In the past few weeks of eating primarily raw food, I’ve noticed a very interesting development—my arthritis pains are back! This is particularly interesting because as far as I can tell, I’ve been eating healthier than ever. My preferred 90% raw has slipped down to 70% or so most days (I wondered if that would happen; many sources say it’s easier to keep from slipping if you just stick to 99% or 100%), but I’m consuming a ton of amazing, delicious, fresh green produce. As far as I can imagine, this new development can be attributed to the following possible causes:
- New sensitivity. When I originally identified my wheat = arthritis issue and went off processed wheat, I was just fine with sprouted Ezekiel bread; it didn’t cause me any problems at all. But after I’d been off wheat for a long time, the sprouted bread started causing me arthritis pain. A little, but it was there. Like many other things, it’s like zooming in on a fractal; making one big change revealed other smaller changes that needed to be made too. Getting rid of unsprouted wheat increased my sensitivity to what’s going on in my body, so I was finally able to notice the problems with sprouted wheat, too. (This is a big honking theory—so let me know if you see holes!) Likewise, it’s possible that getting rid of a certain tier of food in my diet has revealed a new level of sensitivity, which may mean there are other foods I need to eject in order to keep my arthritis away. (For instance, I may need to eat quite a bit less fruit—it might be a fruit sugars thing at this level, rather than just a processed sugars thing.)
- Unidentified Flying Objects. I am still definitely open to the possibility that there’s wheat somewhere in my diet and I’m just not recognizing it. I’ve thought about this a lot since I noticed the new pain in my hands, but I haven’t run any actual experiments yet. So this is still definitely possible.
- Detox, y’all. Detox does a ton of wacky things, so I am definitely not ruling out the possibility that I have inflammation caused by raw detox, and the inflammation is manifesting as arthritis pain in my hands. (When I made the wheat connection, I linked wheat and sugar to inflammation and inflammation to arthritis—it made sense then, so this isn’t unreasonable.) Theoretically it will go away if this is the case, but I admittedly understand very little about detox, so I’ll need to do more research.
To be completely honest, it could be all these things. I think my first, biggest question is this: What am I eating right now that could be causing inflammation? I’m going to need to take this to another level to find out.
I’m bizarrely grateful to my arthritis pain, as frustrating as it is when my living depends on my ability to interact with my computer. That pain has propelled me into more brilliant change and personal growth than possibly anything else in my life. And here I am, very possibly looking at another change that needs to be made.
Score ten for arthritis pain, people! ;}
Tagged as: arthritis, food, inflammation, raw, wheat
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