I Had a Paleo Knee and Didn’t Even Know It

This is roughly the size of my sweet tooth in relation to the rest of me.

Those of you who have been reading for awhile already know this, but for the uninitiated (lucky?) ones, here’s everything you need to know about my knee: It sucks. It’s a lemon. If it were a car, it’d be a Ford because the acronym Fixed Or Repaired Daily applies perfectly.

Long story short, it has an irreparable meniscus tear and chronic inflammation. Doctors have tried a few things but, without resorting to extreme measures (meniscus transplant), are short on options for me.

I had synthetic joint injections a few months ago, which helped a bit, but in the intervening months I’ve begun noticing that the inflammation pain comes and goes. It feels best in the morning, when I wake up, and fine all day until I have…sugar. Oh crap.

It’s too early in the process to know exactly how much sugar and of what kind (because oh my gosh, did you know there are, like, ten different kinds of sugar in the world? And they all do different things to your body? Bizarre!) makes my knee flare up, but one thing I can tell you is I lost three pounds last week by cutting out refined sugar and my knee only twinged a couple times.

This is both good and bad news.

Good because, hooray! A solution that doesn’t involve cutting my knee open (again)!

Bad because, well, I have a Megalodon-sized sweet tooth. I love dessert. I love treats. I love mochas and scones for breakfast, lemonade with lunch, and chocolate truffles with Mai Tais for dessert. Chocolate? Love. Candy? Yes. Caramel? Absolutely. Cookies? Please.

Hi, my name is Erika and I’m a future diabetic.

If sugar is causing an inflammatory response in my knee (in addition to unholy joint pain oh my GOSH) then something pretty drastic needs to be done. We’re talking a lifestyle change, here. So far I’m leaning in more of a paleo direction as opposed to a low carb direction. I mistrust synthetic sweeteners and think it’s nifty how all those paleo people have managed to figure out desserts without, you know, any of the bad-for-you stuff I’d always attributed to dessert deliciousness.

We’ll see how it goes. I baked some low-carb brownies the other day with Truvia that were frigging DISGUSTING. Then I tried some paleo brownies made with honey and almond flour and they were pretty darn tasty.

This could be the start of something pretty cool. Or pretty gross. More likely a bit of both. Stay tuned.