Kickas.org Forums Treatments, Drugs and Alternatives NSD and diet-related; Juice Fast

Hi Everyone,

I am new to kickas, but not new to living with AS. I LOVE this site by the way!!

So I have been doing the NSD for 5 months, and I saw awesome results immediately. But as the weeks went by, my pains and colitis started creeping back in. I soon found myself reaching for pain pills or Alieve gel caps daily.

I fear that I may have to give up fruits, honey & raw chocolate. This would be dreadful, as I have started a raw foods snack & dessert company making awesome raw goodies using raw fruits, nuts, seeds, coconut & honey. I can live without starch forever, but dread having to give up fruits & sweets.

Here is my current No Starch Diet:
Breakfast: Green Smoothies with fruits & veggies, homemade hazelnut milk & raw cacao & dates, or chia/coconut pudding
Lunch: Salads with greens, veggies, starch free nuts, homemade dressings (like hempseed ranch, sesame tahini, or olive oil)
Dinner: grilled veggies, homemade soups, seafoods sometimes, or just a fruit/veggie smoothie

Anyway, has anyone tried a juice fast and had success? Today I started fasting on green fruit/veggie juices (most veggie/green based) and hope this will allow my colitis to calm the heck down, and I will continue for up to 30 days if it helps. So far I am juicing carrots, apples, cabbage, wheatgrass, rainbow chard, parsley, lemons, spinach, dandelion greens.

I would appreciate any comments on giving up natural sweets or juice fasting!

Thanks so much!!
Andrea Wyckoff
http://bettyrawker.com/

What kinds of fruit do you eat? Modern apples are notorious for being starchy in practice even though in theory they should just have sugar. Are you using iodine testing to check whether your fruit might be starchy?

I would suggest a water fast for a day or two, since there is no way to make bad assumptions and eat something wrong. Then try sticking with "safe" fruit for a while, varieties that almost never have starch. Green grapes are good for instance, and I've heard fresh pineapple is also.

Also consider switching from the grilled vegetables to raw ones, if your colitis does not object, since many vegetables have some starch when cooked (or rather, the starch locked up inside cellulose becomes more accessible; I read about that in Carol Sinclair's book)

Finally, seeds tend to be a problem for most of us. In general they have more starch than most nuts (especially if you don't count the starchy pseudo-nuts like cashews and peanuts).

Thanks for the input! I will glady trade grilled veggies for raw ones, it may help.

I do test EVERYTHING with iodine.

The only seeds I eat are ground up hemp seeds or sesame seeds, which I make into salad dressing or add to smoothies, awesome protein, omega 3's & 6's, and other minerals.

Fruits I eat include: frozen blueberries, strawberries, peaches, grapefruit, pineapple, ripe pears.

I also like to make homemade nutmilk with hazelnuts, and eat a fair amount of walnuts that have been soaked for 8 hours first. I was adding in some soaked/sprouted almonds which didn't show any starch when tested, but I have read almonds are a problem for some people?

The reason I chose a juice fast as I was totally inspired by the documentary, Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead. http://www.fatsickandnearlydead.com/about.html I am hoping that my body may experience the same sort of reboot these folks did!

Thanks again!!
Andrea

Good luck on your juice fast. If it doesn't do all that you hope, try a short water fast later on, which is pretty much guaranteed to make you feel better as long as your body can handle a short fast (e.g. no major blood sugar issues).

Also consider taking a food sensitivity blood test, as there could easily be one or more things in your current diet to which you are intolerant, and can thus upset your digestion if you have a bit too much. That happened to me when I first started trying to transition from low-starch towards no-starch -- too many eggs made me feel pretty bad. When I took a food-intolerance blood test, egg whites showed up as a minor problem -- I don't notice the effects if I keep them down to a small amount per day (e.g. my favorite baker uses an egg white per batch of almond cookies, and eating a couple of those cookies doesn't seem to be a problem).

Food intolerance is one reason that almonds can be a problem, and keep in mind that other nuts and seeds are also common problems for those of us with poor gut function. If you can't get a food test that specifically checks all your nuts/seeds (e.g. hazelnuts and hemp are a little less common), it would be a good idea to try an elimination diet experiment to decide whether they affect you or not. The protocol is to eat a very "safe" diet (e.g. eat things that never have starch or lactose and which didn't show up as allergy-provoking on your blood test; examples for me include homemade chicken/turkey soup, green salads with oil/vinegar, homemade lactose-free yogurt) for one week as a baseline, then the next week you eat the same foods + the test food. If you start feeling worse after introducing the test food, then it is probably not good for you -- although outside events could invalidate the test and make you do it over (e.g. catching a virus can make you feel worse regardless of what you're eating).

This reminds me of advice from my GP, who is unusually well-studied in nutrition for a general doctor. Although omega 6 is essential for our bodies, only a small amount is needed. It would be almost impossible to avoid eating enough omega 6 even if you tried, being very very common in our food. The objective for those of with inflammation disorders should be to increase the amount of omega 3 compared to omega 6, since extra omega 6 is pro-inflammatory and extra omega 3 is anti-inflammatory.

A diet that is high in seeds and nuts will tend to be very deficient in omega 3, because they mostly have huge amounts of omega 6 and only a little bit of omega 3 to balance it.

Here is nutrition info on sesame seeds for instance:
http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/nut-and-seed-products/3070/2

Look at how unbalanced omega 6 is compared to omega 3 -- sesame has over 50 times as much omega 6!

