lifestyle as I know it was going to be ruined by this disease.
Well, thankfully that did not happen. ::whew:: Maybe I’ll talk about it in a future post but know that I believe I made a choice and that choice allowed me to not change my life or lose anything that I currently had.
Fast forward to last summer. I was biking to work and some guy hit me and fled. Thanks to my lightning sharp reflexes acquired from years of working out I landed on my feet, and landed on my ankle. Well, that led to an ankle injury that I am still dealing with today. That also lead to developing rheumatoid arthritis in my ankle, where I had no issues there before.
Boo.
Moving on.
It’s been bothering me consistently but I believe one day I decided that it went from ‘injury’ to chronic pain. I posed the question to a facebook group and a few people suggestion ditching gluten. So I figured, why not.
The first week I cut it down but not out, then told myself that if I was going to ‘do this’ then I should ‘do this.’ So, for the most part it’s gone (I’m not perfect, ya know!).
This was two or three weeks ago and in some areas I had to really re-think my food… which in turned caused me to clean up my eating regimen even more. No more PBJ sandwiches at lunch 😦 and now I’m eating salads. Dinner means no more convenient food when I get home really late .. I have to prep something healthy and have it waiting.
I downloaded an app the other day to track my symptoms. You can even take photos with it. In the two weeks that I’ve been doing this I’ve noticed a few changes that I think could be related to the eating change…
1 – My left index finger is usually swollen and has limited movement. Yes, it’s still both but it’s actually less than normal (I’ve also lost my medicine bottle so this is actually happening while I’ve been off my meds, which is why I think it’s from the eating change). I’ve been waking up in shock at how flexible it is compared to normal.
2 – For the past 3 of 4 days my ankle has not hurt. At all. Usually I am aware of it while I’m working out and usually I have moments where it feels tweaky. Neither have been happening. It’s been hurting for … hrm … 3 or 4 months solid. I even went ‘balls out’ on a HIIT style class the other day and expected it to be sore and .. it wasn’t. What??
Do I know that it’s related to ditching gluten? No, but I never will.
The only thing I know is that I made some eating changes and right about the same time I’ve been fortunate to see some health improvements. With that being said I’m willing to stay the course to see how this works out. I will update the blog if I notice anything else worth pointing out.
In the meanwhile I’ve already been poking at my baby sister, nudging her to ditch the gluten.
Here’s the deal .. it is 2015 .. I was amazed at the gluten free choices out there. There is pretty much a gluten free option for most everything we eat. Seriously. Even bread has a gluten free option .. it’s actually sitting in my fridge but I’ve yet to grow the courage to try it :). I basically made a list of the food I typically buy then went through and found a gluten free alternative. Easy easy.
So, that’s where I’m at now. I’m willing to keep going with this and, I’m hopeful that this could mean something positive for me, whatever that is. I’ll let you know when I find out 🙂
Happy day and thanks for reading!
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