Water Retention And Psoriatic Arthritis
Some years ago I was consulted by a lady called Sally who had been told she had psoriatic arthritis. This is a combination of painful joints (in Sally’s case her fingers) and a skin disease known as psoriasis, which makes patches of your skin red and unsightly.
Since painful joints are often caused by water retention, I thought it was likely that the same metabolic imbalance in her body was causing both the water retention and the psoriasis and that maybe both could be helped with the Waterfall Diet. So I put Sally on the Waterfall Diet on a trial basis, and waited to see what would happen.
I was really expecting Sally’s condition to improve, but when she returned after two weeks, her joint pains were as bad as ever. Then I discovered that Sally had unknowingly been cheating on the diet. While she knew that for the first few weeks she was not allowed to eat salt, I had forgotten to tell her that smoked fish has a high salt content. Sally loved these and had been eating them every day.
Sally loved anything salty. She had always sprinkled her food liberally with salt even when the food was already salted. Unsalted food would get a double helping.
Sally spent a very unhappy few days eating food which she did not much enjoy at all, but she soon gained the tremendous benefit of pain-free fingers. She felt so much better that it became quite easy for her to stick to the diet.
Sally also lost 3 lbs in water weight very quickly. Salt plays a key role in your fluid balance because it dictates how your kidneys behave. The salt in Sally’s diet was interfering with her kidneys and the resulting water retention was making her fingers hurt.
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Comments
Comment from Mark
Time August 11, 2011 at 10:34 am
Hi Linda.
I am a (very young) 50-year old male, no real health problems, physically quite fit, but yet inclined to put on weight very quickly, usually around the waist (‘love handles’) and chest (‘man boobs’). In addition, I have always suffered from eczema and very dry skin.
For some time now I have suspected that I suffer from water retention. I always feel extremely bloated after drinking water, I literally sweat litres of liquid after intense physical exercise (most of this, strangely, emanates from my shoulders, arms, backs of my hands, wrists and ankles, and not ‘normal’ places like armpits, chest etc), and when I do your fingernail-thumb indentation test, the skin takes quite a while to return to its former shape.
It almost seems to me that my skin is never hydrated naturally, and that the liquid, for some reason, doesn’t arrive there.
I wonder if water retention plays a role in the formation of adipose tissue?
Comment from Robert
Time January 2, 2011 at 12:06 pm
I suffer from severe CBOP, and am on Oxygen 24 /24.I also have psoriatic arthritis and hence am quite immobile. My legs and feet are swollen with water. I recently passed through the scanner which, although showing many problems,did not specifically mention water around the heart.
I have been taking 40 mg of Biogaran every day for 2 years or so and have the impression that it is these that are making me feel bad every day until about 4 pm. Today I did not take it and feel better than I have done for some time.