Category Archives: Paleo

Simple Tricks for Meals: Getting Butyrate from Your Diet

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2/4/2022

A long time ago I wrote a series on butyrate because I believed it to be very valuable for health. Supposedly decreased cancer, decreased diabetes, decreased obesity, decreased leaky gut, improved brain health, and so much more–and now improved COVID outcomes. My sister sent me an article about it the other day.

I no longer think about butyrate and resistant starch routinely, but I have developed simple habits that add buytrate-producing foods to my family’s diet each day. I wanted to share them with you and remind you to keep at food for health. I don’t know who you are reading this, but I would like you to be healthy and feel good inside and out (emotionally, spiritually, and physically). When a person feels good, they can share that true joy and it survives bumps and potholes in the road.

Simple Tricks to Add Butyrate-Producing Foods to a Diet

Eat a plain green banana.

Freeze some green bananas (I peel them.) and then use them in smoothies.

Use a green banana in banana bread. (I replace one brown banana with a green banana in the recipe. It gives it a very nice texture my kids like.)

Toss some beans onto a salad.

Toss some beans into taco meat.

Eat chili with multi-colored beans.

Eat hummus.

Bake lots of potatoes ahead of time, then eat them reheated or slice them and fry them with onions for fried potatoes.

Baked beans.

Make a big batch of rice, and then use the leftovers for fried rice.

Toss green peas into anything you can: a salad, vegetable soup, fried rice.

Serve green peas as a quick side dish.

Toss nuts onto salads, onto hummus, into fried rice.

Eat a handful of nuts.

Note: Plantains are a wonderful source of butyrate-producing plant matter! You need to be a bit more adventurous to learn to cook them, but they are a real treat we love. Raw oats and corn tortillas are also high, so if you like those and they cause no problems, go for it. My kids tend to eat oats and corn frequently, but I find they’re not pleasing to my body in various ways I try to respect. Whole grain breads are also a rich source, but I hesitate to encourage bread because there are so many additives to it–and it often replaces vegetables and fruits calorically in many people’s diets.

Closing

It’s January, and a VERY hard month for those who live in winter-producing climates. You have to be tenacious and proactive to keep healthy in winter. Move. Reduce sugar. Cut down on breads and grains and comfort foods. Give yourself grace. Give yourself a kick in the butt. But please don’t top trying. Find a path that works for you.

Eat real, whole food as most of your food intake. Please. Please. Please.

Don’t get bogged down in the dogma and the institutions and the fundamentalism and the indoctrination and the propaganda. These things can really confuse you and overwhelm you. Keep it simple. Real, whole food. Take note of your body. Eat real, whole food and see how you do. Adjust foods as necessary.

Don’t forget to add the simple and easy butyrate-producing foods to your diet, which studies suggest will help you out. Decreased cancer. Decreased diabetes. Decreased long-COVID. But keep it simple.

Eat real food to live.

Terri F.

Article my sister sent me:

Long COVID: Gut bacteria may be key

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/gut-bacteria-may-play-a-role-in-the-development-of-long-covid

Before You Give Up On Your Diet

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By NMajik at en.wikipedia (Own work (Original caption: “Source: Self”)) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

By NMajik at en.wikipedia (Own work (Original caption: “Source: Self”)) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

This is the last post in my little Specific Carbohydrate Diet series. The Specific Carbohydrate Diet (SCD) is just a real food diet, with some added food tweaks that good observers throughout history have discovered reverse disease and promote healing. It is not the holy grail of diets, although for some patients, it is the cure they were looking for. (You may prefer the word “control” instead of the word “cure,” since these patients will probably never be able to go back to DiGiorno pizza.) I definitely suggest the SCD for Crohn’s and ulcerative colitis as a starting point diet because there is research behind it. (See here for a short summary of the evolution of the SCD diet with references.)

When I used a form of SCD for my gastrointestinal issues (not inflammatory bowel disease), I ran into a few issues and the diet stalled for me, even regressed. I don’t give up easily when I think there’s a way to accomplish something, and so I played around with the diet and I read what other people trying the diet were saying. I’ve compiled a little list of things to try if SCD is not working for you.

Remember, nothing here on my site is medical advice and should always be investigated and explored. Talk with your doctor and maybe get a referral to a dietitian for help. This is the internet. Believe nothing. Question everything.

Eliminate “pesky” foods that are allowed on the diet: nuts, peanut butter, eggs, dairy. Foods that we know cause life-threatening allergies can also cause other immune reactions in the body that aren’t nearly so serious. Even though they aren’t life threatening like true allergy, they still can cause bad, uncomfortable immune reactions, especially at the interface of the gut lining (but not limited to the gut lining).

Common food allergens like nuts, peanuts, dairy, and eggs are notorious for more than just anaphylaxis and hives! If you read research studies, you’ll see them coming up again and again for things like migraines, eosinophilic esophagitis, and eczema! I feel like medical doctors only communicate the life-threatening aspect of these foods (which is super important, of course), and ignore their involvement in so many other disease states. So people walk around treating their problems with creams, puffers, and pills, when they could be investigating their diet.

The Specific Carbohydrate Diet allows eggs, almonds, nuts, peanut butter, homemade yogurt, cheeses and butter. All good foods! But also all known top allergens that can perpetuate illness in susceptible people.

(Coconut is not necessarily a top 8 common allergen, but I’ve read of many SCD’ers having trouble with it, particularly the flour. I’d add it to the “pesky” list.)

How do you know which “pesky” to take out? Well, you can start with the one you have a sneaky suspicion about. Or you can see if your doctor will order you an IgG blood panel (which has such variable results for people), although you need to know up front that many conventional medical doctors disapprove of them. Or you can eliminate them all, and slowly bring them back in one at a time.

Whatever you do, be smart and make sure you’re getting any nutritional deficits accounted for!

Cut down on baked goods. When people switch to the SCD, they often, understandably, try to recreate the diet they had been eating: muffins, breads, pancakes, and cookies. ALL of these things can be made on the SCD and are super tasty! However, the ingredients for them come from the “pesky” category (almond flour, eggs, butter, and so on), so they really shouldn’t be routine food fare. They also come with a big whop of sugar; yes, I know it’s honey, but fructose in excess has its own negative effects. Baked goods are great as a transition to ease families into eating more real, wholesome foods. If my kids hadn’t had a baked good, I would  have had some runaways.

