Hi!
My name is Mikhaila Peterson. I’m a 26 year old mother (and loving it!). I live in Toronto.
Short background on me:
I was diagnosed with Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis when I was 7 years old. My parents think it started when I was around 2 noticing the way I walked. I was the first child in Canada to be put on injections of Enbrel, an immune suppressant. I was also put on injections of Methotrexate. In grade 5, when I was 12, I was diagnosed with severe depression/anxiety. I started taking Cipralex (Celexa), an SSRI. I was on a very high dose for a child, but if I tried to lower it, I couldn’t. That dose increased into my teenage years and early 20’s when my depression worsened. When I was 17 I had a hip and an ankle replacement from the arthritis (that diagnosis was changed from rheumatoid arthritis to idiopathic arthritis). I was prescribed Adderall to keep myself awake because I couldn’t stay awake. Diagnosed with idiopathic hypersomnia. My skin was itchy, I had mouth ulcers, floaters, and terrible skin problems starting in my early 20’s.
At the peak of my medicated times I was taking:
For Arthritis: Enbrel and Methotrexate, (immune suppressants). Folic acid because of the Methotrexate. Tylenol 3 so I could sleep at night without as much pain.
For depression: Cipralex and Wellbutrin
For fatigue: Adderall to keep me awake, Gravol and Lorazepam to put me to sleep from the Adderall.
For my skin: Minocycline (antibiotic), and later dapsone (antibiotic)
Other: Birth control (seasonique)
I’ve probably taken antibiotics 2-3 times a year since I was 2. That’s almost 40 rounds of antibiotics.
I’ve been on way more than that too. That was just at one point in time.
Anyways, all in all, I was very sick.
May 2015, I stopped eating gluten. I thought that my skin problems that had slowly been growing worse were probably Celiac related (dermatitis herpetiformis). I never had stomach pain so I had never looked at food before. Cutting out gluten maybe helped a bit… But not nearly enough.
September 2015, I went on an elimination diet. I went on it to see if I could control my arthritic symptoms. I could. 3 weeks into the diet my arthritis and skin issues went away. This was unheard of. I don’t have the type of arthritis that goes away.
3 months later my depression disappeared. My arthritis ate my hip and my ankle but I haven’t experienced anything more debilitating than depression.
A month after that my fatigue lifted.
Everything wrong with me was diet related. Arthritis, depression, anxiety, lower back pain, chronic fatigue, brain fog, itchy skin, acne, tiny blisters on my knuckles, floaters, mouth ulcers, twitching at night, night sweats, tooth sensitivity, and the list goes on, but everything was diet related. Every single thing wrong with me was fixable.
Then I got pregnant.
Things shifted in my body and the original diet I followed didn’t get rid of my symptoms anymore. My arthritis came back (albeit much less awful than before) and my depression came back (again, much less awful). I lost the ability to tolerate any carbs.
The following is a list of foods that I could originally eat without reacting. This is a good list of foods to start with for the elimination diet. In order to do this, you have to be very strict. If you have questions, please comment! If the following list doesn’t work for you after a month, you can try even more strict, or you can go zero-carb/lion diet. If you’re suffering from an autoimmune disorder or you need to get better ASAP (as in you’re dying from what ails you), I’d recommend zero-carb. You can reintroduce vegetables after a month (if you want to).
If you can’t manage to do zero-carb, or the following list of foods, (it makes eating out almost impossible), at least cut-out gluten and dairy and sugar. If you’re a “healthy” person, cut out gluten and dairy. All of it. Gluten is hidden in soya sauce, twizzlers, malt vinegar. Cut it all out for 4 weeks and see how you feel. If you’re suffering from an autoimmune disorder or depression or another mental disorder than I would suggest doing the following diet or doing zero-carb. Cutting out gluten and dairy will help but it might not be enough. You may find that you’re able to reintroduce most foods after the elimination diet.
Meats:
- turkey
- beef
- chicken
- lamb
- duck
- wild game is fine too, elk, moose, etc.
