Have not checked in here in a long time. I had PMR and decided not to do the steroids. Just took anti-inflammatories by prescription to manage the pain - did not work so good. I spent a lot of time in bed but here I am good as new. It took about two years to run it's course but I have recovered and now you would never know anything was wrong with me.
Make sure if you are doing, or have done, the steroids to have your eyes checked for glaucoma.
Hang in there. Hi Smartie,
Congratulations for beating this without drugs. I have managed to stay 98% symptom-free by using diclofenac (a NSAID), an anti-inflammation diet, and lots of supplements. A trial run of a few Prednisone tablets knocked the symptoms down, and I believe the diet and supplements and diclofenac were able to keep them down.
I also read Barry Sears, and now am reading Monica Reinagel's book, The Inflammation-Free Diet Plan. She also has a website called Nutritiondata.self.com which shows the Inflammation Factor of foods in a quantitative fashion which I find very useful.
I buy herbs in bulk at the local health food store and put them in capsules with a little hand-held gadget. Real inexpensive. I think ginger, tumeric, garlic, and cayenne are the best. I take lots of fish oil, ( 6 grams a day).
Also lots of vitamins, and selenium, zinc, and DHEA.
Hope you have continued good luck and a great holiday season.
Good news Tom! That is almost to the letter how I treated myself. I also took the diclofenac. I would stop taking it to see if I could stand the pain. It was a wonderful day when I stopped it to see how I felt and found I could get through the day (though still in pain - I was happy just to be able to bear it without meds.) I also took the pred just for about a month till I figured out how bad it was for my body.
I also am a fan of Barry Sears. His fish oil is very good although very expensive. It is all about cooling that inflammation. This is a disease of inflammation!
I never stuffed my own pills but I thought about it and did buy some empty capsules! Yes! Ginger, tumeric. Also cinnamon. I liked the Chapter One Zymafland.
I truly believe that all the other meds just weakens your body and adds more problems. You need your body to be strong to overcome this inflammation.
You did not say how long you have been affected. Mine just gradually faded away. Just got better and better very, very slowly. I will say this. When I decided to stop the pred I did talk to my doctor and my pharmacist. I was down to 5 mg and just stopped as they said I could. I did have a hard time of it. That was the absolute WORST I ever felt. But that pain also slowly got better. So, I wonder if a lot of the pain people are having is more from trying to get off the pred than from the PMR??????
Oh, I also took pycogenol. Check that out. Time will tame this beast as well.
Best of luck to you and all the others fighting this awful disease.Coincidentally, or not, I just ordered some pycnogenol from
Swansonvitamins.com. They've got great prices, especially on their own Swanson's brand. I haven't ordered from them before but have heard great things about them from a friend.
I only took Prednisone for about 2 weeks. I asked my GP for a prescription for 10mg. a day. He wouldn't comply since he knew I didn't have health insurance and wouldn't want to be doing a lot of follow-up, (blood tests and such).
He did, however, agree to give me just (12) 10mg tablets as a trial. You see, he wasn't sure of my self-diagnosis of Polymyalgia. Sure enough, the prednisone worked its magic within hours, confirming my suspicions.
I'm glad now that he didn't give me a prescription, though, because the immuno-suppression of the Pred. allowed a latent fungal infection in my lungs to emerge. In the
desert of southern Arizona a fungus grows, which causes a serious disease called "Valley
Fever". It can be fatal if it disperses through the body. If I'd stayed on the Pred. any longer it probably would have suppressed the symptoms of the Valley Fever (coccidioidomycosis) to where it would've gotten more entrenched.
By the way, I had a bout of Polymyalgia, never diagnosed, 15 years ago. It hit me when I was 48 years old. I suffered through that one, the worst stretch lasted maybe 4 or 5 months, then gradually got better. I don't think it ever completely went away, as I still had shoulder pains and generalized inflammation which I learned to live with over the ensuing years.
This time that short stint on Prednisone seemed to knock the inflammation down, as I mentioned in the previous post, and I credit my new attention to diet and supplementation with keeping it down.
My main focus now is fighting the remaining symptom of this Valley Fever, ( a nagging cough which has hung on for months) without reactivating the Polymyalgia. To beat the Fever involves stimulating the immune system, something I was disinclined to do when focused on the Polymyalgia.
I'm willing to admit that I may be wrong as to my interpretation of the events I've related.
I'm reluctant to go to doctors, preferring to research this stuff out on the web, and to treat myself with vitamins, minerals, herbs, and diet.
Oh, and the reasons I'm not too anxious to get off diclofenac:
(1) I'm not overly worried about the likely side effects,
(2) I've tried it and still get quite a bit of pain,
(3) It's my understanding that inflammation sort of feeds on itself, that the inflammatory chemicals in one's body stimulate the production of more of the same. I'm quite concerned about the possible long- term effects of inflammation on my arteries, so I'm willing to use that drug awhile longer.
It's good to hear of people managing PMR with natural remedies. Friends are always asking me, "isn't there some way to deal with it without taking prednisone, etc?"
Because I also have GERD, I can't tolerate turmeric, cayenne, or garlic --I do take fish oil capsules, but even they tend to irritate my esophagus (maybe it's because of the lemon oil they put in the capsules to reduce the odor and taste). However, I wonder how much of the disturbance is due to the prednisone having aggravated my GERD (which was under control before taking pred) so that things which might not have bothered me before now cause a problem.
As far as the diet, it's my fault that I can't stick with the anti-inflammatory regime. I did it for 3 weeks and then .....I hate to say it, I just got bored. I was so upset and angry about having this condition and it seemed like food provided some comfort--eating the foods I like and wanted to eat. I did read a book by Barry Sears and I wasn't sure that his recipes were really anti-inflammatory; one included Canadian bacon and that doesn't seem like it should be on the anti-inflammatory menu! Just my opinion; I could be wrong.
