Special report
Emily Johnson, aka the Arthritis Foodie, talks to editor-in-chief Katy Sunnassee about her arthritis diagnosis at a young age, through to how she overhauled her diet to improve her symptoms and is now helping others do the same.
I finally got diagnosed when I was 20, but the first symptoms began when I was four.
I was hospitalised with swollen knees for a week and checked for juvenile idiopathic arthritis in the three months afterwards. Although nothing came of it, I seemed absolutely fine. But that kind of susceptibility to having arthritis was always there.
The first symptom was swelling on my fourth finger on my right hand – it was a strange sensation, I couldn’t bend it.
It was really stiff in the mornings. As well as that I was over whelmingly unwell. It was 2013 and I was aged 20, and at university. I was sleeping up to 16 hours a day. I was full of cold. And that was the start of my body attacking itself, and the start of having autoimmune disease-based arthritis. This went on for about six weeks, so I ended up taking time off from university and going home. The symptoms seemed to settle down, but then they started to spread into my thumbs and into my other fingers.
No one could really tell me what was going on.
Doctors were telling me that I’d probably got extended “freshers’ flu”. But I ended up going to A&E at one point because I couldn’t bend my thumbs, they were so swollen and big and I was crying – I was just so scared. But again, at A&E they couldn’t tell me anything. They said I had to see the GP.
It took 18-24 months to get a diagnosis because doctors didn’t want to put a label on it straight away.
It was only when I had an ultrasound on my fingers and thumbs that the person doing the ultrasound said, ‘This is a severe amount of fluid you’ve got in your joints!’ and I ended up being diagnosed with an inflammatory type of arthritis called seronegative arthritis.
I was told it would go away, that I’d probably only have it for a year and then it would die down.
But it didn’t, it stuck around. I live with it now, but I’m in a much better place compared to back then. I was put on various medications and some of them didn’t work. It took a while before I found something that worked. Then in 2015 I moved to London for work and was really thriving, but I let my self-care slip. I wasn’t looking after my immune system.
Starting small…
Emily’s lifestyle tips can help improve your arthritis – and overall wellness!
1 GET BETTER SLEEP It’s very hard in the modern world when you are bombarded with so many things on your phone, the TV and audio devices. B
