Why the diet? 🤷🏻‍♀️

Those who work with me or even know me, also know that I am a stickler for focusing healing efforts on the diet first and foremost. Anytime someone asks me for health advice, the first thing I will ask them about is their diet. But why?

It may seem obvious, and the simple answer is that whatever is on the end of our fork can harm or heal us. But the more complicated answer is more specifically what I am going to dig into here. This is the stuff that often gets missed, avoided or misunderstood, and may even be the missing link for your ongoing symptoms.

We must first understand that what we eat literally becomes our tissue and cells. My first blog from 2008 was called “Your are what you eat,” because this couldn’t be more true. What we eat contains food chemicals, molecules that when broken down, are absolutely essential for energy, performance, mood, and optimal long-term health. So I know most people get it, we can’t live without food, but it’s so much more than that. It’s not just food we need, it’s the right food for our individual bodies. I am not going to get into the basics of nutrition here, I think anyone who follows me knows I’m all about eating healthy and avoiding junk food, so we’ll just leave that at the door.

Today’s discussion is about dietary interventions for chronic conditions like autism, PANS/PANDAS, ADHD, allergies and anything else chronic, like rheumatoid arthritis, fibromyalgia, thyroid conditions, autoimmune disease of any kind and so on. Every chronic health condition requires a good, hard look at the the diet. Even if you’ve been at this healing game for decades, if you haven’t pressed rewind and really evaluated the foods your body loves, and more importantly doesn’t love, you’re missing a big piece of the puzzle for your health. To flip the switch from disease or autoimmunity to healing, we need to lighten the load on the body.

IT’S FOUNDATIONAL

Imagine building a house with no foundation? What would happen to that house? I think it’s pretty safe to say that it would eventually fall down. Even with the most impressive construction skills, a house without a foundation has no stability. You will eventually reap the consequences of trying to rush the job without ensuring a good strong footing beneath the structure.

Experimenting with treatment after treatment without fine tuning the diet is like that house without a foundation. There isn’t enough stability to withstand the pressure of all those treatments, if you don’t first look at what is being put into the body on a regular basis.

And this is where you might be saying to yourself, “I eat healthy, I don’t need to dig any deeper.”…but that nagging symptom of joint pain is in the back of your mind trying to push through. Or maybe your child “eats healthy,” and maybe you are even gluten, dairy and soy free so you think you’ve addressed the diet, but you are remembering how s/he continues to have potty accidents well past training, complains of random pains or has out of proportion tantrums. If you are still dealing with lingering symptoms and you think the diet is “fine,” think again. There could be a very simple solution at the root of some nagging symptoms that won’t resolve even though you’ve “tried everything.” Does that sound familiar?

If you’ve been going through treatment protocols without much lasting progress or you have lingering symptoms that just don’t seem to resolve with any of the many protocols you’ve tried, I recommend you back up and re-evaluate your foundation. 😉

STAGES OF INVESTIGATION

So let’s go down the path of investigation. How do you make dietary intervention decisions in the ocean of options?

Let’s break it down in manageable chunks, in stages of experimentation. Unfortunately, although you can have all kinds of food panels drawn (they are helpful when you are still struggling and you truly feel like you’ve tried many of the diets I recommend, but we’ll address this option later) the most tried and true investigative efforts for the diet are by using elimination techniques for extended periods of time, where you then challenge the foods after strict avoidance, and yes, it has to be strict avoidance. Otherwise, what is the point of avoiding a food, if you aren’t going to actually….avoid it? For some people, even trace amounts of a problematic food/trigger, can start up the autoimmune cascade which can last months, drowning out all of your other efforts for a period of time. So strict is essential during the investigate stage. Don’t go at the intervention half-you-know-what….prepare, and do it 100%, otherwise you may be setting yourself up for inaccurate investigation results. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard families tell me that they have tried it all, every diet, nothing works, only to discover that they missed something or they weren’t 100% invested in the elimination of certain foods, sabotaging their own efforts to find solutions.

So yep, go into this expecting to be strict. Also, go into this expecting to document your results and findings. It is so easy to forget that before you removed dairy, you weren’t sleeping great and now you are. It can slip the mind, especially when you are feeling better. Write it all down, no matter how small it may seem.

