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I'm doing the elimination diet suggested by Robert McFerran. I am ready to add in the whole foods. I want to know if for example I eat an orange for breakfast and have a reaction to it (RA flare), and then eat a second whole food, say chicken for lunch, how will I know if I've reacted to the chicken if I'm already in a flare from the orange? If I flare from the orange, should I wait until the flares subsides before adding any other whole food?
In Reply to: elimination diet posted by April on February 13, 2003 at 07:47:08:
Yes, you need to wait until your symptoms are gone before testing another food.
How did the elimination phase go for you? Did you experience a lot of withdrawal? Any clearing?
What group of foods are you testing first? AG or HG?
Also, as far as testing the orange...it should be part of your breakfast, not all of it.
Good luck! I hope it's a useful trial for you.
~~~8>
In Reply to: Re: elimination diet posted by labrat on February 13, 2003 at 07:58:03:
Thank you so much for your response.
I did pretty well on the elimination diet. At first I was very hungry, but I actually got used to it only eating fish once a day. I'm going to follow the AG food list. I do feel better than I did on the 2nd and 3rd day of the diet, however I don't feel completely better.
According to the diet I read, it said to test a CORE food for breakfast, SUPPLEMENTAL food for lunch and an AVOID food for dinner. I'm really new to this so I appreciate your guidance. All I was going to eat was the orange for breakfast. What should I be adding to that? Another CORE food?
In Reply to: Re: elimination diet posted by labrat on February 13, 2003 at 07:58:03:
Thank you so much for your response.
I did pretty well on the elimination diet. At first I was very hungry, but I actually got used to it only eating fish once a day. I'm going to follow the AG food list. I do feel better than I did on the 2nd and 3rd day of the diet, however I don't feel completely better.
According to the diet I read, it said to test a CORE food for breakfast, SUPPLEMENTAL food for lunch and an AVOID food for dinner. I'm really new to this so I appreciate your guidance. All I was going to eat was the orange for breakfast. What should I be adding to that? Another CORE food?
In Reply to: Re: elimination diet posted by April on February 13, 2003 at 08:57:36:
Hi April,
If you are sure you're an AG then an orange by itself might be fine. Generally, you would add the new food to the meals you were making with the e diet foods - whatever you were having for breakfast plus one new food...same for lunch and dinner. THEN, if you don't react, you would consider those new foods safe and add one different "new" food at the next meal. That way, you continue to expand your diet with safe foods.
If you get a reaction, you stop adding foods, and continue eating from your known safe foods until you feel better. After you're over the reaction, continue adding foods.
To make things easier, you add only whole foods. That way you know exactly what you reacted to.
Supplements, herbs and spices all need to be tested the same way, and it's best to wait until last for those.
If you are testing grains and/or dairy, you need to test them toward the end of it too, because you would test these foods three times a day, and that's all you can test. You don't want to waste that time until you've expanded your safe food list.
Hope this helps. I also suggest you try the link below - McFerran's book is organized pretty well there - just look in the dietary theories section and you'll find it.
Since I don't know how to link more than one site, here is another source of info on metabolic diet and RA...
http://jhackett_ra.tripod.com/
Keep us posted and I'm happy to help if I can.
~~~8>
In Reply to: Re: elimination diet posted by labrat on February 13, 2003 at 11:19:51:
Sorry about the multiple postings. I find the site a little hard to navigate.
I did go to jhackett's web site and printed the AG food list. But the other link will be helpful as well.
Do you know if it is true to test a CORE food for breakfast, SUPPLEMENTAL food for lunch and an AVOID food for dinner? That's what jhackett's site said to do. Or should I stick mainly to the CORE foods first.
Has the diet worked for you?
In Reply to: Re: elimination diet posted by April on February 13, 2003 at 11:50:14:
No problem about the postings...it's been harder since they changed the board format...
It's fine to test core, supplemental and avoid foods in that order. I believe I tested mostly core foods first to expand my safe foods. But, I am an HG and the ediet was a light diet for me, so I wanted to test my "staples" first...beef, chicken and eggs, that sort of thing.
If you're an AG, then you won't have as much trouble feeling good on a safe group of lighter foods.
The HG diet worked wonders for me. I don't have RA however, but I did have a bunch of problems that were leading me to arthritic symptoms...CRS, CFS, LGS - the typical, chronic, doctor-can't-help-you stuff discussed here so much!
SR really helped me too. I'm just climbing back on the wagon as a matter of fact...had a bit of a spill last year!
Take care, and I will check back if you have any more questions.
~~~8>
In Reply to: Re: elimination diet posted by labrat on February 13, 2003 at 11:19:51:
Hi labrat. I have not started e-diet yet and want to get something clear before starting. .... How do I know what food I reacted to and how do I schedule a re-test and still have time to do all the foods I want to do?
OK... Say I have done the elimination phase, gotten through testing my core foods and established an expanded group of "safe" foods already.
