In this video you will learn:

• The relationship between monthly cycles and Rheumatoid Arthritis
• How CRP and ESR vary during the female monthly cycles
• How to address food testing during this time
• Why not get bloodwork done during this time

Good day, it’s Clint Paddison here, and I help people with inflammatory arthritis to become healthier and live happier lives.

And today we’re talking about the monthly cycle. And I’ve got a study that I’m going to present here that shows that the monthly cycle period tends to be one of which there is higher C reactive protein and inflammation in the body. And you might have noticed this yourself. So if you have your monthly cycle, you make the correlations with inflammation spikes at that time. So I’ve seen lots of discussions around this inside our support platform. So I have come in here to rheumatoid support, which is our support and coaching platform, and a search for monthly cycle. You can see there’s multiple pages of results here. And over the years I’ve learnt from female members that they have reported increases in C Reactive protein or mostly describing just a higher increase in inflammation that they experience in their body during that time of the month. And so in this study here, I want to show you that this is actually confirmed and this study was published in the Interventional Medicine and Applied Science Journal in December 2015. It’s called CRP at Early Follicular Phase of Menstrual Cycle can cause misinterpretation for cardiovascular risk assessment. So you’ll notice that this study is not done for inflammatory arthritis patients. But we can learn so much by finding information from other disease management publications.

And so in these cardiovascular patients, what was found is by taking their blood samples before their menstrual cycle and then during the menstrual cycle, that the C reactive protein levels were significantly higher during menstruation than in the period that was not during menstruation. Okay, so what does this mean for us if we have inflammatory arthritis? Well, first of all, we should expect it. So this means that if we are trying to reintroduce foods into our diet through the Paddison Program sequence, and we noticed that we get inflammation levels going up, we can’t jump to conclusions that it is the food. We just need to be mindful, well where am I in my monthly cycle? Is it something that could be related to that? We also need to make decisions carefully based on our medication management. And so if we are getting our blood tests done periodically so the rheumatologist can see the trend of the C reactive protein, and then we’re due for a visit with the rheumatologist and we go and get our blood test done and there is a spike in inflammation. But that spike was because we had it measured during our monthly cycle. Then the rheumatologist may say, hey, your inflammation is going up based on the last blood test and therefore we should reconsider the dosages that you’re taking of your medications and make an upward adjustment.

Now, if that’s something that, you know, we don’t want to have that kind of confusion in the results of the blood tests. So there’s a couple of examples there. So, first of all, just to recap where we’re at, so if you’re just noticing your inflammation levels in your own body, be aware of where you’re at in the monthly cycle before you make too many decisions based on that. And if you’re looking to get your C reactive protein measured, I would avoid doing it during a monthly cycle and I would make sure that it’s done at the same time of the month. That’s away from that time section.

Okay, so I think this is really, really interesting. And I have a case study here from actually from the lady who sent this to me, and she has emailed me this study originally. So I’d like to think, Erica, for sending this to me, because, as I said, I’ve been looking at seeing this for a long time, and it’s nice to have the study to confirm what we see in practice. But Erica has said she came across this study when she had an unexpected spike in her C reactive protein during her last blood test. Suspected it could have been from her period, and so then had it measured again, so during her period, her C reactive protein went up from 0.4 to 0.7  Milligrams per liter. But her ESR actually dropped, which she says is consistent with the results of this study. And sure enough, in the study, it says that the ESR or the SED Rate in the study was similar before and after. So on average, 12.1 vs on average 12.3. So within a very large range of uncertainty, those results are consistent.

So what do we make of all this? Bottom line is do try to get your blood tests measured at a period of the month where you aren’t going through your monthly cycle. Try to make it at the same section, if at all possible, to avoid having this spike that will come up in your blood markers. And don’t make big decisions about your disease management progress and your improvement progress and your reintroduction of foods progress based on that few days of the month, because you’re going to get results that aren’t consistent with the rest of the month.

So I hope that serves you. And if you’re looking for more ways to become healthier and happier and reduce inflammation, then go and check out www.RheumatoidSolutions.com