WHICH FOODS THOUGH?

Let’s start with the foods I think every single person with a chronic condition should avoid. These don’t usually require a trial in my opinion, because if you have a chronic condition involving some sort of chronic inflammation, whether it’s in the joints, the brain or it’s systemic, it requires eliminating highly inflammatory or toxic foods…remember the foundation? This is critical to reducing inflammation no matter where in the body it’s occurring.

Most people, for their sanity, need to go into food elimination thinking it’s a trial, not permanent. There is something about knowing you might not need the intervention that provides the forward momentum needed to keep going with the “trial.” Living for the possibility that they might not actually need the diet is their motivation. Ok, I understand that psychology, and it makes sense. We all want to believe we don’t need to make life more complicated than it already is. Did I warn you that I’ve reserved myself to being the resident party pooper? 😉 I want to be totally honest with you here so you take this seriously, these foods have been proven time and again to cause immune dysfunction in a variety of ways. You can certainly go down the individual rabbit hole for each food; trust me, I’ve been there, it’s why I feel so strongly about this intervention as foundational work. So do what you must, I encourage educating yourself, because it will reinforce why you need to avoid these foods, so don’t just take my word for it…go ahead and research each of these foods as inflammatory or immune disrupting, but if you want to give this a real go, eliminate them. 100%.

Here’s the kicker, this is the hook, line and sinker. I’m going to spoil the ending for you. When you start feeling better or your child(red) begin behaving better, you’ll be sold. That “trial” now becomes essential to life. 😊 See, I’m not all bad news!? 😆

My favorite source for assistance with going gluten, casein and soy free is the TACA website, because of their sheer thoroughness. If you need shopping lists, tips and background information, this is a great place to get started on your journey, or even to ensure that you’ve done the elimination as thoroughly as possible. It’s not uncommon to hear about people trying to go GFCFSF and missing something major, or even minor, which has the distinct potential to completely ruin the trial.

Here’s the full list for stage one in your dietary foundation efforts, this is what I recommend to everyone who has a chronic condition start with:

• Gluten - wheat, rye, barley, and oats that aren’t GF. I recommend the Gluten-free Society if you want to research more about the role gluten plays in chronic inflammation, leaky gut and thyroid disorders, among other deleterious effects it has on health.

  Following is an excerpt on gluten from my book, Lives Paralleled, Living in Darkness and Shadows, an Autism and PANDAS memoir and resource guide:

  “Please be aware that "gluten-free" according to the food industry does NOT mean free of gluten. The food industry has a predetermined threshold of gluten considered to be "gluten-free" and for some, that threshold may be too much. If you prefer to eat foods that are truly free of gluten, you will want to know exactly what you are eating. A food that is prepackaged or labeled as “gluten-free,” is not necessarily free of gluten and for some people, even trace amounts can cause inflammation throughout the body and/or an opiate effect. Gluten remains in the body for 6-9 months and in that time frame, if we continue to expose ourselves to industry standard "gluten-free" foods, imagine the accumulative effect.

  There may never be TRUE healing if we don't fully eliminate certain gluten-containing products from our diets. We must be our own food detectives. If you are trying to eliminate gluten and you REALLY want to give gluten-free eating a shot (to see if it resolves health problems) I think it's imperative that this detail be taken into consideration. The only true gluten-free diet is created by cooking your food, in your kitchen, with your own fresh ingredients.”

• Dairy - the correct technical term for this is casein, the protein found in animal milks. Did you know that beyond infancy, we don’t actually produce enough of the enzyme that digests milk? Beyond this detail though, when a pregnant mother with the MTHFR genetic mutation takes folic acid in her prenatal (or even eats it in “fortified” foods), it has the potential to initiate a cascade into autoimmunity where the body begins to develop antibodies to casein proteins. This is passed down to the baby in utero. It’s very possible then for the baby to develop an allergy or sensitivity to dairy products, which has the distinct possibility of developing into autoimmunity early in life. Considering how prominent MTHFR mutations are and how frequently prenatals with folic acid (instead of methyl folate or folonic acid) are prescribed, it’s no surprise that dairy allergies are quite common in our children. I discovered that I myself was sensitive to dairy, and may be have been my entire life, when my baby required me to avoid dairy while nursing so he wouldn’t experience eczema. Many of my own chronic symptoms resolved. I had them for so long, I actually believed that was just how I was made! Chronic ear infections since childhood, unexplained ear and head pain throughout my adult life, random eye inflammation, chronic cystic acne since my teens that never went away as an adult, and irritability that was chalked up to my personality, all resolved! 😯 If you have a child who started life with repeat ear infections, eczema, reflux, or asthma, dairy is the likely culprit, or at least part of the bigger picture.

