Posted 4/5/2016 7:58 PM (GMT -5)
Dietitian Cassie, RD, LD is the presenter.
Q: What do you do when someone with chronic lyme comes to you?
A: We help people heal from the inside out and look at their state of health, hows their nutrition, stress, sleep exercise level. The immune system has to be able to engage and fight illness like lyme and our guts are more compromised now than ever before. Things like ABs, sugar, stress, artificial sweeteners wreak havoc on our gut health.
Gut health is the first step when it comes to lyme disease.
Most practitioners completely overlook the gut.
You can eat all the right foods but if you aren't digesting properly, you aren't getting the benefits out of the food.
Q:What do you do for the gut?
A: Three prong approach:
1. stop the damage. Remove inflammatory triggers. Sugar is huge, avoid refined carbs, processed foods. These things feed bad bacteria.
Also grains, oats, granola bars, pasta, rice... they all turn to sugar in the body.
Get your carbs from veggies and fruits instead of grains and pseudo grains.
Breakfast high in protein with healthy fat and nutrient dense carbs. Eggs cooked in butter or coconut oil. Add some cooked sweet potato or spinach in there and that's a good breakfast. you're gonna feel a lot better and especially if you have lyme, this would be a lot better breakfast for you.
People think oatmeal fills them up but an hour or so later their blood sugar is crashing and you are tired and hungry for carbs again.
Pair carbs with healthy fat and protein to slow down the blood sugar spike from the carbs so your blood sugar stays stable and doesn't roller coaster up and down all day.
2. Start to heal the existing damage
Add in FERMENTED FOODS which are great for replenishing gut bacteria, kombucha, kraut, kimchi, kefir and butter, avocado, salmon, bone broth all calm inflammation. Supplements are probiotics, l-glutamine and fish oil. With lyme disease you are taking ABs which kill off gut bacteria so take probiotics both as a supplement and in food as I said before.
L-glutamine might be the most effective gut healer of all as it plays a crucial role in rebuilding, healing and maintaining the structural integrity of your digestive tract. It protects your cell walls and promotes good digestion while reducing inflammation.
Fish oil provide Omega 3 fatty acids which reduce inflammation too.
This is basic for everyone but especially lyme.
3. Being patient and consistent as your body heals. This is simple but should not be overlooked. Just as inflammation doesn't happen overnight, healing also will not happen overnight so it's important to give your body time to do its job with proper support along the way.
That's so important to remember with lyme disease as recovery can be 6 months or 5 years and we have to be patient with it.
That's got to be one of the hardest things because in this society we expect things like, yesterday.
Breaking old habits is hard even if we aren't craving sugar physically it's a habit to eat it.
When we are healing from inside out we have to be patient when we don't see instant results.
Eat nourishing real foods with protein, fat, carb balance and stick with it, keeping your eye on the big picture.
Q: What advice do you have for people to stay away from old food habits.
A: create a new habit, walk the dog, tea and a favorite book, etc. Take a moment and write down how you are feeling and notice if it's hunger or not. If it's hunger then eat. If not notice what it is. this helps us get in touch with our body and what real hunger feels like.
The right types of fat will not make you fat. They will give you energy and support brain function and the detox process which is important for lyme disease.
Veg oil, canola oil, cool whip, are not healthy oils. Stay away from them.
PFC balance approach. Protein Fat Carb balance is what I suggest. Don't wait til you are starving to eat. Try PFC balance eating every 3 or 4 hours at first.
Sample meal: P=2 or 3 eggs at a meal or meat/fish the size and thickness of the palm of your hand. F=couple tablespoons of healthy fat or half an avocado. C=veggies as much as you want. 1/2 C. fruit or small orange. Plus you eat healthy snacks throughout the day so you are never getting really hungry.
This is an anti-inflammatory way to eat which is so important for people with lyme.
Chronic inflammation is what damages tissues and it shows up as different in everyone from acne, to weight loss issues, to heart disease, to achy joints, etc.
It's hard to heal from anything when you are inflamed and the inflammation starts in the gut.
Q: What things do you focus on for boosting immune system.
A: Vegetables are really important. We use a product called Dynamic fruits and greens, a powder with lots of antioxidents. Also we focus on detox because with lyme there is the added bacterial toxin load which wreaks havoc on every system in our body and they are produced continuously.
We use some products I've formulated for detox and then supplements like milk thistle, coQ10, magnesium along with the gut health products mentioned before, to support the body's natural detox pathways since the lyme toxins place a heavy burden on the liver and kidneys.
Also the healthy fats help stimulate bile flow which is the body's #1 way to remove fat soluble toxins which are abundant in lyme disease.
The natural detox process also relies on protein as well as building and repairing muscle and nerve tissue, so protein is critically important in chronic illness.
coQ10 deficiency is common in lyme and should always be supplemented for energy.
Milk thistle for liver detox and regeneration.
mg+ helps with dramatic decrease in symptoms since so many lyme symptoms are made worse by the lack of mg+. Cramping, muscle twitching, tics are some symptoms. Soil is mg+ depleted and people are all mg+ depleted nowadays.
Q: what supplements have you formulated?
A: Detoxvive Powder which supports the liver through detoxification, and Livervive which helps supports the liver during the detox process and prevent the bad symptoms of detoxing.
Q: so basically Fix the gut, put good stuff in the body and support the liver which is the detox lifeline of the body.
A: exactly.
Q: what do you think about fasting and cleansing?
A: I dont' find it to be helpful. Juicing can be a healthy addition to a healthy diet but just to juice fast you are basically putting sugar into your body for 10 days and we know the protein and healthy fats are necessary to the body.
Your body can detox itself you just have to give it what it needs to do it more efficiently.
Keep it simple, real food,simple ingredients, good protein, healthy fats, quality supplements.
We see food sensitivies go away when you heal your gut so if people are sensitive to things now, heal the gut and see if you can't add back those things.
Favorite snack: chicken or wild tuna salad with full fat mayonnaise and some avocado or olive oil stirred in. For carbs I'll chop in celery or grapes and eat it with a fork. Don't miss the bread at all.
(goes into meal examples following her PFC balance outlined above)
Avoid protein before bed as it can boost your metabolism and lyme pt.s can have trouble falling asleep. Have a bedtime snack like a handful of nuts and some blueberries, for example. But stay away from protein before bed.
Cherries help to boost melatonin. FYI.
hardboiled eggs are good snacktime protein.
Bone broth in the evening. Is soothing to the gut.
Can you recommend a brand to buy? No. Make your own.
Q: Final thoughts?
A: again be patient with your body, it can be so frustrating. Be kind to yourself and gentle.
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