For me, it was the opposite. Cutting out meat and eating a lot of organic greens helped calm my immune system and reduce inflammation. In my experience, meat increased my inflammation, while greens decreased it. I think everyone is different, and it's not hard to test on yourself if you have noticeable symptoms like joint pain, as I did.
I was diagnosed with lupus a few years ago. My mom also had it and passed away after 10 years due to complications. My initial symptoms were severe joint pains, which made daily activities difficult. This happened during the COVID lockdown, which helped me maintain my job.
I did a lot of research and tried various treatments. Functional medicines and expensive vitamins didn’t help. I read about long-term fasting and tried different routines at home. I did several 1-day, 3-day, and 7-day fasts. During the 7-day fasts, my pain disappeared, but it returned once I resumed eating. This led me to believe that food was causing inflammation.
Previously, I ate a lot of lean meat and occasional red meat. I then cut down to eating meat once a week and ate mostly raw leafy vegetables the rest of the time. My pain would come back after eating meat and decrease over the week. I eventually stopped eating meat entirely and consumed a ton on greens, and within six weeks, I was pain-free.
I also tried Benlysta for months, but it didn’t help much. Vegetables seemed to reduce my inflammation more effectively. I stopped taking Benlysta but continued regular blood tests. After a year, my doctor agreed I could stop the medication. I’ve been in remission for the last two years with no pain or inflammation.
I hope this helps, though it’s just my personal experience.
I have crohn's disease which is also autoimmune and directly related to ingesting certain things. I think a lot of autoimmunity has to do with intestinal bacteria and their relationship to our innate immune system. And to a lesser extent it seems that almost every aspect of life is effected by what we eat, how we feel, how we act, how we grow and die. Maybe in 100 years we'll have fecal tests and bacteria pills to catch and prevent a paradigm shifting amount of ailments.
I know I've tried tons of different diets and exclusions and things. I've got a pretty good list in my head of what i can and can't eat but it seems to change q bit every couple years. I used to not tolerate bread but eat sugar and it seems to have switched some time in the last decade. Anyways, i wish you luck with your journey and I'm glad you've found something that works for you
Quite a few of my friend's that were diagnosed with chron's disease found out that the main culprit seemed to be flour and other foodstuff that had been treated with glyphosate (Roundup). After switching to sourdough bread made from organic flours, and similar choices for masa harina (nixtamilated corn) their issues went away. This was after years of not eating anything with fiber, gluten, or nightshades.
Their theory was that the herbicides would kill off their gut's natural biome and cause an inability process carbohydrates, fiber and maintain a intestinal mucus layer.
YMMV...but just passing along what has worked for a few of my friends.
Hmmm...I recently had my gut biome die off but could not identify any suspects. I bake a lot.
The most noteable thing about the whole experience was how amazing my bowel functions are after having to restore the gut biome. They are functioning far better than the many years before I experienced the die off. I used pills from Amazon that had good reviews (Physicians Choice) with a strict raw vegetable diet, and they definitely worked. I noticed another uptick in bowel function after taking some pills my wife purchased that had more strains. You can't just eat yogurt and dust off your hands.
California banned potassium brominate as a food additive last year, but it doesn’t go into effect until 2027.
The FDA finally banned brominated vegetable oil very recently so maybe they’ll get to the rest of it too. Assuming they can make rules anymore, anyway.
I was struggling with digestive issues from about 2019 after a severe work burnout (I think triggered by sleeping with a belly full of casein powder and also don't eat gas station sushi) but finally got to the bottom of them only this year. The solution was holistic, but basically my body's inflammation was so high from stress that my gut couldn't handle a piece of bread or a cup of milk, much less beans or nightshades.
Specifically I have sleeps apnea, my cortisol was 1.5 times the max upper range, my thyroid wasn't getting signals from my brain, I had adrenal fatigue, my B12 levels were low (the liver stores 3 years worth of B12, that's why vegetarians often crash the third year), my D3 was low, my BMI was way too high so aromatase was turning my T to estrogen, basically my levels were all off. My nurse gave me some prescriptions and a supplement cocktail and I found relief within just a few days. My joint pain went away, my patchy hair filled in after a couple of months, no more brain fog, etc. If IBS is a spectrum, then my experience has been that it is curable even if it's been going on for 5 years or more, although Crohn's disease probably has immune system markers that require specific treatments.
Now my digestive issues are in remission and I can eat everything I did before (edit: including gluten), although spicy food maybe overstimulates my peristalsis. So that's just the onset of oldtimers disease I guess.
