SI Pain: 0/100 | Rib Pain: 3/100 | Concrete Back: 8/100

It has been an amazing run over the last week. Lots of bright green days in the diary.

I’ve been virtually or completely pain-free and I think this probably feels what a normal person feels like.

It’s not perfect, not 100 out of 100, and I still have the odd ache – more so in the upper body than anywhere else – but it’s only ever fleeting.

The aches are linked to the AS in the sense that it’s an overly fussy feeling in the joints (quite hard to describe). Either way though, right now is definitely an amazing, amazing state to be in, despite the very small niggles.

The spreadsheet insanity and constant recording of pain levels… foods eaten… exercise and so on has really paid off.

The no alcohol experiment is well underway.

My partner and I would normally be having a drink at home this evening, but we’re having lemon water instead.

I am excited about this because we’ll finally going to get some tangible results about alcohol and ankylosing spondylitis and how it relates to pain levels.

I’ve been thinking about what I will do if going alcohol free does have really dramatic effects.

At the moment I don’t think I would cut out alcohol completely. I really love sipping interesting whiskies, and I also like having a beer with friends.

What I imagine I would do is continue along the same train I have been going along. Cutting it out as often as possible and only having stuff that agrees with me.

I’ve gone over the kinds of things I’ve done already in Sunday’s entry, but I’m sure there’s more that can be done.

I’ve noticed that certain brands of beer and even certain brands of non-alcoholic beer, can have different effects on the AS. So sometimes it’s not necessarily the alcohol that’s causing the problem, or the main problem, but some other weird ingredient that the manufacturers have put in.

So that could be the next challenge. Something to get geeky about that. Of course, I’ll share any findings here.

That’s it for today. I felt really good overall, although maybe not as amazing as yesterday.

Aches from nightshades or butter (or both, or neither!)

I found myself having some very slight aches this evening.

I’m trying to pinpoint what I think those could be from. I didn’t have anything weird to eat apart from two things. 1) Green and red peppers (bell peppers) in with my dinner tonight. I can’t remember having them for at least a year or two.

They are nightshades, and are something that people always recommend avoiding if they are doing an autoimmune protocol or an elimination diet. The science is a bit hazy and/or inconclusive on this one.

Some people seem to be fine with them, and others say they have problems. I just cut them out anyway to see whether it would help or not. I then didn’t really bother reintroducing them back in because they weren’t exactly my favourite foods anyway. For reference nightshades are things like peppers, tomatoes, aubergine, and others.

I didn’t eat that much of them beforehand, and since following I strict diet I only ever had small amounts at friends’ houses or restaurants. So it’s something I don’t know either way whether it affects me or not.

I suspect it doesn’t have too much effect. However, as I’m writing this, my ribs are just letting me know that they are there, and I wonder whether that could be as a result of them.

The other possibility is the macadamia nuts. I found these to be okay to eat on the diet as far as I can tell, but you need to be careful about what they are being roasted in. I normally roast them with olive oil, but I just found out that my partner has done it in butter for this batch.

Cow dairy is a big pain trigger for me. I have tested it multiple times and it really has caused me problems.

However, butter, because of some weird part of the making process, tends not to be quite so bad.

So it’s possibly one of those things, or maybe it’s both, or maybe it just could be one of those days when the AS is fantastic and behaves itself, and then just nudges into your being for a little while to remind you it’s there.

Long weekend ahead. It will be nice to have Monday off and looking forward to a weekend of long walks and hopefully putting up some more information on this website.