- wild salmon
- tuna – check the ingredients! Get stuff that’s just tuna and water and perhaps salt.
- organ meat – chicken liver tastes the best I find
- wild herring – check the ingredients!
- wild sardines – check the ingredients!
Veggies:
- lettuce
- arugula
- arugula microgreens (arugula sprouts)
- cucumber
- swiss chard
- seaweed – check the ingredients! this is hard to find without soy and other things. The brand I’ve linked to is safe and really tasty
- cilantro
- collard greens
- broccoli
- turnips
- cauliflower
- parsnips
- sweet potatoes
- spinach
Fruit:
- olives – check the ingredients! see my olive post. be super careful about which brands you buy here too, many have preservatives and flavours and dyes.
Vinegars:
- Omega Nutrition Certified Organic Apple Cider Vinegar, 12-Ounces
apple cider vinegar – try to get the organic stuff so there aren’t dyes and flavours added
apple cider vinegar – try to get the organic stuff so there aren’t dyes and flavours addedOils:
- coconut oil – get unrefined. And try to avoid the Nutiva brand. It’s everywhere but it doesn’t taste as good, and I’ve had ones that have gone bad before.
- olive oil – make sure your olive oil is pure olive oil. Sometimes it’s also soybean oil!
Spices/Seasonings
- salt
- pepper
- marjoram
- parsley
- oregano
- thyme
- rosemary
- peppermint
- turmeric
- basil
- bay leaf
- coriander
Other:
- baking soda (probably won’t eat this but it’s good for toothpaste 🙂 )
- peppermint tea – check the ingredients. Buy loose leaf (David’s sells an organic peppermint which is lovely) or organic. We want to make sure there aren’t preservatives or flavours added. White tea bags or coffee filters are often bleached with sulfites. If you’re super sensitive (dad and I), you’ll react to these. So make sure you get organic tea bags as well!
- black tea- check the ingredients. Buy loose leaf if possible
- green tea- check the ingredients. Buy loose leaf if possible
Alcohol – not for the first month. I can kinda handle it, but lots of people can’t.
- vodka
- bourbon and American Whiskey labeled “straight” whiskey
Good luck! If you try this for 4 weeks you should be able to see a huge difference. Then reintroduce foods by having a bite of it. I do not recommend reintroducing dairy and gluten ever but do so if need be. It took me 8 months to realize how sensitive I was, it doesn’t seem possible, but I react strongly to half bite of food. Have a bite or two of the new food and then wait 4 days before reintroducing something else. Most of my reactions (but definitely not all) take about 4 days to hit peak terrible – particularly arthritis and definitely the depression. Skin issues take about 7 days to come up after eating an offending food.
Things to try and reintroduce first after the first month:
- avocados
- other leafy greens
- macademia nuts
- foods that are listed as okay by the AIP or SCD diets
Foods to always be wary of:
- grains
- dairy
- sugar
- soy
Foods that I had major issues with when I tried to reintroduce
- almonds
- rice
- sulphites
- dairy – ouchhhh that was not fun to experience
- gluten
- kelp noodles
- white cabbage
- bananas – terrible for the arthritis
- cane sugar
- food dyes
- citrus
- melons
- grapes
- onions
- zucchini
- soy
- probiotics – I can’t handle them, but that doesn’t mean they’re bad. Hopefully, after some healing, I’ll be able to handle them too.
My father and my husband have the same sensitivities, and I’ve been contacted by people who also have extremely similar reactions to the same foods. This is widespread. These are terrible reactions that most people don’t realize until they’re gone. What’s the point of realistically thinking about everything bodily that’s bugging you? Muscle pain, fatigue, digestive issues, minor skin problems, the occasional mouth ulcer – all things people ignore. Don’t. These are signs. Good luck!!
To find out exactly how to go about doing an elimination diet please read this (especially if you suffer from depression/anxiety, there are some things you should know before going on an elimination diet).
Dear Mikhaila,
Congratulations on your beautiful healthy baby.
