Food And Arthritis

Add the RIGHT foods to your diet to REDUCE arthritic pain and inflammation.
Include the WRONG foods to your diet and INCREASE arthritic pain and inflammation.
My choice? A life-journey based on a low-oil whole-food plant based diet.
Whatever your current state of health, make yourself healthier - you deserve it. Start your plant based diet journey today.

Monday 3 July 2017

Are NRAS fit for purpose?

Excuse me for making a controversial post.  Over some months I posted onto the NRAS forums on the HealthUnlocked website about my dietary changes and progress towards good health.  I even went to meet Ailsa Bosworth at NRAS headquarters to discuss the benefits of dietary improvements.  Ailsa was kind enough to take a paper from me to present to the NICE committee and came back with the feedback that the research supporting the Paddison Program was not "gold standard".

So good so far.

I continued to post that my health was continuing to improve.  Sadly my posts, both and after the meeting met with hostility from certain forum members.  Indeed I started one thread, "I feel sorry..." whose remit was again to help people begin to think that they might actually help themselves to better health with dietary interventions.  This was met with a barrage of hostility.

It's not that NRAS are against diet.

NRAS has always upheld the advantages of a Mediterranean diet. Whereas I have always challenged this position.   For me, anyone who puts meat in their mouth is putting a minimum of 30% fat, and often trans-fats, into their body.  Also almost everyone who seriously explores dietary options finds that dairy - milk, eggs and cheese - are big triggers for inflammation.  And so we are at odds.

But today NRAS goes too far.

Today one of NRAS staff posted arguing that the program I have benefited from has two issues.  The thread you can read at https://healthunlocked.com/nras/posts/135777663/ra-sufferer. All someone asked was has anyone tried the Clint Paddison program.  NRAS jumped in with the response, "absolutely no proven evidence to back up the claims of this programme" and also then went on to describe his program as a "money making scheme with no evidence base at all."

That is too far.  This is coming from an organisation who year after year takes money from drug companies!  After all Ailsa had already accepted that she had presented evidence from Clint Padisson to the NICE committee on Arthritis.  As to money-making, yes Clint charges for his program.  He has to live.  He does not get any money from drug companies.  He does not sell any supplements or tablets of any kind.  He advocates yoga as being 40% of his program and yet receives no financial reward for that promotion.

I realise that by posting this probably NRAS will do some kind of cleansing of its forums to remove my posts.  The organisation has had a history of doing this for other people, so I guess my posts will suffer the same fate.

Who cares?

Well, the only reason for ever posting anything is to change someone else's life.  In my case I do it to help people with arthritis think about improving their lives.  I would hope that NRAS had similar aspirations.  Apparently not.  Rather than encourage people to think about changing their diet for the better NRAS want to shut down that kind of debate.

A final note.  The first of July, a couple of days ago.  I finished tapering my methotrexate.  No more drugs.  A drug free life begins now.  I took almost six months of tapering to be safe in the knowledge I was not doing my body any harm.  Instead I have never felt healthier.  I wish I could say the same for people on the NRAS forums.

5 comments:

  1. Great article Andy, well said.

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  2. Yay and HallelulYah! I"m so excited for you Andy! I followed you on the paddison forum while I was there...I am still battling and refusing drugs but looking hard at doing it. Any chance you might contact me so I could talk with you about that??

    Many blessings and best wishes to you, sir!

    Traci R.

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    Replies
    1. Traci, drop me an email andyswarbs at gmail dot com.

      Delete
  3. Yay and HallelulYah! I"m so excited for you Andy! I followed you on the paddison forum while I was there...I am still battling and refusing drugs but looking hard at doing it. Any chance you might contact me so I could talk with you about that??

    Many blessings and best wishes to you, sir!

    Traci R.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I have hesitated about NRAS as anyone with ideas gets shot down by the must take DMARDS brigade, just because they are and safety in numbers I guess.....

    ReplyDelete