Mom diagnosed with Rheumatoid arthritis, what to do?
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I appreciate your kind words on my little write-up. I simply have the privilege of good internet and I know what I'm looking for. I give thanks to @haidut for sharing many of the linked studies first on the forum(I'm not a RPF member but google searching "xyz ray peat haidut" is about as effective as pubmed for many things)
Your first thoughts of K and E are certainly correct! More so than many doctors who'd throw some immune suppressants into the mix.
Glad to hear you've had good results with Kuinone. I do not have spare income for supplements. at this time, but it's on my list of first buys from idealabs. Vit E is so versatile, I'm not surprised that your 400mg dosage has helped. I've mostly taken my Vit E if I have to eat out or I'm eating liver to assist the retinol absorption and whatnot.
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JSYK, there's some evidence to suggest that baking soda improves antibiotic effectiveness. This is true for several cases of antibiotics but if you use tetracycline then it may actually reduce efficacy because tetracycline uses a pH gradient to enter cells and bicarb reduces that gradient, making it harder to enter the cells. That being said, bicarbonate is an intrinsic antibiotic, even in concentrations of 0.5-1 tsp per 1L of water.
It's worth talking with your mom's doctor about a 2-3 month session of bicarbonate alongside the other non-antibiotic supplements and thyroid in order to repair your mom's gut barrier, reduce her RA, boost her thyroid, and get good protein in before doing antibiotics which may be too much on her system without reinforcement and support.
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@JulofEnoch re: hormonesmatter.com: They have some excellent articles about thiamine on that site. The articles about hormones, I suspect, are possibly influenced by newer "research" paid for by the estrogen industry. I prefer to rely on Ray Peat's articles/interviews about hormones myself.
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@mostlylurking
thanks
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This is such wonderful advice, thank you so much! I've shared all of this with her. Interestingly enough she was on Armour Thyroid so this is all starting to add up.
She does have a pretty good doctor that looks at things from a functional perspective and my mom talked to her today and she said between the gallbladder and arthritis stuff/autoimmune stuff, wondering if she has SIBO.
So next steps are testing for that, hormone testing, potential antibiotic, then we can look at supplementing with progesterone, DHEA, vitamin K, baking soda (with the gallbladder stuff I don't know if she can handle it at the moment), vitamin E and whatever else has been mentioned, along with upping the BCFA (also finding a better endocrinologist - great suggestion calling up the pharmacists to reverse engineer finding a good one)
Thank you again for all of your help!
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@JulofEnoch Also really great callout of not immediately jumping to an antibiotic. She has allegedly been taking oil of oregno for an extended period of time, wondering if that screwed up her gut flora, and with the gallbladder stuff it just seems like her digestive system is very tempermental right now and throwing an antibiotic at it might either really help or be way too extreme at the moment.
Baking soda seems like such an easy, cheap add as well with relatively nothing to lose
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@irs said in Mom diagnosed with Rheumatoid arthritis, what to do?:
She does have a pretty good doctor that looks at things from a functional perspective and my mom talked to her today and she said between the gallbladder and arthritis stuff/autoimmune stuff, wondering if she has SIBO.
Another thing to consider is trying some thiamine. When people get on the far side of 60, absorption of thiamine via the intestine gets poorer and poorer. So lots of people wind up with a thiamine deficiency. Thiamine deficiency is now believed to play a part in most/all of the dementias including Parkinson's Disease and Alzheimer's.
Here's some links for your consideration:
https://www.hormonesmatter.com/sibo-ibs-constipation-thiamine-deficiency/
https://www.hormonesmatter.com/dementia-thiamine-deficiency/
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@mostlylurking awesome, thank you. I started taking thymine for post concussive symptoms and it's wild how much better i felt almost instantly
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@irs Great news! I'm so glad it's helping you.
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@irs hope this helps! https://constantinek.substack.com/p/autoimmunity
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@Sophocles amazing, thank you!
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Ok so the latest update is that her gallbladder is fine - they did a CT scan and her gallbladder, liver etc all looked wonderful which is wild considering the surgeon was about to take it out lol
So now they're leaning heavily towards SIBO and she's going to take a test next week to see if it is in fact that, who knows if it will be. One of the frustrating things is the way the medical system works, you have to wait to take the test, then take the test, then get the results before taking any action, and she's been in tremendous pain from this.
I figure there are things she can do in the meantime that won't necessarily hurt to see if it provides some relief. She said papaya enzymes are one of the few things that seem work, which makes me think its a stomach acid thing. I suggested she take some activated charcoal and see what happens.
I passed along all of the advice in this thread so she can start incorporating that as well, thank you again!
