I want you to meet John MacGregor who generously agreed to tell his remarkable recovery story — how he cured an “incurable” disease called Spondylitis which causes a great deal of pain in the back and neck. John experienced a great number of autoimmune conditions and has beaten many of them. He’s currently doing heavy metal chelation as I am. His story is a great testament to our ability to recover from diseases that doctors mostly consider inexplicable and incurable. In John’s own words:
I seem to be expert at contracting (and often enough curing) autoimmune diseases.
In the past 20 years I have had the following – which are suspected or confirmed to be autoimmune:
- Celiac – accepted
- Blood-sugar problems (diabetes type 1 is accepted)
- Glomerulonephritis – partly autoimmune (only recently confirmed)
- Meniere’s Disease – suspected
- Psoriasis – accepted
- Psoriatic arthritis – accepted/Ankylosing spondylitis – suspected
- Restless Legs Syndrome – suspected
In that same period I have:
- Got around celiac (I’m only borderline anyway) by minimising, often eliminating, gluten grain intake.
- Much-reduced blood-sugar problems via chelation, supplements & adrenal support.
- Cured my mild cases of Meniere’s Disease and Restless Legs.
- Not had much impact on my psoriasis, unless I maintain an absolutely perfect diet. (Have got it down to 10% at times.)
- Helped cure a friend of MS (also autoimmune), via the paleo diet and supplements. (From almost total paralysis to full functioning; brain scans can no longer find her lesions.)
- I’m presently working on the nephritis by resuming the strict paleo diet that cured the spondylitis, along with Chinese herbs & other supplements. In three months my urine-creatinine reading (the key measure of the disease) has gone down from 595 to 392 – a satisfying fall in that period. I am confident that it will continue falling, and that I will be cured of this incurable disease by about mid-2013.
- Cured my ankylosing spondylitis – my version of which was also called psoriatic arthritis.
Due to limited time, I might confine this to the spondylitis, which was the worst illness I’ve had. It took about a year to fix. At the end of that year my swelling and staggering pain had vanished, and my ESR blood inflammation tests had gone down to 1 – the lowest possible reading.
Here are the details:
The first thing I did was get blood tests for inflammation (the ESR at the time – a good basic test still in use), so I could keep objective track of progress. Over the year, my ESR went from 43 down to 19 down to 6, then finally down to 1 – the lowest possible reading. (Normal range for middle-aged people is 1-15; 1-10 if young.)
All symptoms disappeared for good. I haven’t had a problem since – tho the rheumatologist at the time said I’d end up a cripple.
From the notes of my 1997 visit to the rheumatologist:
Q: What is the inflammation? And what causes it?
A: A pathological chain of events within tissues. White cells moving into tissues. For me, mainly characterized by the presence of macrophages and lymphocytes (from the immune response). No-one knows what causes it.
So I take it this was autoimmune.
These days I do get the occasional twinge in a finger if I eat a lot of fruit or drink a lot of beer. (I.e. too many sugars.) So I just stop doing that for a day & it goes.
I was in agony from head to foot: 20 digits swollen like sausages; spine fusing up; even breastbone extremely painful; couldn’t turn over in bed at night.
To do this I went off acidic food – was eating a lot of tomato paste at the time; and off gluten grains; and off alcohol and cigarettes. And cut way back on the sugars, including fruit. And no dairy.
The regime varied from time to time. Sometimes I found that animal protein was making symptoms worse, and making my tears stingy & acidic. So I went off all animal protein – & those symptoms went away. Other times I just cut down to chicken or fish every second day. That’s something to experiment with.
I eat a ton of meat now – no ill-effects: but when one is in a critical state, trying to subdue the autoimmune response, one needs extra measures. Therapeutic diets are usually different from maintenance diets.
I took anti-arthritis herbs, & got mobility exercises from a physiotherapist.
My fastest rate of cure came when I went to live on a quiet beach for a few months, & exercised & swam every day.
