Diet, my autoimmune disease, and the quest to feel better

It all started with my rheumatoid arthritis diagnosis back in 2012. Maybe like most people diagnosed with an autoimmune disease, I didn’t believe it would ever happen to me. I also thought about its effects and how severe they can be. Would it slowly deform me? Would it mean that I would have trouble doing simple things like walking, picking things up, and opening jars? These questions raced through my head after my doctor notified me.

I called my mom the day after I found out. She was upset, weeping because she felt some kind of responsibility. Like me, she has had RA since her thirties and also like me felt that taking potent drugs like methotrexate was not appealing – especially when that’s the only option your doctor gives you. In my case, that’s what I got: a prescription for some drugs to ward off the inflammation with a dash of hope to move into remission. I wasn’t willing to take the risk and told my doctor I was going to try altering my diet first to see what effect it had before moving on to drugs. She left me with a snide comment of “good luck with your diet.” and I took that as a challenge.

In my opinion, drugs are not the only solution to fix illnesses. I’m not sure why I feel this way. Maybe it’s the hacker mentality I have; the feeling that there’s always an alternative route to take to get what you want. Maybe it’s the problem-solving nature of us all. Whatever it is, I set out to fix this thing by myself without needing to take toxic drugs that have a whole slew of side effects which in turn would probably need other drugs to combat – a vicious cycle.

Taking on this challenge meant that I was pretty much on my own which is totally ok. I taught myself how to write software and make a living doing it, so how hard could it be to teach myself how to fix my autoimmune disease?