Now say I test 6 new foods on a particular day (call this "Group 1"). I wake up the next morning feeling like DEATH WARMED OVER. How do I know which of the 6 foods I reacted to? Common sense tells me I can't know. What to do?
From what I've learned, seems to me I should
(1) wait till I feel clear,
(2) Do NOT re-test any of Group 1; make a note of the foods in Group 1 with a big ????? beside them and move on to Group 2.
(3) Test Groups 2, 3, 4, etc., all the while making note of which group I react to. Hopefully, with most groups I would sail through with no reaction. But,
(4) At some point, I need to isolate *which* of the 6 foods in a questionable group it was that I reacted to.
It's the isolating "which food I reacted to" that has me so baffled.....
Right now, I can see an argument for testing only 3 foods per day instead of 6 : you're less likely to get confused and have to re-test something later. On the other hand, I LIKE the idea of testing 6 foods a day .... it goes faster. You want to make it through the 30 days time frame during which food-testing is still effective. OTOH you could get bogged down not knowing what you reacted to and having to re-test....
It's funny in all the reading I did, I couldn't figure out how people handle this!
In Reply to: To labrat: elimination diet: more questions - about food testing... posted by Jan S. on February 13, 2003 at 14:05:23:
Hi Jan S.
You are only supposed to test 3 new foods per day, one with each meal. I am not sure where you got the 6 number. Generally (except with grains and dairy) you will feel the effects of a food reaction, usually fatigue or an increase in your symptoms, within 45 minutes to 2 hours of eating the offending food. Sometimes within minutes. It is generally very apparent. That's why the protocol is set up like it is. YOu will know right away if you only added one new food that THAT was the offending item.
You then wait until you feel better and add a different new food. If you want to re-test the offending food (why would you?) then you need to wait 5 days.
As far as which food to test, they should all be whole foods, and foods from the appropriate metabolic subset which you determined during the elimination phase. It's not important for an HG to test any AG foods really, since those should not make up a substantial part of their diet anyway.
For instance when I did this, I did not test any grains at all or dairy because I know those foods aren't really good for me. I also did not test the lectin no-nos for my blood type since I should not eat them regularly.
I hope this clears things up for you a bit.
~~~8>
In Reply to: elimination diet posted by April on February 13, 2003 at 07:47:08:
Yes, April.
I would not test anything else for 3 1/2 days whether you have a flare or not. Once you have gone to this much trouble it behooves you to be absolutely sure of what you need to eliminate and what you can have.
Hope this helps.
Walt
In Reply to: Re: elimination diet posted by Walt Stoll on February 14, 2003 at 07:14:57:
Walt,
Robert's protocol calls for testing 3 new foods per day - after the elimination phase of the protocol, you only have around 21 days or so that you will have hyperacute responnses to the allergenic foods...if you were to wait 3 days between testing, you'd only be able to test a handful of foods!
I know his experience (mostly with RA folks) has been that reactions occur quickly except for the grains and dairy - which is why he recommends testing those last. Since you're not eating new combinations of foods, it's easy to tell what you react to.
...just more stuff to throw into the pot!
~~~8>
In Reply to: Re: To labrat: elimination diet: more questions - about food testing... posted by labrat on February 13, 2003 at 21:39:16:
Hi labrat! Yes, that helps. Somehow I missed the bit about how food reactions almost always occur in the first 4 hours max, after eating. That makes it a lot simpler to carry this out. I guess I was going on the phrase "delayed allergy" and thinking that ANY food allergy can be delayed up to 4 days, whereas it seems Robert has found that only dairy and wheat can do this - which is why we save them to the end of all the testing.
About the "6 foods" ... here is where I got that idea.
http://www.askwaltstollmd.com/archives/bob/8559.html#8594Posted by Robert McFerran on March 08, 1999 at 12:22:02:
In Reply to: Re: Intellectualizing about food testing (ATTN: Bob) posted by Sara on March 08, 1999 at 08:19:20:
Sara,
You too could try and test up to 6 foods a day!
The reason that I say three in my book is just to allow ample spacing and of course time for sleep :)
If you don't have a reaction within 4 hours you can try something else. Remember milk, milk products and grains are different. - Bob
Reading around in the context of that posting, it seems like anyone could test 6 foods if they were up for it. 'Course correct me if I'm wrong about that ... but you'd be eating 2 test foods per meal so if you got a reaction then you'd have to re-test those two by themselves after waiting at least 5 days. That was the only reason I mentioned re-testing - so as to separate out the 2 foods you ate together so you'd know which one you were reacting to.