• Soy - an endocrine disruptor, mimics estrogen in the body and soy is also a protein shaped very similarly to gluten and casein, so the body reacts to it in the same way it reacts to gluten and casein. Soy also blocks the absorption of vitamin K which will disrupt your calcium absorption. It’s cascading effect on poor health is why I am astounded whenever I hear of nutritionists recommending it as a health food or a doctor suggesting soy milk as an alternative to a dairy allergy in infants. Soy couldn’t be further from a healthy option. If you need to replace dairy with an alternative, avoid soy at all costs, but also avoid many of the high sugar, preservative-filled “dairy alternatives” on the commercial market. You can make alternatives at home very simply or you can consider camel milk, which is the one animal milk exception that actually heals allergies and leaky gut! Because it contains very different casein than cow or goat milk, most people with dairy sensitivities or allergies can drink camel milk without a problem. Learn more about camel milk in my book.

• Sugar - refined sugar is what I am referring to here, although for some people even some natural sugars can be problematic due to underlying infections in the gut so it might require first eliminating all sugars and then slowly challenging natural sugars like maple syrup and honey, etc.

• Preservatives - all of them, without question.

• Pesticides, especially glyphosate which is found in all genetically modified foods (GMO) and even some organic foods - avoiding glyphosate can be really hard, especially if you enjoy eating out. The elimination phase may require you to dedicate yourself to eating at home for a period of time so you can control everything you are exposed to, it’s worth it, trust me. You will really begin to tease out where you can safely eat when you take this seriously.

  Here is an excerpt from my book regarding some of the effects of glyphosate on our health:

  “Glyphosate is essentially an antibiotic, killing off beneficial bacteria, resulting in an overgrowth of bad bacteria, promoting inflammation. This overgrowth has been linked to cancers like colorectal, stomach and gallbladder cancers, as well as lymphoma. The over‐ growth of bad bacteria results in an endotoxin known as Zonulin, which promotes leaky gut as well as leaky brain. Undigested proteins in the brain result in autoimmune disease. When glyphosate was originally patented in 1964, it was meant to be a chelator of trace minerals, magnesium especially, which has been shown to be another probable cause of cancer.

  Our beneficial bacteria use something known as the Shikimic-acid pathway to produce essential nutrients like folate and aromatic amino acids that our bodies can’t make. These amino acids are precursors to all kinds of biologically active molecules in our body.

  Glyphosate blocks the Shikimate pathway. Promoters of glyphosate debate that there are no ill effects to humans, because we don’t have a Shikimate pathway, but the residents of our microbiome do and they are essential to our lives.

  One of the most troubling concerns associated with ingesting glyphosate is that it is a synthetic amino acid and glycine analog which can become incorporated into proteins in place of glycine. What does this mean? It means that glyphosate is pretending to be glycine. There is a code for glycine and because glyphosate looks just like glycine, it gets picked up. It fits right into the glycine socket perfectly. Glyphosate then gets in the way, disrupting enzyme function, therefore the proper enzymatic reactions won’t happen, in other words, these functions become non-operative. Glycine is normally used in DNA and RNA transcription, protein and enzyme synthesis and collagen formation.”

• Eat organic whenever possible, because of the pesticides which contain many dangerous chemicals including heavy metals that will bioaccumulate in your body and brain. They also strip the gut of beneficial microbes (mentioned above) which are absolutely vital to a healthy body and brain. I’ve written a separate blog entry about how toxins effect the microbiome. Check it out for more background on the specifics.

