Elimination Diet

[May]

For those who have done an elimination diet, how long before you noticed any effect? I’m dealing with a skin problem, probably eczema, and some people seemed to be helped with eliminating daily and/or gluten. The whole thought of doing this has me depressed and feeling overwhelmed.😢I love cheese, I love pasta and one or the other of these food groups are in food I cook every day. I have a doctors appointment next week and hope to receive more clarity on tackling the problem. Any good and positive thoughts would be welcomed.

[Martha in GA]

It is definitely hard to do both at the same time! I use zoodles for dishes when the sauce/meat is served over noodles, and I skip cheese on things like hamburgers and tacos. Wishing you the best of luck : )

[Pen]

30 days for some significant results even more at around 60 days.  I needed to eliminate a whole group of common trigger foods at the same time initially.  Dairy was by far the hardest for me.  Quinoa, almond flour etc,  and some other grains options were  good enough to substitute if needed for grains foods side.  But none of the dairy substitutes felt satisfying.  And even if I liked soy cheese etc soy was Also on my elimination diet list.

Another option can be to decide to eat certain things—raw fruits, vegetables, simply prepared meats, healthy oils for example, only, for a couple of weeks as a start.  If a “positive doing” is easier than “avoiding”. 

[sassenach]

I did Whole 30. I think it’s a good approach because 30 days is long enough to be able to judge the effects of different food groups but short enough to always have the end in sight.  There’s a TON of W30 info, recipes, products, support out there, which really helps. I’m actually in the middle of my second round right now. 

[May]

11 minutes ago, Pen said:

30 days for some significant results even more at around 60 days.  I needed to eliminate a whole group of common trigger foods at the same time initially.  Dairy was by far the hardest for me.  Quinoa, almond flour etc,  and some other grains options were  good enough to substitute if needed for grains foods side.  But none of the dairy substitutes felt satisfying.  And even if I liked soy cheese etc soy was Also on my elimination diet list.

Another option can be to decide to eat certain things—raw fruits, vegetables, simply prepared meats, healthy oils for example, only, for a couple of weeks as a start.  If a “positive doing” is easier than “avoiding”. 

I know you’re right. I just don’t enjoy cooking and now to come up with new recipes😢Just having myself a pity party😢

[May]

13 minutes ago, sassenach said:

I did Whole 30. I think it’s a good approach because 30 days is long enough to be able to judge the effects of different food groups but short enough to always have the end in sight.  There’s a TON of W30 info, recipes, products, support out there, which really helps. I’m actually in the middle of my second round right now. 

This sounds like a way to start. Thank you for this😊

[Pen]

14 minutes ago, May said:

I know you’re right. I just don’t enjoy cooking and now to come up with new recipes😢Just having myself a pity party😢

 

Could be done as an all raw food diet, no cooking needed at all. 

Whole 30 would be same idea of actively doing something more than avoiding. 

It’s possibly easier in summer when salads and cold fruit would be nicer.  But in winter if you are willing to do simple cooking, then soups and stews are good and can easily be free of dairy and gluten. 

You probably don’t need special recipes.   Beef stews, Chicken soup,  vegetable soups... 

[ElizabethB]

Rotation diet makes it easier. Use simple whole foods with few spices. Eat the same thing for breakfast, dinner, lunch.  Then, if you feel bad after something, you know that it one of those things you ate that day is likely causing a problem.  If you eliminate things for a week or two, a small amount will cause problems and it is easier to pinpoint.  Salt is pretty non-allergenic, you can have salt daily.

Here is an example:

Day 1: Rice, Chicken, bananas.

Day 2: Sweet Potatoes, Bufflalo, Squash, melons (squash and melons are in same food family.)

Day 3: Quail/Pheasant, potatoes, onions, lettuce

Day 4: Pork, quinoa, green beans, blackberries, pepper

Day 5: Beef, Cabbage, green peppers, apples, applesauce (if not a lot of added ingredients)

Other good non-allergenic starches are teff flour and oat flour, although some people with gluten issues do not tolerate oat flour well.  There are a fair number of people allergic to corn, but I tolerate corn well and have a day where I make turkey tacos, I am on a strict 5 day rotation diet and one of my days is turkey with corn.