For some level of immediate relief, try eating mainly big looseleaf salads for a few days, drink kefir, and drink a scoop of organic turmeric powder to calm the inflammation, all daily. I also found 2-4 psyllium husk capsules and a large glass of water daily to be highly beneficial, but watch for flares since there are different types of IBS. And stop all multitasking (edit: choose the path of least anxiety), add slack to your schedule, make 20 minutes per day to meditate, and stop believing that you are stuck and this will last forever. I believe that night terrors and bodily symptoms are our subconscious trying to get our attention so that we do the healing work to address the pain of our isolation and suffering.
Yes, there is a whole subsection of the internet that seems to think that vegetables are a net negative. They site doctors that suggest that fiber causes irritation in individuals with compromised intestines (leaky gut syndrome, etc.). It's exhausting having conversations with them as a vegetarian as they seem to think the only healthy way to eat is bone broth, butter, mct oil, and meat.
It’s common for someone in a flare of an IBD to be unable to eat vegetables without irritation. You should seek to understand the root cause of an individual’s experience instead of invalidating their experience due to your own.
If they become healthier then they should be able to increase vegetable intake which will further increase their health.
I got fecal tests and used expensive supplements and vitamins as recommended by a functional doctor, but they didn't help. I looked into how immune suppression medicines like Benlysta work and tried to mimic their effects naturally to get relief and hopefully stop using medicine. I think food can help manage many side effects of immune-related diseases, even if it can't cure them.
You might want to try the Wim Hof Method. I don't believe in everthing Wim Hof attributes to his method but when it comes to immune response, there is scientific evidence that it does indeed result in an increase of IL-10, which is anti inflammatory.
Did you ever do an Igg food sensitivity test-food panel to check if there were any inflammatory Igg markers from specific foods you were eating? E.g. they can test for 200+ most common foods, which you would of had to have eaten within the last 2-3 months for the Igg markers to still be present - otherwise they breakdown and obviously won't be detected.
To note, you need to eat high fat meat in order to properly digest the meat.
It's possible to also be allergic to certain types of meat, e.g. there's a protein in duck that bothers me.
Another factor to seriously consider is if consuming high quality organic meat vs. whatever else.
Also, meat requires a lot of energy to break down due to its [nutrient-calorie] density - of course you get back much more energy than it consumes, but it is an intensive process, so if there are other foods you're eating that are causing irritation then digesting meat could be problematic - and so then while of course reducing or stopping eating meat will then stop symptoms, it's possible that if removing the other foods that may be causing problems would then allow the meat consumption without causing any problems.
There's really been no properly done research on diet.
I'm curious if you've looked into N-Glycolylneuraminic acid and whether that could be the issue? Does chicken cause an issue for you?
I'm sorry to hear about your Lupus diagnosis, and glad it's in remission. My doctor wanted to diagnose me with Lupus due to the facial rash and arthritis/joint pain, but I came back negative in all the bloodwork, which I think means about 98% sure don't have it. I found that I can treat the joint pain effectively with SSRIs (Fluoxetine, 20 mg is enough to wipe it out after a few weeks). My mother has MCAS and my sister and aunt have UC, so I feel like I'm tripping through a minefield trying to navigate whatever autoimmune issue this is....and I have a PhD in biochemistry.
I haven't looked into N-Glycolylneuraminic acid specifically. For me, all types of meats, including eggs, chicken, and lamb, increased my inflammation levels. From what I understand, correctly diagnosing immune diseases can be quite challenging. My doctor once said it’s more of an art than a science. Because my mother had lupus it was easy in my case. While I’m not against medications, they often come with side effects. For example, immunosuppressants are necessary for high inflammation but can increase the risk of cancer. Even SSRIs have side effects.
When I had pain, I tried both medications and dietary changes, using an engineering mindset to isolate variables. Although I listened to my doctor, I also took matters into my own hands and did my research. My doctor initially doubted that changing my diet would help but did recommend the Mediterranean diet. He still doesn’t believe that food helped since there’s no clinical research backing it, and it’s not something commonly taught in medical schools.
The best part about experimenting with food is that it's easy and inexpensive to test on oneself. In my case, I was fortunate that my joint pains allowed me to observe the effects of my dietary changes within a week or less. Initially, I expected results in a day or two, but I soon realized that I needed to experiment for at least a few weeks to see the full effects. These days, I consume small quantities of eggs every few weeks and haven't noticed any significant increase in inflammation.
One of my friends has APLS (antiphospholipid antibody syndrome), which can also occur as a secondary symptom of Lupus. All of her blood tests always come back negative due to the way APLS affects coagulation -- unless the bloodwork is cultured for at least two days. So if you have reason to suspect the test results may be incorrect, ask them to re-do the bloodwork as a long-term culture rather than the normal fast screening.
