Elimination Diet -- What foods to start with?

[TylerDurden]

Hello!

I am seeking advice from anyone knowledgeable on the topic of the elimination diet insofar as it is used to identify personal acute (or even severe) food allergies. My particular question is: where do you begin? How can you know the foods you are okay with from the get go?

After being in ketosis for quite some time, on Tuesday, June 20th (11 days ago) I went cold turkey on every food to go through with the elimination diet myself. The only thing I have eaten for the past 11 days is:

• lamb
• coconut oil (for cooking)
• sea salt (as seasoning)

That's it; full stop. Besides water, Vitamin C, Vitamin D3, probiotics (to counter the antibiotics I'm on as I fight Lyme Disease which I contracted from a tick), and the three ingredients above, I have consumed nothing else. I am not wasting the bones/marrow from the lamb, either -- am throwing those into a pot and boiling them to make bone broth.

I plan on doing this for 5 weeks in total, before starting to reintroduce things back into my diet.

The silly question I have is: what if I'm allergic to lamb and/or coconut oil?

On the topic of the coconut oil, I suppose I could just boil the lamb and cut out the coil entirely and then test it during the re-introduction phase, but the coconut oil and frying (e.g. lamb chops) has really made this whole experiment actually palatable and was hoping to keep it. Plain boiled lamb just doesn't sound too exciting for 5 weeks! This morning I was thinking of switching to ghee instead -- (I have a hunch (although fully prepared to be wrong) that more folks have coconut allergy than a ghee allergy) -- but nevertheless, I'd be back to square one in wondering whether microscopic/trace dairy elements in the ghee are still worth eliminating and then testing for for good form.

Although, as much as I hate to say it, now that I'm actually typing all of this out, I may just swallow the reality pill and cut the oils out entirely to really do this thing right -- unless someone has a saving grace reason I can keep it :D

On the topic of lamb, I have no idea. Maybe I'm allergic after all. I'm worried that if that's the case my body won't be able to heal 100% and calibrate itself properly over the next 5 weeks such that I can start testing foods and trust/listen to the results. Am I just being overly paranoid/wrong/crazy?

And if lamb isn't a good one to start with, is there another/better one to use for the baseline of the elimination diet?

Any/all thoughts/feedback/suggestions are appreciated in advance!

 

[nicklebleu]

I think that if you want to really do a proper elimination diet, I would definitely ditch the coconut oil - you can always BBQ the lamb on a grill or in the oven - without any oil.

My hunch is similar to yours regarding ghee vs coconut.

 

[Keyhole]

You could go that route, but IMO this seems counter productive and I am aware of cases where people have become reactive to more foods simply by adopting a massively restrictive diet like one of pure meat.

You need to be a health detective here and start asking questions like:
1.Why are you not tolerating those foods in the first place?
2. What factors are implicated in disrupting the integrity of the gastric muscosa and intestinal permeability?
3. Does eliminating foods and taking probiotics facilitate the "healing of the gut"? Or is it much more complicated than that?

First of all, my concern with you eating purely meat is liver glycogen. If your liver is not functioning properly, then glycogen stores may be suboptimal. This means that any time you face a stressor, you face the possibility (likely, IMO) of significant stress hormone release (to counteract the glycogen deficit). Cortisol one of the most common causes of what we know as 'leaky gut' IMO, because it literally shuts off the blood flow to the GI tract.

My question would be: what do your other sex hormones look like? do you have significant pregnenolone, testosterone, and progesterone, or is it all being shunted off into the production of cortisol?

Another factor here is histamine, why is histamine "overreactive"? I believe it is often related to stress related hormones also. Are you overweight, and is your lamb 100% grassfed? If not 100% grass fed, there wil be lots of unsaturated fat in the oil.

Stress activates fat-breakdown, often consisting of unsaturated lipids in large quantities. The metabolism of these unsaturated fats activates an enzyme called arromatase, responsible for converting testosterone and other anabolic (pro growth/repair) hormones into estrogen. Excess estrogen is one stimulus for histamine release.... the two are intimately coupled. So if you have a histamine issue, I would examine hormones, stress etc etc. A restrictive diet can compound this issue if you are not careful.

Have you got some bacterial dysbiosis, SIBO or colonic? ITs hard to say without knowing yiur symptoms, but it can often be the cause of inflammation in the gut. That can be implicated in "food intolerances". An example is one of myself: fruit was COMPLETELY off the table for me, because it gave me diarrhea, gas and acne. I went through a couple of protocols and killed off a big chunk of critters, and now fruit is no longer any problem. Note, no probiotics were taken in the process.

Please understand that taking probiotics when dysbiosis is present can potentially make things a lot worse by adding "fuel to the fire", so to speak.

FWIW, these are a couple possibilties among many, but without your symptoms or lab results it is difficult to say. Are you able to afford private lab testing? If so, I can recommend some function gut testing which is usually helpful.

 

[TylerDurden]

You need to be a health detective here and start asking questions like:
1.Why are you not tolerating those foods in the first place?
2. What factors are implicated in disrupting the integrity of the gastric muscosa and intestinal permeability?
3. Does eliminating foods and taking probiotics facilitate the "healing of the gut"? Or is it much more complicated than that?

.....
Another factor here is histamine, why is histamine "overreactive"? I believe it is often related to stress related hormones also. Are you overweight?