In any area of the diet you may be lapsing and skimping in, get strict again. Get back to eating only the legal foods with “no exceptions.” It’s so easy to let products back into our kitchens. A little guar gum here. A little BHT there. Some maltodextrin there. Some modified food starch. And then you’ve walked down the slippery slope and fallen. Crash and burn for a few little ingredients that really weren’t even that important to you!

Studies indicate that emulsifiers may cause problems for inflammatory bowel disease, so if you’re struggling, get the “small stuff” back out!

Alternatively, perhaps the idea of “being strict” is sabotaging adhering to the diet well, and adding in a few select real, whole, foods, like rice and/or potato may be helpful in overall adherence to the diet.

Even though certain foods are not allowed on the diet, that doesn’t mean that a person’s body and disease will not tolerate them. Yes, it’s best to adhere to the diet as it is written, but it is VERY likely that adjustments will have to be made. Remember, the diet is not magic. It can’t prophesy exactly what your body will and will not tolerate. If adding in a food that may not be problematic anyhow is the price to pay for keeping on the diet instead of giving up completely, it’s worth a trial! Make sense? (But do talk with your healthcare provider who is overseeing your diet. They might have some other tips they’d like you to try first.)

Elaine Gottschall, the author of the diet, did not intend for The Specific Carbohydrate Diet to be a forever diet. She advocated moving off the diet once symptoms were well-controlled.

Read about FODMAP foods. Foods have natural sugars and molecules that we don’t absorb and that feed our gut bacteria. It’s actually a good thing. But sometimes, guts that are compromised need a break from these too, or else they’ll have painful bloating, gas, diarrhea, and/or constipation.  FODMAP stands for fermentable oligosaccharides, disaccharides, monosaccharides, and polyols. FODMAP foods can cause pain outside of actual inflammatory disease and would be worth exploring. I have noticed that many people suggest cutting down on fruit if the SCD isn’t working well for you, and I can see where certain fruits will exacerbate a FODMAP condition. Here’s a good site with FODMAP information. Just click on the symbol, and it brings up a nice handout.

Take away the power struggle. When it comes to kids, they MUST understand the diet and their bodies. Kids usually make good decisions when they’re given good information and see the impact of certain foods on their bodies. Make it a point to understand the diet and read the book, then paraphrase it and explain it to your child. Kids need empowered, not controlled. Sometimes our fears lead to a strong need to control, but kids will buck this. Well, at least mine do!

The mind-body idea. We KNOW that there is a BIDIRECTIONAL process between the brain and the gut and conversely, the gut and the brain. It works from the bottom up. And the top down. If you’re ready to take it beyond diet and supplements, maybe it’s time to move inward. Google things like mindfulness and IBD. Or hypnotherapy and IBD. See what you think. This area has definitely piqued my interest. It takes me months and years to write, so you’ll definitely want to read in this area before I get any posts up on it!

Well, that’s it for today. I’m sure there are other tweaks. I think the best tweak is to know you’re going to be okay. Know that nothing can get you, because you’re bigger inside than anything you can comprehend. If you’re on the religious side, know that you’re a spiritual being forever with a human body but fleetingly.

Feel welcome to post any tweaks you’ve found beneficial.

Over.

Terri

 

A Stay-At-Home Mom’s Diet Enters Medical Research

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gottschall

When I used to work as a physician, I wondered what it’d be like to stay home with the kids full-time. Some moms would say, “I HAVE to work. My kids drive me crazy.” I always thought to myself that I’d still like to try it and see. Maybe crazy is a state of bliss that I’d like quite a lot.

I did get to stay home, and to my chagrin, I did fall into crazy. Crazy nutrition. At first, I honestly did wonder if I had taken neurotic to its pinnacle, but I kept reading and reading. And over the short four years since I began having any interest in nutrition at all, other than having the best chocolate chip cookie recipe, there have been some major upheavals in medicine regarding nutrition, particularly regarding fat and cholesterol. But I know there will be more.

One upheaval that intrigues me, because I swear real food is pixie dust, is doctors using a real food diet to throw inflammatory bowel disease into remission without medicine. At Seattle Children’s Hospital, researchers are reversing serious cases of ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease using the exact same voodoo, or pixie dust (if you prefer), diet that Elaine Gottschall, a stay-at-home mother of two, used in the 1950s to save her 8 year-old daughter’s life from near-terminal ulcerative colitis. The diet, called the Specific Carbohydrate Diet (SCD), was the last hope that Elaine had for possibly saving her child’s colon, maybe even the child’s life itself. Permanent poop collection bag? Death? How about we try this weird diet.

Dr. Sidney Valentine Haas’s Stodgy, Misinformed Diet

The SCD is not a new diet. It has been around in some form since approximately the 1920s, when Sidney Valentine Haas, MD was using it on his celiac and severely afflicted gastrointestinal patients.  At this time, there was no known celiac disease and gluten connection. Dr. Haas, using close observation skills and taking good patient histories (all things falling into disfavor in today’s medical climate), felt that starchy carbohydrates and table sugar were bad for his patients. So he developed a diet which removed starchy foods and sugar, making it inherently gluten-free and grain free. He found that his patients did fine with fruit, and he strongly encouraged bananas, and he even thought there was something special about the banana.

His “banana” diet was pretty popular and was used to manage celiac disease until the gluten connection was verified. Then, Haas and banana diets fell into disfavor, ridicule even. However, Dr. Haas, a reportedly kindly man who lived into his 90s, never acquiesced that gluten elimination should be the sole treatment of celiac disease. He remained adamantly suspicious that most starchy carbohydrates were problematic and needed removed for a time (not a lifetime). He genuinely believed in his diet, and if you read closely, he is scorned for never succumbing completely to the hypotheses that gluten is the sole problem for celiac patients.