In the vegan community there is lost of discussion of animal products causing auto immune issues. A compromised gut lining will let intact animal proteins into the body. The immune sees the animal foreigners but also attacks our body; us being animals too.
Type 1 diabetes, aka childhood diabetes, is thought to be from casein in A1 milk; where the immune system attacks the beta cells of the pancreas. Seems plausible to me; rates of dairy consumption seem to correlate with type 1. (see Finland).
So this is where the people come from who responded to my MS diagnosis with diet plans…I can tell you, despite their clearly good intentions, it was really annoying. Same kind of thing with faith healers. Come at me after you’ve got some reliable data from repeated double-blind controlled trials. Until then, I’m really not interested what kind of kale smoothies might help nerve pain and paralysis.
They also used really unhelpful citations, like “see: Finland”.
Feel free to continue this discussion here and within nutrition enthusiast groups, but please consider the perspectives of someone who’s struggling with a fresh, serious diagnosis before telling them all the hidden secrets of raw diets. Part of getting diagnosed is, at least for me, doing a shit ton of research to know better what my body is doing to me. Part of that research is sifting through all the scams and B.S. NaturalNews[TM] crap that, relevant or not, reads just like this thread. So when people tried to respond to the news of my illness with recipes it felt really patronizing and minimized my experience for the purposes of highlighting their hobby.
Just for an outside perspective. If any of this is backed with reliable data, I’m happy to read it.
This is a classic example, frequently paired with a bunch of pseudoscience and smart sounding nonsense. Even if it weren’t personally offensive to me as an MS patient (diagnosed in 2001, when I in my late teens, and not for nothing—a soccer player and vegetarian in otherwise very good physical shape) this kind of speculative alternative health stuff muddies the water so that when looking for legitimate, bonafide information for autoimmune disorders and treatments, one has to sift through vast torrents of frequently difficult to distinguish bullshit. They go out of their way to appear legit, spend tons of money to push dis-/misinformation, and/or poison the well of mainstream science and research.
I’m not suggesting that’s what’s happening in all of these comments, but I’ve seen a lot already that absolutely is. It’s really disappointing to see, but I’ve learned HN comments are great…until the topic of discussion departs from the usual tech-specific ideas, then it’s Dunning, Kruger, et al.
Unfortunately, role of food in human health isn't studied properly because of won't make anyone money.
Traditional Indian medicine and grandma's wisdom have a long list of foods to eat or not depending on disease/pregnancy/breast feeding etc. But there isn't enough scientific research on it.
Unfortunately the Internet has made it worse now everybody is peddling something or other.
I eat a lot of legumes such as lentils, chickpeas, black beans, and peas. I also include tofu made from soy, and nuts like almonds, peanuts, as well as seeds like chia, flaxseeds, and hemp. I use plant-based protein powders too specifically (https://lovecomplement.com/products/complement-organic-vegan...) when I drink green smoothies (3 to 4 meals a week).
Green leafy vegetables also has a lot protein (Kale, Broccoli and Brussels).
I use supplements for B12 which is missing from vegetable foods.
I used to eat fish but when I stopped all animal products I gave up fish as well. I guess if I have fish once in a while it won't hurt me but I have a tendency to overdo it. The main thing for me was to reduce the inflammation when I had the imbalance. This meant stopping everything I thought might cause inflammation until it went away.
My diet was also free of all salts, sugars and oils for few months though I do use them now.
I never understood why the British had such a hardon for split pea soup until I looked at the nutrition. "Split peas" have a lot more protein than regular peas. Like two or three times as much.
As for the fish, you could try making yourself miso soup. Properly made, it contains bonito flakes, and it's impossible to overdo bonito flakes.
>I use supplements for B12 which is missing from vegetable foods.
Just in case you're looking for an inexpensive vegan whole food source, seaweed sheets (like those used in sushi) have a relatively high amount of B12. I took a look at the brand in my pantry and it has 60% RDA per sheet.
> A 2014 study reported that dried purple laver ("nori") contains vitamin B12 in sufficient quantities to meet the RDA requirement (Vitamin B12 content: 77.6 μg /100 g dry weight).[19] By contrast, however, a 2017 review concluded that vitamin B12 may be destroyed during metabolism or is converted into inactive B12 analogs during drying and storage.[20] The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics stated in 2016 that nori is not an adequate source of vitamin B12 for humans.[21]
Thanks, I was only going off the nutrition label, it shows 60% RDA per sheet. However, the reference link for the academy is broken; I wonder if they’ve changed their stance? Other references indicate raw nori has B12 but the drying process may turn it to an inactive form.
