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Extream diet for extream pain?

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Posted 2/26/2023 12:22 PM (GMT -5)
Girlfriends situation is horrible 10/10 pain, suicidal thoughts, unable to walk for past few days. We still have three and a half weeks until we see a new LLMD. Pain has been gradually getting worse and worse over the past three years.

We have already goten lots of great tips from this forum (were both planning on listening to the audiobook toxic by nathan neil), but I'm wondering if there are ways we can improve her diet.

She eats oatmeal every night with cashew butter frozen blueberries, non-frozen raspberries and strawberries with diced almonds and wallnuts and stevia sweetened chocolate chips.
For dinner she usually has some form of gluten. She hardly eats any meat. If she does eat meat its chicken. She hardly eats any veggies, but does like steamed broccoli and fake butter. Yesterday she had a paleo pancake.

What diet do you recommend and how do you think I can approach her with the new diet? I feel like the best diet would be an elimination diet. This was actually recommend to her by her LLMD. She struggled with it greatly due to carb addiction and being extremely picky about food and never actually eliminated carbs--she ate white rice a lot, which from my understanding is just as tasty to bacteria as sugar.

She tried the elimination diet three years ago when things were not nearly as bad as they are now. It lasted two weeks and didn't seem to improve her symptoms at all. Shell be reluctant to try again, but I feel like things are so desperate we have to try everything that is safe, esp if its free and we can do it right now.

Thank you so much

Post Edited (robinhobb) : 2/26/2023 9:26:29 AM (GMT-8)

Posted 2/26/2023 1:46 PM (GMT -5)
A few ideas:
- The autoimmune diet outlined by Dr. Brooke Goldner in her book Goodbye Lupus (great for reducing inflammation whether it's autoimmune in nature or not). This basically involves loads of smoothies made from raw fruits and veggies, plus flax and chia seeds. She might like that she can keep things sweet with the fruit, and still reduce inflammation. This helped with my partner's pain considerably, but it helps if you have a really nice blender.
- Do an elimination diet for the things she eats the most often one at a time. She does not have to do a complete elimination diet where everything is cut out at once.
- Cutting out sugar and simple carbohydrates is very hard because our bodies make it hard, but after a few weeks, it does get easier. I can understand why she might not be up for blood sugar changes and cravings when she's already feeling so bad, though!
- Fasting (with water and salt) can be a great way to reduce inflammation and pain very quickly, even just fasting for a day or two. If that feels impossible, then she could start with intermittent fasting and try to do all her eating within the same 8-hour span each day.
- A low-histamine diet could make a big difference in pain if her pain is being cause or exacerbated by mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS). I have found that reducing my mast cell activity is the best way to me to reduce overall inflammation and pain.
- As much as possible, try to encourage her to eat whole (not processed) foods. I know it's not easy to cook fresh food all the time, especially if you're sick and/or caring for a sick person, but food made with real ingredients is far better for the body than anything pre-made, packaged, and processed. And there's really no way around needing to eat vegetables.
- How is her digestion? Making sure she has a complete bowel movement every day could help with reducing the overall toxicity load in her body by clearing out a major detox pathway (the GI tract). This can help with energy, inflammation, and even mood.
Posted 2/28/2023 7:01 AM (GMT -5)
If she has carb addiction, she likely has yeast overgrowth. Has she had blood tests for Candida antibodies? An OAT test? Any kind of stool testing? Is she on Rx antifungals like Fluconazole and Nystatin?

I had mold and the anti fungals were the first thing that helped reduce my awful pain and toxicity. Before that, I felt like I had a built in toxin producing factory in my gut. The next thing that helped my pain, numbness, and chemical sensitivities was TUDCA. After that, taking antiparasitic drugs (Ivermectin, Alinia) got me feeling even better.
Posted 2/28/2023 2:29 PM (GMT -5)
Ive tried many different diets for different possible food and or food group sensitives.

Also did a special food sensitivities blood test. 170 different "American diet items" tested against my blood for actual cytokin release. Its around $500 now apparently (Leap MRT). I did this after years of guessing.

I had a lot of pain with lyme, very low energy, and gut symptoms (most of them possible). Also known and tested
/proven autoimmune.

What I found out: Removing certain foods did not have an immediate pain relief, but It gradually can make small changes to your overall health if there were problems from it (better autoimmune tests results for me). . My digestion improved about 90% too. I gained energy to stay awake and think. (This will not change much of athletic energy since that is cortisol influenced). Digestion improvements were the quickest to notice, which would be expected.

Just two weeks of any trial will most likely do anything other than more comfortable Digestion.

I lived on skinless chicken , brown rice and a few veggies for at least three months At the very beginning when I did my own food elimination diet.

Note -Basic grocery store oatmeal can have traces of gluten in it, .....unless tested with the GF symbol.

Post Edited (astroman) : 2/28/2023 8:33:13 PM (GMT-8)

Posted 3/1/2023 12:40 PM (GMT -5)
i would tend to suggest that while an extreme diest may not be the first course of action i would reccomend for acute pain - in termsof recovering from lyme and co's it camn be a powerful wepon in your long term systematic approach

i would tend to differentiate between different sources of pain
some infections can cause intense bone pain - by causing actual growths or abscesses in the bone itself - bartonella does this
clearly in this case there is no diet that can switch off this type of pain - and things that more directly attack the infection are more likely to drive short term reductions in pain

if on the other hand the pain is neurological - eg like an auto-immune neuropathy - then there are examples of people having remarkable turnarounds with different diets - particularly those aimed at auto-immune disease
-Whals
-ketogenic
-GAPS
-Auto-Immune Paleo

with this in mind could you perhaps shed some more light on what type of pain your girlfriend is experiencing
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