(Now, I don’t know whether he was right or wrong about gluten. I DO KNOW that there are celiacs who follow a STRICT gluten-free diet, never eating away from home, and I know they still have abdominal issues. So, perhaps his intuition is not as laughable as it seems. Perhaps, as time passes and we learn more, we will find facts that make him more right than wrong. I don’t know. History repeatedly shows genius in ridicule, and maybe there’s more to treating celiac than just taking away gluten.)

A Doctor -Shopping, Stay-at-Home Mom

elaine_04

This photo of Elaine Gottschall came from www.breakingtheviciouscycle.info , the official Breaking the Vicious Cycle and SCD website.

The SCD would  have probably stopped right there if it hadn’t been for Big Magic (you really should read the book by this title, very good). Elaine Gottschall (now deceased, 1921-2005) called herself an ordinary, happy, stay-at-home, 1950s’ mom. She had two young daughters. One of her daughters, Judy, began experiencing incapacitating gut issues and was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis at the tender age of four years old. Little Judy was so sick and malnourished by the time she was 8, she had stunted growth and even her neurological system was shutting down. Elaine and Herb were told their daughter had two options: colon removal or death. Elaine wouldn’t hear it and refused to take death or colectomy (colon removal) as an answer for her daughter if she could do anything about it.

So she did what all desperate patients do (or parents of patients), she doctor shopped. After much doctor shopping and no hope in sight except surgery, an acquaintance of a friend pointed her to an outdated, nearly ancient physician. She finally landed in the arms (figuratively) of our now 92-year-old Dr. Sydney Valentine Haas. He started her daughter Judy on his version of what is now the Specific Carbohydrate Diet. Her daughter improved dramatically within days and even more in the months that followed, living a full life, even being able to eat a very diverse diet eventually.

Humiliating Success

Dr. Haas died within two years of meeting the Gottschall family. Would his diet die with him? No. Elaine Gottschall made it her mission to understand that man’s diet, even going back to school and earning degrees in biology, nutritional biochemistry, and cellular biology. If this diet helped Judy live and get her life back, she wanted to know why and share it with the others who were sick. Many times she wanted to give up, but her husband was convicted that the world needed this information that would be lost without Dr. Haas, and he knew Elaine was just the woman to do it.

Herb encouraged Elaine to write a book eventually called Breaking the Vicious Cycle, do health consults, and speak. She functioned at a grassroots level, and she touched thousands of lives, helping people turn their health around with the SCD. But, sadly, she could never break through to medical circles. Her daughter said: “She also wanted the acceptance from–if not approval of–the medical mainstream, which she never got. She was told stories by mothers who said their doctors would refuse to treat their children if they followed her diet…”

Doctors refusing to treat patients if they tried this diet? A diet that has now entered the halls of medical research with initial success? Elaine’s diet brought success to many suffering patients, but the patients’ doctors wouldn’t have it. How could a simple diet help? How could a stay-at-home mom know what she’s talking about? Who was she to challenge medical management?

Because of Elaine’s tenacity and courage (and ability to persist despite medical contempt), people today may have an opportunity to try diet over drugs. Some doctors are listening to patients and trying the SCD in clinical research. (See my last post.)

Elaine, Herb, and Judy (their daughter), thank you.

Closing

The SCD studies are small and sparse, but they’re pretty remarkable, especially in kids, whose healing capacities are always amazing. IF diet makes a difference, then I think Elaine Gottschall is right, the only way it’s going to get to medical doctors is if patients keep showing them. Dr. Suskind’s studies from Seattle are shedding some light, but they’re so small. With just a snap or a new successful medical discovery, his work will be trampled over forever, as Dr. Haas’s almost was.

Did Dr. Haas have it ALL right? No. Did Elaine Gottschall? No. Does the doctor named Natasha Campbell-McBride (who has taken Elaine Gottschall’s work further in her clinical practice, renaming her diet GAPS)? No. Does Dr. Suskind, a researcher using SCD in his studies? No. But continuing to cut out colons and continuing to prescribe immunosuppressants without ever trying significant dietary modification such as the SCD is irresponsible and, to me, unethical. Medical doctors maliciously, scornfully, and condescendingly name-call and ridicule diet theories they don’t agree with like pompous elitists. And guess what! When we do that, nurses, dietitians, pharmacists, and the public follow along. Then, we end up in a big mess. Like Days of Our Lives. Please stop the division.

You are never too small. You are never too insignificant. You are always enough. Your experience is for you. Your experience is for others. Live boldly with love and compassion.

Even your cooking can change someone’s life.

Ciao.

Terri

Sites and links I followed for information, which should always be verified before you even think about trusting anything…

Frontiers in Celiac Disease, pages 5-7: https://books.google.com/books?id=gqaDD3jkcfYC&pg=PA6&lpg=PA6&dq=haas%27s+banana+diet+celiac+disease&source=bl&ots=pPA2rdAt9_&sig=tgEgHivZWbdeSKX5j1Dajx243Iw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi1xNTukc_RAhVG4IMKHdtmBKo4ChDoAQglMAI#v=onepage&q=haas’s%20banana%20diet%20celiac%20disease&f=false

http://www.breakingtheviciouscycle.info/p/about-the-author/

Recipes for the Specific Carbohydrate Diet by Raman Prasad

Explaining That Diet Does Help Severe “Stomach” Problems

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baadsgaard-alfrida-ludovica-vi-opstilling-med-ananas-druer-ogImagine having diarrhea 15 times a day, every day. Add some blood to that. While you try to walk across a university campus. Or coach basketball.  Or serve on a Navy ship in the middle of the vast ocean. Or learn to add, subtract, and multiply.

This is life with Crohn’s disease or ulcerative colitis, collectively called inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). And when I was a medical student on general surgery, I swear it seems like we were digging around every day in some poor patient’s intestines due to his or her inflammatory bowel disease. Many emerged from surgery with bags to collect their liquid bowel movements.

I feel like I’ve heard it a thousand times. “My doctor says it doesn’t matter what I eat for my Crohn’s disease.” Have you heard that? Do you believe that? That’s 100% false. Research since the 1970s shows that patients can go into remission with special “nutritional shakes.” 

