Elimination Diet + Functional Medicine - Eric Green
Hello everyone, I’m Eric Green. I’m going to be talking today about food as medicine, specifically the elimination diet, through the lens of how I learned to reverse Crohn’s disease.
And so who here subscribes to the idea of you know, food is medicine, food is the best medicine? What about the idea of like food is information?
So this is what I’ve been hearing more and more frequently now is food is the information that’s providing our body, the substance to or the instructions rather, how to create itself and how to promote healing. And so what I found is that through certain dietary changes. I was able to promote my bodies own natural healing abilities. And that’s something I found was really misunderstood conventionally, and what I started doing was just kind of doing my own research, but I eventually found a functional medical doctor.
One of the first things the functional medical doctor recommended was an elimination diet. The way that it worked was for 30 days, I was going to take out all foods that were possible triggers. For me that included dairy, wheat, soy, corn, peanuts, red meat, I might be missing something too, but the most common and simple elimination diet is really just eliminating four things that’s corn, wheat, dairy, soy for at least 21 days.
And for me it was really difficult to eliminate wheat, the staple of my diet had always been bread, and I thought that was the right thing to do. You know, you’ve got to have your carbohydrates and then maybe some fat you know, not too much fat.
What I learned was that really you know fat is very important and misunderstood, and through the elimination diet I was able to take out a lot of the carbohydrates and start supplementing that with more plants, more fats and see results very quickly. And through this 30 day period, you’re able to really detoxify not just your body but your mind and the way that you respond to certain food cravings.
This is where by the end of that 30 days like I didn’t really need bread, and what you do is you introduce each food, one by one. So psychologically I felt like I didn’t need bread, but also my body was much more sensitive. So that’s when I started introducing these foods after 30 days. I really felt what it was like for my body to be processing wheat for example, foggy mind, like full instantly, even although I didn’t really eat many of any nutrients. So I really responded quickly to the idea of okay, this is what happens when my body is exposed to wheat, don’t need that.
And originally, when I first did my first elimination diet, I noticed sensitivity to dairy. I think that was because it was really when I was really just starting to open up to the idea of you know, grass fed dairy, grass fed meat, pasteurized meat or whatever you want to call it, organic produce. And I wasn’t really eating high quality dairy, so that I noticed sensitivities to.
And what I do now is an elimination diet once or twice a year, where I’ll notice what changes. Every six months, your body will kind of – not every six months, but your body is always changing, especially as your gut changes and your gut microbiome changes. And so a year later I noticed that I was more able to process dairy, and I didn’t notice any side-effects with dairy. So this is something I do once or twice a year, 21 day elimination diet now at least those four things and notice how my body changes.
So that’s how I did it, and what I learned was that food is the best medicine. Any doctor that doesn’t buy into that or doesn’t understand that has a lot of learning to do as we all do. And really, that your body is always changing. So, what worked for you last year might not work for you today, and it’s always a good idea to kind of check-in and learn, especially what you should be avoiding. Because there is a lot of information out there, at fish oil you know, add this add that. But what happens if you’re eating fish oil with you know, processed white flour. Not much changes going to happen.
So the moral of what I’ve learned is that sometimes it’s more important to eliminate, and you know, for example, fasting. You know, a 24 hour fast is often a great way of kind of resetting your immune system. So that’s another kind of tip, eliminating is a great way of learning and triggering your body’s healing abilities.
So I hope that was helpful and I would love to answer any questions.