Some of my ideas came from an English herbalist named Rowland. I didn’t follow every item – excessive fastidiousness is counter-productive, as it causes you to rebel at some point. I also don’t agree with him allowing bread and coffee. Other people’s laundry lists are for picking the eyes out of, not following fanatically.
My hunch is that for me lowering the intake of sugars was the biggest factor. Cutting out/back on bad fats, gluten (& much grain of any sort) & red meat were also curative I’m sure.
Modern fruit is not the low-sugar, fibrous fruit we evolved on, so there’s a good rationale to being careful with even natural sugars.
Fish oil! There’s even some science on it for arthritis. MAX-EPA absorption is improved by replacing polyunsaturated fats in the diet with monos.
n-6 fatty acids tend to be pro-inflammatory, a scientist told me at the time – so I avoided them (e.g. sesame seeds).
I also took quite a few supplements, tho can’t recall which ones. There’d be websites on this now. If you can’t take any supplements that shouldn’t be a barrier to getting well, if diet is in order.
It’s of tremendous practical & psychological benefit to keep track of your ESR – get it measured regularly. Seeing those numbers fall is a real boost. This is one thing doctors are useful for.
Going off anything that I reacted to for a while (until the allergic response settled down) was helpful. Some people find rotation diets useful, tho I didn’t need one. I tried an elimination diet once, which picked up a couple of things (e.g. more pain after eating chickpeas – which incidentally are a post-paleolithic food).
Some writers say going off nightshades is very important: I never had any problem with them (except the acidity of the tomatoes) – but I didn’t eat a ton of potatoes, to keep starches/sugars down.
A final point which sums up a lot: There isn’t much arthritis in the fossil record before the advent of agriculture.
General observations:
- Medicos will be useless. This is not their field.
- Pain is your friend, as it tells you you are sick & (when reducing) shows you that what you are doing is working. So I never took painkillers or anti-inflammatories. It’s a good spur to try hard.
- Acting early is a good idea, because the calcifcation caused by the arthritis isn’t reversible.
- If progress is slow, gene testing & fixing methylation is worth exploring. But this is a whole ‘nother ballgame, & shouldn’t be needed by most.
- The big absence with ‘incurable’ diseases is not an absence of remedies – there are plenty – but an absence of will to apply them. Most sick people don’t want to get well – only about one in 100 IMO. You would be a rare bird if you made the kind of effort implied in the above.
- Following my regime exactly may not be optimal: you’ll need to experiment a bit. But the broad guidelines should be useful.
AS seems to be ab HLA-B27 response to fast mutating Klebsiella Pneumonea bacteria that feed off starch, lactose, high glycemic sugars. I drink only a2 milk with 25 drops of lactase shooken up in the milk now set in the fridge after for 24 hours. Since klebsiella rapidly mutates nothing can kill it without possible injurious results. I’ve suffered AS for a possible 30+years, diagnosed 1992 HLA-B27 positive. It has spread to my entire body. I’m a very serious case where destruction has gone deeply into the bones. It beyond hurts. Skeleton feels seriously injured as though it was freshly thrown offf a tall building crushed & broken all over. It’s very painful. This 2016 year between Jan & April 1, it destroyed my eyesight & ability to control focusing. It took out my right knee in 1 week of serious destruction. Destructive eye inflammation ALL year & last year which all began 2009 on my eyes until it destroyed my eyesight-prednisone & cataract terror now present. Well, June 2016 I believed I had found an answer-but did not, through reading & practicing the No Starch Diet, humic/fulvic acid, Essiac Tea (which aids eye inflammation for some reason taken a couple times a day on an empty stomach w/2 oz tea to 2 oz distilled water). I discovered starch is even in our Ibuprofren & supplement pills in the form of cellulase & rice flours. Kept cutting starch until it was gone. There cale some relief, But not much with mine deep in the system & bones. So, this August geuss what I discovered from an AS sufferer recovered? NATTO POWDER. Do not ever forget this name. I get a pound from healingfoods.org for $40. Within FOUR DAYS of starting 1/2 to 1 tspn 3-4 times a day quivering outer outer tissue gained a normal sensation to the touch that continued improvent by day 7, week 2, week 3-here I am after YEARS now walking at times better, although the injury by disease destruction I have makes hips, knees, thigh bones drop me still suddenly they are so deeply weakened. The inflammation is still there, but the sudden improvements lead me to believe that with zero starch, zero lactose, & low glycemic sigars like coconut sugar, & NATTO POWDER, I may by next year be stronger & better. NATTO POWDER is a wonderful soy fermentation that has an s bacillus anti fungal property that is LIFE SAVING hope for AS suffers. It has gone into my thyroid. I was being killed by the disease-I could not swallow food or water, hold my own neck up, stand very long & started right to die discussions with my son the end of the first quarter of this year. I want to offer those like me some loving hope with all my heart.
