5-day Fast and Elimination Diet

I did not plan before starting my 5-day fast and elimination diet. For several years I have been researching Functional Medicine, Integrative Medicine, Nutritionists and any natural holistic approach to healing. I was at the end of my rope and none of my traditional doctors could provide any answers. I was still on anti-virals, felt like I had the flu but no doctor had any idea what to do next. Maybe I had to get this far down this path before I would do what a functional medicine doctor required. Maybe that is why I never followed through before. I’ve known about them for years. It wasn’t an immediate decision, I left their office twice before they called me back, encouraged me, and even cut their price. I kept looking at the calendar. It just didn’t make sense to start something like this in November, right before the holidays. But on November 11^th I signed on the dotted line and that meant the next step was a 5 day fast.

I cried the weekend before starting the fast. It was daunting to think about not eating for 5 days. I felt crazy. I wasn’t sure how I was going to carry on with my life. I had 2 events the very first week that were centered around eating and drinking. The timing was terrible. I considered waiting until January, but I had 2 trips in January/February and wanted to be done by the time those trips came around. There was no way to get the 5-day fast and elimination diet done between Thanksgiving and Christmas. I finally just resigned myself to my situation and started. I really couldn’t have done any of it at a worse time.

The fast was easier than I thought it would be. Each day I was supposed to drink 1.5 gallons of lemon water sweetened with either honey or maple syrup. I could do without the sweetener, but it was meant to keep my energy steady, and it worked. I couldn’t drink the full 1.5 gallons but managed about a gallon each day. The first day I had a raging headache from no caffeine. I had to take a stool sample, and then 2 days later another stool sample. Getting the first stool sample was easy, but I was pretty sure I wouldn’t have anything for the 2^nd one. Because I was only about 10-15 pounds overweight, I was also allowed 1 cup of vegetables (preferably ones I don’t normally eat) two times per day. An artichoke in the evenings felt more like a meal because it would stretch on for such a long time!  I forgot the noon saliva sample on day 3 and it almost derailed me mentally. I had to start the saliva samples over on day 4 along with the 2^nd stool sample. We had concert and dinner plans on day 4 and I sort of thought he might let me stop the fast early, but he didn’t, he told me I could eat a protein and veggie meal that night but then I was to restart the fast the next morning. So, I got 1 meal in the middle of my fast!

21-day Elimination Diet

After the 5-day fast, the elimination diet began. The elimination part was focused on foods that might trigger an immune response: gluten, dairy, grains, tomatoes, corn, peanuts, alcohol, caffeine, soy, beef, pork, cold cuts, bacon, hot dogs, sausage, and shellfish. He had a very specific diet planned out, but since I was not trying to lose weight, he allowed me some flexibility. It prescribed poultry or fish and wild berries for breakfast, but I quickly discovered that I liked the steel cut oats option that he said I was allowed. It was part of the all-veggie week, but he said I could have it from the beginning. At first, I made it with almond milk because that is what he suggested, but I enjoyed it with water, berries, and a scoop of the vanilla protein powder. The taste was great, and I felt great in the morning after eating it. I looked forward to it! There was a mid-morning snack of protein shake and nuts, lunch was generally veggies and protein, an afternoon snack of protein shake and fruit, an evening meal of veggies and protein, and a late-night snack of celery and almond butter. At first, I ate all the foods as instructed. But then I realized I shouldn’t if I wasn’t hungry. I rarely ate the evening snack. I also didn’t need the morning snack because the steel cut oats were very filling. In general, I tried to make one meal a salad each day and the other meal a protein with lots of veggies. I like vegetables and enjoy cooking them, so this was easy for me.  The third week of the diet was vegetables only and I noticed that my resting heart rate went down that week too (more on a vegetarian diet below). This diet eliminated all dairy (including butter), beef, sugar and certain inflammatory meats like bacon.