After day 5, for day 6 you start again with day 1foods, then keep cycling through. Fruits and veggies are fairly allergenic, and daily and gluten are also problems for many. Add then back in slowly on different days. I can tolerate sheep cheese and sheep milk yoghurt but not cow milk.  Some spices are also highly allergenic, for example, I got allergic to mint a few weeks after I started drinking a tea daily made from mint extract and hot water.

Edited January 14, 2020 by ElizabethB

[Junie]

When I eliminated gluten (after testing positive for allergies to wheat, oats, and barley), it took about 6 weeks to start noticing a difference.

[May]

7 hours ago, parent said:

Have you noticed it being a seasonal thing?  People with allergies are more prone to eczema but we (my son and I) only get eczema in winter.

I would get small patches in the summer but it’s might worse now. You might be on to something. I’m going to ask for allergy testing. I had allergy testing done 15 years ago. We were living in RI for 10 months and I was sick for 9 of them. After we left, my symptoms disappeared😳

[May]

8 hours ago, ElizabethB said:

Rotation diet makes it easier. Use simple whole foods with few spices. Eat the same thing for breakfast, dinner, lunch.  Then, if you feel bad after something, you know that it one of those things you ate that day is likely causing a problem.  If you eliminate things for a week or two, a small amount will cause problems and it is easier to pinpoint.  Salt is pretty non-allergenic, you can have salt daily.

Here is an example:

Day 1: Rice, Chicken, bananas.

Day 2: Sweet Potatoes, Bufflalo, Squash, melons (squash and melons are in same food family.)

Day 3: Quail/Pheasant, potatoes, onions, lettuce

Day 4: Pork, quinoa, green beans, blackberries, pepper

Day 5: Beef, Cabbage, green peppers, apples, applesauce (if not a lot of added ingredients)

Other good non-allergenic starches are teff flour and oat flour, although some people with gluten issues do not tolerate oat flour well.  There are a fair number of people allergic to corn, but I tolerate corn well and have a day where I make turkey tacos, I am on a strict 5 day rotation diet and one of my days is turkey with corn.

After day 5, for day 6 you start again with day 1foods, then keep cycling through. Fruits and veggies are fairly allergenic, and daily and gluten are also problems for many. Add then back in slowly on different days. I can tolerate sheep cheese and sheep milk yoghurt but not cow milk.  Some spices are also highly allergenic, for example, I got allergic to mint a few weeks after I started drinking a tea daily made from mint extract and hot water.

Thank you! You give me a great way to start.

[wintermom]

9 hours ago, Æthelthryth the Texan said:

I had to try an assortment of elimination diets for my IBS and general allergies. I hated it. They had me go 6 weeks per, because honestly, if you eliminate several things at once, there are just too many possibilities to know what you actually were reacting to. Fwiw, nothing ever made a difference of food for me.

I know it's going to be an unpopular opinion here, but I think people credit food with far more than they should as far as hard science goes. I never worked on nutrition, but I worked on a ton of oncology studies and I think a lot of the food stuff is bunk. So I say if you must try an elimination diet, try one thing at a time. First dairy, then gluten, etc. Even if you are reacting to BOTH (which statistically speaking with a hard clinical study, and not some doctor peddling his own research in a book, isn't going to be the most common), you're still going to see some improvement ditching one. So if that happens, then keep on keeping on, and ditch the second. But don't go into self deprivation mode and dump everything at the same time. You might be depriving yourself for no reason. 

I'm sorry your dealing with stuff and hope you find some answers soon. 

I'd agree with this.

If specific allergies are an issue, then of course avoiding those foods makes sense. If it's just a personal experiment to see if there will be improvement, then do one food item at a time. It can be pretty hard on the body to suddenly remove and replace the food your body is used to eating daily. 

You can also wait for your dr appointment and find out what they recommend for diet. Sometimes GI specialists will recommend 6 weeks of pretty drastic dietary changes, but then you are under a dr's care and follow-up, not navigating through things alone.

[Pen]

My personal experience was that neither rotation approach nor one food at a time approach worked. To make a difference,  I had to simultaneously eliminate several foods that were triggering problems and keep away from them all long enough for my system to clear.   

[Soror]

10 hours ago, Æthelthryth the Texan said:

I had to try an assortment of elimination diets for my IBS and general allergies. I hated it. They had me go 6 weeks per, because honestly, if you eliminate several things at once, there are just too many possibilities to know what you actually were reacting to. Fwiw, nothing ever made a difference of food for me.

