Life is stressful enough without completely turning your diet upside down. That’s why as you prepare for and do the Elimination Diet, it will be especially important for you to set aside a little time every day to relax and let that stress dissipate.
One of the best ways to accomplish this is to take a bath, but not just any bath: an Epsom salt bath. Enjoying a nice hot bath with two cups of Epsom salts will do wonders to calm your body and your mind. Epsom salts contain magnesium and sulfate, which will work to settle your racing thoughts, allow your muscles to release, and give your liver a chance to efficiently metabolize both foods and toxins.
When you are fully at ease, your body will switch from a “fight or flight” mode to a state of “rest and digest.” This will allow your intestines to calm and for cellular recovery to take place. While making drastic dietary changes, these baths will give you a break from extra stress and boost detoxification, making your Elimination Diet adventure much more enjoyable.
Epsom salt baths can also relieve many other sources of discomfort, such as:
If your skin tends to be dry, be sure to add ¼ cup of baking soda to the bath as well. Your skin will come out feeling silky and smooth.
The warmth of the sun on your skin can calm down your entire nervous system, while the brightness of the sunlight can change neurotransmitters in your brain to improve your mood. Those reasons alone are enough to soak up some sun, but there’s more.
When sunlight of a particular strength strikes your bare skin, it can change the shape of a cholesterol molecule under the surface, forming vitamin D3. This substance will then travel to your liver where it becomes something called 25-hydroxy vitamin D—this is what your doctor keeps track of to see if you have enough vitamin D for optimal health.
Vitamin D is important to so many critical functions in the body. In fact, if you could only track just one nutrient to make sure you had enough of it, vitamin D would be high on my short list.
What’s the ideal level for vitamin D? There is currently some debate around what’s considered to be “adequate.” Many physicians will say that somewhere between 25 and 32 ng/ml is enough, but after reading thousands of articles on the subject, listening to world renowned experts debate the topic, and lecturing across North America about this vitamin, I am leaning toward 40 to 60 ng/ml. At these higher levels, I have seen that bone density, immune function, and disease prevention are optimized.
Here are some of the common improvements I see with optimal vitamin D levels:
Next time you’re at the doctor, ask for a 25-hydroxy vitamin D test. Or you could go to GrassrootsHealth.net and order your own finger-stick test. Their website also offers a downloadable chart that will help you determine what daily dose you may need in order to maintain their recommended 40 to 60 ng/ml level.
Because adequate vitamin D is extremely difficult to attain through diet, responsible sun exposure or supplementation is highly recommended. Responsible dosing from the sun is achieved by exposing your skin to sun for the necessary time to get a light pinking or darkening to your skin without burning. This is often referred to as a minimal erythemal dose or MED. In fair-skinned individuals this may be achieved in 15 to 20 minutes; in a person with olive-toned skin it may take 30 to 45 minutes; and in people who are dark skinned it may take 120 minutes or more. The more skin exposed, the better.
Based on the fact that 100 percent of our skin can get us around 10,000 IUs of vitamin D, we know that 6 percent of our skin exposed (our hands, neck, and face) will only get us around 600 IUs of vitamin D. Research indicates that an adult needs approximately 3,500 IUs per day, so aim to expose 35 percent of your body during your sun breaks.
Sunscreen application will inhibit the formation of vitamin D, so wait until after your MED is reached before you apply. Even low SPFs will prevent the vitamin D boost: an SPF of 8 will reduce the vitamin D conversion in your skin by 92.5 percent, and an SPF of 15 will reduce it by 98 percent.
In the United States, people who live above the 35th parallel will not be able to get adequate vitamin D from the sun from late fall to early spring. If you were to draw an imaginary line from west to east through Bakersfield, California, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, and Raleigh, North Carolina, this would mark the 35th parallel. If you live in areas above this line, it’s likely you will need to take a vitamin D supplement to maintain healthy levels.
People who have a history of skin cancer may want to limit their exposure to sun as well and rely on supplementation.
See Supplements to Support the Elimination Diet here for how to get enough vitamin D when natural sunlight isn’t available to you or is not recommended.