• Corn - I know most people will be surprised by this, but in my experience, corn is a gluten so similar to the gluten listed above that most chronically ill people react to it. So eliminate it and come back to it later to see if a challenge results in the return of any symptoms. I have a love-hate relationship with corn. I want so desperately to believe I can handle it, because I just love blue corn chips so much, salty and crispy…mmmm, but every single time I eat them, I get fleeting joint pains in my small joints. Every. Time. I can’t deny it, it’s been experimented with so many times, mainly because I have a corn-chip weakness and I have so few snacks in my diet, but I can’t deny it. My kids on corn…OMG, corn is like the devil for them. It changes them instantly!

You may be surprised by how eliminating the above foods and ingredients changes you, and it may even be all you need to change to reach optimal health, but chances are, if you have something really chronic going on, something more deeply rooted in years of toxicities and decreased detoxification, there is a good chance you won’t be done there. Children on the spectrum, with PANS/PANDAS, ADHD, learning disabilities, allergies, anxiety, pains and so on, often have to move onto additional elimination trials once the above has been established. Take your time so you know you are doing it right, but don’t give up. It can be rocky initially as you are figuring it all out. As you remove addictive foods (gluten, dairy, soy, sugar and preservatives), your body may put up a big fight. You will learn really fast which foods you were (or your child was) addicted to during this stage, because the cravings will be strong, so strong that children will often sneak and lie to get these foods. My son was like an addict going off the foods he couldn’t eat when he was 3 years old. He was slurring, walking into walls, vacillating between spaced out and hyper, moody, resistant to change and aggressive. Once we got over the hump, he was a new kid!! But the above foods weren’t nearly enough to take us all the way to the finish line. There were still some nagging symptoms remaining, some of which I was frequently told “may just be his personality.” Nope. Not personality. When a child is behaving oddly or in a way that isn’t consistent with the values you’ve raised him or her with, that isn’t personality, something is wrong. Every behavior in a child has a cause and if you can’t find one that makes sense, it very well may be manageable through dietary interventions. I always say, a mother knows. We know our kids, trust your gut.

If something still isn’t right, continue on with the following considerations. When I tell you that the following interventions were absolutely pivotal in our household, that is not an understatement. Life changing. They require getting into a new groove which is always unsettling, but also only temporarily. Always keep that in mind. Any big changes you make will eventually become second nature with time. Keep your eye on the prize.

This is where we get into foreign territory for most people. 😁 Stay with me here, it may change your life too!

As people change their diets in an attempt to eat healthier and eliminate the above culprits from their diets, a simple and potentially very disruptive mistake often ensues. Think about the foods we consider healthy, that also enable you to avoid gluten, dairy, soy and corn…nuts, GF grains, seeds, leafy greens, colorful fruits and veggies, vibrant high antioxidant teas, even dark chocolate without milk is touted as a super food. What do all of these foods have in common? Many of them share food chemicals known as oxalates and/or phenols like salicylates and amines. If you haven’t heard of these, let’s get acquainted with them, like…how about now? 😉

I am going to pull together some data from my website and my book, why reinvent the wheel, right?

LET’S LEARN ABOUT OXALATES FIRST

From my book:

Oxalates are a component of all food, but are more prevalent in plant foods and serve as a natural pesticide for the plant. An example of foods unusually high in oxalate levels are: spinach, chocolate, all nuts, most grains, the skins of most fruits, beets, sweet potatoes and many more. For individuals whose bodies tend to accumulate and store oxalates in an attempt to remove them from circulation in the blood stream, it is imperative that they keep their intake low or they risk potentially painful symptoms related to the excretion of mass quantities of oxalates. It is common for people with fibromyalgia to have elevated oxalate stores and I would encourage anyone with joint pain, at minimum, to check into this possibility. The more common symptoms appear when the person is dumping oxalates, which is an act of the body excreting previously stored oxalates periodically and can consist of any of the following symptoms: skin rashes, sandy feeling stool, burning upon urination, bloating, pain in the urethra, joints, eyes, heart, bones and especially the lower back (when they are accumulating in the kidneys), a common place for oxalates to be stored as the body attempts to pass them through the filtration system of the kidneys.

In fact, the result of oxalates stored in the kidneys is the formation of kidney stones. Once oxalates are stored in the cells, they can interfere with mitochondrial function, causing a severe decrease in energy, and without proper mitochondrial function, your cells will actually starve to death. So, oxalates are essentially natural toxins that the body is attempting to sequester and excrete, but not without deleterious effects in the process.