I know it's going to be an unpopular opinion here, but I think people credit food with far more than they should as far as hard science goes. I never worked on nutrition, but I worked on a ton of oncology studies and I think a lot of the food stuff is bunk. So I say if you must try an elimination diet, try one thing at a time. First dairy, then gluten, etc. Even if you are reacting to BOTH (which statistically speaking with a hard clinical study, and not some doctor peddling his own research in a book, isn't going to be the most common), you're still going to see some improvement ditching one. So if that happens, then keep on keeping on, and ditch the second. But don't go into self deprivation mode and dump everything at the same time. You might be depriving yourself for no reason. 

I'm sorry your dealing with stuff and hope you find some answers soon. 

 

1 hour ago, wintermom said:

I'd agree with this.

If specific allergies are an issue, then of course avoiding those foods makes sense. If it's just a personal experiment to see if there will be improvement, then do one food item at a time. It can be pretty hard on the body to suddenly remove and replace the food your body is used to eating daily. 

You can also wait for your dr appointment and find out what they recommend for diet. Sometimes GI specialists will recommend 6 weeks of pretty drastic dietary changes, but then you are under a dr's care and follow-up, not navigating through things alone.

ITA, elimination diets suck(food is yummy and eliminating too much cuts out nutrients), it's crazy these are as popular as they are but marketing is good. I'd not eliminate more than you have to and only do one thing at a time or you will not know what caused the improvement. 

[Pawz4me]

This will be another unpopular opinion, but I think there's a lot of placebo effect going on when people do elimination diets and think they help. The brain is a powerful thing.

(Not that I'm knocking that. If it makes the person feel better then it doesn't really matter if it's the placebo effect or a real physical effect.)

[Pen]

20 minutes ago, soror said:

 

ITA, elimination diets suck(food is yummy and eliminating too much cuts out nutrients), it's crazy these are as popular as they are but marketing is good. I'd not eliminate more than you have to and only do one thing at a time or you will not know what caused the improvement. 

 

IME:

The problem with the one at a time approach is it will only help if there is a single trigger food.  

However, if there are, say, 2 or 3 (or could easily be more) commonly eaten items causing troubles, then eliminating one at a time won’t reveal anything.   It will then be a difficult big bother to no useful purpose at all.  And very easy to wrongly conclude that foods are irrelevant to symptoms, if there is never a time when no triggers are being eaten, or still lingering in body. 

If a group of likely triggers are eliminated at once, and there is improvement, then they can be experimentally returned one at a time to try to figure out which are actually problems.  Also some may be able to be returned on a less frequent basis. 

Most of what *can* be eaten for current common group elimination diets I am aware of  is more healthy than what many 1st world Western civilization people commonly eat.  The eliminated foods would typically be 1) all processed foods; 2) all wheat and gluten foods; 3) dairy; 4) soy and sometimes also other legumes; 5) corn; 6) nightshades family; 7) added sugar; 8 )  sometimes eggs; 9) anything personally suspected of triggering symptoms 

This leaves pretty much all vegetables; all fruits except the nightshades; all meats; rice, quinoa, kasha etc for starches and sometimes leaves beans other than soy unless symptoms or experience makes all legumes an avoid group for the elimination; white potatoes are usually out for the elimination period but yams sweet potatoes, cauliflower, turnips and squashes are all fine and can serve much the same role as white potatoes

 

Most of what is usually cut out, is often less nutrient rich than what’s allowed—

[May]

Thank you for all the comments🌺My doctor’s appointment is next week. I’ll ask for allergy testing. I had it done about 15 years ago and nothing was found. I’ll also ask for a referral to a dermatologist and go from there. 

[kbutton]

If you can find an allergist with a broad range of expertise, they can have many tools in their toolbox. If they don't "believe" in intolerances, you're not at the right one. If they don't care about the source, you might still be at the wrong one--depends on how interested in they are in starting to care and finding other information. If you find a good one, they will have a goal of restoring as many foods as possible once the allergens or intolerances are understood.

My current allergist has informed me that in addition to true allergies, intolerances can be due to mast cell issues, as well as a host of neurogenic causes--instances where some kind of bodily tissue is triggered to release the mediators involved in allergies. This can be related to dysautonomic conditions as well as things like TRP receptors (you'll have to google that one--it's new to me since he mentioned it). 

Just the fact that you know this is a skin issue can be enough for a really good and open-minded allergist to rule in or out a host of possible scenarios or to tell you if diet is likely to help at all.