The Lighter Side of: Dietary Changes

Our perspective on food seems to shift on a regular basis.
Foods and ingredients that were once considered healthy are now considered potentially deadly and vice versa. We have superfoods and meat alternatives and soy or almond or coconut milk etc...
On top of all of the ever-changing information on nutrition, with chronic illness you are constantly told by everyone who ever speaks with you about this 'new amazing diet' for such-and-such disease.
These new diets are, most often, recycled diets from decades before with a new spin. That's not to say they don't work, because many people vouch for the varying diets out there, it is just to say that the research and nutrition focus has been explored in many cases.

I think many people are prone to sticking with something they enjoy or they find works for what they are attempting to achieve. With this tendency, we sometimes focus on a particular regimen and then continue with that regimen indefinitely.
While that can be helpful, there is a major advantage to having new information and being required to change dietary intake on a semi regular basis.
The Lighter Side of constant Dietary Changes or recommendations for the newest diet is that we may find out how many delicious foods are available on each diet.
We learn to try new things, find new enjoyable tastes, and we can quickly realizing how many tasty foods fit strict dietary criteria.

When we are stuck in our own routine, following a basic diet we have become comfortable with, a new diet can be daunting. Instead of worrying about foods we may have to give up, we can look at how many different foods we can now add to our diet that we have been previously unaware of. We forget how good certain foods are until we are required to add them.

Fight the Fusion Week 2019

Did you know that there are over 100 different types of Arthritis and related diseases?
Did you know that many of these illnesses are not considered to be ailments of the elderly and that approximately 60% of Canadians with arthritis are between the ages of 15-60?

Fight the Fusion Week is going to be a week long campaign to raise awareness and raise funds for Arthritis Research Canada.

This is a social media campaign and will run from April 27, 2019 - May 4, 2019 in honour of Ankylosing Spondylitis awareness month in May.

To participate there will be a few steps to make during that week (with full rules being listed closer to the date):

1. Share a photo of yourself practicing yoga or another activity that engages the spine while using the hashtag #FightTheFusion.

2. Follow the sponsor accounts on Instagram.

3. Share share share.

4. Make a minimum of a $10.00 donation to Arthritis Research Canada.

We encourage everyone to share their stories and their experience with arthritic and spondyloarthropic conditions, to promote low-impact activities to help fight fusion within the spine and SI joints, and to share various coping mechanisms and help create a community.
Once the week is over, those participants who have made the necessary donation will be put into a draw to win a prize.
(We currently already have one sponsor who is offering a prize valued around $75.00).

Our goal is to help spread awareness for these debilitating illnesses and raise funds for much-needed research to find new treatments and new hope for a cure.

The illnesses we will be putting a face to Ankylosing Spondylitis, Psoriatic Arthritis, Osteoarthritis, Rheumatoid Arthritis, and so many more.

Biologics and HAE

Does anyone know if Biologics have been researched specifically on HAE patients?

I have documented allergies to four different biologics - TNF blockers to be specific - causing the rare symptom of severe swelling everywhere, including my throat and chest.
These swelling episodes are also well known as normal for sufferers of Hereditary Angioedema.

My question is:

Are TNF blockers causing a true-to-form allergy, causing swelling, or do these medications have an ingredient or a mechanism that specifically interacts or exacerbates Hereditary Angioedema?
Is this an allergy or an INTOLERANCE based on the fact that I have Hereditary Angioedema?

And further - if it is simply that the medication includes something that triggers HAE, can we fix it? Can these Biologics be tweaked to be available to HAE patients - especially those who also suffer from several autoimmune conditions who may very well benefit from the use of biologics??

Is there someone in medication scientific research willing to investigate this potential correlation?

Potentially Good News

It has been revealed that a study, performed with mice, has had shockingly positive results with the eradication of several types of Cancer with a Cancer Vaccine.

Essentially the vaccine is injected directly into a tumor, activating the body's own T cells to recognize and eliminate the Cancer cells in that specific tumor. Then, once that tumor has been eliminated, those T cells travel throughout the body, targeting other tumors that have the same Cancer cells that were present in the initial tumor.

The study has led to beginning clinical trials in humans.

This could be huge.

I do have to say that I am heartbroken at the overwhelmingly negative reaction on social media. I am not so naïve to think that corruption does not occur in levels of medicine and medical research, but the amount of people who immediately put down a potentially monumental advancement is staggering. The arguments of 'suppressing the cure', that no one but the filthy rich will be able to afford it, the idea that 'Big Pharma' will never let it reach the public, or that 'Hemp Oil' cures all types of Cancers but that it isn't acknowledged because 'there is no money in it' - are numerous. And tragic. I believe it is healthy to have a small dose of cynicism, or realism, or to be skeptical until the human trials have been successful and we start seeing positive results in the lives of everyday sufferers, but this kind of discovery; this kind of research, is a positive thing!!

I wonder how the anti-vaccination movement supporters will respond to such a study...