Lodi woman fights disease with diet, exercise
Local personal trainer Tiffany Salazar was 30 when she was diagnosed with a rare autoimmune disease that she thought would leave her unable to walk. However, after adopting a fit and healthier lifestyle she was able to beat the odds and maintain her mobility.
Salazar suffers from a condition called Ankylosing Spondylitis, a rare form of arthritis that attacks the spine and several other joints in the body. In more advanced cases the disease can lead to new bone formation in the spine causing sections of the spine to fuse in a fixed immobile position.
Salazar mainly suffers from sciatic lower lumbar pain along with severe neck pain. Her ribs will sometimes pop out and her sternum will flare and become inflamed, making it harder for her to breath. The disease also affects her bladder and bowel as well as her eyes. She is unable to go into bright sunlight or bright light without sunglasses because her eyes will swell or flare.
The disease is genetic, Salazar said, and those with the genetic marker HLAB27 have a higher risk of getting the disease than those who don’t. A lot of people have the gene, but it sets dormant, Salazar said. It can become triggered by an bacterial infection of the gut.
“It starts out as hereditary,” Salazar said. “Having a poor diet and having a lot sugar in your diet, that’s what tells it to turn on.”
Growing up, Salazar never paid attention to her diet and was not very health conscious. While she began showing the early signs during her childhood, she didn’t find out she had the disease until 2012. Salazar had been suffering from migraines since the age of seven and suffered from back pain and digestive issues, all of which are signs of AS. Over time she just learned to deal with the discomfort, and she thought it was just a a part of her life.
Once she began suffering from numbness in her legs that was so bad her husband sometimes had to carry her, she decided it was time for a change. After several years of pain, she began doing research on how to manage her condition.
In 2016, after several medications and injections failed to improve her condition, she decided to adopt a healthier lifestyle. She worked with David Fields, a personal trainer at the Lodi Pure Form PFT, and dropped over 80 pounds. Salazar went from 43 percent body fat to 23 percent body fat and developed more muscle.
The results were noticeable. When her hips would give out and she would fall, she’d have the strength to catch herself. Since she began her healthy lifestyle journey, her AS symptoms have improved, her flare-ups occur less often and her pain more tolerable. Most importantly she is still able to walk despite occasional back pain that sometimes immobilizes her for a few days.
A majority of the time she only feels numbness in her pinky toes and in her hands. Her range of motion has also improved. While her condition has improved, she still has her bad days. She injects Humara and takes several medications to help with the symptoms. Between the medications and the her healthy nutrition she is able to manage her disease.
Salazar is now a Pure Form personal trainer and played a huge role in developing the curriculum for the fitness portion of the Fit Life Impact Program for elementary children in the Lodi Unified School District. However, she has taken a break to focus on getting more advanced certifications in arthritic and corrective exercise, so that she can train people like herself .
“I think when a person truly understands arthritis and understands chronic pain, it motivates people battling with it because they see that I’m pushing through, and it inspires them,” Salazar said. “In some ways this disease has given me my calling, and I do need to be a personal trainer.”
Although she is not training anyone at the moment, she is currently working out at Pure Form’s Galt location where her husband works as a trainer.
“I truly do feel that working out and inspiring others is what’s going to save lives, and caring about the foods that we are putting in our body, that’s going to take care of these autoimmune diseases and diabetes and these various illnesses,” Salazar said.
Salazar is a mother of four children, Logan, 13, Noah, 12, Isabella, 8 and Nicolas, 5, and has a stepson Anthony, 17. With the disease being hereditary, her children are all at risk for carrying the gene and developing the disease if they don’t embrace a healthy lifestyle. She has made it a priority to make sure her children remain active and are eating a balanced diet.
While he has not be diagnosed, Salazar said her son Noah has shown some early indicators of the disease. He has issues with digestion, is very clumsy and gets very lethargic at times, she said, and also suffers from frequent headaches. After reducing his dairy consumption, Salazar said his symptoms have improved.
This summer Salazar has enforced a requirement that all of her children come to the gym with her at least three days out of the week.
On Sunday, July 15 Pure Form PFT in Galt will host an open house charity workout to raise money for Ankylosing Spondylitis Awareness and research. Proceeds will go directly to #ThisASLife in recognition of National Social Media Giving Day.
Those in attendance will be able to join gym owner and trainer Juan Carbajal along with Salazar and her husband as they lead eight workouts. The open house will be from 7 to 9 a.m. break for church and resume form 12:30 to 8 p.m.