Grandma was right. Everyone feels better after a good bowl of soup. All of the miraculous plant compounds from the herbs, vegetables, and spices have time to steep into every warm spoonful of goodness. If you choose to make chicken soup or bone broth, the gut-healing proline and glycine amino acids will help to soothe and repair any damage, while also supporting optimal muscle tone and detoxification. Because soups are cooked thoroughly, they are easy to digest and often tolerated by people with upset intestinal tracts.
Plus, soups are easy! You just chop up the ingredients, throw them in a pot, and set a timer. Done. Then you have meals for days, if not weeks. If you make a big batch, it’s easy to prep the leftovers for storage. Here’s how we do it at our house:
Having your freezer stocked with some soups or broths can make your life and your Elimination Diet a breeze. Any time you are hungry, just run to the freezer, thaw out a jar of soup, drop it into a pot, and enjoy. Add some fresh vegetables or meats and you have a delicious, nutritious, lightning-fast meal.
What’s easier to make than a soup? A smoothie! During the Elimination Diet, it is a great idea to have your freezer stocked with lots of organic fruits, and your fridge loaded with green leafy vegetables. Adding in some hemp seeds and/or ground chia seeds (or whole seeds if you have a high-powered blender like a Vitamix) can help to tide you over for a while. There really is nothing simpler than grabbing items, throwing them in a blender, and turning it on.
Does making a fruit-and-vegetable smoothie sound weird to you? It’s okay if it does, especially if you’re not used to eating many fresh fruits and vegetables in your regular diet. One of the great benefits of the Elimination Diet is that it helps reset your taste buds so that you start to crave fresh, whole foods instead of artificial, processed foods. So before too long on the Elimination Diet, you’ll come to discover how delicious a fresh smoothie like this can be! You really can’t go wrong by putting a bunch of healthy ingredients into a blender and giving it a spin.
Here are the staples that make up our organic smoothies:
Apples
Bananas*
Blueberries (wild are great, too)*
Cherries
Mangoes
Papaya*
Pears
Pineapple*
Raspberries*
Strawberries*
*Indicates fruits that are lower in fermentable carbohydrates (aka fermentable oligosaccharides, disaccharides, monosaccharides, and polylols or FODMAPs; see here for more on a low-FODMAP diet). Fruits and other foods high in these fermentable carbohydrates are readily eaten (fermented) by intestinal bacteria and this can lead to bloating, gas, and irritable bowel symptoms.
Avocados
Collards
Cucumbers
Ginger
Kales (black/lacinato, red, Siberian)
Napa cabbage
Ground chia seeds (or whole seeds if you have a high-powered blender like the Vitamix or BlendTec)
Hemp seeds
Not only are smoothies easy, but when made with the right ingredients, they can provide an incredible number of health benefits. Now, I’m not talking about the typical smoothie you get at a chain smoothie shop, which can be overloaded with sugar and other reactive ingredients like dairy and artificial flavors. I’m talking about healing and satisfying smoothies that are made from only fresh, replenishing whole foods.
For example: If you were to toss kale, ginger, blueberries, pineapple, ground chia seeds, and water into a blender, you would have one of the most potent antioxidant drinks you could dream up.
Kale contains sulforaphane, a potent detoxification and antioxidant chemical.
Ginger is an anti-inflammatory powerhouse thanks to its gingerols, which have shown to benefit 75 percent of joint-pain sufferers and 100 percent of muscle-pain sufferers.
Blueberries are rich in anthocyanadins, which are powerful antioxidants that protect brain function.
Pineapple is chock-full of vitamin C—1 cup of this tropical fruit exceeds your daily requirement.
Chia seeds are a fantastic source of fiber and omega-3 fatty acids: Less than an ounce of ground chia seeds a day has been shown to increase the anti-inflammatory omega-3 fatty acid EPA by 39 percent.
See how easy (and tasty) it can be to drink to your great health? And that is just the tip of the iceberg. I had a gentleman come into my office who wanted to lose weight. He was not willing to cut out gluten, dairy, or any other foods to reach his goals. The only thing he was willing to commit to was to drinking a green smoothie every morning. After twenty-eight days, he had lost 15 pounds!
Common improvements I see with green smoothies:
Be sure to check out all the great smoothie recipes in chapter 11.
