Dionne Jean-Yves - The end of pain: how nutrition and diet can fight chronic inflammatory disease

In my introduction to this book, I emphasized the arthritis I had in my hands because it caused me the most pain and most affected my quality of life. This condition drove me to nutrition therapy in search of relief, as traditional medicine and alternative medicine such as acupuncture, osteopathy, physiotherapy and kinesitherapy had failed to bring any notable relief to the chronic pain in my hands. Even though I was greatly afflicted by the loss of the normal use of my hands, it was the sharp, virtually constant pain that was the most unbearable. This illness, which presented symptoms of both rheumatoid arthritis and arthrosis, had, between 2004 and 2007, turned me into an insomniac, to the point of affecting my quality of life. To present an overall picture of the effects of Dr. Seignalets diet on my quality of life as a whole, I will provide a detailed description here of the various symptoms of my arthritis/arthrosis.

Like many others, I periodically suffered from back pain in the region of the fifth lumbar vertebra. It began when I turned thirty, after I was involved in a collision of bumper cars in an amusement park. At the instant of the impact, I felt pain in my lower back, which became localized for two or three weeks around the sciatic nerve located in the gluteus and the left thigh. The pain gradually faded, even though from time to time I would feel it in the lumbar area. It was bearable and temporary, and aspirin would make it disappear.

When I was about forty-five years old, the painful episodes became more frequent and more acute. Sometimes, just straightening as I stood up would result in extreme pain. I consulted with physicians, who diagnosed arthrosis and recommended aspirin or Tylenol and physiotherapy to reduce the pain and inflammation. I followed some physiotherapy treatments, but with no great results. Later on, an acquaintance told me about a physiotherapist who specialized in osteopathy and who had successfully treated him for a serious and extremely painful lumbar condition. For many years, I worked with this physiotherapist during my most acute episodes of pain, and I must acknowledge that these treatments truly helped me. In addition, every morning when I woke up, I did a series of exercises prescribed by this therapist. These exercises both toned and strengthened the muscles around my vertebral column and helped me prevent a relapse. Most of the time, I had no trouble with my back as long as I did my exercises in the morning and avoided putting too much pressure on my lumbar spine as I went about my daily activities. My back problem was definitely under control, and I only suffered two or three serious crises a year.

In my early fifties, I started feeling acute pain in my neck that often radiated towards the left shoulder. X-rays revealed the presence of arthrosis. Osteopathic, acupuncture and kinesitherapy treatments generally provided me with relief for a few months. However, since the end of 2008 a year and a half after I started the hypotoxic diet I no longer suffer from cervical (neck) pain.

When I started Dr. Seignalets diet on June 10, 2007, in a bid to treat the arthritis/arthrosis in my hands, I had no expectations regarding the other joint diseases I suffered. In spring 2008, about one year after starting the diet, I noticed that I no longer felt the least lumbar pain when I got up in the morning, which was very unusual. I then gave in to laziness as I had lost motivation, and slowly stopped the daily exercises for my back. I even began to get careless, going as far as wielding a shovel in my garden and shoveling snow. After falling in January 2009, I had to acknowledge that even though the state of my lumbar column had greatly improved, I still needed to do the exercises for my back every morning.

Now, it is obvious that even though it stopped the progression of arthrosis in my lumbar region and strengthened my spine, the Seignalet diet did not repair everything in my vertebral joints. However, I can confirm that there has been a 90 percent improvement, to say the least. I no longer suffer from pain in my lower back except in very rare situations when I go overboard and when I get up after a long meal or movie and I no longer have any trouble straightening up as I used to.

In the fall of 2004, I started feeling some stiffness and pain in both knees, especially in the left knee. At the beginning of 2006, I bought a treadmill, planning to systematically walk for about fifteen minutes daily, depending on how much I could tolerate at any given time. At first, as I did these exercises, I would feel an itchy sensation and pain that was sometimes severe or light depending on the day. During the winter of 200607, I had to wear elastic knee braces, as my knees had lost their strength and hurt during and after skiing.

In May 2007, as I walked off a plane after a very long flight, I felt a round lump in the back of my left knee. This lump made it impossible for me to fully stretch out my leg and made walking difficult and painful, even though most of the time the pain did not disturb me that much. The general practitioner I consulted requested a venous Doppler ultrasound of my lower limbs that revealed the presence of a Bakers cyst. I was referred to an orthopedist. After examining my knee, the orthopedist told me the cyst had been caused by arthrosis. According to him, nothing could be done other than to insert an artificial knee in three or four years, by which time my knee would have become totally unusable.

When I received this diagnosis in August 2007, I had been on Dr. Seignalets diet for two months, and the pain I used to feel in my hands was history. Over the next months, the Bakers cyst disappeared, and the pain in my knees gradually reduced as long as I was mindful of my current capacities as I exercised on the treadmill. At that time, I used to go for slow walks, and in the fall of 2008, I noticed that I felt neither the itchy sensation nor the pain. I then decided to walk a little faster. Since the winter of 200809, I go downhill skiing without elastic knee braces, and I can even take on steep slopes without feeling that my knees will give up if I attempt one more descent, as had previously been the case. The improvement in my knees and back joints took place so gradually that it took me quite a while to fully realize the extent of my relief. While it is nearly impossible to forget sharp pain, a state of well-being does not readily draw our attention, especially if it is attained gradually, and more so in a situation in which pain is intermittent.

At the beginning of 2004, I started experiencing piercing intermittent pain in the metacarpophalangeal joints, which link the bones in the hand called metacarpi to the bones in the fingers called phalanxes. This pain quickly became acute, and after a few months, I consulted a doctor. Because he did not observe any redness or swelling in the joints of my hands, he told me everything was okay.

The condition continued to evolve between 2004 and 2005, and acute episodes became frequent. At first, Tylenol would generally make the pain bearable. Quite rapidly, however, the pain became worse, and at the same time, I began to suffer serious insomnia. In November 2006, as I recovered from a cold that had lasted far too long, all the metacarpophalangeal joints on both hands began to hurt really badly. (The general weakening of my body and of my immune system may have caused the progression of the arthritis.) The pain then spread to the other two joints of the ring finger and of the little fingers, as well as those in the thumb. Simply pressing down on these joints would cause unbearable pain. Soon, I was totally unable to bend the two joints on my left thumb, while the right thumb could only bend to about a 50 percent radius. As for both ring fingers, they would bend to a maximum of only 90 percent, even if I put pressure on them. My little fingers suffered a major loss of their flexibility and bounced back like springs when I tried to bend them. In fact, I could no longer close my hands; I could no longer use them normally and felt virtually continuous and intense pain in the metacarpophalangeal joints. My joints had become so weak and sensitive that I was no longer able to open even a bottle of water. I had to use tricks to avoid handshakes, which had become real torture. Tylenol no longer relieved the pain. I tried various balms that are supposedly very effective against pain, but all in vain.