It does sound like the members who are trying natural remedies are on the right track, though. I admire you for trying a different way. It never occurred to me about Valley Fever and diseases like that getting a foothold due to prednisone suppression of the immune system. That is really frightening. Tom, it sounds like you are doing the right thing.
freesia
Hi Freesia,
Regarding GERD, my wife had it and was given Prilosec. It helped a little for awhile. Then her acupuncturist told her that her problem was too little acid in the stomach, and told her to take hydrochloric acid. Sounds weird, I know, but it fixed her problem immediately. No problem since.
As to the anti- inflammatory diet, I hew pretty close to it because I have to. I can tell immediately if I overdose on inflammatory foods. It wasn't until I found nutritiondata.self.com that I was able to really put it into practice, though. The numbering system there and also in Monica Reinagel's books puts it into perspective.
You're right, some unlikely foods like canadian bacon are rated anti-inflammatory, and apples are rated inflammatory, for instance. She explains in her books the rating system and the 20 nutritional variables which are taken into account to arrive at a rating.
However, even on that diet, inflammatory foods are not necessarily considered "bad", nor are anti-inflammatory foods necessarily "good". All she recommends is that at the end of the day, if you have an auto-immune disease, your numbers add up to a +200 or more.
Of course once you get the hang of it, you don't actually add up the numbers every day, any more than a person on a low calorie diet has to literally count the caloric numbers every day.
So the diet can be extremely varied, and she recommends that. No food is forbidden.
But some must be limited.
You get a lot of conflicting information on this subject. For instance, one website rates cherries as one of the 10 best anti-inflammatory foods,due to their antioxidants, whereas Monica rates them slightly inflammatory due to their sugar content and thus their effect on insulin production. (which stimulates inflammation)
But again, she certainly isn't against eating cherries. Quite the contrary. And the rating for them, (-38 for 1 cup of pitted), is almost negligible when compared to the + 300 rating for 1/2 cup boiled onions. (for example)
So thank for the support, Freesia, and I wish you well.
Hi, Tom,
I've also heard that GERD could actually be caused by too little acid in the stomach. I tried drinking lemon juice in water but it seemed to make it worse for me. I'd be willing to try HCL just to see if it does work, though. Did she buy it in a health food store? I've been taking Zantac for almost a year now. It has worked for me, but I prefer to use natural treatments and remedies.
I bookmarked the site you showed in your post. I had been steered toward Bernard Weil's anti-inflammatory diet by my acupuncturist and chiropractor: http://www.drweil.com/drw/ecs/pyramid/press-foodpyramid.html. Maybe it's not that much different from Monica Reinagel's plan (which I also want to check out), although on the surface it looks a little more loose. As far as the plan you are on, I like the fact that no food is forbidden. I think it's ridiculous and not productive to label foods "forbidden"....it makes them more tempting!
Maybe it isn't so impossible to stick with this eating plan, then. Thanks for the information, Tom--I'm going to look into it!
Thanks for the good wishes. Same to you!!
freesia
Hi Freesia,
My wife got her HCL through her acupuncturist, and I'm sure she paid a fortune for it.
However, I checked on swansonvitamins.com and they have four brands of what looks to be about the same formulation as my wife has. Search their site for betaine HCL. They're only like 7 to 10 dollars a bottle of 100 to 180 capsules.
Her acupuncturist told her to take one capsule with each meal that contained meat.
Regarding the anti-inflammatory diet, I think what made Monica's system so workable for me is the fact that different amounts of various foods are actually given a number. For me that put things into perspective.
I hope you can get your GERD under control. Being able to take a few capsules of ginger, garlic or tumeric would really help you on that diet, as their hugely anti-inflammatory ratings would balance out a lot of foods you might crave which are inflammatory.
Also, check out the rating for onions. I've taken to cutting up a whole onion in most of the dishes I cook. You'd think it'd be awful, but when cooked the pungent taste almost disappears. I'm sure that you knew that, but a lot of this is new to me.
Good luck!
The dosage of Diclofenac prescribed to each patient will vary.Diclofenac tablet side effects such as constipation, dizziness, headache, upset
stomach, and heartburn. I've been on Diclofenac 50MG work by reducing certain substances that cause inflammation and pain in the body.
Bio-equivalent drugs for Diclofenac are Generic for Cataflam and Generic for Voltaren.
Thanks for some more valuable information.
Would you believe, I happened to read the flyer that comes with my generic Zantac, and lo and behold, it has betaine HCL in it! I had just purchased some betaine HCL from the local health food store before I read this, and was trying it out, but it didn't seem to do the same job as Zantac. I can't figure out why? Maybe I need to take more of it, and no Zantac? I don't eat beef. I was eating chicken but now am down to a little fish (as far as animal proteins).
It's so strange that all the things that will help inflammation are supposedly bad for GERD! Such as onions. I love onions --I find if I eat sweet onions and not the yellow onions, I do okay. Raw yellow or red onions almost kill me! Shallots, green onions are all okay. Maybe it's because I'm taking Zantac and also less prednisone.
I hadn't drunk any coffee for a year because I figured prednisone is doing enough damage to my bones, it doesn't need any help from caffeine....but recently I tried a little diet cola and it seemed to perk me up. I've been having so much pain, it's almost driving me nuts and I figured, if it helps me feel a little better, why not? So I now drink maybe a cup of coffee if I think I need it. I know it's not good for bone health but as I said--it seems to help with the pain of PMR.
Take care and hope everyone's PMR will take a hike!!!!
freesia
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