Don't be afraid of the dark...

I was walking home from Lindy hop this evening and it made me think about the dark.
My colleagues at work keep telling me off because I generally walk home in the dark, they are worried that one of these day I will be attacked by some shifty character. Whilst I of course appreciate that they care this is not something I worry about but thinking about it I realise how much that means I've changed.
When I was young I was really afraid of the dark, I especially remember a period when I could not decide if it was best to keep my light on or off at night. My reasoning had something to do with that if the lights were off the monsters could sneak up on me but if the light were on well then they would know where I was, so yeah that was a complicated time for someone afraid of the dark. I would also be really afraid when cycling or walking to the bus stop in the morning during the darker part of the year and would cycle frantically to get away from anything scary, or whilst walking would try to look like I wasn't afraid (because whilst I could cycle quicker then the monster I couldn't run quicker then them).

But these days I really like the dark - sometimes I even take the long way home through the forest and then by the canal. To me the dark is just very peaceful, it's all quite with no annoying people around and whilst there might be shifty people hiding in the dark that I can't see they more then likely can't see me either. It's like for a short period time stands still and you are the only one left in existence.

When I was younger I found this Swedish called Don't be afraid of the dark (var inte rädd för mörkret) and whilst I would read it to myself when walking though the dark to stop myself from being afraid I now actually believe the words.

Have you tried this?

When you get sick you suddenly find that everyone seems to know how you can get better. People see you hobbling around in pain and they can't help but ask, which is fine but then they also remember that their cousin's husband's ex boyfriend or what not who either has RA or read something about RA, told them that something is definitely supposed to "cure" all RA symptoms.
This whilst understandable does get irritating very quickly.

So what different "cures" are there? well the ones people know about are mainly food related.

These are the once I have heard of so far:

Don't eat meat
Eat only raw food (this applies to meat as well as vegetables) and eat a lot of raw liver and fish
No Chocolate (this one the doctor tells you about)
No Coffee (and this one)
Eat fatty food
No Alcohol (also a doctor one)
Drink loads of milk
Don't eat any citrus fruits
Don't eat gluten (this means no pasta, couscous, bread, soya, pizza etc)
No dairy products (milk, yogurt etc)
things that grow during the night (this apparently covers potatoes and all rot vegetables)
Cook everything fresh, nothing frozen and nothing with additives or preservatives (this one ups the price of a weekly shop considerably)
No sweets of soft drinks unless completely natural
No fish (this one I find strange as it's been medically proven that large doses of Omega 3 helps symptoms)
Eat bones soup every day

As I am sure you understand the main issue with following these are that if you followed all of them you would starve to death! Also a lot of them contradict each other.
Now I have actually tried some, when you are in a lot of pain there isn't many things you wont try.
I have tried the no Coffee, no chocolate, no gluten, no conservatives or preservatives and all raw diets.
All that happened is that I lost a lot of weight, but then starving yourself does have a tendency to do that!

So whilst I appreciate that fact that people want to help, please don't give me diet tips unless you have had the same problem yourself and it actually worked!

Now do I believe that none of the above works? Well no, I actually think they might, after all one of the believes are that Arthritis isn't just a case of your immune system going bonkers but that it is actually trying to attack something that is hurting the body, but that it can't "cure" the problem, and as such end up causing more damage to the body trying to cure it then the actual issue that made it start attacking.

It would then make sense that perhaps you are oversensitive to something already in your body or "allergic" so to speak. If you then stop ingesting whatever you are over sensitive to your immune system would stop trying to attack it and the symptoms would go away. So yeah I believe that in some cases the diets may actually help. But in my case it definitely wasn't anything I ate!