The irresistible lure of pizza

1 Posted Mon 25 Feb 2019 00.18 by wendyloish

My brother came to visit yesterday, not an everyday occurrence as he lives in another city. He is on a holiday with a group of friends. I offered him lunch, and he told me that he had some pizza in the car, leftovers, for lunch. My Sunday roast pork won him over, but I have thought since, a lot, about the pizza. Like me, my brother has psoriatic arthritis, blood pressure problems, an enlarged heart, tinnitus and gut problems. He is 76, 4 years older than me. Last July I persuaded him to go onto FODMAP, and like me, after some time on this anti-inflammatory diet, his condition improved. It was in early January he emailed me to the effect that his rheumatologist had him on prednisone, taken from time to time when needed it. At the time I was somewhat disappointed. I have a medicine cabinet with more than one bottle of this corticosteroid, which I have not had to use since starting my FODMAP diet last Easter. Now I find he is eating pizza! At the same time, on his visit, he is boasting about how the tinnitus in his right ear has subsided and his hearing loss is being reversed. I resisted the temptation to be disapproving of the pizza and the gluten content of its crust, the delicious cheesy nature of its topping. Instead I have spent the last 24 hours thinking about how hard it really is to not eat gluten, dairy and saccharides (sugars) in our society. Christmas with friends and family is saturated with forbidden foods. It may not have been a coincidence that the prednisone thing came to light just after Christmas, New Years Eve and my brother's birthday on 1st of January. If friends invite you to Christmas parties, bake you a cake for your birthday, how can you resist? Not eat the cake? And now, traveling with friends who choose pizza for dinner, it is hard to make a fuss and say no, especially when everything else on the fast food list available is equally impossible. I passed on Christmas and New Years Eve altogether this year, but I doubt anyone else would have made this decision. (Christmas Day was my dead husband's birthday) So following a regime that involves severe dietary restrictions might be more difficult than an alcoholic giving up booze. Gluten foods, dairy foods, apples and peaches are everywhere! And everyone is convinced most of these foods are good for you. Easy to give up finger buns, lollies, or even caffeine. Not so easy, foods that everyone eats and likes. And eats in front of you! My brother was also full of how delicious the previous evenings apple pie with cream had been. So not just the pizza with its gluten crust and dairy topping, but the gluten crust of apple pie, and the forbidden apples (Cream is allowed as it has little lactose, that being concentrated in the water part of milk, not the fat). How easy to just take another pill to dampen down the inflammation! How hard to forgo the pleasure of social interaction that shared food represents! No wonder there is so much resistance to my message. But even though the lure of pizza may be irresistible, that does not make me wrong. I may have only saved myself. My brother is persuaded he will live to be 100. Perhaps his compromise with food and prednisone will be enough. I hope so. I love my brother. wendyloish

Posted Mon 4 Mar 2019 02.26 by wendyloish (edited Mon 4 Mar 2019 07.26 by wendyloish)

March marks the 8th anniversary of the death of Tony, the man I married, the father of my two sons. He survived stomach cancer in his forties, only to die of lung cancer at the age of 59. He was a biochemist who worked in cancer research, Yet he somehow managed to smoke roll your own cigarettes until dark spots appeared on his chest X-rays. After that he was able to beat the nicotine addiction, but went on to smoke camomile cigarettes. No matter how much his conscious brain knew he had to stop, he still could not break the habit of smoking something. And he was still putting smoke, and undoubtedly carcinogens into his lungs. What has this to do with psoriasis, I hear you ask. The same thing that the above pizza post has. We are not good at avoiding anything that is beyond a clear and present danger, although our consciousness allows us to perceive it, to rationally evaluate it, to make a resolution to avoid it. But our brain does not actually help us to abide by our resolutions. It hinders this. How many New Year's resolutions have you broken? How long did it take to break them? You tried for weeks, maybe, but in the end you probably faltered, just as most of us do. You may realise at a conscious level that changing you diet could only be beneficial, and that stopping eating certain foods (the inflammation related ones) may make you life better, but if the adverse effect is not immediate, your brain will be working against a long term better outcome. If you do not see a short-time related negative response to eating pizza, it is hard to say that one more slice, one more meal will hurt you. Young people are still taking up smoking. And social pressure is against you changing diet, as so much of our social interaction is designed around food. I know all this, because it was only a year ago I went onto FODMAP, at the age of 71, despite having health problems going back decades. I was diagnosed with irritable bowel syndrome when in my 40s. My back and joint problems were evident also from then. It was only when I was in constant pain, and looking at the prospect of ending up in a wheelchair that I found the will power to firstly research, and then give up gluten etc. I try on this forum (I think it is the best for psoriatic arthritis) to influence other people to try an elimination diet, as over the past 12 months it has helped me. A lot. But it is not a popular message, as it is a hard thing to do. Taking pills is easy. And they get results. But the pills treat the symptoms. I ask you, is the deterioration in your body still going on because the cause of the inflammation has not been addressed? A hard question for even an expert to answer. And what about the side effects of putting a chemical complex chemical compound into or onto your body? Short term it maybe OK. Long term? There is that brain disassociation problem again. wendyloish

