I'll elaborate a little on my earlier post.

At one point I seemed to be extremely sensitive to sodium nitrite. This is a deadly poison even in tiny quantities but even smaller quantities are used to keep meat red. A single piece of processed meat would send me into a minor flare and bacon or corned beef would be a couple days of agony. It went away after about a year and now I eat up to moderate quantities (two medium servings per day). Doctors have continually suggested quitting caffeine. So every six months or so I'd quit to see if it helped anything; it didn't. I love coffee and the control it gives me so I'd start drinking it again (4 cups/ day). The last time I tried to quit, I couldn't. I get a little panic attack about an hour after coffee time and it won't go away until I have coffee. Cod liver oil is great for my arthritis now but makes my ears itch so horribly it's incredible. Chocolate and sugar aggravate it but this wasn't apparent a year or two ago. Ghinko Biloba has been a big help as an analgesic right from the beginning.

Salt made things worse but then I cut back on salt too much and that was worse yet. For a while I had to try to keep my salt intake in a very narrow but variable range. Now the range is a little higher and much wider and easy to hit. Dairy was a no-no for a year once.

Most of these things seem to be stabilizing a little now after about ten years of this. Really I'm back to about the way things were with diet before this started. I do eat much more carefully now and try to watch for patterns. Balance is good and fresh food is good. It costs a lot more to eat now but it's healthier. I avoid processed foods and especially the very heavily processed foods but this is mainly because I don't trust them and hope it will keep me on a more even keel. I've added metamusil recently which seems to be a boon for the diverticulitis. I've tried it in the past with little effect though. I chew my food more thoroughly but this also is mostly for the diverticulosis. I used to eat just a couple meals per day and have found three meals and a sizable snack work better. For some reason my body has never much cared for food in the morning so I don't eat early. My diet is only about 1900/ 2000 calories now and it has been close to 5000 in the past.

I use more spices now but nothing very heavily. I've grown pretty fond of cumin though. I drink a lot more juice now and with meals.

I experience stress in my guts and if there is one thing RSD is good for it's stress so digestion problems were severe for me especially the first five or six years. It's still a big problem but not quite like it has been.