Sugar and PMR

Good for you! Just wanted to comment that I never had elevated inflammatory markers in my blood, but I was still diagnosed with PMR due to my overnight pain while in bed. I apparently had such a mild case that it was hard to diagnose. If you improved your health through diet and lifestyle changes, this could be the reason why your inflammatory markers went down. See my previous comments regarding my whole foods diet.

Thankyou Janiceem, I think I have read your replies before but I will certainly look for them again. My main job right now is to make sure this never happens again.

Thanks for this / I have a sweet tooth especially during the holiday season - I just realized my symptoms have worsened the last few days but then I have also indulged in a significant sugar increase in my diet - so today and the next couple days I will cut out sugar totally and see if my pain subsides.

I agree it's not easy to avoid sugar this time of year. I've already had two pieces of blueberry pie, courtesy of my sister, and half a box of Turtles gifted to me by a friend....but I try to spread the Turtles out so I'm only having one a day. And there will be more sweet stuff to come, as another friend is giving me a boxed of baked goodies (I don't want to hurt her by saying no), and more pie on Christmas Day. Come January, though, it's back to a strict minimal-sugar diet.

Evidently not everyone is sensitive to sugar. I have tapered from 30 to 10 over the last 3 months. After originally being very cautious about sugar intake, I have fortunately not been affected at all by minimal sugar in coffee, breakfast pastries, or an occasional piece of candy. Perhaps the 10mg is dealing with it, and as tapering continues, the situation might change.

I am a firm believer that your diet and the way our food is manufacturer, some foods have sugar in them but not in a different firm/name, plays a lot in our health, that’s my believe. Before PMR I normally did not eat a lot of sweets but in looking for answers sugar came up as not being one’s friend. So in doing some trail and error experiment I found that when I indulged in eating sugary products that certain pains would flair up, eliminate sugar and pain would leave. Just had blood work this month, my CRP and SED rate are in normal range. Was at my doctors office 3 days ago and he dropped my prednisone from 7.5mg/day to 5mg/day for the next 3 months and 5mg/day every other day for the second 3 months and will see him 6 months from my last visit. I firmly believe that diet (ie: sugar, etc.),exercise, and my medication have helped with my progress so far.

I agree that diet makes a difference. Avoiding sugar is almost impossible over the holidays, but come January, I'm back to a strict minimal-sugar diet. I also need to reduce my salt intake, but that's actually harder for me than reducing sugar, as I'm a salt freak. I see my doctor in a month's time for an update. I'm down from 15 mg to 14 mg of pred a day, which is hardly significant, but if I taper down any more than a 1 mg per month, the pain starts to come back. Next week, I'm going to try going down to 13 mg a day, and so on.

Exercise is also important, as you noted. In fact, I've made a list of the things that affect my PMR pain, as follows, and will likely add to it as time goes on:
1. Sugar
2. Red meat
3. Processed foods
4. Lack of exercise
5. Stress
6. Lack of sleep
7. Damp chilly weather

I also don't react to small amounts of sugar...but too much will affect me, especially if it comes in the form of cake, pie, etc.

Thank you for the reply and list of what affects your PMR. You might want to look into the effect eggs have on PMR, there was something about what is in the egg yolk. I only have 2 eggs a week and I feel there is a difference.

Not hard for me to avoid sugar. I don't like the next day pain so I guess a bit of a whimp. Also, I found that eating grass fed beef is very beneficial it has more omega 3s than regular beef which has more omega 6s. Also, I do exercise daily.