Ankylosing Spondylitis - Diet and medication

As someone who has lived with AS for about fifteen years, I've had to make adjustments to my diet and medications to find what works. I know many of you are still struggling as I have many times throughout this journey.

I'd like to hear your thoughts if you have experience with AS. Have you found something that works? Or even just experience with things you now know that don't work, or are potentially harmful? Diet or medication specifically.

So I'll start. I'm currently on Brenzys which is a TNF inhibitor and my experience with it so far has been positive. I feel well enough to work out every day, which has helped my overall health and posture. I typically avoid too much processed sugar, as it's an obvious inflammatory stressor.

I've had several intense flare ups caused by red food dye, and just now upon researching why that might be the case I see, "On January 16, 2025, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) officially revoked authorization for Red Dye No. 3 (erythrosine) in all foods, beverages, dietary supplements, and oral medications.".

The reason: "Federal law contains the Delaney Clause, which strictly mandates that the FDA cannot authorize any food additive proven to cause cancer in humans or laboratory animals. Red Dye No. 3 was shown to induce thyroid tumors in male rats."

They're phasing out other red food dyes presumably for the same reason, but they are still used in things like birthday cakes where I live. I'm hoping this reaches someone who may not know anything about red food dye being harmful just like I was ignorant to this fact until I had enough first hand experiences to draw the correlation myself.