There are various possible causes for the accumulation of oxalates. It is believed that oxalates accumulate more so when the bacteria that is solely responsible for degrading oxalates, known as Oxalobacter formigenes, is reduced within the intestinal tract. This could be due to: the use of antibiotics, eating processed foods, pesticides, genetically modified and chemical-laden foods which wipe out good bacteria, and could even be related to intestinal infections responsible for gut flora imbalance. The body is capable of converting some substances into oxalates such as Glyphosate, sweeteners and vitamin C. For someone who doesn’t realize they have an oxalate issue, IV vitamin C can actually trigger overt oxalate toxicity. Adding insult to injury, leaky gut allows dietary oxalates to enter the blood stream, contributing to a systemic oxalate problem.

It is also believed that mold/fungi and parasites produce oxalates as a byproduct, while depleting the O. formigenes population by sheer existence, contributing to leaky gut. So as you can see, there is a vicious cycle that can ensue, regardless of what causes the problem to begin with. Sadly, because the O. formigenes bacteria is anaerobic, it cannot survive outside of the body, and therefore has not been successfully used in a probiotic product to date, although there are a few companies still attempting to make it happen.

There are so many reasons to consider trying the Low Oxalate Diet. For one, if you are dealing with a chronic candida overgrowth problem, there is a good chance you need to reduce oxalate intake. If you are struggling with an autoimmune disease typified by inflammation, especially in the joints, lower back, or eyes, physical pain anywhere in the body, or involves an accumulation of painful stones like kidney stones or gallstones, the Low Oxalate Diet may be for you.

Oxalate crystals look like little miniature fishing hooks, can you imagine what that does to the surrounding tissue? If you have joint or muscle pains, aching all over, back or neck pain, frozen shoulder, problems with pain in your eyes (feels like grit or sand), burning, red or crusty eyes, floaters in the eyes, painful or unnaturally warm urination, cloudy urine, frequent urination, chronic lower back pain, kidney pain, bladder pain, gallbladder pain, “sandy” or gritty stool, burning stool, light colored stool, black specs or white crystals in stool, IBD, chronic UTIs, air hunger, heart palpitations, peripheral neuropathy, burning tongue/mouth, sinus issues, odd sensations like fullness in the ears, vertigo and dizziness, tinnitus, fluctuations in hearing, frequent rashes, ravenous hunger, chronic candida overgrowth, carpal tunnel, CFS, arthritis or fibromyalgia, you really should experiment with the low oxalate diet to see if it brings relief.

Oxalate accumulation is often a comorbidity of Autism, PANS/PANDAS, mold toxicity, arthritis, fibromyalgia, MCAD, ODD, ADHD and is often part of the complex puzzle of symptoms. Anyone who has taken an antibiotic, has leaky gut or gut problems might be dealing with oxalate accumulation, as well.

Join the “Trying Low Oxalate” Facebook group for the most up-to-date information about food lists and support for those struggling with this dietary restriction.

Another great resource for the Low Oxalate Diet can be found at this link, which includes recommended recipes.

If you join my coached community group, you will have access to a simplified low oxalate shopping list (which also highlights low salicylate foods, more about that later).

WAIT, THERE’s MORE?

I know, it’s getting hard to hang in there with me. This is a LOT of information, and quite overwhelming when you are just branching into these dietary changes. If you need to take a break, there is no shame in just skimming and coming back to take in more later, when you feel ready. I took these interventions in stages, we didn’t initiate them all at once, mainly because we didn’t know about them all at once. We found them as needed, or maybe a better way to say that would be, as the body spoke to us through symptoms. When the first stage of dietary intervention wasn’t enough, the body told us we needed something more. This is where someone might think “the GFCFSF diet didn’t work” and give up. Don’t give up!! Instead, keep going. So we maintained the first stage of our dietary interventions while exploring more deeply, because we did see some improvements initially, so we knew GFCFSF was helping, but we also knew that we were still missing something so we kept searching.