Posted Tue 5 Mar 2019 15.56 by Hycarumba

I'm keen to know more about fodmap, however I know it's bad but I'm and always have been a freaky eater, I know dairy is bad but it's all I can honestly eat, is there a fodmap that includes dairy?i find I can't eat meat though I'm not vegitarian,tjank you, post is very interesting

Posted Tue 5 Mar 2019 16.56 by wendyloish

FODMAP is an anti-inflammatory diet developed by Monash University specifically to treat irritable bowel syndrome. I went onto it a year ago after I tried fasting for several days in a desperate attempt to get my weight under control and found that each day of the fast I felt better and better, with the pain of my psoriatic arthritis and spondititis gone for the first time in a long time. I then decided to try to extend this by finding an anti-inflammatory diet. FODMAP was a properly scientifically tested diet that worked for gut problems caused by inflammation (I have those), so I thought as an experiment I would try it. It took some weeks for me to regain movement in my joints and back, and the pain is gone, so a year later I am still on the diet, although it is actually designed to work out which foods a person may be reacting to. The diet is specific for most foods which can be searched for on an app (I think from memory it cost $A10). Basically it eliminates gluten, high lactose and high fructose foods, plus foods that create gas in the guts. But of the dairy, butter is allowable, and most cheeses (Not fresh like ricotta). Many fruits are considered bad, like stone fruit, apples and pears. There is a lot on line about FODMAP, so have a look. After 12 months I will continue in the diet as it has made my life liveable again. Once you have been on the diet for a while, though, you can test out particular foods to see foods to which you personally are susceptible. I plan to put up a post on this in a week or so, to mark my 1 year anniversary on the diet. Sadly I have not lost weight on this diet, although I had hoped to. And I am still getting minor skin outbreaks triggered by my intolerance of heat. I see the diet as more of a holding pattern to stop the rapid deterioration of my back and joints, rather than a cure. I suspect that at the age of 72 the long term damage of a lifetime cannot actually be reversed. For younger people, though the damage may be able to be reversed or even prevented. So I come on here to try to tell people this. It is not a popular message. wendyloish

1 Posted Sat 9 Mar 2019 20.45 by wendyloish (edited Sat 9 Mar 2019 22.39 by wendyloish)

It has been nearly a year now that the lower back pain has gone. And I had come to take my new pain free status for granted. I had forgotten the paracetamol, the ibuprofen and the prednisolone. FODMAP was working for me. But like always, my own brain was not. I confess, I got slack. For only a couple of days. I had been very careful with cheese, only allowing myself a little hard cheese. I know from past experience that cheese can set off my irritable bowel symptoms, although i can eat a little now and then. But I have an absolute weakness for soft blue cheese. On Thursday night, stupidly, I ate a whole 250g of it in a sitting, as a meal (with toast). At the same time I have been slack about bacon, upping my consumption from the odd rasher to having it for breakfast with my eggs every day. Then I had cheese on toast for lunch on Friday. Whatever the cause, I have tipped the balance, and the punishment is immediate. I am in pain. And I think I did it to myself. Yesterday (Saturday) I had to take both paracetamol and ibuprofen. This morning, Sunday, I have the prednisolone out of the medicine cabinet. It is past its expiry date. So I will hold the line with the paracetamol and ibuprofen. Apart from restricting my activities and continuing with lower back stretching exercises, as an emergency measure I propose to go on a fast for a few days. I will try for 4 or 5. Whatever it takes to get rid of the inflammation. When I fast, apart from water, I allow myself a cup or two of weak instant coffee a hot cocoa and cup of instant chicken style stock (for the salts as it is still hot here at the beginning of autumn) every day. Wish me luck. wendyloish

Posted Mon 11 Mar 2019 02.50 by wendyloish

It is coming up 2 days now on my fast, and I am already feeling a whole lot better. Fasting is such a key to this that I have decided to put up a new posting just on that. You see it is not just the negative of having removed an irritant or inflammation causing problem that makes fasting so good. It is the active side of what happens when you fast. I intend to fast at least until tomorrow evening, but may go one more day. But already I am pain free again. Fasting is not for the faint hearted, but once you have tried it, you may, like me, feel a whole lot better. I have fasted between 2 ad 5 days five times in the last year since I took up the FODMAP diet. And I had never done it before in my life, although I have had periods where I have only eaten one meal a day. wendyloish

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