Tag: anti-inflammatory diet

Swollen Hands Due to Diet

June 22, 2018June 21, 2018

Could the inflammation in your body be due to what you’re eating? Absolutely.

And, if this statement is true, then the opposite is also true: that you can reduce inflammation in your body by changing the foods that you are eating.

This is a story about a woman I met at a chance meeting who was suffering from terrible inflammation. I could see the inflammation just by looking at her, but at the time I did not know how negatively it was affecting her life. As it happened, the previous day she had photographed her hand, which was so swollen that it was painful to open for the picture.

We began working together the following week and on August 8, 2017, she began implementing a LEAP diet that was scientifically designed to be anti-inflammatory for her based on the results from her Mediator Release Test (MRT). The MRT is the gold standard in food sensitivity testing and takes all the guesswork out of figuring out what you should and shouldn’t eat in regards to inflammation. The results are as unique as your fingerprint.

Before we started working together, she had many days when she was in so much pain that she couldn’t get out of bed. In fact, she had been in bed since June when we met in mid-July. As she told me later, she realized that the reason she had dragged herself out of bed and to that meeting on July 17th, was to meet me and take control of her health.

Same hand on 2/28/18, a little over 6 months later.

On February 28th she emailed me saying, “I don’t know if you have ever seen this, but it was by fate that I had these pics. I took the first one 7/16/17 the day before I met you. It was for a hand analysis session. I was having a hard time opening my hand to get a good pic.

The second one is today, 2/28/18. A world of difference. I was floored. I accidentally discovered this by cleaning up photos on my phone. When I saw the picture, I sat up. I immediately looked at my hands and couldn’t believe it. You can see the information so clearly.

I am also sending to my mastermind group who are hand analysts. I am not, but sent the photo into a group last summer. I would like them to know that if they ever see this, to bring forth as further discovery and suspect for inflammation and forward on to an ND or such. It’s profound.

Glad that you are going to blog about this. It was fate to have this baseline picture, but this could also be a baseline activity to consider so that others can physically see their progress and keep going.”

Are you suffering from painful inflammation? Is inflammation affecting your life in a negative way, keeping you from doing the things you’d like to be doing? If so, contact me to schedule a free initial phone consultation. What have you got to lose – except

Neuromyelitis Optica (NMO) and Diet

November 7, 2013

I just returned from speaking about diet and nutrition at the 5th Annual Patient Day at the Guthy-Jackson Charitable Foundation’s conference on NMO. Again, it was inspiring for me to meet and connect with the brave folks battling this rare autoimmune disease.

Us autoimmune disorders have to stick together! In fact, many with NMO were originally misdiagnosed with multiple sclerosis before having NMO confirmed by an NMO antibody test. Since MS pharmaceutical therapies can actually harm those with NMO, it is worthwhile for those with questions to get the IgG blood test and find out for sure.

One of the common symptoms of NMO, along with optic neuritis; weakness, numbness or partial paralysis of limbs; or shooting or tingling pain in neck, back, or abdomen, is bowel and digestive tract distress.

If there’s any group of sufferers that is in dire need of dietary guidance, this is it!

My sessions focused on cleaning up your diet by avoiding toxins and contaminants in our food supply, including The Scary Seven and GMOs, and generalized advice on adopting an anti-inflammatory diet.

Any issue that has inflammation at the root will benefit from an anti-inflammatory diet. Think about it: if you are inflamed –either internally or visibly– and you remove the stimuli that are found to cause you inflammation, then you will become less inflamed and will feel better.

Of course, the best anti-inflammatory diet is one that is custom-designed for your body using state-of-the-art scientific analysis of your blood (MRT) and urine (enzyme urinalysis). That’s what I do in my therapeutic dietary clinic with my clients all over the country.

I look forward to working with many more NMO patients in the future and helping them sort out the best anti-inflammatory diet approach for them.

GuthyJackson2013 — The annual group photo of the NMO patients gathered in Los Angeles for the 5th NMO Patient Day hosted by the Guthy-Jackson Charitable Foundation.

Diet Can Help Heal Chronic Anal Fissures

May 10, 2013

File this one under: There’s not much that a change in diet can’t help heal…

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) Apr 29 – Along with medical treatment, a diet that curbs food hypersensitivity might help chronic anal fissures to heal, Italian researchers suggest.

Roughly a fifth of patients whose fissures healed with this combined approach had recurrence on double-blind placebo-controlled challenge with wheat and/or cow’s milk proteins, but they didn’t react to placebo administration, Dr. Antonio Carroccio told Reuters Health by email.

Anal fissures are seen in up to 15% of proctology patients, said Dr. Carroccio of the University of Palermo and colleagues in a paper online April 16th in The American Journal of Gastroenterology. Chronic anal fissure prevalence in the general population isn’t clear, but Dr. Carroccio says diseases of the rectum and anus are common, “and the prevalence in the general population is probably much higher than that seen in clinical practice since most patients with symptoms referable to the anorectum do not seek medical attention.”

Research has suggested that anal fissures might be at least partly related to a high resting anal pressure due to unrecognized food hypersensitivity.

