Will This Diet Help You?

People have been emailing me, asking me if I think their certain set of symptoms are food related. Normally I would bet good money that they are, but I usually say "there's a good chance that they are, try it for a month and see."

Most of the questions I get are regarding mental disorders, mostly depression and/or anxiety.

Here are some symptoms, if you suffer from them, try the diet out. Many people ignore small symptoms, because it's easier to ignore them then to complain about them all the time.  If people had to actually sit down and think about everything that was wrong with their body, it would be miserable. So I'll list out what I was suffering from, and if it seems like you have a number of the symptoms too, try the diet. DO NOT DO A HALF ASSED JOB. And by half assed, I mean you have to follow it 100%. You can't follow it 98%. You can't do it perfectly for two weeks and have a beer to celebrate. You need a solid month and you need to be 100% strict.

Other than your main symptom (mental illness, autoimmune disease), do you suffer from?:

• Lower back pain
  • my lower back pain felt a bit better if i bent over frontwards to stretch. My rheumatologist told me it was arthritis. I really doubt it was. This is a common symptom.
• Brain fog
  • Terrible short term memory, difficulty remembering phone numbers, lyrics. Do you forget where you just put down your keys or your phone? Do you raise your hand in class and then forget what you were going to say when the professor calls on you? Do you trail off in the middle of a conversation?
• Crash around 4pm
  • Do you get moody, or hungry, or exhausted around 4pm. You might have been blaming it on a hard work day. See if it still happens on a Saturday. Do you have a muffin or something and then feel better?
• Acne
  • I suffered from cystic acne on my shoulders, bum and face. Not everyone has this but MAN it sucks.
• Floaters
  • little worm looking things that you can see when you look into the light?
• Sensitive teeth
• Bleeding gums
  • noticeable when you brush your teeth
• Fatigue
  • if you were able, would you nap every day? Have you had trouble staying awake driving?
  • I was diagnosed with "ideopathic hypersomnia" - very medical sounding but it literally means "unknown reason over tired" which I had figured out by myself...
  • Sleeping is when a lot of these toxins are moved out of your body. At night, your brain pushes a lot of the dead cells and junk out of it. The fatigue took 3 months to go away for me. But since then, even during reactions, I'm not tired. Sometimes if I'm reacting I'll have a nap, or I'll be more tired for about a week, but NOTHING like before. I was passing out in class, on the bus missing my stop, etc. I was on a high dose of adderal so I wouldn't be unconscious all the time. It was terrible.
• Low blood pressure
  • when you stand up do you black out sometimes?

Below are some more symptoms. If the above ones sound familiar, start the diet asap. At minimum, cut out gluten and dairy. But that might not be good enough. It definitely wasn't for me.

Here are some more symptoms that I had that were all resolved from the diet:

• Allergies
  • rashes
  • asthma
    • sensitive to perfumes?
  • hives
    • are you sensitive to types of metals, lotions, bedding?
• Blisters
  • I got tiny blisters on my fingers sometimes, and sometimes toes and knees. It's called dishydrotic eczema, but giving it a name doesn't mean it's not a food allergy. They were super itchy.
• Eczema
• Nose bleeds
• Joint pain
• Muscle weakness
• Hard time standing heat
• Sweating at night, or easily sweating
  • this is from you body trying to remove the toxins your putting in it
• Mouth ulcers

All of these problems went away for me. When I react now, a lot of them come back, but not like before,

These are symptoms of inflammation and that your body is trying to fight of pathogens (in this case, antigens from food).

I DO NOT believe that we spent this long evolving just to suffer from mental illnesses. That's kind of a HUGE flaw wouldn't you say? The severe depression and anxiety I suffered from was a food sensitivity. And it was terrible. I always had that feeling that someone was about to jump you at night, I screamed really easily, was super jumpy, very angry, weepy, just wanted to stay in bed. And that doesn't cover it at all. My arthritis was the worst any of my rheumatologists had seen. That's really saying something. I was the youngest joint replacement surgery both of my surgeons had performed. And I still think that the depression was worse. It was all food people! That's good news. It also means your body is working fine, but in our society, especially North American, we just put too much junk in our bodies.