Try researching FASTING…IT ALLOWS THE BODY TO HEAL & REPAIR…MIRACLES HAPPEN..
I’LL PRAY FOR YOU
SINCERELY.
LIANN
1) THANK YOU for sharing!!
2) Purium (brand name) anti-inflammatory, organic, non-gmo, gut healing superfoods are helping me! Check it out! Don’t buy from Amazon. Find a distributor. I am one, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is if you HEAL your gut, balance gut bacteria and calm the inflammation in your gut the REST will follow. Some days I would rather be dead than live with AS. I too am healing. I’m so glad to see that others are too! Despite how very unhelpful western fucking medicine is.
Hey John, i am also suffering from AS, and i need your help, i just dont know where to start, i got the diet part that you mentioned but what herbs did you take with it ? and if possible can you mail me whenever you are free so that we can have a talk about this ?
Email: himanshuchirag123@gmail.com
Hi Himanshu,
I can’t remember which herbs. The English herbalist I followed was John Rowland, & I see his 1993 arthritis book is now onsale at Amazon for one penny:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Arthritis-Natural-Remedy-John-Rowland/dp/1874082103
Or you could just google till you find some science covering herbs & arthritis. There is probably a lot more science on herbs & arthritis now than then. (I recently found studies on 4 herbs that showed good promise or good effects on cognitive decline, which have lifted my cognition & memory nicely this year, & are also having striking effects on the demented mother of a friend. So this kind of data is out there.)
You can email me via my website if need be.
John
HI John. ..I too have AS and my right neck is very stiff when I wake up….What about hemp seeds? Are they starchy? Please let me know
Fazal London
Hi Fazal,
Probably (don’t know much about them), but I wouldn’t have thought modest amounts would be a problem. Main thing is not to sweat the small stuff too much (“Don’t major in minor subjects”).
ATB,
John
Fazel…I discovered SAME AS JOHN NO STARCHES OR SUGARS….VEGGIES JUICED WITH LEMON…FASTING HEALS. A LOT OF PEOPLE…RESEARCH THIS.
GOOD LUCK.
SINCERELY LIANN
Sir , I m in intiail stage of AS ,
although not surely diagnosed with AS ,as my MRI sacroiliac joint is clear but all the symptoms are same as AS & HLAB-27 positive ,
It pain very badly in the back ,leg & shoulder
I m taking as usual food like diary & sugar becoz my doctor told to take any
Sir plz prescribe me the right diet
Tell me what you don’t understand about the article (which has plenty of advice on diet), and I’ll try to help.
After 15 yrs of degenerative arthritis I finally got a referral to see a rheumatologist and he prescribed Humira but I went to see my daughters naturopath and she suggested I take therapeutic grade fish oil and man has that helped the pain! Now I’m working my on the diet part which is hard and I don’t know why:( You’d think if we know diet can heal and stop pain it would be a no brainier. Feel encouraged reading your testimony, Thanks!
