Gut-Restorative Diets

When I was searching for answers to my family's ongoing health issues, I made the decision to alter our diet. I found a great deal of conflicting information and found myself overwhelmed as I tried to sift through the various diet plans. In an effort to help others, I have written the following article comparing five of these diets.

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Yeasts, bacteria, and other microbes exist in abundance in every individual's digestive tract. The gut lining consists of both beneficial and harmful varieties. When the balance shifts in favor of pathogenic microbes, our immune system suffers.

Symptoms of bacterial and fungal overgrowth include fatigue, brain fog, joint pain, headaches, sugar cravings, OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder), skin and nail fungal infections, dizziness, and much more. Antibiotics, environmental toxins, a highly processed diet, stress, and the aging process all contribute to microbial imbalance.

There are a myriad of options for those seeking to boost their immune system through diet. In this article we compare and contrast five popular diets designed to restore or maintain health.

• Phase One Antifungal Diet
• Bee's Healing Diet
• GAPS Diet
• Paleo Diet
• Body Ecology Diet

Before contrasting these diets, it's important to note their similarities.

1. Elimination of processed foods. What exactly are processed foods? The Food and Drug Administration defines them as "any food other than a raw agricultural commodity and includes any raw agricultural commodity that has been subject to processing, such as canning, cooking, freezing, dehydration, or milling." Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride, author of Gut and Psychology Syndrome, notes that processed foods are natural foods that "get subjected to extreme heat, pressure, enzymes, solvents and countless number of various other chemicals." In addition, she notes, "fats get hydrogenated and proteins get denatured." She says the bulk of processed foods are carbohydrates which, in the form of processed foods, are burdensome to the body.
2. Elimination of sugar. Sugar is the primary food for pathogenic yeasts and bacteria. By taking sugar out of our diet, we essentially starve these pathogens. For more information on this concept (specifically relating to toxic fungi), see the article Forget Antibiotics, Steroids, and Medication – Starve This Toxin Out of Your Body by natural health advocate Dr. Joseph Mercola.
3. Elimination of grains. With the exception of Body Ecology's inclusion of grain-like seeds such as quinoa or buckwheat, all of these diets are grain-free. Grains and many root vegetables such as yams and potatoes are rich in starch. Digestion of starch requires quite a bit of work for the digestive system, leaving much of the starch undigested. Undigested starch provides food for pathogens. Doug Kaufmann, author of the Phase One diet, notes that mycotoxins are commonly found in grains because "sugar is the staple food of fungi, which makes grains one of their prime targets."

The following chart offers a comparison of the foods that are permitted on each of the diets. The chart is not a comprehensive assessment of each diet, but rather a tool to assist you in your research. See the individual websites linked above for specific protocols.

Click to download the
momsAWARE Antifungal Diet Comparison Chart

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EPA and Clothianidin

The 29th National Pesticide Forum convenes this week in Colorado. The forum will address numerous health and environmental concerns, including the pesticide clothianidin. Clothianidin has been banned in Europe, but is used extensively in the United States. As of 2007, 80 percent of corn seed sold by market leader Pioneer Hi-Bred (DuPont) contained either 0.25 or 1.25 mg per seed of clothianidin.

Tom Theobald is one of the Pesticide Forum's keynote speakers. As a beekeeper and researcher, Theobald is concerned about the hazards of clothianidin. Theobald wrote the following essay shortly after last summer's oil spill.

As I’ve listened to the news and read the articles describing events leading up to the explosion I’m struck by the parallel to what has been occurring in the beekeeping world over the past several years.

In May of 2008 there were massive bee kills in the Baden-Wurttemberg region of Germany, with two thirds of the colonies there killed. The damage was quickly traced to one of the pesticides in the controversial family of neonicotinoids produced by the German corporation Bayer. Planting of corn seed coated with clothianidin, by way of pneumatic planters, supposedly resulted in fugitive clothianidin dust which caused the disaster. Within two weeks Germany banned clothianidin on corn and several other crops, but the damage was done.

Clothianidin is just one of a number of pesticides in the family of neonicotinoids. Neonicotinoids are systemic pesticides, which means that they become incorporated into the system of the plant when the seed germinates. In the United States clothianidin was given a conditional registration by the EPA in 2003. Originally approved for use as a seed coating on corn and canola, it is now being approved for a growing list of other crops as well.

It appears that two years later we have now had a repeat of this "rare event," this time here in the United States. This bee kill occured in Indiana in April (2010), reported by two entomologists at Purdue University in an article written for the Indiana Beekeepers Association newsletter and circulated widely. Titled "Pesticide Kill at the Purdue Bee Lab?," it reports a significant bee kill across Indiana, again believed to have come from fugitive dust from pneumatic corn planters.

According to these two entomologists, "Every corn seed that goes into the ground in Indiana these days has a coating of clothianidin on it. It has been a dry spring. We have had very warm, windy weather this week. As I watched my neighbor planting, I could see huge clouds of dust being stirred up." As researchers at a major university, the authors had the resources to do some immediate analysis that would have been beyond the reach of most beekeepers, and they found high levels of clothianidin in the dead bees and the incoming pollen.

Along with other beekeepers, I have been concerned about clothianidin for some time, in part because it is not the first neonicotinoid to cause problems. Imidacloprid, the first, was registered in the U.S. in 1994 and was soon implicated in widespread bee kills. Several commercial beekeepers in North Dakota filed suit because of damage from imidacloprid used on sunflowers, and similar damage in France from use on sunflowers led to a ban there in 1999. However it is still used without change in the U.S. France declined to even register clothianidin.

. . .

Further concerns are emerging as a consequence of the Indiana bee kill. High levels of atrazine were found in the dead bees and pollen along with clothianidin. This suggests that dust alone may be a vector, with the atrazine contamination coming from airborne soil. We now find evidence, again from the EPA’s own documents, that clothianidin can be persistent in the soil, remaining for years in some cases, and that it may accumulate from successive uses of treated seed, a common practice in the corn belt. Has the soil itself become a source of toxicity as a consequence of clothianidin use? Only further tests will give us answers to those questions.

Theobald concludes,

The bees are telling us something. We need to start listening before it’s too late.

To which I add, chronic illness is rising dramatically. The cancers, autism, diabetes, and other chronic conditions are telling us something. How long before we connect the water we drink, the air we breathe, and the food we eat to our health and the health of our children?

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