Growing things is fun. Really fun. And in the case of growing your own broccoli sprouts, it may be one of the healthiest things you can do for yourself.
In 1992, a team of scientists from Johns Hopkins University searched the globe for miraculous compounds that could protect our cells from cancer. And they found them in a common group of vegetables many of us eat called cruciferous vegetables. These are:
The way they protect us is fascinating. These vegetables contain a chemical called sulforaphane that allows our genes to make more antioxidant and detoxification proteins. Regular antioxidants like vitamin C fight free radicals directly and protect us for approximately 6 hours after we are exposed to damaging chemicals. But sulforaphane is an even more powerful protector—it ramps up the ability of each and every one of our cells to secrete hundreds of antioxidant and detoxification chemicals for more than 72 hours.
Research has shown that when people eat foods high in sulforaphane, they are protected from air pollution, heavy metals, pesticides, and many other compounds. And what food is particularly high in sulforaphane? Broccoli sprouts. Broccoli sprouts are shown to have more than 20 times the amount of sulforaphane as regular broccoli. (See Tom’s TEDx talk, “Broccoli—The DNA Whisperer” at http://tedxtalks.ted.com/video/Broccoli-The-DNA-Whisperer-Tom.)
So get sprouting! Check out the video on our website and the recipe here. Then, buy all the supplies you need and jump right in. I advise all my clients to start sprouting broccoli seeds, and most of them have grown addicted to the fun and healthy process. Not only do they experience noticeable shifts in their health when they eat the sprouts, but they seem to adore the process of watching their little plants grow on their kitchen counters. Kids love to be included in the process, too.
Beneficial bacteria (aka probiotics) are our friends. Cultures across the globe have known this for millennia, which is why you’ll continue to find what I call “bubbling foods” in their kitchens. Bubbling foods are fermented foods, such as sauerkraut, kefir, yogurt, pickles, and fermented meats. When you enjoy them, you introduce incredible beneficial bacteria into your diet. It’s a time-tested tradition worth following.
I once had a young man come up to me and thank me for the cultured vegetable information that we share on our blog and in our books. He told me that it saved him from months of severe intestinal pain. After a hernia surgery left him with an infection, his doctors put him on a course of antibiotics. Soon after, he started having terrible bloating, gas, cramping, and erratic bowel movements, all of which continued for months.
It wasn’t until he started eating sauerkraut that he began to feel better. After two weeks of regular consumption, his symptoms were nearly gone. A few months later, he said, “I was a new man!” And all just from eating sauerkraut.
The beneficial bacteria found in fermented foods can create a profound change in the gut environment. They help reestablish balance, which can relieve digestive distress; ward off infection and boost your immune system; and increase energy by replenishing several important nutrients, including many B vitamins.
The easiest way to start your adventure into fermented foods is with lacto-fermented vegetables. The process of making them is almost as simple as making a smoothie. You just chop up some veggies, put them in a jar with salt water, put the lid on, and wait. About a week later, they are ready to enjoy. Just enter “lacto-fermented vegetables” into the search bar on our NourishingMeals.com blog for an instructional video. (Turn to here in chapter 11 for some easy recipes to try.)
You can eat these vegetables on their own—they’re great as snacks and sides. But they’re also excellent as a condiment. Several of my clients like to use cultured vegetables this way to add flare to otherwise bland dishes. Personally, I’ve found that adding sauerkraut or lacto-fermented cauliflower to some steamed or roasted kabocha squash can really kick up the flavor; the mixture of tangy and sweet is amazing. And I have yet to find any meal that does not go well with a side of fermented green beans. Something magical happens to green beans when they are fermented for a few weeks. Even our kids eat them like candy, as our jars quickly disappear from our countertop.
Long story short… fermented and bubbling foods taste great, are fun and easy to make, and will assist you in feeling great.
There are a handful of supplements that I like to recommend for most people before and during the Elimination Diet. The supplements will support you on this program in a variety of ways.
It’s important to note that this information should not serve as a replacement for advice from your own health-care practitioner. I recommend searching for a practitioner trained in Functional Medicine. You can find out if there are any in your area by going to the website of the Institute of Functional Medicine (functionalmedicine.org). Click on “Find a Practitioner” at the top of the website and enter the required information.
