The Girl With Arthritis

When I was thirteen years old, my mum and I had a very steady weekend routine. Right after school on Friday, we would go to my doctor’s office where a nurse would give me an injection of methotrexate. It wasn’t a huge deal, but I began to dread Fridays because of the medicine’s side effects. A lot of people with autoimmune arthritis do very well on methotrexate and go into remission. But I didn’t. I remember the doctor often telling me that the medicine “had better start working soon, because [I] won’t like the next level.” It was horrifying to hear this as a kid. I knew it wasn’t my fault, yet I blamed myself. It felt hopeless; if the medicine that worked for everyone else failed me, what would that mean for me later on? But years later, I realized there was no reason to feel hopeless. I’ve seen many different doctors since, and I’ve found that there’s no one way to treat chronic pain. But the most successful approach I’ve found is to treat the person, not the disease. The outc...

Very recently, I received an email from a reader. She told me how she's trying to find information on how to manage juvenile arthritis through diet and exercise, but hasn't found a lot. She asked me to write about helping treat arthritis with exercise and diet, and I did so right away. Today will be able diet, and my next post will talk about exercise. This was written with E in mind, but with the hopes others would benefit. Diet There are several ways to help arthritis. Unfortunately, there is no 'one size fits all' diet because different things affect us differently. Some people are affected by things like dairy, red meats, white flour and various other things. The best thing for us  all (chronically ill or otherwise healthy) is to stay away from processed, fatty and greasy foods as much as you can: Eat as freshly as you possibly can, whenever you can. That doesn't mean (necessarily) to buy organically, it means that it's best to eat your vegetables with...

This is a guest post by Kishana Sainte. Her bio and links can be found at the bottom. Thank you Kishana! Arthritis is a debilitating disease that can literally take the fun out of life. Living through pain day to day can make doing normal everyday activities sometimes unbearable. If you are suffering from arthritis know that there are things that you can do to help yourself feel better. There are certain aspects to life that can exasperate the painful joint swelling associated with arthritis. Here is a look at four reasons why your arthritis flares up and how you can use your diet and exercise to help yourself to feel better. Continue reading to learn more… 1. Arthritis Flare Up Due to Stress: Stress is a major contributor to increased pain due to arthritis. Although scientists haven’t found the exact reason why, experts, doctors and researchers agree that learning effective tools to deal with stress positively affects arthritis symptoms. Certain ways that you can negate stres...

A couple days ago I had the chance to catch up with my cousin, of whom I had not gotten the chance to sit down and talk with in years. I enjoyed our time immensely. My cousin is very interested in food health. Somewhere in that conversation Arthur popped up. You can see where I am going with this. My cousin very much believes I could cure my arthritis by eating a raw diet, with plenty of white foods like garlic to support immune health. And I agree. I might be able to. I genuinely believe that people are able to cure themselves or go into remission through diet. I've seen it happen and it makes sense that if we put good things in our bodies, only good can come. But, of course, it doesn't work for everyone. I've seen it fail numerous times as well. Everyone's body is different, and it will react differently to different things. Let me say now that I've never really tried diet changes. Do I believe it could work? Yes, I do. I believe it can work for lots of people...