Now that I add up the core & supplemental foods, I come up with 49 to test. So that's not as many as I thought so maybe there is no reason to try to cram in 6 a day. :) I'm 90% sure that I'm H/G so (unless this proves untrue and I'm a mixed) it looks like, as with you, there is no need to test grains and dairy.... ONLY that I am SO curious to do so. I would give *anything* to keep eating yogurt and kefir... and hope it would be shown that I can, heh. And I'm just plain curious to cross-check some of the 11 foods that were no-no's on my ELISA test, not just the ones that are core & supplemental, but the avoids too, just to see if they are right. :) Also I want to test Perfect Food and a few other supplements and seasonings. And coconut oil, which I love but is not on Robert's lists.... common sense tells me that H/G's are not adapted to it... never yet seen a palm tree growing in Northern Europe.
Well, this is my thinking so far. Thanks for being there to help with this!
In Reply to: Re: To labrat: elimination diet: more questions - about food testing... posted by Jan S. on February 14, 2003 at 17:17:22:
Hi Jan S.
Well, I think I see where you are getting hung up. What Robert wrote about a new food every four hours... You can test ONE new food every 4 hours (if you stay up late enough you can do 6 in a day) But NOT two foods per meal! It's just not good science to try two at once. Like you realized, you'd be wasting precious time trying to backtrack and re-test stuff.
About testing dairy and grains. Just because you don't have an actual allergic reaction, it doesn't mean that you are well adapted to those foods. I bet you know that - it's sad but true...if you do find that you're HG, you would be wise to consider eliminating those foods from your diet at least for awhile and see how you feel.
In my case I can tolerate grains - even wheat - quite well for quite some time. Eventually however, they begin to wear me down and put weight on and other annoying things...it's something I've tested more than once. Usually the tests lead to addicitive type cravings and then all the work needed to get back on track! :-)
Oddly, the one grain I reacted to - oats - I had eaten every morning with yogurt for a long time! I decided to have some for a treat one morning and spent the rest of the day running for the bathroom!! What a sad surprise (it was well after the ediet too).
Keep on reading and asking - It's good to have a strong handle on it before you even start it so that mistakes and possibly ruining your results can be avoided.
~~~8>
In Reply to: Re: elimination diet posted by labrat on February 14, 2003 at 09:04:23:
Thanks, Labrat.
Bob & I are good friends. It is healthy for us to agree to disagree.
I recommend what I recommend because it is the surest way to resolve the problem with the least complication although it takes longer.
Bob's recommendation CAN work faster (3 times faster) but has the built in problem that one may not find out what the exact triggering items are and thus have a much more complicated diet, from then on, than would be necessary.
The antibodies taka an average of 3 1/2 days to dissipate and so the most accurate way is to test only one thing at a time and only every week so as to not miss those people who have a longer reactive time.
Is this making sense?
I KNOW which way I would do it for ME.
Walt
In Reply to: Re: To labrat: elimination diet: more questions - about food testing... posted by labrat on February 14, 2003 at 18:47:03:
Wow. Thanks for clearing that up that misunderstanding. It's funny how misconceptions are born and then just stick in one's mind...
I do have more questions. Instead of loading them all into one post, I'll just pop one or two at a time. Makes it easier.
Is the red trout (steelhead) OK? A while back, you mentioned that you ate it on the e-diet. (It's available frozen from Trader Joe's... the label just says ingredients: trout but I wasn't sure if frozen is acceptable)
In Reply to: Re: To labrat: elimination diet: more questions - about food testing... posted by Jan S. on February 17, 2003 at 01:39:51:
~~~8>
In Reply to: Yes, I ate steelhead, but it should be fresh if you can get it.. nmi posted by labrat on February 17, 2003 at 15:06:53:
OK, I already bought some steelhead and stocked it in the freezer, in anticipation. But I will just save it for regular eating, no problem!
I also froze some regular trout, but it was fresh when I bought it, so there's no doubt about anything weird having gotten into the packaging (which I think is the reason why we don't want to use frozen foods, right?)
In Reply to: Re: Yes, I ate steelhead, but it should be fresh if you can get it posted by Jan S. on February 17, 2003 at 18:23:23:
It's alright to freeze fresh fish or get it frozen at the fish counter as long as you know nothing's been added.
You'll want to plan your meals in advance (and have extra around in case you get hungry) so you don't get caught without a meal.
Especially important is keeping a food diary of what you ate, when, and how you feel. Keep the diary all through the elimination phase and the testing phase. It will come in handy as you go along.
Planning ahead what foods you want to test (and in what order) after the elimination part is also very important. If you treat this like a scientific experiment and keep records and go by the book, you will really gain a lot from it. If you try to improvise too much, the info you get becomes less precise as well.
~~~8>
In Reply to: Correct! You REALLY want to control what you're eating during this diet... posted by labrat on February 18, 2003 at 08:15:04:
Yep. I'm all for the scientific experiment, with tightly controlled variables. Which is why I'm taking such a long time getting a "round tuit" :)
It has taken me 3 months to get off coffee by the gradual tapering-down-to-zero method. I don't want my e-diet to be about the horrors of cold-turkey caffeine withdrawal!! Wonder of wonders, I now feel fine not drinking any coffee
Later :)
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