For specific brand recommendations, you can see the resource guide in the back of this book, or visit us at WholeLifeNutrition.net for more information.
1. Multivitamin: Many people are not meeting their daily requirement for essential nutrients. This is due in part to our mineral-depleted soils and our polluted environment. But it’s also a product of dysfunctional intestinal tracts (which don’t properly absorb nutrients) and a poor diet. These factors have combined to make malnutrition quite common these days.
The simple addition of a high-quality, easily absorbed multivitamin can be a huge step in the right direction toward recovering your health. In my own clients, I’ve seen the right type of multivitamin produce drastic improvements.
2. Vitamin D: If your vitamin D levels are not in the 40 to 60 ng/ml range, and you are not getting adequate sun exposure, supplementation with vitamin D3 may be called for. (See also Get Some Sun here.) The Grassrootshealth.com website chart will give you an indication as to how much vitamin D you may need to supplement. Be sure to take some vitamin K2 along with your D3 as they work together to put calcium where it needs to go. (See the Resources section here for supplement recommendations.)
3. Essential Fatty Acids: A purified fish oil product can be very beneficial for people who are not consuming regular amounts of fish. Many people will find benefits from taking a combination of 1.5 to 3 grams of EPA and DHA a day. It is important that you choose a high-quality product as there is potential for contamination of fish oils with heavy metals, PCBs, and other ocean pollutants.
4. Magnesium: Magnesium is the most important mineral in the human body, as it is a cofactor for more than 300 enzymes. It helps regulate blood sugar and blood pressure, and maintains relaxation in your muscles. Magnesium also has the honored task of carrying something called adenosine triphosphate (ATP) around. This is your cellular currency, or what your body relies on to produce energy. When things go wrong with ATP, your cells have trouble functioning. As a result of this dysfunction, you can feel fatigued, agitated, and unmotivated (see the sidebar here for other magnesium deficiency symptoms).
Your body also requires adequate levels of magnesium for digestion and detoxification, and to help regulate bowel movements. Irregular bowel movements, especially constipation, can cause the walls of the lower intestines to reabsorb the toxins your body has worked so hard to clear out. This is one of the reasons you feel so lousy after you have been constipated for a few days.
One of the safest ways of encouraging bowels to move again is the supplementation of magnesium. Most people find that their bowel movements are easier after supplementing with 400 to 600 mg of magnesium citrate. Some health-care practitioners will recommend upward of 1,000 mg if a client is suffering from constipation. Please be aware that this may cause a bowel movement that may occur within 6 hours’ time (i.e., you will not want to be far from a toilet). Other forms of magnesium, such as magnesium glycinate or taurate, tend to be milder on your intestines and may be more appropriate for people who are not suffering from constipation.
As a maintenance dose, many Functional Medicine practitioners will recommend daily supplementation of 200 to 400 mg to assure adequate magnesium status. Frequent Epsom salt baths can assist you in meeting your magnesium requirements as well. Check with your health-care practitioner to determine the magnesium supplementation that’s best for you.
5. Activated Charcoal: When acute toxic chemical exposure lands someone in the emergency room, activated charcoal will often be used to treat them. This is because activated charcoal binds to toxins in the intestinal tract and helps excrete them from the body.
When you are making big dietary changes, you may free up toxins that have been locked into the cells and tissues of your body. This sort of toxic release can produce symptoms of lethargy, joint pain, and headaches. It is possible for these detox symptoms to set in while you are doing the Elimination Diet. Having a bottle of activated charcoal around may assist you in neutralizing these toxins, which will improve or lessen the time you have to tolerate any such symptoms. Follow the recommendations on the product you choose.
6. Sulfur to the Rescue! When you are exposed to a toxin, it will almost always make its way to the liver. It is here that most “detoxification” takes place. If the body is going through a process that may bring about a great purging of toxins—such as the Elimination Diet—the liver can use all the help it can get. That’s where sulfur comes in.
Sulfur-based compounds are used in the body to neutralize toxins. These compounds have names like sulfate, glutathione, taurine, and methionine. Here are the actions you can take to optimize detoxification:
7. Probiotics: We’ve talked about a great way for you to get beneficial bacteria from fermented foods (see here), but you can also get them from probiotic supplements. I’m sure you’ve heard about probiotics, and you’ve probably wondered if they live up to the hype.
