Wahls diet for WED? Trying it.
Posted: Mon Apr 21, 2014 1:49 am
In late Jan I ripped my knee apart and could no longer play hockey or broomball. In Feb, at loose ends, I signed up for 21 yoga classes in 21 days. I didn't realize that it came with a diet, but I was game. When I looked at the diet plan - no starchy foods, no this or that - I realized it was very nearly a gluten-free (GF) diet, so I decided to make it one. I had wanted to test going GF for a long time, ever since I learned of the connection between gastro-intestinal problems and WED (a much higher incidence of WED in people with celiac, Crohn's, IBS, etc) but I thought it would be very hard, very complicated.
It was not hard. Admittedly, I was on holidays from work at the time, so it would have been more difficult to get used to that way of living if I had been working at the same time. For that matter, I couldn't have managed one yoga class a day, either. I have very little energy because of WED.
I felt so much better, I had no daytime symptoms, and evenings were bearable. But keep in mind, I also quit coffee, alcohol (which I didn't use much of), and multiple other foodstuffs, plus I was sleeping sleeping sleeping.
I happened to have a doctor's appt, and happened to be seeing a different doctor because my regular GP was away for 5 months. This new doctor listened with interest to my improved symptoms and GF diet, and said she wanted to test me for celiac right away! (I had been denied a test 3 yr ago, being told it was too expensive). I returned to gluten for a few days before the test, then went off again after the test. My return was marked by a return of daytime WED symptoms within 4 hours of eating bread! And general feelings of malaise and bloating. But the return to no gluten didn't get me such profound results as the first time. Hard to interpret. And then to make it worse, I got a call from the lab saying the labels had fallen off the blood vials and I was among the people who had to get tested again. I ate gluten again for one day, then got tested a second time. This is the blood that was analyzed, and it showed that I had sufficient IgA to test but did not have antibodies to -- anyway I forget, but I do not have celiac disease.
So I decided to start eating gluten again. My WED was mildly elevated Monday, I started gluten again Tuesday, it was also mildly elevated Tuesday, it went nuts Wed Thu Fri. Hard to interpret those results. My doctor also recommended that I see a particular naturopath who specializes in nutirtion (god save me from the homeopaths), and that I read a book called The Wahls Protocol by Terry Wahls, an MD who developed multiple sclerosis, was confined to a wheelchair within a few years, but researched her own disease and diet and ended up walking and running again, and now is taking her diet through a series of clinical trials.
I went to the naturopath, who asked lots of questions and explained stuff about the gut, and about tests that can be used to check for different problems (this was in stark contrast to the homeopathic dude, who looked on the internet for varieties of water that matched my symptoms - from feeling like I was being tortured to being cold all the time - and prescribed a water that had been shaken with a water that had been shaken with a water --- 100 times of this - that had touched a crushed spider).
I also bought the book, and I'm partway through it.
The gist of what I'm learning, and I admit I haven't looked up anything myself, or not much, to see how much backing this has in the conventional-medicine community, is this :\
We eat carbohydrate-rich and sugar-rich diets. The carbs break down into sugars. Bacteria and yeast that eat these sugars grow in our small intestines at the expense of good bacteria that would otherwise be there, and - only in genetically susceptible people - these bacteria and their byproducts (because they too have wastes) damage the control mechanism that keeps the barrier between the gut and the blood closed. Undigested particles of food leak into the tissues and bloodstream - like, entire molecules of gluten or casein, which come from wheat and milk respectively. This is fine in some people, but in others - again, genetically susceptible ones - the immune system over-reacts, and instead of just attacking the gluten or casein, attacks also the small intestine.
Then the situation may escalate, because although it probably begins with gluten and casein (very similar to each other - many celiacs are lactose intolerant too), once the gut is leaky, large molecules from other partially digested substances - strawberries, nuts, eggs - also start leaking into the blood, stimulating immune responses. This is how food sensitivities develop. Those large molecules are not supposed to be in the blood, they are supposed to have been digested further into smaller components that do belong in the blood.
Another way the guts can get leaky like that is by taking heavy doses of antibiotics, which kill many of the natural flora and fauna in your guts, leaving room for the bad guys to grow.
Another way the immune system can be hyper-stimulated is if you have a lingering low-grade chronic infection, the remains of an infection that was supposedly dealt with long ago, but it really was just reduced, and learned how to hang out in your tissues in disguise, so to speak. When the infection pathogens come across inflamed tissues - a sciatic nerve being pinched, or a pulmonary infection - they settle in and begins to reproduce. The immune system notices it, but because the infection has disguised itself as you for so long, the immune response might turn into an auto-immune response, in which the immune system attacks its own body as well as the pathogen.
