Alan Ebringer, Professor of Immunology, was appointed Hon. Consultant in Rheumatology, UCL School of Medicine, Middlesex Hospital, London, for his discoveries in the field of rheumatology. He was awarded the Donaldson Gold Medal from the Royal Society for the Promotion of Health for his research into BSE and is Consultant on Autoimmune Diseases to the NIH ( National Institute of Health) in Washington D.C.

This excellent book by Carol Sinclair on the use of a 'low-starch diet' in people who suffer from backache and ankylosing spondylitis provides a long-awaited answer to repeated questions asked by patients who suffer from these all too common disorders.
Many patients receive plentiful supply of drugs that may reduce their symptoms but they always ask: 'Doctor, what can I do to help myself? Could a diet help me?'

Carol Sinclair's book provides a clear and explicit answer to these questions as well as a simple and practical dietary method by which the patients can help themselves.

Ankylosing spondylitis is an arthritis involving the spine and large joints. The main symptoms are backache, usually in the lumbar area, which is worse in the mornings on getting up. Lumbar backache is often associated with muscle stiffness, so much so that the patient cannot get out of bed or does so with great difficulty. A characteristic, almost diagnostic, feature of this condition is that the muscle stiffness can be relieved by exercise.

There are approximately one million individuals in the U.K. and five million in the United States who suffer from ankylosing spondylitis or from the early stages of this disease. It usually starts in the teens or twenties and affects men more frequently than women.
However, one of the greatest problems in ankylosing spondylitis is that it takes five to ten years or even twenty years to make a diagnosis, during which time the patient suffers from recurrent episodes of backache and muscle stiffness but is often accused of being neurotic or even malingering.

The main reason for 'delay to diagnosis' is that one of the definitions for this disease is 'presence of sacro-iliitis' on X-ray examination of the sacroiliac joints. However, it takes five to ten years or even twenty years to develop sacroiliitis which can be seen on radiological examination. Therefore the patients are told: 'You cannot have ankylosing spondylitis because you do not have sacroiliitis.'

Nothing upsets patients more than to be told: 'There is nothing wrong with you, it is muscle strain, lumbago, stress, nerves or you are just imagining it.' However, a diet might resolve these problems and this book by Carol Sinclair could show the way of how to achieve a possible reduction in symptoms.