Perseverance!

I did it! It's been almost a month I've been keeping to cutting high glycemics. That's cutting out fast-releasing starches and glucose from my diet like rice. Seems easy? Given the amount of food I consume daily, it is almost impossible to adhere to this diet because my diet's usually not in my control, so I have been cooking for myself lately.

Again, I can't not eat, ever. Never. I simply substituted rice for pasta, cut down the amount of carbohydrates I ate by eating lots of vegs. For lunch and dinner I often had a big bowl of salad with very little dressing, a small bowl of wheat pasta, - by small, it really is small for me. :( Like half the amount of rice I used to take - sauteed mixed vegs and if I could, lean meats, fish or chicken and if I can't, an egg. I also had to cut red meats and caffeine... almost entirely. Well, I do allow myself one thick mug of English Breakfast if I've been really, really good for the past few days.

It helps that I never had a sweet tooth, I don't normally take ice cream or chocolates so I don't have a problem cutting those out.

The reason for my diet change is largely because my bulging discs may or may not be causing arthritis. The arthritis can't be confirmed or denied. The last time I saw my ortho, he says that my hip and knee pains can be explained by several other problems, but I do not show any signs of them. Since he diagnosed DDD on the same day, he says it does fit the bill, explains my symptomless pains but it's something that can't be confirmed.

I guess at 17, it's ridiculous and almost too unlikely to be suffering from this. But often, people do develop arthritis to various reasons and sometimes at a young age. I had a schoolmate who had arthritis at 11 or 12. Since bulging discs are also known as Degenerative Disc Disease, it kinda makes sense why I'm so "old" anyway. My spine looks like it belongs to a 30 year-old, my ortho said.

So, arthritis could be affected (not caused) by diet, foods that do not burn 'cleanly' like red meats could cause unexplainable pains especially when the weather is cold. This is why arthritis happens to cause pain when there's a sudden drop in temperature.

I've also doubled my intake of water and substituted my insatiable love of tea with decaffeinated green tea which also detoxes. (What bullshit. I mean the detox part.)


In the past 3 weeks, I wasn't sure if making such a drastic change in my diet was paying off. The change isn't immediate, and even today I can't say it's some miracle cure-all. The thing that made me go, "That's it!" was really when the stormy season started and it was raining heavily all day. The pains were not as bad as when I was swimming at 14, but it was still annoying enough. It didn't make me stop walking and double over in pain like it used to, but it's still bad enough to turn my normally-brisk walk into a slow dawdle.

In short, it wasn't terrible, but worse, it was persistent. I Googled arthritis and found out diet largely affects it. I wasn't sure if I could trust Google advice since I'm rarely a Google doctor. I was desperate enough to take Dr. Google's advice though.

If anyone with arthritis happens to read this, especially if you're at a young age - 17 years-old or younger - I can tell you to just try it and that's about all I can tell you. I feel a lot better in general, one immediate change is that I'm not as tired in the morning. The double intake of water was what made me feel a lot better immediately. FYI don't listen to what people tell you, it is not 8 cups (2 litres) of water a day, it is 2 litres of fluids a day. I knew this when I was young enough and I always chortle in the face of people who tell me to drink only water. Simply compensate for high sodium, sugar and caffeine intake by drinking more water.

The pain is not gone entirely. I stretch every night (and some mornings) because of the bulging discs, and I can still feel the same pains when I do. But that terrible, sharp pain in my hip when I walk, or stand after sitting down for a long while, is gone. And my knee pains during cold weather feels like a dull muscle ache now. I still occasionally have that tiny migrating pain in the body, but that's mostly a joke compared to what I used to have to suffer.

I also do not do any exercise at all, it's been months since I last exercised so it's definitely the best odds for my condition. Though, the pain did come a month ago despite my not exercising. I'm not sure if it's always been arthritis that has been misdiagnosed all along, but if it was arthritis when I was 14, then in my experience rest has been the best cure. I say this because I think my pains came back (all at once, ugh. Like period.) after I played softball earlier this year. (It was gone entirely when I rested for the whole of F4. Absolutely no exercise at all and true enough, I had no pains.)

Now that I'm used to this diet and I'm feeling much better from it, I think I'll continue with it and see what comes out of it. My mum thinks I should be losing weight, but I'm ironically putting on weight, so haha! I found that funny.

I'm not sure if I'll be in a good enough shape to resume swimming after SPM. I need to be fit enough to handle butterfly, not to mention building stamina and rebuilding muscles.

But I'm much happier now, eating much more healthily. I feel great and better by the day.

I think that's all that matters.
- Fire ninja out.