Patients are often convinced that food impacts their disease, but they can’t always pinpoint how or which foods. Medical studies weren’t very helpful in the past; they looked at things like fats, amino acids, and vitamin D, finding some correlations, but nothing to hang their hats on. So hard-working doctors just shrugged their shoulders and said, “It doesn’t really matter, dear patient. Just eat.” [Scram. I’ve got 8 patients waiting to see me. I don’t have time to listen to you speculate about whether or not milk gives you diarrhea.]

But fascinatingly, studies have shown for forty years now, plus or minus, that IBD can be controlled with nutrition! Well, more accurately put, researchers and patients controlled IBD with exclusive enteral nutrition. Exclusive enteral nutrition, EEN for short, is basically just a “nutrition” shake kind of like Ensure or PediaSure, only it tastes much worse. The ingredients in the shake have been pre-digested so they can be absorbed completely in the small intestine.

Studies have repeatedly and reproducibly shown great results for IBD patients and EEN, particularly Crohn’s disease. How great? Well how does upward of 100% sound to you for a remission rate? Would you even settle for a 70% rate? Yeah. That good. I’m cherry picking a little; some studies didn’t have such high success rates, but most did. And some studies that didn’t look all that good to begin with looked better after the study results were adjusted for patients who just couldn’t tolerate the special liquids (often quite a few). Also, results were consistently better for pediatric patients [who often heal more quickly and have to be compliant whether they like it or not—and sometimes choose to be compliant because they feel so much better!]. (Kansal, 2013)

But patients and doctors, I guess, weren’t having that. Too yucky. Too restrictive. (Just for interest, I notice that Nestle seems to make many of these nutritional EENs.)

What’s in that shake?

Great minds pontificated about what it was in the EEN drink which could cause these patients to do so well. They played around with the liquid formulas with good success, trying to make them less repulsive and less expensive. Then they pondered, “Well, can we let our patients eat [cake] and take some of this EEN stuff?”

So researchers let patients drink the liquid EEN formula and have free access to table food at the same time. Yum! With free access to table food, despite the nutritional “shake,” the remission rates weren’t as good as when a patient ate only EEN liquid—but they were better than the patients who received no EEN at all. Aha! So it’s starting to look like something in table food perpetuates increased inflammation in inflammatory bowel disease patients. (Triantafillidis, 2015)

Okay. All Mama’s good table food really threw a wrench in the great effects of the EEN shakes. What next?

Well, allowing table food was a step backward, and researchers thought, “We need another twist. What can we do? This is fun.”

So researchers gave patients nutritional “shakes” and they let them eat only certain allowed foods. (NO CAKE this time. Sorry.) Bingo. Success rates held at about 70% of patients showing improvement and or sustained remission. (I know a lot of doctors who made just 70% in class and are successfully practicing. Pass equals MD, baby. Seventy percent is pretty good.) That’s awesome. How happy would you be to be symptom-free and able to eat some real food?  (Sigall-Boneh, 2014)

It’s 2017. Can we ditch the EEN altogether and just eat real food?

Now, we have to cap it off. Could patients get off of the disgusting “shakes” altogether? (Good-bye, Nestle…) Well, the Journal of Clinical Gastroenterology is about to publish a study done by a Dr. Suskind (and his team, of course!) from Seattle Children’s Hospital. Ten pediatric patients followed a diet called the Specific Carbohydrate Diet for three months, and 80% of them had symptoms improve significantly and even resolve and lab markers normalize. Eighty-stinking-percent! Let me repeat: eighty percent success. WITH FOOD.

Way to go Dr. Suskind and team. Way to take medicine back to truly patient-centered, do-no-harm care! And most importantly: WAY TO GO PATIENTS AND PARENTS WHO PARTICIPATED IN THIS STUDY! Changing how you eat is hard work, and most people balk, standing in the corner cowering with too much fear to leave their pizza and bread behind. Not you. Not you. (Suskind, 2017)

[Click here for a readable summary of Suskind’s report and here for an abstract of it.]

Meh. Study needs to be bigger.

Now, I showed someone Suskind’s research summary, and she replied, “But there’s only ten patients. I wish it was bigger.”

Sigh. So do I. But it’s what we’ve got. And it’s so promising. I’m ebullient. Diet alone! Eighty percent remission! With real food. No diarrhea! No bleeding! No stomach cramps! Virtually 100% safe. No injections! No risk of white blood cell counts crashing. Why won’t people try this?

Reminds me of a verse I learned from a big book, although I’ve adapted it. “The fiddle plays and you won’t dance. The singer wails a mournful tune, and you will not cry.” We are hard to please. Impossible nearly. What do we want? A magic bullet pill with no side effects?

I must close now. But you will not want to miss my next post about the amazing stay-at-home mom who made it her life mission to show the world that inflammatory bowel disease can be controlled most of the times with real, whole food. And I’ll explain a little about the diet that saved her 8-year-old daughter’s life and which she spent her life studying and evangelizing.

Terri

Citations:

Kansal, S., et al. “Enteral nutrition in Crohn’s disease: an underused therapy.” Gastroenterology research and practice 2013 (2013).  https://www.hindawi.com/journals/grp/2013/482108/

Triantafillidis, John K., Costas Vagianos, and Apostolos E. Papalois. “The role of enteral nutrition in patients with inflammatory bowel disease: current aspects.” BioMed research international 2015 (2015). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4352452/

Sigall-Boneh, Rotem, et al. “Partial enteral nutrition with a Crohn’s disease exclusion diet is effective for induction of remission in children and young adults with Crohn’s disease.” Inflammatory bowel diseases 20.8 (2014): 1353-1360. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/263548102_Partial_Enteral_Nutrition_with_a_Crohn’s_Disease_Exclusion_Diet_Is_Effective_for_Induction_of_Remission_in_Children_and_Young_Adults_with_Crohn’s_Disease

Suskind, D. L., Cohen, S. A., Brittnacher, M. J., Wahbeh, G., Lee, D., Shaffer, M. L., … & Giefer, M. (2017). Clinical and Fecal Microbial Changes With Diet Therapy in Active Inflammatory Bowel Disease. Journal of Clinical Gastroenterology. Abstract only: http://journals.lww.com/jcge/Abstract/publishahead/Clinical_and_Fecal_Microbial_Changes_With_Diet.98120.aspx

Hypoallergenic Food

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Listen, you’ve heard the term hypoallergenic as it relates to your jewelry, your skin care products, and your laundry detergent, but have you ever thought about the food you eat? Have you ever thought about if what you eat is hypoallergenic? No, no. NOT sterile. Hypoallergenic doesn’t mean sterile!

