Why am I so tired?

I'm REALLY tired today. I have the cold that won't quit, and the Humira has short-circuited my immune system so I'm not fighting the cold off as well as I could. Ironically, because I'm tired, I'm having a hard time getting the motivation together to write about an article on fatigue and inflammatory illnesses that I found last week. But this is really cool science... I've been excited to share it.

In short:

Although the brain is usually isolated from the immune system, the study suggests that certain behavioral changes suffered by those with chronic inflammatory diseases are caused by the infiltration of immune cells into the brain. The findings suggest possible new treatment avenues to improve patients' quality of life.

It was previously thought that immune cells couldn't make it to the brain... but this study shows that in folks with inflammatory illnesses, white blood cells called monocytes do get up into our noggins and make us feel sick. The researchers in this study were able to reduce "sickness behaviors"(fatigue, malaise, loss of social interest) in sick mice by blocking monocytes from the brain. And one way they were able to block these monocytes was by blocking TNF signals, which as we know is part of what Humira does.

I love the idea of these little mice suddenly exhibiting social interest. What, are they making martinis? Playing bridge? At least now I know that my Humira is making me sick and outgoing at the same time.

you are what you eat

I'm just starting to do some reading on how anti-inflammatory diets affect inflammatory arthritis, after toying around with one of these diets for the last few months. This article from CBS presents a decent review of this diet, but also implies that as of yet most evidence of effectiveness of the diet is either anecdotal or inconclusive.

However, here's a fairly recent article which suggests that there are significant benefits to eating a gluten free, vegan diet if you have rheumatoid arthritis. The GF vegan diet is by it's nature anti-inflammatory. While we can't assume what works for RA will work for PsA, I think it can't hurt to surmise some connection between the two, because they are both types of autoimmune arthritis and they have such similar symptomology. Hey, inflammatory arthritis is inflammatory arthritis!

Myself, I'm avoiding gluten (because I'm a celiac), sugar, dairy and alcohol. I'm also trying to reduce nightshades. Anecdotally (N=1) I've found that I do feel worse on the day after I've had a sugar/dairy binge. I haven't had gluten in 15 years (on purpose at least) so I have no personal data there.