Glad you’re on the way.
Just about every healing story resembles ours – medical failure, then finding our own way via lifestyle, diet, supplements, herbs…
The fish oils are no doubt damping down inflammation. You’ve gone at least part of the way to restoring the natural omega 3/omega 6 ratio – which might be a good hint for the next steps.
They might also be filling deficiencies of vitamins A & D. Again, food for thought.
Good luck (not that you’ll need it).
Thank you John for your story . I live in Zimbabwe and had AS diagnosis to years ago and it was in a very acute active state. My entire body has been affected and l could no longer walk. Had surgery on my back and recovered well. I am now on HUMIRA and responding very well. I will surely implement some of your ideas into my daily life. already l am off gluten since l noticed wheat gives me flares. The pain is unbearable at times and l take morphine. THANKS FOR SHARING.
No problem Chiedza,
Hope your recovery continues. AS is quite beatable in my experience.
John
hi cheidza .. I am diagnosed with AS and kyphosis .. I am taking Humira as well.. I just wanted to know what surgery did you do if its ok to ask ??
Hey John,
So i after you recovered from AS you were able to drink alchohol? What about tobacco?
Yes, can drink a bit of alcohol. I’ve tried to stay off the cigs, as they contribute to just about every kind of illness, not just AS – so I didn’t want to go from the frying pan into the fire.
Tomatoes are also very high in oxalates. And oxalates can cause many of the issues you described.
Hi John
Based on your experiences in treating your AS, do you believe it’s essential to drastically reduce starch intake, at least for a while (ie rice, potatoes, sweet potatoes – in addition to no gluten at all)?
Thanks
William
Hi William,
We didn’t have our present understanding of starch & carbs when I cured my AS. That didn’t come till the invention of paleo in the late 1990s.
I fixed my most of AS without low-carb. Possibly the discovery of low-carb is what finished it off. If I did it again now I would eat low-carb (as I am).
We are a relatively high-animal protein-eating species. Having said that, the animal protein we buy these days is suspect for a few reasons (pesticides, high fat, low n3 fatty acid content), & I found that going low-meat at times helped the AS out the door.
Gluten is pro-autoimmune, & most arthritis is autoimmune, so it stands to reason that no gluten is the way to go.
But self-experimentation tends to work best for everything. Pain & blood tests are two excellent ways to monitor progress.
Thanks for the info John.
I’ve been gluten free for a few years now, but I’m in the middle of a pretty bad flare right now. From your experience, would you say that cutting out all dairy (including butter) is just as important as avoiding gluten?
Do you also think that going completely grain free (including rice) would be helpful too?
Yes and yes, William.
If I wasn’t making progress, I changed something. Dairy & all grains are definitely suspects.
If gluten-free isn’t enough, it might be time to go the whole hog. The people who heal MS (another autoimmune disease) do just that.
You might be fine with dairy – but you won’t know till you stop it completely for a while.
You could stop them one at a time, to better gauge the effect of each.
I eat brown rice these days, but if I had an acute illness I’d stop it. There can be a difference between healing diets & maintenance diets.
Trial & error gets you across the line.
There are also the ‘wallpaper’ habits (e.g. 2 or 3 drinks in the evening, never exercising) that are so much a part of us that we don’t even think of them as possible causes. Put yourself under the microscope a bit.
If I (who have very dodgy genetics) can be free of AS after nearly 20 years, probably anyone can.
All the best,
John
Thanks very much again for your help John.
I really need to accept that all dairy products (even butter) are just as harmful as gluten.
Hopefully within a few weeks of eliminating this, all of the antibodies shall have cleared and my gut shall have the chance to start healing properly.
John check out local farm sources for grass fed beef and pastured organic chickens and pigs. Buying from the store is $$. You can find local farm sources from eatwild.com and other websites that list high quality, poison free meat
Thanks – not a bad idea. I’ll put an ad in my community online forum.