You don’t blink an eye when a friend says, “Oh, I can’t wear cheap earrings. My ears get sore.” You get that! We can all relate to people needing hypoallergenic jewelry or skin products. But have you ever thought about the food you eat and whether or not it’s hypoallergenic to your system?

Yes, indeed! Just like these external substances can lead to immune reactions, so can the food you eat! However, the food you eat leads to a chain reaction of internal immune system activation that doesn’t just sit right there at the gastrointestinal (GI) tract.

You have immune cells lining the intestines which sample the foods you eat and decide whether or not they like it. Whether you like the food doesn’t matter. Whether the food you eat is healthy or not doesn’t matter. If the immune cells sample it and don’t like it, they are going to send out signals (histamines, prostaglandins, interleukins, interferons, and other cytokine signals) in the blood stream which can affect any organ system in your body: you stomach, your brain, your skin, your reproductive system, your lungs, your connective tissue (joints, as an example), your thyroid.

My Oligoantigenic (What!?!?) Diet

When I first started down this fascinating nutrition avenue a little over four years ago (from a classic diet of cereal for breakfast, a sandwich for lunch, and pizza or pasta for supper), one of the first things I learned about and tried was an “oligoantigenic diet.” I had read that some people with the same gastrointestinal malady that I suffered from had been treated in a medical research study with an oligoantigenic diet!

What in tarnation is an oligoantigenic diet? I’d never heard of that! Basically, it is a strict, hypoallergenic diet that allows only foods which are accepted to be very mild on the body’s immune system. Once I figured out that I could think of an oligoantigenic diet as a type of “hypoallergenic” diet, I got it! Choose foods which cause the least known reactions! For those of you familiar with a strict elimination diet, you know what I’m talking about here too.

So I started on a (miserable) diet consisting of three foods which don’t seem to rile up people’s immune systems too much: lamb (I didn’t even like lamb), plain sweet potato (I had only ever eaten those as fries), and white rice (which I had never eaten plain). Did I mention it tasted miserable? But persistence led me on a food journey of a lifetime (for a lifetime).  And as I’ve heard it said, “I didn’t know I was feeling so bad till I started feeling so good!”

An oligoantigenic diet (or hypoallergenic diet) is NOT meant to be a long-term diet. A person starts with a small group of 3-5 foods and builds from there, learning to observe signs and symptoms that tell him or her that a particular food category raises immune reactions (by observing for headaches, GI changes, spikes in fatigue, skin rashes, and other clues).

The Pesky Foods

Never once going through pharmacy school, medical school, residency, and hundreds of hours of continuing education did I ever hear about a hypoallergenic, oligoantigenic diet or even an anti-inflammatory diet. (I was served plenty of donuts, bagels with cream cheese, and pizza, though.) It took me going after my own health to learn about nutrition.

Since my oligoantigenic diet, I’ve done a lot more reading. What I’ve found is that the same foods that doctors KNOW are immune provoking because they cause true, life- threatening food allergies, are the same foods that can be removed to lighten the load of a body stressed by health problems. By removing known immune-provoking, inflammmatory-producing foods, the body gets a rest from the prostaglandins, histamine, interleukins, interferons, and other cytokines that it makes in response to something it thinks is harmful.

Although any food can cause allergic and sensitivity issues, there are eight foods that are medically known to cause the majority of the reactions. Why? These foods have what I call “pesky proteins.” They have proteins in them that have very, very strong bonds, making them difficult for our digestive tracts to break down. The better food is broken down into its smallest parts in our intestinal tracts, the less inflammatory it is to us.

The pesky eight foods are:

Peanuts
Tree nuts
Milk products
Egg
Wheat
Soy
Fish
Shellfish

These are the common drop-dead if you eat them allergenic foods. But I’m not talking about drop-dead allergies here. I’m talking about you and me and Mr. Smith walking around with headaches, bloating, fussy guts, allergies, asthma, psoriasis, eczema, depression, fatigue, puffy eyelids, puffy faces, coronary artery disease, increasing forgetfulness, dry and itchy eyes, chronic sinus problems, joint pain–do I HAVE to keep going? I sure can. Sometimes by simply eliminating the above food categories (with NO cheating), a person can gauge how much food is affecting their health.

Enter Anti-Inflammatory Diets

Since trying my three ingredient, hypoallergenic diet, I’ve discovered a whole world of anti-inflammatory type diets, which aren’t as strict as an oligoantigenic (hypoallergenic) diet. I find it fascinating that these diets often eliminate the Pesky Eight foods, capitalizing on what we know about the immune system and health! However, anti-inflammatory type diets incorporate and expand further on the idea of the immune system and inflammation in the role of health problems.

Each named anti-inflammatory diet (sometimes called autoimmune diets) has its own unique quirks. In general, though, these diets do three things.

  1. Eliminate most of the Pesky Eight foods (although seafood is usually encouraged if a person knows they are not truly allergic) and a few other problematic foods which don’t make the top eight. (Things like corn, any gluten grains, beef, chocolate, citrus, tomato, and beans)
  2. Eliminate processed foods, refined foods, including sugars.
  3. Include abundant vegetables and fruits.

Anti-inflammatory diets (autoimmune diets) seek to eliminate the most common food problem causers and also try to bring in food problem solvers.

Conclusion

Diets in general can be overwhelming, and when they talk about restricting food groups, diets can be downright terror-provoking. As I’ve journeyed away from an oligoantigenic elimination diet, my own diet landed very similarly to many of these anti-inflammatory type diets. It wasn’t by choice and planning. That’s just how it fell. I can’t eat many of the Pesky Eight foods and feel good doing so. My body likes hypoallergenic food best.

I hear a lot of people say that no good diet restricts food groups. I really, really understand what they’re saying. However, LOOK AT THE PESKY EIGHT! They are good, healthy foods!!!!! But if the GI tract immune system triggers a cascade that sets the rest of the body on edge, you’re not going to feel good.

