I also have a very strict microbiota tailored diet and do intermittent fasting (5:2). I do this to naturally manage Graves' disease. I also have to exercise regularly and I use blue light therapy to regulate circadian rythims. It's not easy but it really works.
The alternative was to remove the thyroid and replace the hormones with synthetic. Unfortunately you body needs different amounts for different things at different times of the day. It is a constantly moving target and in many cases you never really feel right again.
The special diets were known to the Graves community when I started 8 years ago. Later on I learned and incorporated microbiota theory and used that as a basis for experimenting which has worked well. I only recently started intermittent fasting and feel even better for it.
Interestingly I started intermittent fasting after reading Nassim Talebs book Anti-fragile. He and I share the same opinion on the medical establishment (I won't bore you with my details) so I figured I'd give it a go and it helps.
Hashimoto's here. The problem with all of these diets is that its not known if they actually do anything and the source is usually a mommy blogger who's making money from selling supplements.
I tried to talk to a few doctors and the only one(yes, one) who didn't dismiss the whole thing mentioned that there's nothing conclusive about any of these diets besides some well known diseases such as celiac and gluten. He told me to try it out if I wanted to and see how i feel but don't go to drastic measures because you could be depriving your body of nutrients it needs. I guess that's why the recommendation is always a varied diet; nobody knows what the body needs exactly so eating everything in moderation is likely to give your body anything it could need. Not really scientific though, is it?
So my question is, how do you know what fad diet actually works? Searching for peer reviewed published work on anything nutrition related is a futile endeavor.
Your comment on garbage info on on garbage blogs that seems to dominate google search results is on point. But there is plenty of good data and studies from legit sources if you sort through it. Here is one of the key papers that drove interesting in fasting and immune system repair:
Not only is it wrong, it's also incorrect. I used to work in healthcare IT so a "few doctors" to me is different than other people. But I got his point, I didn't see the need to get too technical.
A few generally is 2 or 3. If you are talking to scores of doctors, and calling it a few because you work at a hospital, then it is the usage of the word that is incorrect.
One datapoint: the autoimmune protocol diet worked wonders for my wife. The first time she got graves she was on the mediation and hospitalized due to weak liver. When it came back she wanted to try something different. Tried a few different diets, but only getting worse for a few months. Tried AIP and felt better after 1-2 weeks. She's been healthy for over a year now.
I have atypical cystic fibrosis and manage it with diet and lifestyle. I have gotten off the boatloads of drugs I was once on.
I am one of those "mommy bloggers" being talked bad about in the comments here (though I don't make money selling supplements) and I am also the person who submitted the article. If you ever want to share info or chat with a like-minded person, drop me a line.
What is your light exposure regimen? Even though I have a SAD lamp in my room set to turn on before my alarm I still struggle to regulate my sleep, especially in winter.
Sure, I wear blue blockers 2 hours before bed (~11pm) and I use blue LEDs that shine in my eyes from a distance while I'm reading for an hour after I get up at (7am). I don't use an alarm clock and I can't drink caffeine (Graves). I found the blue blockers at night to be more effective for regulating sleep than the blue light in the morning. You can get blue blockers for $5 on Amazon. Highly recommended.
Not more than 20 years ago Gout was a disease caused by what you ate, the only problem was that wasn't true. It turns out its not red wine and red meat that causes Gout, its metabolic and mostly genetic in nature. You can make it subtly worse with foods that break down to high amounts of Uric acid in the body but people who suffer with it have a metabolic issue they can nothing about and need drugs to manage it.
We look for correlations with food until we truly understand what is going on with diseases and their true triggers and "cures". It feels like something is being done when someone says "you should be eating healthier", like in some way that has an impact on the disease. Alas it doesn't, it is infact just another way in which people treat others with prejudice, its all part of the fat shaming culture. If you have cancer its your fault, and if you die from it you didn't fight hard enough. People are often cruel to each other and make stuff up in the absence of the facts.
I agree with most of what you said but also remember that Celiac was considered all sorts of things with several attempts at curing it before it turned out to be an intolerance to gluten.
Fat shaming weakens your argument in my opinion. Its up to the individual how to live their lives of course but consuming a big mac meal along with a diet coke and finishing it off with a doughnut for dessert and then wondering why you're getting fat and now suffer from 10 different ailments due to it is silly. A lot of things you can't control, but some things you can.
I cured a congenital gastrointestinal condition simply by introducing a couple of food items into my diet. I wish somebody had told me about them when I was much younger.
Black turtle bean (frijoles negros) and small red bean (frijoles rojos). 2 parts of the former and 1 part of the latter cooked together worked wonders for me.
The combination, or even both items separately, contains a ton of fiber. However, the result is contra to what's expected from eating such a food combination. Instead of making matters worse, like eating other beans (black-eyed beans, for example) would do, it completely stopped (cured) it.
I think it deserves further study by those in the area of research.
Psoriasis + Arthiritic Psoriasis + GERD + some IBS symptoms for me. Was on proton pump inhibitors, antiacids and all that shit for a time. Said fuck this shit and started experimenting my diet.
Now I'm down from 2 PPI's a day to one every now and then when I get stupid and eat something that irritates my digestive system. Also my skin condition is a lot better now.
I cut out wheat, sugar, (shitty light roasted) coffee, broccoli, raw tomatoes and most artificial sweeteners.
I haven't the slightest clue, but broccoli in any form gives me acid reflux in 30 minutes. Same with raw tomatoes - I have no issues with tomato sauce or ketchup even. Just raw tomatoes...
I hope the answer is yes! My doctor recently ran tests showing that my mildly high cholesterol and glycemic index have become a worse. Rather than go on prescription medicines, I started the Eat to Live diet a week ago. This diet initially eliminates all oils, meat, dairy, sugar that is not in whole fruit, and in general no processes foods. All the veggies, beans, and whole fruit that you want with also lots of seeds, nuts, etc., with a strong emphasis with getting a lot of Omega 3 fat in the diet. After 6 weeks, then the diet lightens up a bit. I felt like crap the first 4 days of the diet, but now am feeling great. This food is starting to taste very good also, which surprised me.
EDIT: I should add that this diet contains a very wide variety of foods, but they are all plant based.
Tibetans believe it can. Traditional Tibetan medicine emphasizes changes in a diet as an adaptive answer to some symptoms. Obviously, Tibetan medicine is unscientific and based on superstitions rather than biology, and to some extent the method of trial and error with arbitrary interpretation instead of controlled experiments, but the idea that food could be the cause and the answer is general and reasonable.
There is absolutely no doubt that a diet is a major factor. Vitamins are the obvious example - processed, overheated foods with destroyed structure of the molecules, which in the long run could lead to deficiencies. Tibetans would use animal blood and organ meat, which could make sense in this context.
I've read various accounts online about ketogenic diet being beneficial for mood disorders. Here is one such example [1]. I'm not sure what to make of it, but I'd say it would be interesting to test this in a clinical trial.
mucus free diet - arnold ehret, his work is very enlightening regarding health. Should be more popular, considering ;) it's important that one read his work thoroughly.
The alternative was to remove the thyroid and replace the hormones with synthetic. Unfortunately you body needs different amounts for different things at different times of the day. It is a constantly moving target and in many cases you never really feel right again.
The special diets were known to the Graves community when I started 8 years ago. Later on I learned and incorporated microbiota theory and used that as a basis for experimenting which has worked well. I only recently started intermittent fasting and feel even better for it.
Interestingly I started intermittent fasting after reading Nassim Talebs book Anti-fragile. He and I share the same opinion on the medical establishment (I won't bore you with my details) so I figured I'd give it a go and it helps.