Thanks for this story. It’s a great encouragement for people genetically vulnerable to AS. It is possible to heal.
Do you have the gene known as HLA-B27? About 90% or so of people with AS have that gene, and the main way of avoiding issues is to follow the London diet (no/low starch). It can also be responsible for IBS in a sub-group.
No, I don’t have HLA-B27.
The truth is that there are only 3 types of food available: 1- Petroleum/Chemical food, 2- Animal food and 3- Plants. 1 and 2 will always creates inflammation and decay in your body. Petroleum(chemicals) stands for rocks and oils, Animal are killed, therefore; decaying in your body. Clean Plants are alive source of real food carrying clean water, oxygen and carbohydrates.
The choice is simple ! Type 1 and 2 are creating all the sickness found in the world. Type 3 is from Heaven (not man-made) and works miracles in the body and mind.
P.S. 48 years of pain and worries all gone ! Have fun…
What? So animals are not from heaven now!! Lol some people have really gone delusional. Plants are great but animals aren’t? I wonder if lions feel the same way. Give me a break. We are animals and we have been eating other animals since life began. What we haven’t been doing is filling them full of chemicals to make them grow faster or prevent bacteria. Get out there and shoot some elk for some food and taste some real meat!
THANK U!!! THIS ALL SUMS UP WHAT PEOPLE MISS!!!!
If GOD did not grow it from the trees or the ground to pick…DON’T EAT IT is My Moto
Try RAW MORE ALIVE FOODS & FASTING! Hello…JESUS taught FASTING & PRAYERS..
Its WORKs ..
ALSO CHECK MOLDS IN UR HOME OR OFFICE! Big problems arise from MOLDS.
Sincerely Liann
It’s all in the article Taher.
I never tried homeopathy.
Hello john
M suffering from Ankylosing Spondolitis, just now am taking sulphasaline tablets. The treatment is affecting my stomach and it is upset.
Please refer some daily food habits by which i can heal the disease soon.
And is homeopathy treatment helpful in Ankylosing
Hi check here
https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!searchin/tibb-e-nabwi/ankylosing$20spondylitis$20|sort:relevance/tibb-e-nabwi/mkj8axEwy1g/6rvpYcYFwiEJ
I have AS and i,ve been on Anti Inflammatory for a long time now. i think its high time i stopped taking the med. Can anyone tell me what i should eat and what i shouldnt. Sounds like AS is alot related to diet
Thanks Sagar (tho I am an agnostic!).
Paleo is hard to beat. Pro-autoimmune foods are the ones to avoid – basically everything introduced into our diet from ~10,000BC. That means no grains & dairy & processed food. I also minimised acidic foods & meat at times. Raw helped. low stress is important.
The more acute the illness, the more strict you need to be IMO. I could relax the rules after a while.
Hi John,
I am also suffering from AS. Just now I came to know about it. ESR=24.
What you are doing is righteous act. You are sharing your experiences, acknowledging to people’s concerns and these things are giving them hopes to fight to bear the pains.
I just want know that what should be our regular diet, what we should eat in breakfast, lunch and diner.
I understood what all need to be avoided, just help me with what should I eat normally.
God will always bless for your divine work.
i hav a question…JOHN, are u able to run after d recovery???
Sorry for the late reply – just got notified of your post.
Yes, I have done a lot of running after recovery. At 64 I still do a fair bit.
Thank you John for this great site. As a serine negative RA plus plus, sufferer, I totally agree with your comments regarding dietary and lifestyle changes to combat the skeletal demise I have tried the remote island living, tried drastic dietary changes and used the medical fraternity for pharmaceuticals at differing stages. I now realise that until we get some honesty with growers within the food chain, and unless we discontinue our reliance on petro chemicals, we will continue to suffer with debilitating illnesses where we all end up searching for ways to improve our lives. I am sure that most ill people would prefer to be well but sometimes the effort to achieve this is along the oo long hard road. I agree that pain is the best indicator and the window to wellness. Thank you John for inspiring us to keep trying.