So please, when someone says they can’t eat dairy or wheat, give them a break. When they say they can’t eat eggs or beef, give them a nod. It’s just as frustrating for them as it is you. And if you have any nagging health problems, talk with your doctor about a dietary referral to see if an oligoantigenic food trial helps you gain control of any of your issues.

Don’t use anything on my site as medical guidance or instruction. I hope it sparks curiosity to help you want to learn more. And, oh yes, I like to think that for most people, autoimmune type diets can be expanded with a whole health approach.

Be well. Be curious.

Terri

Eleven Reasons THAT Won’t Work For You

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Xiao_er_lun_-_Confucius_and_childrenIt’s so easy to let jealousy torment you when your husband loses 30 pounds eating very low carb (while sneaking in Snicker bars)–and you only lose 5 and swear it makes you manic. Why does it work this way?

It’s so easy to cry and wallow in yourself when you try everything for your multiple sclerosis (MS) and nothing seems to make it budge–well, not like it did for Terry Wahls, who changed her diet and lifestyle and went from a zero-gravity recline wheelchair to riding a bike. What does she have that you don’t?

And how about these people with cancer? The people who go to Mexico and get coffee enemas? Why does one come back glowing and cured and the other one we remember with love and frustration, saying, “Tsk, tsk. She wouldn’t take chemotherapy and look what happened to her. Goes to show. . . ”

I could go on and on. He dropped gluten and his arthritis went away. She started coconut oil and frankincense for her dementia and now she recognizes her family again. He gave up dairy, started some aloe, and his constipation is gone for good. Going raw, vegan cured her chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia. Dropping all grains and all dairy and all sugar and starting physiologic folate helped his autism. Fish oil cured her depression.

Can I stop? Do you get the idea? Is this you?

Shocker. Spoil alert.

Stop reading if you’re completely sold on a new diet or have just spent big money on a new supplement because I have some bad news.

It may not work for you. (Gasp. Shocker.)

But I have some good news too! It MAY work!

Today I want to help you understand maybe why you’re not getting better doing the good things you’re doing. Why each person’s health plan (diet, supplement, exercise, sleep, etc.) must be tailored individually. It sounds overwhelming to think you actually have to formulate your own health plan, that it’s not written out there for you in some book, but isn’t that really the journey of our whole life? Finding out what makes us tick? What brings us peace? Coming to terms with our limitations and expanding our strengths?

“I Don’t Have MS, Terri.”

Medical doctors group symptoms and tests together to arrive at a diagnosis. A label. A name. The name helps us to know what to expect for a patient’s outcome. What we’ve tried before that has helped or not helped.

Dementia. Psoriasis. Ulcerative colitis. Multiple sclerosis. Migraines. Crohn’s Disease. These are labels. They are necessary labels! For example, we know that the group of people who have ulcerative colitis symptoms and tests will need monitored for colon cancer, and that many celiac patients can be symptom-free following gluten-free diets. Having a label helps!

But there are tough cases. Cases which don’t fit, and sadly, they’re more common than medical doctors want to admit or even know about. These patients doctor shop, so often a doctor isn’t given the chance to even know that refractory cases are as rampant as they are. There are diagnoses that don’t have good treatments, like irritable bowel syndrome and fibromyalgia.

These patients, these refractory cases, are like a nebulous cloud which floats around looking for answers. Why can’t they get their answers?

I have a friend (actually I have many friends with MS, sad to say) with classic multiple sclerosis (MS) symptoms and diagnostic tests. She repeatedly tells me, “Terri, I don’t have MS. I’ve never believed I have MS.”

You’d think as a medical doctor, I’d laugh my head off silly.

Maybe you, as a vociferous alternative health proponent are thinking, “She must not be doing it right. She needs to do this [insert your desired diet or supplement]. She needs to try harder. She needs to try longer. . .”

Now, my friend is a little frustrated. She has had MS for years, and sometimes it’s better. Sometimes it’s worse. She has tried nearly everything.

What I want you to think about for people–is the possibility that our labels group similar health cases together which may stem from different causes. And when that is the case, when the underlying cause of presentations which LOOK the same is NOT the same, a person can bang her head into a wall (this is one of my favorite images because I’m so prone to doing this if I’m not careful) wondering, “Why not me? Why can’t I? Why did it work for her?” Except in a highly motivated individual who says, “I’m moving on. I can do this. That failure taught me something,” this can be counterproductive and harmful.

One Leukemia: 11 Diseases

And now I get to the crux of my post. When I was in medical school, I learned about acute myelogenous leukemia (AML). I learned it as ONE disease entity. ONE (a bad disease entity at that). New research shows that this AML that I learned about as one disease, is actually 11 diseases, with 11 different causes–which show up looking the same! This helped explain why some people responded so well to treatment and some people tragically did not. We weren’t treating ONE disease, we were treating ELEVEN!

See: Genomic Classification and Prognosis in Acute Myeloid Leukemia

I think that most of our clinically diagnosed diseases will ultimately be found to be caused and/or impacted in different ways. Until that day that you know exactly what the cause of your illness is–your obesity, your thyroid problem, your irritable bowel, your IBD, your arthritis, your insomnia, your depression, your constipation, your MS, and so on–until that day, you’re just going to have to take a flat-out comprehensive approach to have the best outcome.

So…

  • Should you eat low carb?
  • Should you eat high fat?
  • Should you eat dairy?
  • Should you eat meat?
  • Should you eat grains?
  • Should you take calcium?
  • Should you supplement with CoQ?
  • Should you take iodine?

And so on and so forth. Whether you should or shouldn’t may depend on your genes, how they are expressed, your gut microorganisms (bacteria, fungi, viruses), and how your environment (sun, exercise, sleep, diet, daily doses of inadvertent toxins) interacts with those.

There is no ONE diet. There is no ONE lifestyle. In fact, there’s probably no one dementia. No one MS. No one IBS. There may be 11.  So find a platform which resonates with you. Try it. Be willing to modify it. Don’t abandon what works. Keep what works and build your plan. Don’t despair. Don’t give up. Start with absolutely real food if you have a problem you really need to tackle. And move forward, tweaking as your body tells you.