One of our key tests on this journey was an OAT (Organic Acid Test) by Great Plains. You can order the OAT here without a doctor. It’s a simple urine test you can do at home and send back to the lab. It highlighted some major issues we were still dealing with, including our need for the Low Oxalate Diet. It sealed our fate. Symptoms were glaring, sure, but we were feeling overwhelmed and also incapable of making such big changes to our diets without more confirmation. The OAT was that confirmation.

The Low Oxalate Diet takes time to master and fully embrace. For one, you don’t want to jump in too fast, because it can create a world of hurt through oxalate dumping. There is more about this in my book, but for now, I’ll just say, oxalate dumping is a cyclical and temporary worsening of the very symptoms associated with oxalate accumulation in the body. It’s also very reassuring, because as frustrating as it is to get through, it means you are on the right track.

So what if you’ve done all of the above and maybe the Low Oxalate Diet is or isn’t for you, and you are still experiencing some symptoms. There is another food chemical that can wreak havoc on the body and brain. It’s the lesser known food chemicals known as phenols. There is a specific diet with already established guidelines to address sensitivities to phenols, known as the Failsafe Diet.

THE FAILSAFE DIET

This diet is well-known for reversing symptoms associated with ADHD. The FAILSAFE diet is a diet designed to be free of additives, low in salicylates, amines and flavor enhancers. It is designed to treat sensitivities to specific man-made AND natural flavorings, colorings and preservatives in foods by eliminating problem foods and replacing them with healthy, low-chemical alternatives. It’s important to understand that if you don't exclude enough food chemicals, the diet won't work, but if you exclude everything from the start, the diet might be unnecessarily difficult.

The reactions are quite immediate typically, and are not the result of an allergy-mediated response, instead they are dose-related reactions to a food or chemical and in some cases, can be quite severe, creating aggressive and undesirable behaviors in children affected by these substances. An example of foods high is salicylate are coconut and honey. Food dyes are an example of a chemical that falls into this category. If your child responds to high phenol foods with aggression, impulsivity, hyperactivity and defiance, you might be dealing with an intolerance. In adults, the symptoms can be quite widespread, so check out the link to learn more.

Salicylates , also known as salicylic acid, are found naturally in plants. They protect the plant from pests and diseases. Salicylates can also be found in many medications, perfumes and preservatives which is why the Failsafe diet excludes these items. Both natural and synthetic salicylates can cause health problems in anyone when consumed in large doses. But for those who are salicylate intolerant, even small doses of salicylate can cause problems.

Some common symptoms of salicylate intolerance are: stomach pain, tinnitus, rashes and itchy skin or hives, asthma and breathing difficulties, headaches, swelling of hands, feet, eyelids and/or lips, bed wetting or increased urination urgency, persistent coughs, skin discoloration, fatigue, sore, itchy or burning eyes, sinusitis, nasal polyps, stool changes like constipation or diarrhea, and mental symptoms like hyperactivity, memory loss or poor concentration and depression.

From my book:

The symptoms can involve the central nervous system, the endocrine system, the gastrointestinal tract, the genitourinary system, the head, eyes, ears, nose and throat, the heart, the immune system, memory, musculoskeletal system, the skin, sleep, speech and the vascular and pulmonary systems. Just one infraction and the reaction in our younger son was almost instantaneous and resulted in intolerable behaviors like: aggression, impulsivity, hyperactivity, obstinance, defiance, excessive anger, lack of focus and even violence in some cases. Additional accumulative exposures caused him to progress into other symptoms like headaches, fatigue, hypoglycemia, and he became unreasonable and unmotivated. His anger and obstinance undermined everything he did when he was inflamed from these foods.

Our younger son reacts severely and quickly to high salicylate products. More so when eaten or taken internally, but I don’t like to increase his total load unnecessarily so we do our best to find personal care products that don’t aggravate him. Reactions to chlorine can also be a salicylate sensitivity. In our house, salicylates create a hyperactive, aggressive and impulsive child who experiences body pains, fatigue and headaches. He also struggles with poor concentration when he is exposed to salicylate, so we see his education suffer too. He literally forgets things he previously knew!

Another really helpful site for the Failsafe diet can be found at this link, where you will find three recommended steps for starting the diet as well as additional reading about the symptoms. It briefly compares the Failsafe diet with the FODMAP Diet and suggests trying FODMAP, which is less restrictive, before going full Failsafe.