I’ve seen the videos of you and your father and have been wanting to do the elimination diet for a while. My diet is rather healthy most of the time, but every couple of days I lash out, eat the bad stuff and feel terrible until it subsides. I was recently diagnosed with IBS and am confident trying out this diet would be helpful. What did you do to get over the initial cravings? Did you ever have a setback? In those moments, I even eat the stuff with full awareness of what it will do to my body and how it will make me feel, which causes me to never actually detox. I know how addictive especially sugary things and grains are, and that they incapacitate my free will.
How did you manage to stick with it, and deal with temptation, in certain situations and in the long run?
Thanks for writing this blog!
Best wishes from Germany
If you’re having a seriously hard time getting off sugar… switch to honey. Instead of going full out elimination, keep fruits and honey and literally eat honey when you feel a sugar craving. Eventually you won’t want to. This isn’t an ideal long term solution but it’s better than not cutting out processed foods. Once you’ve managed to get your cravings down to manageable with fruit and honey, you can cut down on the honey and fruit. I’ll write a blog this week on how to stick with the diet when you’re not feeling well, or in social situations, or when you get cravings. It takes an incredible amount of will power but even cutting down is good for you.
Be very careful about honey. I discovered the hard way that honey made me very sick. Not sure why but I suspect it’s because I have pollen allergies. I tried a few different types of honey, all made me sick.
Thanks for your response! I’ve managed to stay away from everything gluten in particular and processed in general for a couple of weeks now and I’m feeling WAY better – less pain and better skin (that is, until there were clementines and oranges – discovered the hard way that they are the absolute worst for acne-prone skin) Another satisfying discovery for me was that will power seems to increase the more you stick with staying away from the stuff that makes you sick. I’ve never been too fond of honey, so I just stayed with fruit and have been able to stay away for a couple of days now, so I’m hopeful that will have a positive effect on my overall health.
What was interesting for me was that you also prefer naturopaths to conventional medicine practitioners.
I’m glad I found your blog/story.
Good for you! That always makes me so happy to read! I can’t do fruit unfortunately, but the worst culprits (especially for my arthritis) were citrus (oranges and clementines), and bananas.
Hi ! First i wanted to say thank you for your work and the one of your father =) You both helped me greatly lately. I tried multiple high fat diet low carb diet, supplements and all that stuff to fix my depression and fatigue with really low success. Im slowly cutting on some food to get close to your list. Coffee and Avocado are gonna be extremely hard since i ended up developping the MCT oil in coffee + and the whole Bulletproof frenzy that comes with it. I’d like to know whats your take on Eggs tough ? I know most elimintation diet adviced to not even reintroduce it but have you tried Pastured Eggs ?
I can’t handle eggs. Neither can other people I know doing this diet. Although I have an easier time with egg yolks. They showed up on my whole family’s IgG test. I’d definitely eliminate them at the beginning unfortunately. Coffee I haven’t tried yet but there doesn’t seem to be anything obviously wrong with it… if you can’t live without it, it might not be the end of the world if you don’t eliminate it. But if you can, I know that black tea is fine. If you haven’t had success but you’ve tried different high fat low carb diets, I would really recommend getting a food sensitivity test (IgG). You might just have kept in one food that’s still bothering you. Avocados would definitely be enough for me to trigger the depression. If you can’t fork out the dough though, definitely try what dad’s doing, that should eliminate the major allergens. But yeah, no eggs, sorry. Good luck!
Was watching a video with you and your father where you talked about the positive aspects of changing your diet. Today i found your blog via his twitter. Congrats for figuring all this out.
So you’re mostly getting your energy from meat, right?
What about things like lentils and beans?
In the about me page you say: “Check out the list of foods we got better with for more info! Leave a comment, and give it a try if you feel lousy, or if you don’t.” You should put a link in there for convenience 😉
Done, thanks! Legumes are out for us. They induce the same depression and autoimmune symptoms as dairy, wheat, etc. We’re getting our protein from meat mainly. No nuts or other things.