Because of the initial challenge to eat vegetables I do not normally eat, I rediscovered cooked cabbage, turnips, rutabaga, and artichokes. Some recipes I had made before like the Garlic Ginger Carrots and the Broccoli Salad. I preferred my artichokes with nothing. Radish green salad with green apple, smoked salmon, and homemade honey mustard dressing was one of my favorite meals.  I started a vegetable garden with a cover crop of daikon radish and ate lots of radish green seedlings as I thinned them. It has been wonderful because they are fresh and have a slightly spicy flavor like arugula. In general, I ate simple proteins like chicken, turkey or fish with any type of vegetable and fruit.

Reintroduction Phase

After the 21-day diet, foods are added back one at a time for 3 days each. The belief is that after such an extreme elimination, the body will have an obvious reaction. I didn’t believe it, but my psoriasis returned after eating quinoa for 3 days in a row. The next step was to repeat the fast, reintroduce it again and check my response. I had a similar response, so for the foreseeable future, I will also eliminate quinoa.

I successfully reintegrated the following foods into my diet: lamb, goat, venison, coconut milk, eggs, tomatoes, peppers, pork, rice, herbal teas, garbanzo beans, sushi rice, black beans, lintels, and potatoes.

Heart Rate and Blood Pressure Improvements

Fitbit showed my resting heart rate dropping rapidly. And because I had so many doctor appointments, I realized my blood pressure dropped dramatically almost immediately. On the first day of the fast, she checked my blood pressure twice because the top number was around 100 and mine is usually around 120.  I would have thought it was a one-off experience except it happened with 2 other doctors during that first week. Once I started eating regular food, my blood pressure crept back up to my normal range and my resting heart rate has crept back up as well, but it is still significantly lower than before I changed my diet. Right before I started this diet, I was hovering around 73 or 74 bpm. During the fast, I was at 67 bpm for 3 days straight. It maintained 67-70 bpm until I had a psoriasis flare over Christmas when it got back up to 73. My doctor suggested I do a 3-day fast to address the psoriasis flare. During that fast, it got down to 62-63 bpm for almost a week! It gradually crept back up to the 73-bpm range and as high as 78 bpm when I went on two trips in February where I was drinking, staying up late and eating in restaurants the whole time. What impressed me is that when I got back from my trips, I did another 3-day fast and my heart rate dropped back down to the mid-60’s bpm and stayed there until I got a cold mid-March (possibly COVID-19) and it went back up to around 70 bpm. I was also getting less cardio exercise because of the coronavirus outbreak

Gluten Antibodies

The saliva/stool testing showed I had gluten antibodies in my body. He didn’t do a celiac test, and I’m a little frustrated by that. People do not take me seriously if I can’t say I’m celiac. He described me as “allergic” to gluten, which is worse than a gluten-sensitivity. I’m not supposed to eat off menus that say “gluten-friendly”. I do not recommend STARTING a gluten-free diet the week before Thanksgiving. I brought large quantities of roasted carrots and a broccoli salad with nuts, cranberries, and onions to share. I prepared each day’s gluten-free steel-cut oats and wild berries we left town. After finishing a fast, you do realize that you’ll be fine if you can’t eat anything. I knew I’d get those steel-cut oats each day. I would not starve to death! It’s an important mental state to get into or you feel deprived and almost desperate to find something to eat and that’s when you grab the wrong foods.

I have been gluten-free since mid-November and I think that one change is making a gradual but drastic change to my health.

Vegetables

I was surprised how much better I felt the week that I was limited to a vegetable-only diet. I guess it was vegan since I was also avoiding dairy. As a Texan, meat is a central part of every meal, so it is a huge mind shift to consider not eating meat. But for January and February, I did not eat meat about 25%-30% of the days. I feel better when I eat that way. I had to cook more meat centric meals with my college-age son home due to coronavirus isolation, but intend to shift to a vegetarian focus when possible.