(And, of course, seek medical advice and always be safe.)

Terri

Photo credit: By An unknown Chinese artist [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Outsmart Your Diet

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“You’ve started a gluten-free, dairy-free diet, and you’re feeling pretty zippy. Household purchases of tissues for allergy symptoms are down, and household purchases of toilet paper for gastrointestinal regularity are up. The kids no longer complain of tummy aches and itchy rashes. Your energy level feels amazing. As long as Enjoy Life® chocolate chips and Rice Dream® are around, what is there not to love about eating this way? Why doesn’t every doctor prescribe a gluten-free, dairy-free diet? You just can’t understand it!

Enter nutrient deficiencies. Wheat products and dairy products, despite being pesky foods for the body to digest, pack huge nutrient punches. They are even vehicles for specifically added nutrients which are deficient in our diets, such as folic acid in bread and vitamin D in milk. Doctors know that an improperly implemented gluten-free, dairy-free diet is a set-up for nutritional disaster. They have nightmares of vitamin D-deficient women with broken hips and spina bifida-afflicted newborns from folic acid deficiency. Gluten-free, dairy-free diets make them cringe inside.

A poorly thought-out gluten- and dairy-free diet that relies on processed gimmick products can lead to nutritional deficits—sometimes causing problems much worse than those originally set out to be cured. None of us want that, particularly for vulnerable children. In addition, going gluten-free before an appropriate celiac disease work-up really complicates matters because celiacs should not have a speck of gluten. Please make sure to talk to your doctor about changes in your family’s diet and don’t be afraid to ask for a referral to a nutritionist to help you. This article is not intended to be medical advice but instead to raise awareness. So what are the most common deficiencies when gluten and dairy are cut out and how can they be addressed?

CALCIUM: Dairy is hands-down the easiest way to meet calcium requirements, and calcium is necessary for all of your cells to function. Although it is absolutely possible to obtain the recommended calcium intake without dairy products, it requires exceptional diligence and a willing palate. Good food sources of calcium besides dairy include kale, collard greens, Brussels sprouts, peas, dried figs, and bone-in canned salmon and sardines. When we eliminated dairy two and a half years ago, my kids ate just about none of those foods. Now, they will eat bites of every single one. However, it takes about three cups of cooked kale or one can of sardines to equal the 300 mg of calcium in a glass of milk or cup of yogurt—and that’s not even enough calcium for one day. My kids are good, but they aren’t that good! I work very hard to serve calcium-rich, natural foods daily, but I also choose to supplement with calcium fortified non-dairy milk and a calcium supplement. If you use a non-dairy milk (such as almond milk, rice milk, or coconut milk), be sure to shake it well because the calcium often sinks to the bottom…” (Molly Green Magazine)

If you’re on a gluten-free, dairy-free diet, you need to outsmart it so you can be tip-top healthy.  Can you guess the other nutrients besides calcium that you’d miss out on if you eliminate gluten and dairy? Can ya’?  What do you think they are?  What non-processed foods (and yes, I do consider rice milk and gluten-free English muffins to be processed) do you think you can use to bolster them?  Find out by clicking over to Molly Green On-Line where I write for the wonderful price of free.  If your fingers are broken and you can’t–or you’re just tired of being jacked around all the time by internet personalities–then take a stab in the comments, and I’m happy to share what I know in conversations there.  It won’t be laid out so nicely with great, amazing graphics, but it’ll get you the information.  And THAT–is what I care about!

Seriously, ask away.  I just want you to have the information.  Not dogma.  Not a one-sided view.  Not entrenched, inflexible opinion.  Information, pure and simple (although often quite complex 🙂 ).  And I don’t care if you get it here, in Molly Green, or anywhere else, as long as its accurate.  You never learn if you don’t ask questions.  You never learn if you think you know the answers already.

Enjoy your weekend!

~~Terri

Paprika Chicken: Sure to Please and Super Easy

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Our family really loves this recipe. It is very quick to make and super easy. It can be made dairy-free by using olive oil  in place of the butter. It is good for when you want something that is easy but still very yummy! 😉

paprika chicken

PAPRIKA CHICKEN

(Served four with leftovers.)

2 pounds of skinless, boneless chicken breast, cut into strips or use the pre-cut “tenderloins”
1/4-1/2 cup melted butter or olive oil
Salt, 1 teaspoon
Pepper, 1/2 teaspoon
Garlic powder, 1 teaspoon
Paprika (or smoked paprika), 1 teaspoon
Oregano, 1-2 teaspoons

1.  Preheat the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit (204 degrees Celsius).

2.  Place the chicken in a 9X11 pan.   (Don’t be afraid to cram ’em in there.)

3.  Drizzle the chicken with either melted butter or olive oil.

4.  Sprinkle the chicken with salt, pepper, garlic powder, paprika, and oregano.

5.  Bake for 25-30 minutes, until juices run clear when the chicken is pressed down with a fork.

Serve alongside a side of potatoes or sweet potatoes or rice or squash and something beautifully green.

Family “gustar” report:  100% success rate.  Everybody approved.  Super delicious and super easy.  If you want to make it even better, then consider pounding your chicken.  But this adds a little more mess, work, and time.  I am in fifth grade, and I make this for the family myself.

Warmest wishes for health and happiness from our kitchen to yours–from our family to yours!

~~Mary and Terri

Folate Delivery Dressing

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I have one more post on folate to share before I leave it behind.  It is a recipe I use to help my family eat more greens,Greens eat good food including the folate-powerhouse spinach.

Goal: 

Eat more folate-rich foods, including greens.

Why:

Some people–maybe you–can’t metabolize the form of folate called folic acid very well.  Folic acid is what is added to most grain-based processed foods and used in most vitamins.  These people do much better with folates found naturally in foods.  Since they don’t metabolize folic acid very well, their bodies are basically functioning on a “folate deficiency” despite adequate intake of folic acid.

So what?

I don’t know.  Which reason do you want?  Folate deficiency may play a role in depression?  Bipolar disorder?  Birth defects?  Anemia?  Atherosclerosis?  Alzheimer’s?  Chronic fatigue syndrome?  Gout?  Hearing loss?  Blood clots?

