Hi, 26 year old guy. Diagnosed with AS about 3 years ago. Seems to be a rather aggressive case. I work out extremely hard, three hours five days a week doing powerlifting and interval cardio but NO high impact exercises. One hour of that is dynamic stretching and foam rolling. Eat relatively well because I also have Crohn's disease. Was originally prescribed Humira, but it stopped working. Was then put on Enbrel with much better results. Pain was almost non-existent and in four months was able to squat 290 lbs and deadlift 500. It worked. Too well. The side effects were another story, as I began to get frequent skin and sinus infections. In the course of two months I had to go on antibiotics three times from infections.
I have since stopped taking Enbrel. My reasoning was that it's pointless if after every weekly shot I take I get an infection that causes me to stay off the medicine for three weeks due to antibiotics.
Symptoms of AS are now rapidly returning. Was able to work out only once this week. Constantly sleeping and cannot work. I am not okay with this and determined to find an alternative solution so I can resume my life.
Does anyone have recommendations for alternatives treatments to biologics? Any experience with infections on Enbrel? Perhaps I should only take the shot biweekly. I'm also interested in natural supplements, dietary changes, etc..