How do we find John MacGregor’s website?
My website’s at http://john-macgregor.com
I’ve had back pain since I was 12, dianosed with AS when I was 20 over the years Sugar and Acid foods make inflamation and pain a lot worse. periods where I was pain free was when I didn’t eat anything with Sugar.I am now much older and find anti inflamatiory meds do not help. Onlydiet and exercise work.
Hi all, I have also been monitoring my ESR and CRP (inflammation markers) via blood tests and they have been high for some time now…. also have AS for many years. Love this blog, more people need to share their experience and successes….. I also believe that AS is diet related since when I fast my flare up subsides and when I begin eating again the pain starts up again. I have also noticed when I flush my bowls the pain lessens. I am currently contemplating getting a comprehensive food sensitivity (allergy) test to see what food groups I am highly sensitive too and stop them completely to see if there is any reduction of pain.
From information I have come across, there also seems to be a relation to acid forming foods causing increased inflammation. I just realized the other day just how much more acidic forming our modern diet has become.
I am definitely going to take the information in this site into account when I’m doing my food testing….
thanks again
Lee
Lee,
You’ve prodded my memory with your observation about acid diet.
When I look back, I was eating tons of bread & pasta, & tons of tomato paste with the pasta. I abolished all three, and that was when I started getting better.
So yes, I’m guessing that balancing pH is an important part of retiring inflammatory disease.
Eat some quantity of methi (Indian name) each morning and while going to bed, every day. It will cure AS.
Hi John,
Need your help in big time. Please advice me if i can improve a bit at least.
Happy to see these type of forums which at least gives some confidence. Im 30 yrs old suffering from AS from last 8 years and unfortunately i replaced my both Hips at an earlier states of AS. Any how im dealing some what normal life but as you know how torture AS life is. In-fact Social life its very difficult to explain.
As you said all the rheumatlogists just concentrates only on Anti-TNF like Remicade, Enebrel which is very costly and not affordable for all the persons. Now My neck is getting Fused and even Spine , still i have bit moment but doctors are telling its waste of any treatment , it wont be treated and slowly it will be completely fused.
Im really worried about my future. I don’t know how can i do justice for my Family who are dependent on me. Can you please suggest me what treatment i can do as of now at least i can im prove a bit.
Hi Prasad,
Read my reply to the previous poster: most of it is there.
You can start anywhere you like – diet, supplements, whatever. But do all the basics. Medicine is useful for one thing: its pathology testing. A simple blood test repeated monthly or quarterly can tell you if you are going in the right direction.
The problem you face is not lack of solutions: there are plenty. The problem is implementing them: only one in 100 wants to do that.
Good luck,
John
PS: If you want to email me, go through my website.
m suffering from AS..n i cant take any more pain.
it would be better that someone kill me.
can u plz plz suggest me to get rid of this as soon as possible
Hi,
And sorry for the slow replies. I didn’t get notified that people had posted (maybe I forgot to check the box below?).
Anyway, first an update on my nephritis – of interest to people with ankylosing spondylitis, as both are autoimmune:
It’s gone. The latest tests put me in the normal range for both blood and urine. No symptoms now. Took 18 months – longer than expected, but I had some big stress in there for a while, which doubtless slowed me down.
As for a diet for spondylitis: first eliminate gluten grains & dairy, completely & entirely. This is fundamental. Read my post at the top: I don’t have much to add to that. That’s what worked for me. and will have an effect for others. But a cure is generally individualised, so you’ll have to fine-tune it yourself.
Curing incurable illness is straightforward if you don’t panic, do your own research, muster the will & character to make changes (most sick people don’t want to get well – so you’d be an outlier if you did this), and above all scrupulously ignore medical advice.
If I’d listened to my rheumatologist 20 years ago I’d now be in a wheelchair. If I’d listened to my nephrologist 18 months ago I’d be on lots of drugs and heading for dialysis. These guys do not practise any medicine worthy of the name.