To investigate, the researchers randomly assigned 161 patients to follow one of two diets for eight weeks. The first was a “true oligo-antigenic diet.” It eliminated cow’s milk and its derivatives, as well as wheat, egg, tomato, and chocolate. The “sham diet” eliminated rice, potato, lamb, beans, and peas.

All patients also received treatment with sitz baths and bran supplementation during the eight weeks of the study, plus topical nifedipine 0.3 % and lidocaine 1.5% cream three times daily.

By the end, the anal fissures had healed completely in 69% of the “true diet” and 45% of the “sham diet” group (p=0.0002). The intervention group also had a significantly higher number of evacuations per week in the second half of the study.

In a second phase of the study, 60 patients who were cured on the oligo-antigenic diet were challenged with cow’s milk protein or wheat, or placebo. They continued to avoid dietary wheat, cow’s milk, egg, tomato, and chocolate.

While no one reacted to the placebo, 13 had fissure recurrence during the two-week cow’s milk challenge and seven had recurrence during the wheat challenge. Patients who reacted had significant increases in anal sphincter pressure over baseline. They also had more significantly more eosinophils in the lamina propria, and more intraepithelial lymphocytes, compared to non-reactors.

In all, 65 (40%) of patients remained uncured at the end of the study and underwent lateral internal sphincterotomy.

Dr. Carroccio concludes that “anal fissures could be etiologically related to a food hypersensitivity condition.” More work will be needed to confirm that, he admits.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/15Uvg8i <http://bit.ly/15Uvg8i>

Am J Gastroenterol 2013.

Apr 29, 2013
By David Douglas
Reuters Health Information © 2013

Salicylate Sensitivity and Psoriasis

February 21, 2013September 9, 2020

In my work creating customized anti-inflammatory diets, one of the trickiest sensitivities to deal with is salicylate sensitivity.

Psoriasis before going salicylate-free. Skin is scaly and uncomfortable.

Psoriasis 2 weeks after going salicylate-free. Itch-free and healing!

When salicylates show high in the Mediator Release Test (MRT), it translates to an exhaustive analysis of every food before deeming it safe to it for that person.

Salicylates sensitivity is near impossible to identify without such sophisticated testing because so many foods we think of as “healthy” are full of these naturally occurring compounds. Synthetic salicylates may be added to many medicines, perfumes, and personal care products. Those with salicylate sensitivity need to be aware of both sources when they are looking to find relief.

Salicylate sensitivity can manifest in anything from migraines to skin issues to autoimmunity. One of my clients arrived battling severe psoriasis that had recently escalated with new patches and swelling in her face and eyelids. Testing showed she was highly reactive to salicylates.

We started her off on a tailored anti-inflammatory diet that was low in salicylates. Immediately, the puffiness and new patches receded, but long-term spots were unresponsive. We adjusted her diet to be entirely salicylate-free and the change in her body was dramatic after only two weeks.

She realized that the daily “green-smoothie” health kick she and her husband had been following had actually been making her skin much worse, full as it was of salicylates in the leafy greens!

So much for blindly following generalized health advice!

Mom’s AutoImmune Disorder Increases Risk of Autism in Babe

August 28, 2012

While we might suspect vaccinations are contributing to the alarming rise of autism in this country, Moises Velasquez-Manoff, the author of An Epidemic of Absence: A New Way of Understanding Allergies and Autoimmune Diseases, thinks autism might be related to immune responses stretching farther back into the womb. Perhaps even to the mother’s autoimmune disorder.

In a recent New York Times column on autoimmunity and autism, Velasquez-Manoff points out that Danish research studying over 700,000 births shows a mother’s immune dysfunction can raise the child’s risk of autism by 350%.

As a mom with an autoimmune disorder, multiple sclerosis, I am particularly interested in learning about this link. Although my kids have aged beyond the autism zone, both show food and chemical sensitivity reactions (inflammation) and I’m certain there is a connection.

Velasquez-Manoff says: “The theme here is maternal immune dysregulation. Earlier this year, scientists presented direct evidence of this prenatal imbalance. Amniotic fluid collected from Danish newborns who later developed autism looked mildly inflamed.”

It all comes down to inflammation.

It all comes down to inflammation, yet again, but this time it appears to be the mother’s inflammatory response during gestation that influences the amniotic fluid that sensitizes the developing child, who later manifests as autistic. Perhaps autism is what it looks like when unwelcome swelling interferes with brain development.

The Feingold Association has a lot of research showing that autistic kids manifest behavior changes from ingesting chemical additives like the petroleum-based, FDA-approved Food Dyes & Colors (FD&C) in so many of our food (or food-like) products.

My goal, in both my own life and in my clinical practice as a naturopath, always focuses on reducing and eliminating inflammation through customized dietary strategies. Autoimmune disorders, like multiple sclerosis, fibromyalgia, and rheumatoid arthritis, respond so well to personalized anti-inflammatory menus that I started the Fight MS with Food project to gather data about the efficacy of this approach.

Velasquez-Manoff might advocate intentional parasitic infection as a way to combat hypersensitivity that manifests as autoimmunity, but personally I’d rather change what I’m eating than choose to host a colony of parasitic hitchhikers. My theory reverses his: I think that sometimes parasitic infection can cause the inflammation that leads to autoimmune disorders, not cure them.