Does diet have an impact on your psoriatic arthritis?

I'm really not at all sure that the science supports this statement "that there is no one diet for everyone". All animal products and some vegetables are associated with inflammation which often builds in the human body before expressing itself. The diversity among human genetic heritage and inheritance is the only known reason to explain why people note "dietary changes impact [them] differently. Ultimately, a diet that includes even so-called "moderate" quantities of animal products leads to inflammation.

Oh dear, please read the scientific papers. Aberdeen angus, grass fed, factory farmed pork, free range chicken and processed meats [as well as dairy and probably eggs too] differ only by degrees in the effects on the human body. All animal products promote inflammation because these are not the natural foods that humans evolved to consume. Too rigid for you, anyone with PSA who doesn't understand that they must move away entirely from the typical western meat-based diet is literally whistling to the wind.

There is a problem with keeping a food diary, it is influenced by your world view. Most western people eat meat and dairy [and eggs], if not every day, then certainly many times each week, they consider that a dietary basic and not the toxic concoction it actually is. Therefore, on noticing any changes in your PSA symptoms you simply cannot link it to any particular foods because you are eating animal foods every day. I know one PSA sufferer who religious tested his PSA response by deleting one vegetable after another from his diet, meanwhile consuming meats and dairy and eggs of course in roadside cafe quantities every day! Observable inflammatory responses do not track food on a daily basis, sometimes it takes years, certainly months for food-related inflammation to manifest itself. Here in Britain, I have a number of friends with PSA and I have persuaded several to adopt an entirely plant-based diet [including raw foods as often as they can - I can't say I religiously follow my own advice on that score, although I have upticked the raw food component of my diet recently]. These people, over periods as long as two years during which they claim to have steadfastly stuck with the diet [I do not believe one of them is being entirely truthful] have noted significant improvements in all the markers of PSA including blood test results, pain and stiffness, mental cloudiness [fuzziness], psoriasis outbreaks etc. If you consider following a plant-based diet you will have to commit to doing so for at least a year and more and if at the end of this long period, you do feel some benefit, must never go back to your current diet, regardless of peer pressure, or personal desire, or visits to restaurants. I have been following a plant-based diet for 45 years: during that time 2013 was a very bad year [I had both a heart attack and an aortic dissection, apparently caused by a massive inflammatory episode over that years summer that no one can explain] and the Covid years also almost resulted in my death twice as my immune system went into overdrive fighting infection by the virus four times. That I am still alive [after 2013 and 2020 to today], is credited to some interesting side benefits of my diet - significantly low arterial cholesterol, excellent blood test results, the blood pressure of a man a third my age and others too etc.

Finally, the number of vegetable causes of inflammation is greatly exaggerated and largely based on silly idea such as a food plant's relation to the nightshade family. Vegetables like egg-plants, peppers and tomatoes have no chemical composition that might trigger inflammation. One of my above mentioned friends told me they didn't eat mushrooms because they gave a person "psychedelic experiences" and "fungus" was associated with rot. People have some really weird obsessions. Anyway good luck.

This is not a true statement in my experience: "After all we are all different and what works for one might not work for another." This is a common belief but in my experience it is a belief founded on a fallacy. The fallacy is that at some point in time everyone with PSA has tried the same thing and got a result that is comparable and that these results differ across the population trying a specific approach. That has never been done and would be impossible to implement anyway.

I discovered this to be true, firstly whilst conducting experiments with my own diet over the last 30 years, the result of which was that I eventually realised it was almost impossible for me to link obvious symptoms of active psoriatic arthritis to short-term dietary manipulations. Secondly, whilst helping others to understand their PSA, I discovered all of them were predetermined with largely false or anecdotal ideas about what was good for PSA and what was bad and furthermore there were unshakeable false beliefs that dictated behaviour even including lying about specific items that they were including in their diet. All I can say with certainty is that those people who rigidly ahere to a plant-based diet (i.e., never eat a beef burger on their way to a football match - because "the odd one now and again won't matter"😉 for a year do see dramatic improvements in their condition, as indeed did I. But even the plant-based diet isn't a cure for this genetic illness that you were born with and the nature of genetic illnesses are such that there are going to be rare, seemingly inexplicable upsets, they are inevitable consequence of living with a complex genetic health condition. However, daily experiences and the quality of life do show significant improvement the longer one adheres to a wholly plant-based diet (no meat, dairy or eggs of any kind) over the long term.