If a group of businessmen set about to design a health system which made the maximum profit from each individual (with no other goal), they would design one that kept people sick, but alive for as long as possible. I don’t believe it’s any accident that that is what we have.
Any questions that I miss here, kindly drop me a line via my website – tho I ticked the box this time.
All the best,
John
thanks John, beautifully put! congratulations on your recovery:)
-Eric
I fully agree with you! Congratulations! I do medical research to help others live, etc… since 2003… http://www.ParasiteTesting.com test for all 250,000 (50,000 are yeasts) bad parasites known in the world! Most US labs can only test 40 – 50 types! I see the wrongs, pathways, the doctors slowly killing people, and so much more! So many people not diagnosed ~ misdiagnosed ~ under and over medicated ~ malpractice ~ etc… Doctors that should not be in practice! I have to say only a few doctors truly care! I advocate to seek the holistic/natural ways to get well and stay healthy! The holistic/natural way will save your life literally even when the medical world has you on your death bed! Story is on my blog… I do medical consulting and so much more…
Hi john…
I m suffering from initial stage of as…
I m 21….
Can u suggest d diet and which mobility exercises you followed…
Such that I can discuss with my physiotherapist….
I m having stiiffness in lower back and sacroiliac joint only….
Which come and go…
In a repeat
Just an addendum regarding my (partly autoimmune) kidney disease – nephrotic syndrome:
As expected (tho slower than expected) the numbers are returning to normal:
My blood-albumin reading is now 36 – well into the normal range (>30).
My urine protein-creatinine ratio is not in the <40 normal range yet. But it is somewhere between 112 and 240. I got two samples taken in the one day; they are quite different, but both are below my previous lowest reading, and well below the readings around 600 I was getting 18 months ago.
The route to this improvement has been the paleo diet + certain Chinese herbs.
Eating paleo means one isn't eating food such as grain and dairy which damage the gut lining, allowing too-large food particles to enter the bloodstream and spark autoimmune reactions. The Chinese herbs (particularly astragalus) have been very efficacious against kidney disease in case studies; I have no idea what the mechanism is.
This is essentially the way I cured my spondylitis 20 years ago. I should take the hint and adhere to strict (as opposed to "more-or-less") paleo from now on: to do otherwise would probably be to invite in another autoimmune illness.
The kidney specialist (whose drugs I have been refusing for 18 months) handed me my latest results in icy silence – as expected.
congrats John and thanks for the follow-up! precious story about your kidney specialist 😀
Hi D,
I can’t remember what arthritis herbs I used, tho they were those recommended by an English herbalist named Rowland, so you might be able to look them up. He wrote a book about curing arthritis with herbs. I tend to think diet was a bigger factor.
The Chinese herbs I am now taking for nephritis are astragalus membranaceous, T wilfordii, angelica sinensis, rhubarb, L. wallichii. The main one is the astragalus.
Again, the arthritis was too long ago for me to remember what fruit I was eating. But lowering fruit intake (and sugars in general) seemed to lower inflammation.
I don’t know if I have a fruit/restless legs correlation. However since chelating my restless legs problem has decreased 90%.
I eat tons of potatoes, and have never had any problems with them. Which is unsurprising given our species would have evolved eating roots & tubers.
I don’t follow the blood-type diet, & could not in the past get D’Adamo to reply to my questions. This was when I was writing a media article on the diet. The article is here: http://john-macgregor.com/catIndex.php?catid=1 – Scroll down to “blood type diet”.
Admittedly this was 10 years ago, & new evidence may have appeared since.
I’m also chelating Cutler style, and am pretty sure this is a key factor in the resurrection of my health the last 2 years. I once thought eating paleo was as basic/bottom line as it was possible to get; but now I think mercury is equally “basic” inasmuch as until you get it out, nothing much is going to improve.
