Hello!
My name is Artur. I was diagnosed with AS in November 2011, when after a bout of severe hip pain and iritis the eye doctor suggested that I see a rheumatologist. My grandfather has AS too, although for him it has apparently "burnt out" by this time, with less than pleasant consequences, of course (back completely fused, he is unable to turn his head, but otherwise healthy and I am very happy for that). Considering the family history and the fact that I was determined to be HLA-B27 positive, the doc did not have a difficult time in making the diagnosis.
Up to this point, I have had symptoms that could be considered "mild", I suppose. Mainly some hip pain, which has made jogging painful, but not much else. This month the lower back pain started creeping in at night, waking me up. A couple of weeks ago I decided to get myself together and go on the no-starch diet, which has given a noticeable reduction in pain after being very strict with myself for about two weeks.
So the typical symptoms of AS that I am experiencing are not by themselves that debilitating. However, there is a huge problem which has made my life a living hell for about a year or more already, interfering severely with work and life in general. The issue is this: I get extremely, I mean extremely tired after eating. If I have a full lunch at work, in an hour or two I am guaranteed to be completely out of it. It feels like being drugged with some sort of soporific, the yearning to sleep is so immense that productiveness reduces to 0%. There is also some muscle weakness. For a while I thought that it was because I wasn't sleeping soundly at night (I've had some crazy dreams, sleep paralysis, waking in the middle of the night etc), so I got a sleep study done. When I described my symptoms to the sleep specialist, she said that it sounds like narcolepsy (!), but the results came back completely normal.
It's now so bad that I am severely worried whether I can satisfactorily do my job at the office (I hold a stressful occupation in the law field). For a while I just fasted (that's when I discovered that fasting, at least for me, takes away much of the pain of AS) and kept myself awake on coffee, which isn't exactly healthy for someone suffering of a chronic disease.
So my problem breaks down to this:
- EXTREMELY, almost indescribably and definitely abnormally tired after eating food
- crash onset about an hour from eating, peak at two hours, then recovery to "human" energy levels in another hour or two
- have tested blood sugar both before as well as an hour and two hours after eating, all normal
- no correlation between sleepiness and amount or type of food eaten (any food makes me totally crash, I have crashed after drinking a small bottle of carrot juice; smaller amounts only seem to reduce the length of the crash, but this also may vary)
- I also suffer from heartburn, I wonder if this may be related somehow;
- paresthesia is common: I get tingling and prickling sensations all over the body sometimes, tiny muscle fasciculations
- blood tests for deficiencies (incl. iron, B12) done recently, all normal.
Anyway, I am at a loss at what the problem could be. Doctors I have been to really do not understand the severity of the fatigue. I am a bit worried, because at this rate I won't be able to do what is expected of me, or at least to the extent expected from me at work. And they also do not hand out disability pensions for "food coma", at least not where I live (a tiny European country, Estonia). If anyone has any experience with what I am describing, or any suggestions on how to overcome this blight, all is greatly appreciated. Thanks!
