@becsbuddy Hi.

I've had RA for at least 5 years but it only got diagnosed a year ago. I didn't know what it was, and because I'm palindromic and crazily stoic about pain, it was gone again before I could bother about getting to to a doctor with it. My very early cataracts and hearing loss are quite probably a symptom and if so I've had it 15 years. It really ramped up 2 years ago, with flares every week, and triggered me into getting a diagnosis, which was a slam dunk on my blood scores.

The supplement idea started with a comment about MSM being the only thing that worked for a friend's mother, and took quite a few hours digging out the research but the Internet is great these days. I did a few blood tests before I settled on the MSM dose that I originally had too low.

I'm thrilled to find that the main marker for whether it's working CRP in blood is now available as a pinprick lateral flow test from Amazon for £8 . It's accuracy is high, it's not very precise but it will tell me if I'm getting ill again without sending blood to a lab. I ran one on Monday and it gave a score of 0-10 and my bloods drawn on Tuesday gave 2.

My private Rheumatologist told me they know how MSM works and why but they aren't allowed to prescribe it because it has no licence. My NHS rheumatologist said "what's MSM?" and clearly thinks I'm currently in spontaneous remission and will be crawling back to him soon. I'm about to write a letter telling him I'm done with his department, they are so overload their service had been dreadful and if I do relapse I wouldn't go back to him anyway.

Then again, if there hadn't been such terrible delays in being seen Id never have realised that I had other options and I'd be on methotrexate now with a compromised immune system and constant trips to have blood collected for testing. Every cloud ......