Appreciate the thorough reply! I should have added that I have no food intolerances that I am aware of. I am doing this solely to discover acute alergies/sensitivities that may be preventing me from being at peak performance and health. I have not in the prior decade eaten anything (even when I was eating everything) that gave me reason to believe I had an intolerance. The only exception is carb overload, which made me groggy and put me in a food coma at times (no surprise). Lastly, I am not overweight, though did lose ~10 pounds in the last 15 days. I think it's a combination of a serious lack of appetite due to the antibiotics, which make me quite nauseous at the moment. Fortunately today is my last dose of a 3-week course!

First of all, my concern with you eating purely meat is liver glycogen. If your liver is not functioning properly, then glycogen stores may be suboptimal. This means that any time you face a stressor, you face the possibility (likely, IMO) of significant stress hormone release (to counteract the glycogen deficit). Cortisol one of the most common causes of what we know as 'leaky gut' IMO, because it literally shuts off the blood flow to the GI tract.

My question would be: what do your other sex hormones look like? do you have significant pregnenolone, testosterone, and progesterone, or is it all being shunted off into the production of cortisol?

My cortisol is probably through the roof anyways because my sleep is horrific. Trying to get that under control as we speak. The bit about eating purely meat went over my head to be honest. I thought from everything I'd gathered that eating nothing but meat should be mostly okay given human evolution. At the very least I figured it'd be alright for the next 5 weeks or so until I start to re-introduce.

... and is your lamb 100% grassfed? If not 100% grass fed, there wil be lots of unsaturated fat in the oil.

It is 100% organic grass-fed lamb.

Stress activates fat-breakdown, often consisting of unsaturated lipids in large quantities. The metabolism of these unsaturated fats activates an enzyme called arromatase, responsible for converting testosterone and other anabolic (pro growth/repair) hormones into estrogen. Excess estrogen is one stimulus for histamine release.... the two are intimately coupled. So if you have a histamine issue, I would examine hormones, stress etc etc. A restrictive diet can compound this issue if you are not careful.

I have been under quite a lot of stress lately, both at home and at work. Plus the sleep issue is not helping (recently had a bout of insomnia). I am working frivolously to get sleep under control, and when I'm not sleep-deprived, I have the energy to deal with the day-to-day life stresses. Thanks for the reminder of the importance of getting sleep under control.

Have you got some bacterial dysbiosis, SIBO or colonic? ITs hard to say without knowing yiur symptoms, but it can often be the cause of inflammation in the gut. That can be implicated in "food intolerances".

I'm sure my gut is not in a good place right now after 3 weeks of doxycycline (antibiotic). I didn't want to completely destroy my gut so I was taking antibiotics in between doses of the antibiotic. In regards to the inflammation: my understanding is that even acute food allergies can cause inflammation. That's partly why I endeavored on this journey of the elimination diet: to make sure that any and all potential inflammation related to food subsides, and I can start the rebuilding process of a healthy gut since mine got so damaged.

FWIW, these are a couple possibilties among many, but without your symptoms or lab results it is difficult to say. Are you able to afford private lab testing? If so, I can recommend some function gut testing which is usually helpful.

I can afford lab testing but to reiterate the point above, I don't have any particular symptoms that I'm looking to understand or resolve, more so that I just want to do what I can to not cause unnecessary inflammation and issues down the road by not understanding what my personal body's preferences and sensitivities are.

Really what I was seeking in starting the thread was to see if anyone who has does the elimination diet can think of a better food to start testing with than lamb. I chose it rather at random, but then was perplexed by the idea of testing for food sensitivities by starting with a food that I could be sensitive to but wouldn't even know.

That being said, I am thankful for the food for thought (pun intended). If it is particularly detrimental to just do a single meat like I'm doing, and someone more knowledgeable than I can recommend doing two foods (e.g. sauerkraut or something - to make something up), then I am up for it.

 

[zak]

Hello!
(...)
Besides water, Vitamin C, Vitamin D3, probiotics (to counter the antibiotics I'm on as I fight Lyme Disease which I contracted from a tick)
(...)

Hi TylerDurden there are some good threads here about Lyme disease, by example:
https://cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php/topic,39885.msg609784.html#msg609784

A quote:

Lyme Disease
Many health issues are made even more challenging by the burden of free radicals. Consider the tick-borne Lyme disease, caused by the Borrelia burgdorferi bacteria, which sometimes manifests itself in "bulls eye" pattern skin lesions, but can later progress to muscle dysfunction, arthritis, facial palsy, and more. The body's glutathione levels are depleted in an effort to reduce the damage and spread of the disease.

However, antibiotic treatment doesn't address the need for the body to help heal itself. In fact, Polish researchers found that patients using antibiotics to treat the skin lesion phase of the disease, still had heavy free-radical activity. Even though antibiotics in this case are standard medical procedure, the resulting oxidative damage weakens the system. This is why glutathione, because it replenishes the body's own levels, has become a standard practice in integrative treatment of Lyme disease. I believe it is good practice to bolster your glutathione ratio with an oral form anytime you are going to spend extended time outdoors, or if you live in a particularly tick-heavy environment during the spring, summer, and fall months. If you already have Lyme disease, an oral form should help reduce recurring flare-ups.

More threads HERE