The immune system once over-activated can attack lungs (asthma), skin (rashes), neurons (MS), etc. WED is not known to be am auto-immune disease, but the author of the Wahls Protocol suggests that all chronic disease can benefit from being addressed by diet, because at the root of it, almost every chronic disease is a manifestation of the body's cells not having the proper nutrient chemicals to repair themselves and to generate energy.
The crux of the diet is to give your cells the nutrients they need (to repair the leaky gut, to keep balanced populations of good gut bacteria, to provide energy, to repair all damaged tissues, to re-instate biochemical processes that have broken down for lack of the right fuel); and to avoid toxins, or anti-nutrients.
There are three levels of diet, but I'll just describe it generally.
- - You cut out gluten and casein - that is, wheat free, rye free, barley free, free of all gluten; and milk, cheese, yogurt free - free of all dairy.
- - You eat 9 cups of vegetables daily. That includes a bit of fruit. You divide it equally among green leafy veg (kale collard, spinach, etc), brightly colored veg (peppers, beets, more) and fruit (berries are the most useful fruits), and sulfur-bearing veggies (cauliflower, cabbage, mushroom, onion). Each class of veg has key compounds that are essential to cellular nutrition - eg. phtyochemicals, B vitamins, anti-oxidants, etc. and she lists what each one does - essential for building the myelin sheath on neurons, essential to build the cell membrane, etc.
- - You cut way down or don't eat starchy veggies and GF grains. (so, limit or eliminate rice, potatoes).
- - You eat quality protein preferably from meat because it's low in carbs, preferably wild game or grass-fed meat and wild-caught fish - the reason for the wildness is to reduce the amount of toxins deriving from antibiotics & hormones given to farmed animals, and to increase the ratio of omega 3 to omega 6 which is too low in grain-fed animals. Also get small fish over big fish, they will have less toxin buildup.
- - Finally eat lots of nutritious fat (coconut oil, etc), the point being to convince the body to burn fats instead of carbs for energy.
I have just decided to try the second level of her diet, which allows me some GF grains and legumes. I thought I could leap right into the final level, but she warns of possible gastrointestinal upset if you do that. And I started to feel lonely and confused. No microwaving! Whatever shall I do? Microwaves heat by altering the molecular structure, which might interfere with the nutrient value of foods, so better safe than sorry. Gee, like the bad old days. And fasting for 12-16 hours every night. That one's hard. And preferably only 2 meals a day, with a mini-fast in-between. I haven't finished reading the book, so I will take it easy on myself and allow GF grains for now, and the length of the fast - I think I need to work into that.
It was not hard. Admittedly, I was on holidays from work at the time, so it would have been more difficult to get used to that way of living if I had been working at the same time. For that matter, I couldn't have managed one yoga class a day, either. I have very little energy because of WED.
I felt so much better, I had no daytime symptoms, and evenings were bearable. But keep in mind, I also quit coffee, alcohol (which I didn't use much of), and multiple other foodstuffs, plus I was sleeping sleeping sleeping.
I happened to have a doctor's appt, and happened to be seeing a different doctor because my regular GP was away for 5 months. This new doctor listened with interest to my improved symptoms and GF diet, and said she wanted to test me for celiac right away! (I had been denied a test 3 yr ago, being told it was too expensive). I returned to gluten for a few days before the test, then went off again after the test. My return was marked by a return of daytime WED symptoms within 4 hours of eating bread! And general feelings of malaise and bloating. But the return to no gluten didn't get me such profound results as the first time. Hard to interpret. And then to make it worse, I got a call from the lab saying the labels had fallen off the blood vials and I was among the people who had to get tested again. I ate gluten again for one day, then got tested a second time. This is the blood that was analyzed, and it showed that I had sufficient IgA to test but did not have antibodies to -- anyway I forget, but I do not have celiac disease.
So I decided to start eating gluten again. My WED was mildly elevated Monday, I started gluten again Tuesday, it was also mildly elevated Tuesday, it went nuts Wed Thu Fri. Hard to interpret those results. My doctor also recommended that I see a particular naturopath who specializes in nutirtion (god save me from the homeopaths), and that I read a book called The Wahls Protocol by Terry Wahls, an MD who developed multiple sclerosis, was confined to a wheelchair within a few years, but researched her own disease and diet and ended up walking and running again, and now is taking her diet through a series of clinical trials.
I went to the naturopath, who asked lots of questions and explained stuff about the gut, and about tests that can be used to check for different problems (this was in stark contrast to the homeopathic dude, who looked on the internet for varieties of water that matched my symptoms - from feeling like I was being tortured to being cold all the time - and prescribed a water that had been shaken with a water that had been shaken with a water --- 100 times of this - that had touched a crushed spider).
