What is psoriatic arthritis?
Psoriatic arthritis (PsA) is a chronic disease where the immune system creates inflammation that can lead to joint pain, swelling, stiffness, and fatigue. While the condition can start at any age, it most often occurs between 30-50 years of age. And PsA tends to present in about a third of people with psoriasis, which is often due to the fact that inflammation is an underlying marker of the two ailments. In fact, experts note that those with more severe cases of psoriasis can have a greater chance of developing psoriatic arthritis down the road – on average, 10 years after a psoriasis diagnosis. London admits that living with PsA hasn’t always been easy and that her diagnosis came with a learning curve. However, over the years, she’s learned to implement certain lifestyle change that make life with PsA manageable. Things like avoiding certain foods, toning down her workouts, and slowing down have helped her tremendously to keep her condition at bay. She’s also made a point of prioritizing self-care and making sure to be kind to herself in the event that she’s not always perfect in the maintenance department. Parade.com caught up with London who walked us through her journey with psoriatic arthritis and shared her tips on how she wards off a painful flare up:
A childhood psoriasis diagnosis
I got psoriasis when I was about four-and-a-half. This was in the 70s and there wasn’t a whole lot known about psoriasis. It was behind my ears and I’d get a couple of spots. And I was given a cream for it. When I turned 11, I got strep throat over and over again one year, and then I broke out from the neck down with psoriatic scales. After that, it took two years for me to get rid of it. I was on penicillin every day for three years. There was a lot that went into trying to fix whatever was wrong. I finally had my tonsils taken out when I was 17. I’ve since had just a couple of flare-ups over the years.
The first signs of psoriatic arthritis
Psoriatic arthritis is something very different than psoriasis. I had known about it because I’ve done stuff for the National Psoriasis Foundation, but it never occurred to me that that was even a possibility for me. The last season of What Not to Wear, I was exhausted all the time. I was bloated. I would feel tightness in my Achilles heels and had no idea why. I was gaining weight. I felt totally lethargic. And it wasn’t until I was doing an interview with the Psoriasis Foundation and with a dermatologist that I realized that I had psoriatic arthritis. I was complaining about having symptoms like being tired all the time. And the dermatologist started asking me questions like, “How old are you? When did you first get psoriasis? Did you ever have indented nails?” And I was saying “yes” to everything. And she said, “You need to see a rheumatologist. I think you have psoriatic arthritis.” I went to see one – and this was after every kind of other test I could have had, just trying to figure out thyroid, anything. And he diagnosed me.
Psoriatic arthritis treatment
It really took me about two years to get it under control. A lot of that was with the diet and through medication at different intervals. And really, it’s something that I noticed as I get older I really have to pay attention to. For instance, nobody knew that there was a connection between chronic stress and having psoriasis so stress management is another thing I’ve really learned to implement.
What does psoriatic arthritis feel like?
The physical ailments are like an arthritic pain inside the body and it’s due to inflammation. I start to get it in my spine. I start to get it in my hips. It feels like you have limited movement. When I have a real flare, that will put me in bed for a few days. It feels like you’re the tin man and you need oil. Everything is hard to move. There have been times where I’ve just been in so much pain that I haven’t gotten out of bed for a couple of days. There are two things that can create that flare and it’s an actual physical fall or hurt or pain or over exercising, or real emotional trauma. Either one can really wreak havoc when you have an autoimmune disease.
Psoriatic arthritis diet plan
There is a lot of research behind the fact that there are certain things that are inflammatory – gluten dairy, soy, sugar, alcohol, nicotine, nightshade vegetables. All of them have been proven across the board to be harder for people with autoimmune diseases to handle. If you’re celiac, you can’t handle gluten at all. So it’s really to minimize those things in your diet and to help keep your body from not feeling inflamed. So those are the things that I look out for. I’m not vegan. I do eat meat, but everything is based around getting all the vitamins and minerals you need. There is evidence that autoimmune diseases and gut health are related. So that’s very important to me.
Psoriatic arthritis exercises
I’ve had to tailor my exercise because if I try to exercise every day or too much in one day, I’m basically making it impossible for me to recover. So I can’t over exercise. It’s very important that you listen to your body. When I’m in pain, I can’t exercise the way I would like to. So I really have to tailor my workouts and instead of go for the gold type of mentality, it’s more like just keep an even pace; make sure your body doesn’t hurt. Because over exercising for arthritis is the worst.
