Magic Arthritis Therapy: And it's FREE!

My in-laws visited this past weekend. My FIL has arthritis in many areas of his body. He is constantly looking for a new pill or therapy to ease the pain that arthritis brings. He currently is exploring platelet therapy; a therapy I investigated over a year ago when it was much less available in this area. The science looked promising, but if one thing is true about new therapies is that while it may work wonders for one person, it may be ineffective for another. So that's what I told him. But I have since discovered a therapy that works for 90% of arthritis sufferers and is totally FREE. The big secret? Stop eating so much sugar. It drops a person's weight which relieves the overall stress on a person's joints, thus relieving the arthritis pain.
As a western society we have ramped up how many foods contain processed sugar by astronomical amounts in the last 30 years. Even in foods that are supposedly healthy, the fats have been replaced with shocking amounts of sugar. I looked last night at a bottle of teriyaki sauce I was going to use on a stir fry and found it contained 56 grams of sugar per 1/4 cup. That's almost 2 chocolate bars! No wonder people who think they are eating in a healthier way don't lose weight.
So, I've made it my personal mission to not only increase my protein intake but also to cut the amount of sugar from the standard 40+ tsp (200 grams) a day down to 6 tsp (30 grams) a day. It isn't as simple as simply cutting out candy. I have to look at any food product that is not sold in its original/natural form. In almost every case, you can pretty much guarantee sugar has somehow worked its way into the ingredients list.
Today (at least up until now which only includes breakfast and lunch), for example, I've had a protein shake (my standard breakfast) which contains 0.5 grams of sugar, chicken broth which contains 1.07 grams of sugar and a half serving of peanuts at 1.5 grams of sugar. This is me taking a proactive approach to reducing the amount of sugar I eat. Usually I eat a salad for lunch, which is tricky depending on the type of salad dressing I use, but it is certainly much less sugar than if I ate a sandwich or plate of French fries. If I were to tally up what many people eat for breakfast, such as a bowl of cereal and a glass of juice they would already have consumed over 80 grams of sugar. It's shocking.
When I think of my FIL and his nightly habit of a stack of white bread (4 -6 pieces) with molasses gobbed on top I know exactly why he has trouble losing weight and his arthritis flares up constantly. It's interesting that most people would rather take pills with a host of side effects rather than simply pay attention to the sugar content in our food.

Let's get EPIC

After my last post I did re-evaluate my goals. I decided to give the Epic Canadian multi-day race a chance and reorganized my training plan to suit it. I still have every intention of running the 50k at the Valley Harvest Marathon in October but I believe my knee is demanding that I take my training more slowly. Fine. One thing I've learned from OA in the knee is to be flexible based on what your body is capable at the current moment of achieving. So mine is currently calling for a slower mileage build up, and I have the time to make it happen.
I'm honestly not all that upset about canceling my plans to run the NS Marathon. It was really a replacement for an ultra that I would normally do in June but a family commitment that had me change my plans back in January. I feel positive about running the Epic Canadian races, after all, the distances are what I would normally run on a weekend anyhow, I'll just add the goal of doing them in a reasonable amount of time, or at least not finishing last haha.
In the meantime I still have the Walk to Fight Arthritis coming up on the first weekend of June. After a month of dance competitions for my daughter I really just want to take it easy on that weekend, but I feel I have a duty to support the cause. Last year my husband and I got into an argument on the drive to the event (about my driving) so I'm hoping for a much happier day this year...or maybe I'll just leave him at home.
So my new goals are set and I'm ready to go after them. I'm also hoping to run some shorter events between now and the end of August, and maybe even run one of the Maritime Race Weekend races in mid September. Let's giv'r!!

Re-evaluating Summer Goals

So...my knee. It's been giving me a bit of grief on the past few runs. I can't say that its totally my knee either, since my quad has hurt more than my knee, and at times it even gives out/spasms mid stride, which always leads to a fun little recovery. I've tried lathering icy-gel on it with a little bit of relief. I can't point to any one event that caused this issue either. I even went through my Strava logs to see if I've somehow drastically increased my mileage over the space of a month or two. But no, for the past 4 months I've averaged just above 250 kms for each month. Grrr. To add to the issue my other knee, just below the patella, has decided to kick up a fuss if I don't lather it with icy gel too, but modifying my stride seems to also help that leg.
It's frustrating. Especially now that I've finally got my long run back into the 20's. I haven't been doing as much weight training lately so I've resolved to pick that back up in the hopes it will help.
My frustration has led me to re-evaluate my goals for the summer. Doing a marathon no longer seems like a totally fun idea. I've looked around at the other events going on in the area and found an interesting endurance challenge; the Epic Canadian. I would run 6.1km (what's up with the 0.1 I don't know) on Friday night, then 10km on Saturday and finish with 21.1 on Sunday. All of the races are very close by and from what I hear the race support is great. The issue with that idea is the cost. To do all three will cost $181.00. Ouch. When you're used to paying $30 for a race, this amount seems ridiculous.
So I'll weigh my options. I could also not race at all this summer and train even more slowly up to the 50km road race on the Thanksgiving weekend. One thing is for sure, currently running 30km long runs is not something my knee is willing to go along with.