Here’s the truth: It depends on too many factors to know if they will work for your specific condition or symptoms. As it stands, there are some bifidobacteria and lactobacilli strains that have great research behind them. Names like Culturelle, Phillips’ Colon Health, VSL-3, and Florastor are all known to have great results on conditions such as traveler’s diarrhea, C. difficile infections, and ulcerative colitis. I highly recommend you seek out a practitioner trained in Functional Medicine to help you navigate this ever-growing field of information.
Here’s what to look for when choosing a probiotic:
8. Berberine: For people who have intestinal imbalances like SIBO, irritable bowel, or inflammatory bowel, I will often recommend a trial with berberine extract. The bright yellow bitter alkaloids found in berberine have been used for centuries for balancing out intestinal microbes. Recent science is showing their efficacy in regulating blood sugar and body weight as well. The standard adult dosing varies between 300 and 1,500 mg of berberine per day.
9. Meriva: Many people who are suffering from arthritis, back pain, muscle aches and pains, irritated bowels, and other symptoms of inflammation resort to taking over-the-counter and/or prescription anti-inflammatories. Unfortunately, one of the primary side effects associated with these medications is intestinal damage. If recent science reveals that much of our inflammation originates in the gut, and the medications we’re using to calm inflammation are harming the gut, doesn’t this seem a bit counterproductive?
Thankfully, there are better, natural options making their way to the marketplace. A 2013 article in the Journal of Pain Research showed that a plant extract supplement derived from turmeric known as Meriva is as effective at lowering pain as acetaminophen (Tylenol). And it doesn’t just lower pain, it also lowers inflammation. An article from Alternative Medicine Review in 2010 demonstrated the power of Meriva to significantly lower markers of inflammation like high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs-CRP) in patients with arthritis.
Meriva also has a history of showing no intestinal upset or liver damage. In fact, it shows the exact opposite. Studies on inflammatory bowel disease and fatty liver disease demonstrate that the plant chemicals found in Meriva can be quite protective of both the intestines and the liver. In short, Meriva lowers pain and inflammation without the adverse side effects of commonly used medication. There are side effects, however. Good ones. Meriva and other turmeric-based supplements are being used to prevent cancers as well.
The maintenance dosing of Meriva as an anti-inflammatory is recommended to be 1 to 1.5 grams (1,000 to 1,500 mg) per day. The article on pain reduction showed dosing of 4 grams (4,000 mg).
10. Digestive Enzymes: If you have suffered from terrible gas, bloating, multiple loose bowel movements per day, or urgent bowel movements that float, or you see lots of undigested food in your stool, the addition of digestive enzymes may change your life.
In general, animal-based enzymes with pig-derived pancreatic enzymes and ox bile are excellent for people with sluggish digestion. However, during the Elimination Diet, I recommend plant-based enzymes instead, since many of the animal-derived enzymes will have both beef- and pork-sourced ingredients in them. I typically recommend taking digestive enzymes with each meal before beginning the Elimination Diet and through the duration of the diet. If someone has a known sensitivity to aspergillus, a microbe used in the making of some plant enzymes, they may need to be avoided altogether.
Follow the specific directions on the bottle of the product you buy. If you are suffering from terrible bloating, nausea, cramping, and erratic bowel movements, you may need to take more enzymes than are recommended on the label, but be sure to consult a Functional Medicine–trained practitioner before doing so.
If you have floating and urgent stools, choose a product designed for fat digestion that has a significant amount of lipase. See the Resource section in the back of this book for recommended brand names.
Digestive enzymes can help:
I want you to keep in mind that all these steps and supplements are intended to provide you with the maximum support as you prepare for and follow the Elimination Diet. They are not essential, but in many cases will provide physical and mental boosts that will only make the process easier for you. You will find resources for these supplements on our supplementation page at WholeLifeNutrition.net. Implement what you can, take note of what proves successful for you, and modify or remove what doesn’t. Remember this is just the start of your journey toward creating a customized diet that will promote complete healing.