And lastly, but certainly not least, this step by step guide is chock full of tips. There is also a Facebook group list on this link.

**Some of the resources above are from other countries, as they have a better handle on this diet than most nutritionists and practitioners here in the US.

WHAT ABOUT HISTAMINE?

Yep, this is yet another rabbit hole you can go down. As you can see there are many. All the more reason not to give up on dietary interventions. This is definitely one to consider if you are dealing with Mast Cell Activation or many allergies. There is a lot of overlap with histamine foods and the dietary interventions above, but something that isn’t addressed in the other diets is the intolerance for fermented foods which is a classic sign that someone has a problem with histamine. Although some people promote the Low Histamine Diet, I am more of a believer in reducing inflammation while avoiding the higher histamine foods rather than cutting out histamine foods all together, which is also a technique used by The Low Histamine Chef. You will notice that she also incorporates a little of the Low Oxalate Diet into her recipes, because of the overlapping needs between the two diets.

From the Healing Histamine website:

As per Mastocytosis Canada’s website…check out www.mastcellmaster.com for more information. Skin rash, spots, redness, hives, persistent fatigue, itching, flushing & severe sweating, joint, bone pain, headaches, tachycardia (racing heartrate), eyes tearing/dry, eye pain, persistent body/tissue pain, difficulty exercising, vertigo, episodes of low body temperature, unexplained Vitamin B12 deficiency, scents/odors/chemical reactions, difficult menses (females), numbness & tingling in face and extremities, skin feels on fire, unexplained anxiety, sudden drops in blood pressure, fainting, persistent diarrhea, vomiting, unexplained weight loss, cognitive impairment, sinus problems, chest pain, vision problems, hair loss, mouth sores, nausea, swelling & inflammation, odd reactions to insect stings, anesthesia difficulties, anemia, thyroid problems, decreased bone density, unexplained weakness, shortness of breath, sunlight sensitivity, temperature (hot/cold) sensitivity, difficulty with foods, drinks, anaphylactoid reactions, anaphylaxis, gastrointestinal pain, bloating, unexplained medication reactions, enlarged liver/spleen, liver/spleen/bladder/kidney pain, enlarged lymph nodes, frequent urination, recurring infections, neuropathic pain, constipation (MCAS), iron deficiency, unexplained bruising, bleeding, malabsorption, intermittent tinnitus or hearing problems, skin lesions or sores (mastocytosis).

HOW DO I MAKE SENSE OF ALL THIS?

Always start with the first stage foods I mentioned in the first few paragraphs of this blog. These are foundational, I wouldn’t skip them no matter how tempted you are to jump right into the next diet. Just don’t. You can’t build your house without a solid foundation.

If you find that you are continuing to experience troubling symptoms, one way you can tease out whether you should move on to the Low Oxalate Diet or the FAILSAFE Diet is to take my dietary quiz. The quiz will encourage you to determine by the weight of your symptoms, which diet is a better fit. As your symptoms change, you can re-evaluate your needs.

Regarding histamine, if you think you are also struggling with histamine intolerance, you can toss that into the mix by looking at some histamine food lists and experimenting with reducing those foods as you create your new shopping lists. Pay attention to how you feel after eating these foods, document your experiences and fine tune as you go. There is no one-size-fits-all diet so you may find that you need a combination of diets or that one particular diet is sufficient. Keep your food journal up to date and you will notice trends that will ultimately help you tailor your needs accordingly.

I mentioned food panel testing earlier. This is certainly a step you can take in the process of discovery. No testing is 100% accurate, even when our younger son was reacting to dairy with eczema, he didn’t test positive for a dairy allergy. Symptoms told us otherwise. So testing is a beneficial route to take when you feel like you want a bit more confirmation, but don’t assume that a food that doesn’t come up on testing isn’t still a problem. Use your common sense and experimentation to make the final call on that. Also note that there are different forms of testing, IgE and IgG food panels will look at a different set of reactions within the body. So if you are going to conduct testing, I’d recommend both, but IgG at minimum, since it addresses the sort of responses that can involve autoimmunity.

If you would like more specific help with your dietary journey, consider joining my private coached community.