I also bought the book, and I'm partway through it.
The gist of what I'm learning, and I admit I haven't looked up anything myself, or not much, to see how much backing this has in the conventional-medicine community, is this :\
We eat carbohydrate-rich and sugar-rich diets. The carbs break down into sugars. Bacteria and yeast that eat these sugars grow in our small intestines at the expense of good bacteria that would otherwise be there, and - only in genetically susceptible people - these bacteria and their byproducts (because they too have wastes) damage the control mechanism that keeps the barrier between the gut and the blood closed. Undigested particles of food leak into the tissues and bloodstream - like, entire molecules of gluten or casein, which come from wheat and milk respectively. This is fine in some people, but in others - again, genetically susceptible ones - the immune system over-reacts, and instead of just attacking the gluten or casein, attacks also the small intestine.
Then the situation may escalate, because although it probably begins with gluten and casein (very similar to each other - many celiacs are lactose intolerant too), once the gut is leaky, large molecules from other partially digested substances - strawberries, nuts, eggs - also start leaking into the blood, stimulating immune responses. This is how food sensitivities develop. Those large molecules are not supposed to be in the blood, they are supposed to have been digested further into smaller components that do belong in the blood.
Another way the guts can get leaky like that is by taking heavy doses of antibiotics, which kill many of the natural flora and fauna in your guts, leaving room for the bad guys to grow.
Another way the immune system can be hyper-stimulated is if you have a lingering low-grade chronic infection, the remains of an infection that was supposedly dealt with long ago, but it really was just reduced, and learned how to hang out in your tissues in disguise, so to speak. When the infection pathogens come across inflamed tissues - a sciatic nerve being pinched, or a pulmonary infection - they settle in and begins to reproduce. The immune system notices it, but because the infection has disguised itself as you for so long, the immune response might turn into an auto-immune response, in which the immune system attacks its own body as well as the pathogen.
The immune system once over-activated can attack lungs (asthma), skin (rashes), neurons (MS), etc. WED is not known to be am auto-immune disease, but the author of the Wahls Protocol suggests that all chronic disease can benefit from being addressed by diet, because at the root of it, almost every chronic disease is a manifestation of the body's cells not having the proper nutrient chemicals to repair themselves and to generate energy.
The crux of the diet is to give your cells the nutrients they need (to repair the leaky gut, to keep balanced populations of good gut bacteria, to provide energy, to repair all damaged tissues, to re-instate biochemical processes that have broken down for lack of the right fuel); and to avoid toxins, or anti-nutrients.
There are three levels of diet, but I'll just describe it generally.
- - You cut out gluten and casein - that is, wheat free, rye free, barley free, free of all gluten; and milk, cheese, yogurt free - free of all dairy.
- - You eat 9 cups of vegetables daily. That includes a bit of fruit. You divide it equally among green leafy veg (kale collard, spinach, etc), brightly colored veg (peppers, beets, more) and fruit (berries are the most useful fruits), and sulfur-bearing veggies (cauliflower, cabbage, mushroom, onion). Each class of veg has key compounds that are essential to cellular nutrition - eg. phtyochemicals, B vitamins, anti-oxidants, etc. and she lists what each one does - essential for building the myelin sheath on neurons, essential to build the cell membrane, etc.
- - You cut way down or don't eat starchy veggies and GF grains. (so, limit or eliminate rice, potatoes).
- - You eat quality protein preferably from meat because it's low in carbs, preferably wild game or grass-fed meat and wild-caught fish - the reason for the wildness is to reduce the amount of toxins deriving from antibiotics & hormones given to farmed animals, and to increase the ratio of omega 3 to omega 6 which is too low in grain-fed animals. Also get small fish over big fish, they will have less toxin buildup.
- - Finally eat lots of nutritious fat (coconut oil, etc), the point being to convince the body to burn fats instead of carbs for energy.
I have just decided to try the second level of her diet, which allows me some GF grains and legumes. I thought I could leap right into the final level, but she warns of possible gastrointestinal upset if you do that. And I started to feel lonely and confused. No microwaving! Whatever shall I do? Microwaves heat by altering the molecular structure, which might interfere with the nutrient value of foods, so better safe than sorry. Gee, like the bad old days. And fasting for 12-16 hours every night. That one's hard. And preferably only 2 meals a day, with a mini-fast in-between. I haven't finished reading the book, so I will take it easy on myself and allow GF grains for now, and the length of the fast - I think I need to work into that.