My first blog post... My quest to become pregnant and cure my arthritis all in one fell swoop ;-)
Ok, so the title is a little ambitious...
Maybe I should have stopped at 'My first blog post'.
But I am feeling optimistic and ambitious today!
Just as a quick summary before I begin the long explanation process, the important findings so far, are as follows:
1. Having regular periods is really important to both fertility and rheumatoid arthritis
2. Being low in progesterone is bad for many reasons
3. Zinc is especially important as a supplement when you have rheumatoid arthritis
4. Acupuncture works, in a way that makes sense in Western medicine's own terms
5. Vitex Agnus Castus and Red Raspberry Leaf supplements do help with regulating hormones and calming endometriosis and PMS
6. Supplementing your diet with omega oils (and folic acid when trying to conceive) is important
7. Being happy (having lots of beta-endorphins) helps suppress disease, whether it be RA, cancer or anything else
OK, I guess I have to start at the beginning. I'm 31 years old, and recently married. I've had rheumatoid arthritis since I was 15 years old and I've had it pretty badly too. I've taken fair cocktail of drugs in my time and still do, even now, whilst trying to get pregnant.
The reason I'm writing this in a blog is because I've found out so much stuff lately, by researching on the web, that I don't want to forget it, lose track of it, or otherwise muddle it all up in my head.
OK, so you should look away now if you're squeamish because I am going to be talking about menstrual cycles and periods - well, a lot really!
Up until my 31st birthday, I'd pretty much left the treatment of my RA in my doctor's hands. I never believed I could influence the disease much and I'm a great believer in Western medicine and science generally.
Strangely, I also didn't believe that diet played much of a part in treatment of one's illnesses. I considered my disease to be so deep and severe that no amount of avoiding tomatoes, or other such crapola could help me at all. Well, I still don't believe the problem lies with tomatoes, but I am *much* more careful about what I eat now.
It was six months to the day before our wedding that Rich and I decided we really needed to lose some weight and that we probably only just had enough time left before the wedding in which to do it. So, after seeing the success my brother and sister-in-law had had with the Atkins diet we embarked upon it with zeal. And you know what, it worked! Not only did we lose weight (30 pounds each), we also felt much healthier, woke up earlier, had less afternoon fatigue, less hayfever, my migraine's disappeared completely and haven't returned since and my blood pressure went down and so on.
Have I stayed on the diet? Well, no. Not really for any other reason that I am too lazy to stick to such a rigid regime. I have kept some of the changes as permanent parts of our diet though. I now cook all food from scratch. I also eat as much organic food as we can. (Apart from the supposed health benefits, it does actually taste better too.) I avoid white bread, white rice, white pasta and concentrated fruit juices and I also try and avoid sugar whenever I can. I do not stick 100% rigidly to any of these rules, apart from cooking from scratch.
With these small changes, I can see and feel that our health is much improved.
OK, so I lost a load of weight just in time for the wedding and felt much better, but my arthritis still wasn't good. I decided in August 2004 to start trying for a baby and although I didn't think it would be easy, I didn't think it would be this hard either.
I stopped the Remicade (my wonder drug) and the methotrexate (a cytotoxic drug, that is toxic to foetsus) well in advance of trying to become pregnant and switched to 7.5mgs of prednisolone (an oral steroid) and 20mgs daily of valdecoxib (an anti-inflammatory or NSAID).
My arthritis worsened, which, with my history was what I expected, and after two perfect 28 day cycles after stopping my birth control pill, my cycles went wacky and went from 37 days, up to 60 days or more. I knew this wouldn't be helping my chances of getting pregnant, so within a month or so of trying to conceive, I decided to take action and see what I could do to increase the odds in my favour.
As a web designer, I spend all day in front of the internet, so I went to my beloved Google and started to research.
The first place I came to was a wondeful web site called www.fertilityfriend.com. I signed up and did a lot of reading about the Fertility Awareness Method and bought a wonderful book by Toni Weschler called Taking Charge of Your Fertility.
Maybe I should have stopped at 'My first blog post'.
But I am feeling optimistic and ambitious today!
