This book is amazing! I discovered it on audible and listened to it on my drive from Tucson back to Denver. I usually have a short attention span with audio books, but this was so fascinating that I listened to it all in one go. This is partially because I, like many people these days suffer from psoriasis, and I know that some day this could even develop into other auto immune issues like arthritis. Having struggled with many different diets, and with limited success (vegetable juice fasting is the only thing that seemed to help directly) I still find myself without a lot of options. Conventional western medicine typically only has steroids as an option, and this is because, as Fett mentions in her book, research takes about 10 years to make it into clinical practice, and her job is to analyze an compile this research.
A whole new gateway of research into gut health and autoimmune disease has opened up. You may have read my previous article 5 Reasons Why Tongue Scraping Should Be Part of Your Daily Oral Care Routine explaining how the oral biome supports cardiovascular health, well this book combs through research illustrating that an unbalanced gut biome is primarily responsible for autoimmune diseases like psoriasis and arthritis. What leads to this imbalance can be different for different people, as can the road to restoring balance, but she brings up quite a few topics in research to consider, like food allergy, or diet in general, what diets supports a health diversity of gut species, what diets may feed the "bad" bacteria, conditions that lead to gut permeability (leaky gut syndrome), and diets along with supplements that can help to restore balance. Fett goes on to consider which supplements have research backing up their claims, which is important because supplements are not regulated in America. She arrives at the conclusion that fish oil, probiotics, and vitamin D3 are the primary avenues to restoring gut health along with diet.
The diet, of course, is the hard part, but not everyone needs to go on the strictest diet imaginable to gain success, she goes through 3 tiers of diets to restore gut health. Most people with psoriasis have heard that they should avoid night shades like potatoes, tomatoes, and bell peppers, but that never seemed to help me. Vegetarian and vegan diets have not proven to be successful either. I began limiting grains in my diet a while back, which may have helped for a while but my psoriasis made a big comeback after a summer of eating dehydrated camping food every weekend at the Colorado Renaissance Festival, where I was working. My gut health became bad, and so did my skin. What Fett points out is that starchy foods, even starchy vegetables, have proven not be supportive of healthy gut bacteria, and also tend to linger in the gut and feed the bad gut bacteria, leading to an imbalance. The answer appears to be going on a low starch diet while taking supplements to restore balance. How extreme the low starch diet should be depends on how bad the problem is.
Following a restricted diet can be very difficult, and most Americans would probably rather take a drug than change their diet. This is not entirely true though, as diet fads frequently pop up in this country, eating gluten free diets, paleo, keto, ect. Sticking with these diets is the problem though. Fett not only compiles printable lists of foods to avoid and foods to favor following these three tiers of diet, she compiles some meal plan suggestions and recipes. I am excited to give this a go. Understanding that gut health is a leading factor in autoimmune disease does correlate with my studies in Ayurvedic medicine, which states that all disease originates in the gut. It has not been until recently that we can prove this idea with scientific research. This research is liable to completely transform modern medicine, a transformation that is coming
very soon!
Click below for the audible link:
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