Hi Mikhaila, glad I have found your blog.
Like many here, I’ve heard about you by first following you father.
Your article is of great interest to me, I have a close member of my family who has multiple sclerosis, which has been very quickly and very severely incapacitating.
Do you have any info and/or tracks I could follow? Could be changing diet, could be other hypothesis appliable to autoimmune disorders and that he could work on… I’m open to anything that could relieve him a little.
Hope to hear from you.
Best regards, Jean.
If he’s open to an elimination diet, I would do that plus the IgG food sensitivity testing. The research is slowly being put together on that, and the medical community is extremely far behind. Dr. Terry Wahls wrote the book “The Wahls Protocol” and managed to reverse her secondary progressive MS. Her diet has far more variety than mine, but removes gluten and dairy completely. It wouldn’t have worked for me though. I’d recommend going down to my basic list of foods, and seeing what happens after a month. It’s really hard to do all the cooking though, so unless he has help, it’s going to be difficult. The cravings are hard, the cooking, the frustration.. But it only took a month for me to see a big change. That, or look at the Wahls Protocol. He could maybe try that for a month and if that doesn’t work, then try my diet.
Thank you Mikhaila for your answer. I’m gonna check that with him, and will let you know if it has its effects.
Hello,
Watch out for carrots and celery (parsley family). Those 2 foods caused me a great deal of grief. It took a knowledgeable allergist to suggest them. Approx 5 years of problems. Mostly prescribed betaderm for the skin issues – had to use prednosone once due to a full body breakout. Later also methotrexate. The allergist pointed out, based on my tree and grass allergies, what foods to look out for and specifically called out carrots and celery. This year recently cut out chips/snacks. First real sign of trouble was Iritis about 6 years ago. Tested HLA-B27 positive – a potential indicator for autoimmune problems. 2+ years no carrots or celery and the changes have been incredible. All sorts of problems have gone away. I still cannot believe it.
Celery causes and IgG response to everyone I’ve seen take the test. I can’t do very many carrots, but celery is definitely an issue. That’s great news though. Very strange.
Hello Mikhaila, I have found your blog through your dad. I have also been looking at and altering my diet the last few years as I suspect it has a role to play in my low moods that often seem to come out of no where (no life dramas but what seems like sudden spurs of deep low moods and a feeling of being stuck in a rut).
It is really encouraging to read your story and outcome. As people in my immediate circle have no issues nor experience no physical nor mental instability nor discomfort as a direct result of what they eat, often I am seen as a hypochondriac or OCD with regards to weight and diet. Of course the social trickiness of eating this way, leaves those that do not appreciate the suffering caused by eating like everybody else thinking I am severely depriving myself and see my practices as a form of self harm.
There have been many many times where I wonfered if this is the case, especially when cravings for the foods I used to love kick in. The I go and say ‘one bit is not going to hurt’ and that one bit which is meant to be a pleasure and a treat brings with it a flood of pain and suffering in so many ways…physical and mental.
It is actually really supportive in a way that you share your experiences here. Myself and people in my circle are close followers of your dad and have great respect for him. The fact that they are seeing that JBP and his family are talking about and have experiences with similar dietary issues that I have been battling with is actually helping them realise that this is a thing and not a suffering of just my imagination. THANK YOU for sharing.
One question for you so far, I have not seen any mention of eggs in your blog yet. Do you/can you eat eggs?
We can’t eat eggs. IgG response to eggs unfortunately. One of the hardest parts of being sick with something invisible (and most illnesses are invisible until you’re basically dead…) is the whole hypochondriac thing. Even though I was diagnosed with arthritis and had joint replacements, I got the hypochondriac response from tons of people. Especially with fatigue, and skin issues.. Even visible ones. Just keep at it. And don’t doubt your body. I had to learn that. If you think somethings wrong, it probably is, and pay attention to it. Try not to logic yourself out of it. The “only one bit isn’t going to hurt” is really hard to get over mentally haha, I feel you.
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