Hazelnuts:
http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/nut-and-seed-products/3116/2

That one is even more lopsided, 90 times as much omega 6 as omega 3

So if you are looking for omega 3, you have to count all your seeds and nuts as an omega 3 deficit, rather than counting them as effective sources for omega 3. Seafood is the really effective source of omega 3, since it has a surplus of omega 3 over omega 6:
http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/finfish-and-shellfish-products/4259/2

My doc recommends taking plenty of fish oil to balance out all the excess omega 6 in our diets, thereby calming inflammation.

First of all, I want to say how much I love your handle. It's awesome!

As for your question, I definitely went through a juicing phase at one point. By the time I started experimenting with juicing, I had already eliminated sugars from my diet, so was focusing on things like red cabbage, celery, etc. Not very appetizing...

When I first embarked on my NSD journey, I enjoyed substantial improvement but after awhile noticed that my progress plateaued. Based on experiences of others on this forum, I experimented with removing sugar from my diet for one month. Within two weeks, I definitely found a direct link to sugar consumption and other symptoms I was battling (sinus infections, brain fog, etc.), so after one month of not adding sugar, I decided to keep avoiding sugar altogether. The first two weeks are the hardest. But to me, the biggest danger of being no starch / no sugar, is making sure that you get your calories from other sources. I cannot stress the importance of this.

The next big step I adopted after kicking sugar, was adopting a high fat diet. Whether it be spoons of coconut oil, butter (the only dairy that I eat), etc., eating much more fat helped tremendously. In hindsight, I ate too much protein and not enough fat when I initially removed sugar from my diet. It took about 3-4 months to figure things out, but ultimately I settled on a diet that I am content with. The diet is now second nature to me and is tolerable (but time intensive).

If sugar does impair the immune system, and if AS is an auto-immune disease, it stands to reason that selecting a diet to strengthen your immune system gives one the best chance. That's generally the philosophical approach I take with my diet and lifestyle now.

Kicking sugar is not easy, and as with all things, has its pros and cons. You just need to find something that is right for you and your situation. Good luck with whatever you try!

Thanks for the great feedback!!!

Well, it's day 3 on my juice fast, and I am feeling pretty awesome. My intestines are loving this! They have calmed down completely. My upper back/shoulder that has been freezing up has also calmed down. I am experiencing hip pains today that I haven't had in a while though, but for now I will just blame this on detoxing, as they almost seem like good achey pains, NOT, "holy crap, please stop all this inflamation pain!!"

I am using a juicer to make juices out of: apples, spinach, kale, cucumber, parsley, lemon, grapefruit, lime, carrot, ginger and some other fruits & veggies. The juice is awesome, and the sugars aren't bothering me at all! Yipee Yay, cuz I love fruit. I have been reading lots & lots the past few days, and once I heal my intestines up a bit from this juice fast, I plan to continue to eat mostly raw fruits & veggies with limited seeds, nuts, coconut, cacao & honey (this will be the true challenge and I love sweet raw treats - and I think these were part of what was getting me into trouble). And I will likely add some seafood if my body needs it.

Gotta luv this picture for all of us who are healing through diet:
[img:center]http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=farm...amp;FORM=IDFRIR[/img]

http://images.sodahead.com/polls/002215747/Farmacy-58393498546_xlarge.png

I will keep you posted as the juice fast continues. I believe for me it is an excellent way to stop inflammation in its tracks. We are all so different, but for my body this seems to be working

Oh, and day 1 and 2 of only drinking only green juices were rough - I could feel a big detox, low energy, but not really any hunger. Just the desire to nap, relax & heal.

Thanks!!!
♥

I just wanted to update everyone that my Juice Feast is going awesome. It is totally eliminating all the inflammation in my body! Huray!!!

Here is a link to my latest blog about it: http://bettyrawker.com/2012/03/21/day-4-of-my-30-day-juice-feast/

Today is Day 5, and I am ready to go all the way to 30! I have now decided that anytime I flare up ever again in the future the first thing I will do is reach for a glass of green juice instead of a pain pill or NSAID. Juicing is literally like Nature's "Paid Medicine". My body is totally relaxing, my aches are dissolving away, and I feel really content with everything. This is such a relief as I have been stuck in this state of inflammation where my body was so quick to flare up over the past couple months.

I will update more in a few days!

Thanks!
Andrea

Hello Andrea,

Glad to hear pain is getting better. I used to juice every day many years ago... but it is expensive.

I loved pineapple/strawberry mixer a lot.. but used carrots/apple combo or something with a bit of cabbage juice (cabbage juice has l-glutamine that is supposed to heal gut).

I find if I eat too much sugar, I run into problems with AS. It is actually candidas and I have to cut out sugar for a month.

Take care,

Tim

Hey Tim,

Thanks for the input! I too have battled Candida, I like to think that one day it will just go the heck away, but everytime I overdo sweets, it comes right back like a dear old friend, well more like a creep evil stalker.

I like to think that one day I will be able to enjoy honey again, after my gut starts healing back up! So far juicing fruits hasn't been a problem at all. I think I get into trouble with acutal white sugar (which I try to avoid as much as possible) and raw honey/nut/chocolate goodies.

I agree, juicing is totally expensive. I am getting some great produce at our Saturday Farmer's Market (organic spinach, apples, dandelion greens, kale) and I get organic carrots & more organic spinach from Costco for a great price too. But I do find this is causing me to spend a lot more at the grocery store for all the other produce. But I still think it's a lot cheaper than most of the doctor visits, tests and pills I have paid for over the years!

Two weeks ago I spent $180 for my first two colonics appointments, and boy do I just wish I spent that on fresh produce instead! The colonics seemed like a big waste to um.... expel waste, and not feel any better. Glad to say that juicing is what did it in the end

-Andrea