Not too much fruit and eating low sugar fruit are good IMO, as the fruit we eat now is very sugary compared to that of the Stone Age whose creatures we are.
As for suggestions, the two things that fixed me in the last year were addressing methylation issues – this fixed my severe reactions to thiol foods from chelating – and vigorous exercise, which on resuming it (cautiously at first) a few months ago took me to the best state of health I’ve had for many years.
Chelation, reducing acid, inflammation sound good to me. If you need another heavy metal-removal route you could always look at saunas. Tho many have got very good gains from low doses.
All the best,
John
Hi John,
Thanks for the article and information. a few questions…
What anti arthritic herbs did you take?
Can you also comment on the Chinese Herbs you mentioned for Nephritis?
What fruits and how much of these did you consume?
I feel if I eat too much fruit, I get restless leg, did you find a correlation with this as well? It feels like pathogen or parasite activity in legs, caused by the sugar. How did you cure restless leg? What specific supplements to cure blood sugar problems. I am currently on Chromium.
So no gluten, no other grains, and no potatoes ? Are you familiar with the Blood type diets? I am an “O” and this is the regiment for me as well, based on the diet. Only Ezekial bread, sprouted grains for grains. The diet is based on NO lectins, which can also aggregate a leaky gut.
I have severe leaky gut, I believe due to long history of Hg. As well as high bacteria from living in moldy house. Bacteria seems to be higher than the mold for me. Have a lot of brain issue from the leaky gut. Pretty severe constipation, so when doing enemas I get brain fog, dizziness, blurred vision, I think from the toxins leaking out and redistributing into bloodstream and crossing BBB.
Have started low fruit and veg raw and juiced as well as red meat and soft cooked veg in olive oil and the fruit is really helping with constipation and clearing the toxin bowel in gut, but have to be careful of fruit, as it is helping to detox and clear bowels, I feel it feeding the bacteria. I vibrate a bit after eating the fruit, like the fruit is causing the bacteria to move around and even affect the CNS.
I am also on FDC protocol-Cutler, think it is helping but very slow and can not go high on doses due to so many bacteria infections and leaky gut, and inability to eliminate through bowels.
Any other suggestions?
It seems chelation and reduced inflammation and acid is the key and this through food.
Thanks again
D
Never heard on Enbrel.
Have just done 2 years of Cutler protocol chelation. Great results, but the spondylitis was cured 15 years before that.
So did you ever try Enbrel? What about chelation therapy and did you ever try that? I am only just now looking for alternatives to my medication the doctor has me on.
Thanks Eric – glad it might be doing someone some good.
My nephritis continues to improve steadily – urine/creatinine ratio down from a high of 595 to 269 last month. (Low = good. 40 is normal.) I don’t think I’ll hit my “cure by mid-year” target, but I doubt if it will take longer than the end of the year.
And because I am doing all the above stuff plus having a low-stress lifestyle for a change (less work commitments, running on the beach every day), I’ve felt confident to attack the psoriasis again. It’s decreased in coverage by about 50% to date. I’m sure that will continue if I stay on the straight & narrow. The main element here has been eating less. I have a theory that leaky gut syndrome is caused not only by food quality but by food quantity. I’ve always been a huge eater, so am putting a lid on that.
In summary, it again seems clear that autoimmune illnesses can be retired via lifestyle changes alone.
All the best,
John
John, my wife and I took a print copy of your story to Guatemala to share with her father who is an MD and suffering terribly from ankylosing spondylitis. We spent about 45 minutes translating and discussing it sentence by sentence.
We also brought along Practical Paleo and the Paleo Solution. He was very impressed, told his wife that you had exactly what he’s got, promised to try the diet and called the info “a treasure” when thanking me.
He also acknowledged that the pharmaceutical companies want to keep patients just healthy enough to keep spending, so he understands the game to some degree…
Many thanks for sharing your story. You hit so many key points and the end result is powerful.
– Eric