Just as a quick summary before I begin the long explanation process, the important findings so far, are as follows:
1. Having regular periods is really important to both fertility and rheumatoid arthritis
2. Being low in progesterone is bad for many reasons
3. Zinc is especially important as a supplement when you have rheumatoid arthritis
4. Acupuncture works, in a way that makes sense in Western medicine's own terms
5. Vitex Agnus Castus and Red Raspberry Leaf supplements do help with regulating hormones and calming endometriosis and PMS
6. Supplementing your diet with omega oils (and folic acid when trying to conceive) is important
7. Being happy (having lots of beta-endorphins) helps suppress disease, whether it be RA, cancer or anything else
OK, I guess I have to start at the beginning. I'm 31 years old, and recently married. I've had rheumatoid arthritis since I was 15 years old and I've had it pretty badly too. I've taken fair cocktail of drugs in my time and still do, even now, whilst trying to get pregnant.
The reason I'm writing this in a blog is because I've found out so much stuff lately, by researching on the web, that I don't want to forget it, lose track of it, or otherwise muddle it all up in my head.
OK, so you should look away now if you're squeamish because I am going to be talking about menstrual cycles and periods - well, a lot really!
Up until my 31st birthday, I'd pretty much left the treatment of my RA in my doctor's hands. I never believed I could influence the disease much and I'm a great believer in Western medicine and science generally.
Strangely, I also didn't believe that diet played much of a part in treatment of one's illnesses. I considered my disease to be so deep and severe that no amount of avoiding tomatoes, or other such crapola could help me at all. Well, I still don't believe the problem lies with tomatoes, but I am *much* more careful about what I eat now.
It was six months to the day before our wedding that Rich and I decided we really needed to lose some weight and that we probably only just had enough time left before the wedding in which to do it. So, after seeing the success my brother and sister-in-law had had with the Atkins diet we embarked upon it with zeal. And you know what, it worked! Not only did we lose weight (30 pounds each), we also felt much healthier, woke up earlier, had less afternoon fatigue, less hayfever, my migraine's disappeared completely and haven't returned since and my blood pressure went down and so on.
Have I stayed on the diet? Well, no. Not really for any other reason that I am too lazy to stick to such a rigid regime. I have kept some of the changes as permanent parts of our diet though. I now cook all food from scratch. I also eat as much organic food as we can. (Apart from the supposed health benefits, it does actually taste better too.) I avoid white bread, white rice, white pasta and concentrated fruit juices and I also try and avoid sugar whenever I can. I do not stick 100% rigidly to any of these rules, apart from cooking from scratch.
With these small changes, I can see and feel that our health is much improved.
OK, so I lost a load of weight just in time for the wedding and felt much better, but my arthritis still wasn't good. I decided in August 2004 to start trying for a baby and although I didn't think it would be easy, I didn't think it would be this hard either.
I stopped the Remicade (my wonder drug) and the methotrexate (a cytotoxic drug, that is toxic to foetsus) well in advance of trying to become pregnant and switched to 7.5mgs of prednisolone (an oral steroid) and 20mgs daily of valdecoxib (an anti-inflammatory or NSAID).
My arthritis worsened, which, with my history was what I expected, and after two perfect 28 day cycles after stopping my birth control pill, my cycles went wacky and went from 37 days, up to 60 days or more. I knew this wouldn't be helping my chances of getting pregnant, so within a month or so of trying to conceive, I decided to take action and see what I could do to increase the odds in my favour.
As a web designer, I spend all day in front of the internet, so I went to my beloved Google and started to research.
The first place I came to was a wondeful web site called www.fertilityfriend.com. I signed up and did a lot of reading about the Fertility Awareness Method and bought a wonderful book by Toni Weschler called Taking Charge of Your Fertility.
posted by spacehoppa at
4:05 pm
2 Comments:
Hiya
we have some things in common. I too suffer with some sort of arthitis, spondylo arthosis syndrome, maybe ankyolosing spondylitis and non degenerative connective tissue disorder, probably fibromyaliga.
This all started alomost 20 yrs ago after a back injury.
Then I too got endo. 15 years of pain, 10 including the sciatic endo. Plus 7 years of infertility.
If you want to chat, merseymay@bigpond.com.au is my email.
How is your sciatic pain? How is it all going?
By
Angela, at 3:23 am
oh my name is angela by the way.
By
Angela, at 3:23 am
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