Although the research on folate’s connection to many of these conditions is not clear-cut, there are some suggestions.  On something as simple as eating real, folate-rich food, I don’t see a need to wait around for the million dollar research study.

Plan:

When it comes to folate, spinach leads the pack.  I use this simple dressing which the kids enjoy to deliver folate-rich greens, including spinach, to my family.

 

Folate Delivery Dressing

1/3 cup of bacon drippings
1/4 cup of maple syrup (or honey or sweetener of choice)
1/4 cup of apple cider vinegar
Diced onion (may omit)
Salt and pepper to taste
Spinach (or greens of choice)

Heat bacon drippings in skillet over medium-high heat until melted and hot.  Add onions and saute until golden brown.  Add the maple syrup and whisk.  Allow to thicken and bubble.  Add apple cider vinegar and whisk again.  Allow it to reduce and thicken a little.  Salt and pepper to taste.

Use the dressing to pour over fresh spinach, tossing to wilt.  Use just enough to coat as desired.  Alternatively, the greens may be added to the pan and cooked a little.

 

warm bacon dressingBottom Line:

Nutrient deficiencies abound.  Not huge deficiencies that can be pointed at directly.  But little micronutrient deficiencies.  Feed yourself and your families fresh vegetables, fruits, and foods to overcome these deficits.  You’ll feel the difference!  It is important.  I just wish I could emphasize this enough!

Thank you to my lovely, young daughters for the graphics on this post.

~~Terri

How Do You Eat That Vegetable? Parsnips.

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Vegetable Series: When we changed our eating two years ago, I resolved to be afraid of no vegetable. Not knowing how to cut it or cook it was NOT going to keep it out of my cart. For a long time I’ve wanted to do a series of posts on all the different vegetables we have tried and what we do to the poor things. May you, too, vow to try any and all vegetables in your supermarket! Go get ’em, tiger.

 

“I LOVE those French fries!”Parsnips in basket edited

Have you tried parsnips?  Have your kids tried parsnips?  Do you or your family like parsnips?  Do you have a great parsnip recipe?  Do you know what parsnips are?

For my kids, I often find keeping dishes simple and flavors not too complex suits their taste buds more at this young age.  Plus, when you’re eating a whole, real foods lifestyle, faster and easier is much better for the cook, too!  We made parsnip “fries” to prepare for this post.  When my husband and kids came into the kitchen, I was frantically grabbing fries to stash and hide behind the coffeemaker so I wouldn’t have to make more to photograph!  I was glad the “fries” were a gastronomical success!  M5 year-old daughter said, “I love those French fries, Mom.”

This wasn’t always the case.

If you can do it with a potato…

As I’ve pointed out, we’ve only been eating this way for about two years now.  The word out there is:  If you can do it with a potato…you can do it with a parsnip.  So I tried parsnips in soups, roasts, mashes, and casseroles.  (“What is this, Mom?”  As in, they didn’t approve.)  I even made parsnip fries, which you could tell they didn’t mind, but they didn’t really eat many.  My kids were just too close to their potatoes.  Near removal of the potato and addition of parsnips on occasion, and my kids can now tally parsnips to the growing list of vegetables they’ll eat!

What am I saying?  If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again!  Kids need repetitive exposure and a great example.  Persist in a vegetable-rich diet for your family.  Understand it may take years.  Accept it and don’t give up.  In the meantime, just be prepared to eat a lot of vegetables yourself…

What is a Parsnip?

It is a root vegetable which looks like a fat, white carrot (one of its relatives).

  • Commonly cultivated and eaten in Europe before the potato was introduced.  (Do you know where potatoes originated from?  The mountains of Peru.)
  • Usually thought of as a fall and winter vegetable, but since it stores so well, it is available year round.
  • It is a starchy vegetable and has a sweet, nutty taste and a potato-like texture when cooked.
  • Frost and refrigeration bring about a sweeter taste.
  • Neck to neck, there’s not much nutritional difference between a parsnip and potato.  Parsnips have a little more calcium and a little more fiber.  Parsnips are a little (not much) lower on the “net carb” ladder than a potato.  The only real difference I can think of is that a potato belongs to the family called a “nightshade” and a parsnip doesn’t.  (Nightshades are excluded for people who follow an anti-inflammatory diet because some minor research indicates they may be detrimental to the lining of the GI tract, may increase the body’s production of inflammation-producing chemicals, and increase arthritis and achiness in people.  So someone on an anti-inflammatory diet could easily replace the potato with the parsnip.)

Parsnips are nice because they keep in your refrigerator forever.  I choose them and store them like I do carrots.  Often they come coated in a waxy material, so I always peel my parsnips with a potato peeler before using them to get this strange stuff off.

Then, do what you’d do to a potato!  Here’s one to try, but don’t stop here!

Parsnip Fries

Parsnips, washed and peeled
Olive oil
Salt as desired
Garlic powder and onion powder if desired

Preheat oven to 375-400 degrees Fahrenheit (191-204 degrees Celsius).  Cut the parsnips so that they resemble French fries.  Toss in just enough olive oil to lightly coat.  Sprinkle with salt and other seasonings.  Lay each cut fry on a baking sheet so that the fries have space between them.  You may need to use two baking sheets if you’re making a lot.  (If you get them too close together, they steam each other and get soggy rather than crispy.  Uck.)

Baking times seem to vary immensely.  The best idea is to just watch.  I start by baking in the preheated oven for about 10-15 minutes (but still watching them), and then I take them out and flip the fries.  I bake for another 10-15 minutes or so.  The goal is a fairly golden brown fry that isn’t burnt and isn’t soggy.  Sometimes I remove the ones that look done before the rest.Taste before serving and add more seasoning as desired.  Serve hot.  Nobody likes cold fries of any kind.  Do they?

Parsnip fries edited Cutting parsnips edit

 

Family “gustar” report: 5/5 ate these fries all gone. Will definitely try to include these more in our repertoire.

Note: Parsnips are discouraged for the GAPS/SCD diets.

So what vegetables are YOU all eating?  ~~Terri

Other vegetables in The Vegetable Series:  Rutabagas, artichokes, kohlrabi, and jicama.