Stress management
When I was doing What Not to Wear, there were about 10 years where I was nonstop stressed out all the time. So it doesn’t surprise me it sort of happened when it happened, during the last season. I just felt like I was on the verge of collapsing and could not figure out why. For me, exhaustion was the number one symptom. And after that, I started to take things a little bit slower. Mindful management of this situation has really been the priority last few years. But before that, it felt like my body just needed to rebalance. And after going so hard for so long, it needed a little bit of a break. I utilize meditation when I feel like I needed like more for anxiety and short term stress and it works. I like some yoga. I have a lot of titanium in my spine so I can’t curl my back the same way. So it’s not as enjoyable for me as it used to be. But I like stretching. Really to me this has been about an exercise in learning how to exercise inside more specifically. I love the videos from Walk at Home. This woman, Leslie Sansone, she’s like 60-years-old and she’s been teaching dance and aerobics and walking forever. I found her channel so I do that as much as I can instead of really high impact stuff.
What causes psoriatic arthritis flare-ups?
If you don’t take care of yourself, then you’re more susceptible to flares. So if you’re not eating as well as you can, if you’re not exercising and using your muscle as much as you can to protect your joints, then what winds up happening is a flare that could last anywhere from two days to a week. And that puts me in bed. And it really just feels like it hurts to move.
Stacy London’s tips for managing psoriatic arthritis
It’s a little bit difficult to tell you exactly what the best tips to follow are because with psoriatic arthritis, people experience things in a different way. And there are a ton of psoriatic arthritis symptoms. So these are some general ideas for those struggling with it: things I’ve found that help:
1. Pause and breathe
More than meditation, because I feel like some people don’t love meditation, I would say deep breathing. That is one of the biggest stress relievers that I’ve felt. It’s a moment that you stop and you really take stock and you have to think about what you’re doing. And for me, that has been very helpful.
2. Eat well and move smart
Definitely diet and exercise are important but exercise really with the caveat that you cannot do it too hard or you risk setting off a flare. So that really includes stretching and walking and things that are nonimpact. I used to do kickboxing for a while and I kept getting flares because hitting heavy bags was just too much impact.
3. See a rheumatologist
I went to so many doctors before I realized that was what I needed to see. A lot of weird symptoms that don’t seem to make sense sometimes have something to do with autoimmune. So it is worth seeing a rheumatologist, especially when you have weird aches and pains or total exhaustion. Those are really things to look at. And a diagnosis can be really cathartic. I saw so many different doctors and nutritionists. I thought I was making it up in my head at one point!
4. Be kind to yourself
There’s so much anxiety around what you do, or you don’t do when you have an illness that people can’t see. Because I think that as much as we are hard on ourselves, it’s very difficult to talk to people about chronic diseases that feel like “well, you can function, you can do this, you can walk, you can work, you can whatever.” It doesn’t really feel like you even want to seem to be complaining. But I think that the problem is that we just don’t understand chronic illnesses and so it is really hard on people who deal with a sense of chronic pain. And they have to keep explaining themselves. That gets a little bit tricky and we get mad at ourselves if we’re screwing up. But it really takes a lot of self-care to be kind to yourself. And so one thing that I’ve learned is you have to treat yourself with a little bit of grace, because it is very hard not to mess up and it is very hard to feel like you’re restrained from doing things that it looks like you should be able to do.
5. Embrace your confidence
This stuff affects your confidence in such a major way. And those are scars that I’ve taken with me as a kid and grown up feeling a little bit unseen. But I’ve learned to live alongside of other things. I have massive scars on my body from a treatment that I had for psoriasis that was a topical steroids. And I was slathering it on to help my psoriasis go away but it left scars where my skin started splitting because it was so thin from steroid use. And I have those scars too. So you certainly don’t get over it because you still have to live with the illness. You get used to it. You try to manage it as best you can. But you have to radically accept that this is the body that you have because it is difficult to live with and it is difficult not to be seen. Not all of these are visible disabilities but they also take a super psychological toll I think.
6. Do it anyway!
If I spent time doing nothing out of like fear or insecurity, I would probably never leave my house. So “do it anyway!” Next, Does Cracking Your Knuckles Cause Arthritis?