I deduced this from my human evolution and anatomy studies over the last 45 years. Meat eating was not the great advance the so-called experts of human evolution describe and whether you like it or not, the human digestive system is largely the result of millions of years of frugivorous (fruit) and foliverous (leaf) and possibly insectivorous (insects) consumption. Meat was incorporated into the human diet relatively recently forming a regularly consumed item only within the last few tens of thousands of years. Dairy was added to the diet perhaps less than 9,000 years ago. Early human ancestors may have occasionally eaten the in season eggs of wild birds and indulged in eating some fish but this is not known for certain and there is evidence that it amy not have happened until late in our evolution. Even the image of Neanderthals hunting woolly mammoths is likely as not an exaggeration but either way, they became extinct so meat eating didn't help them much did it?

Meat is toxic to the human being. Cyanide kills you within seconds, meat-eating usually takes decades, but about 60% of western human deaths are premature and almost all of these are caused by diseases associated with the eating of animal derived foods. Sorry to rain on your parade but you need to hear this. More importantly, you need to read the science.

Thank you. As I intimated the last four years have been a disaster for me, I was steadily recovering from my crisis in 2013 that came out of the blue. Although I believe I was afflicted with another corona virus or something like the recent whooping cough infection. There was a coronavirus circulating the planet in 2012 and although only about 8,500 people worldwide were confirmed as having caught it, the fact that the virus travelled around the world means we all must have come into contact with it but like almost everyone on the planet, it had no visible impact on us. Each successive Covid infection provoked my immune system more than its predecessor and over the four years I spent over 7 months in hospital, a few weeks with the first attack, a month with the next, two months with the third and three-and-a-half with the fourth attack. I am now wheelchair bound but gradually and very slowly I seem to be improving. A suspected 5th covid infection appears to have caused little additional harm but the psoriasis spread is almost certainly related to the bacterial infection of whooping cough. As I say, I am improving, my mind is clearer, my blood sugars and blood pressure figures have also been improving. You just have to make the best of the pack of cards dealt out to you in life LOL.

well, despite all the infections and provoked immune system, I am very glad to hear that you are improving and keeping a positive attitude. I hope things continue to move in a good direction, with your blood levels improving and mind continuing to become clearer! -- Warmly, Christine (Team Member)

Quality meat is a human "carnivore" term and implies unprocessed (i.e. not minced, burgers, sausages, ham and salami type meats) red meat cut from the body of an animal that is supposedly grass fed and organic (which is a falsehood propagated by the meat industry. Some humans who hunt wild life, deer, bison, rabbit, hare and game birds talk about quality "lean meat" by which they mean the flesh of wild living animals. Wild animals are almost always virtually devoid of fat due to their means of foraging (browsing and grazing) and generally active lifestyles. It's good to hear you've more or less discarded salt but although you will probably derive some small benefit from that lifestyle change, compared with the meat and dairy you consume (the science is equivocal about eggs and immune conditions), sugar and fats, salt is the probably the least of your concerns. Meat is unequivocably bad for humans. We evolved on a diet similar to gorillas which are at least 97% vegetarian (i.e. vegan) except for a small quantity of insects they are thought to eat. Chimpanzees are likewise 95% vegetarian but apparently individuals (mostly males) hunt other primates in bands and divide the flesh of those they catch amongst them and it is calculated that about 5% of their diet comprises animal flesh. So our nearest relatives gorilla and chimpanzee are virtually entirely plant-based feeders. I would advise you to reduce your daily/weekly meat and dairy intake by at least two-thirds and stick with that for a year - don't increase your egg consumption at all. Keep a diary recording symptoms etc. before you take that step so that at the end of the year you can do a comparison. Replace meat and dairy with plants, plant milks, butters and cheeses. I'd not replace all that meat with vegan "meats as they are rather processed and whilst not as bad as meat, they will diminish the effect of reducing your meat intake. Avoid "treating yourself to the occasional steak" as that mindset rapidly leads you astray with "occasional" gradually morphing into daily. Anyone can change, you are stronger than the cultural conditioning you have experienced throughout your life. Giving up animal products will also gradually reduce cholesterol in your arteries and the meat-derived toxins in your own flesh, so even if it does next to nothing for your PsA, you will derive the health benefits that saved my life in 2013.

Hello, , thanks for some great information. It is truly appreciated. I am going to add some of these days to my daily routine. It's baby steps for me. Thanks for sharing. Diane (Team Member)