I watched several documentaries on fasting, diets and health. I never grasped that Forks Over Knives style of cooking doesn’t even use fat when they sauté vegetables. I have tried a few meals this way and it is possible. I’m not sure my husband could deal with the flavor adjustment though. I’m trying to use less and less oil in my cooking as a starter and inserting a few of their recipes in my repertoire occasionally.

3-day Fast Reset

My psoriasis returned after my two trips in January and February. I re-did my fast January 1-3 and again January 21^st-23rd. The last time I ate quite a bit more than I had previously. I was down about 15 pounds from when I started this diet and was finding it harder to fast. The good news is my doctor pointed out that we can fast from anything. I realized I was fasting from meat, sugar, alcohol and large portions. I should have fasted again after my February trip but I could not bring myself to do it! Plus, I was integrating various gluten-free snacks into my diet and they were addictive! Most of them were pre-prepared from Costco (see February food diary for specific foods and links to them). Although the ingredient list is all organic and natural, I am now convinced there is something in them that allows them to remain shelf-stable and that product irritates me. I know manufacturers don’t have to list some of those types of products so I have no way of knowing what might be in the food. It makes me sad, but I think I need to avoid prepared foods like that and just make my own.

Results

This diet not only successfully eliminated the disseminated zoster virus from my system but also pushed my psoriatic arthritis into remission. My lichen planus and psoriasis got very bad in January and February. Psoriasis can get worse in the winter because we get less vitamin D from the sun, so I re-started my vitamin D supplement. If I’m honest with myself, I realize that I have allowed small amounts of dairy and sugar into my diet even though I have not officially re-introduced dairy. I also had coffee a few times while sleepy and driving.  If the psoriasis doesn’t calm down, I will need to do another fast. My goal is to get the psoriasis and lichen planus to clear and stay healed for several months, then I will go back to adding in some of the most problematic foods: dairy, corn, peanuts, chocolate, beef, bacon, and alcohol.

2021 February Update

I have been eating all of the “problematic” foods for almost a year. My body is still able to keep the Disseminated Zoster virus in check. My psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis have been getting steadily better and are significantly better than they were in February 2020. This is a long slow process that requires constant monitoring of diet and exercise. I consumed too much sugar and alcohol over the last year and realize I need to address my addictions. A did a 3-day fast in November 2020 and another in February 2021 and give more details about my update in that post.

Timeline

August 2019 Stopped Alcohol. I mention this because it was a huge behavior/habit adjustment that has improved my life.

November 11^th-15^th 5-day fast eating only 1 cup of vegetables 2 times per day.

November 16^th-29^th Protein and vegetable diet (details in my Food, Exercise and Symptom Diary). I took vitamin supplements, digestive enzymes, and probiotics that my doctor prescribed. Some of them I cannot find anywhere else on the internet and for those, I included photos of the labels in My Medication Diary.

November 30^th-December 5^th Vegan diet.

Throughout this diet, I was experiencing profound back pain in new places. I was motivated to continue because the Disseminated Zoster rash was not showing up even though I was off the anti-viral. I became convinced that this pain was the virus leaving the joints and tissue that it had inhabited for 9 months.

December 5^th -11^th Protein and vegetable diet. My 21-day diet lasted 26 days mostly because Thanksgiving fell during my week that was supposed to be all vegetables and he kindly allowed me to swap those two weeks and eat turkey with everyone else on Thanksgiving. But it wasn’t exactly a clean break and so I waited to start reintroduction until December 12^th.

December 12^th Physical Therapy started twice a week. It hurt incredibly at first but one of the exercises that they had me do at home immediately released myofascia in my upper back. I could feel the prickly tingling release each time I did the exercise. Gradually, the exercises made me stronger and the back pain lessened.

I also started my food reintroduction at this point in the following order.

• December 12^th -14^th Eggs
• December 15^th-17^th Tomatoes
• December 18^th-19^th Red Bell Peppers
• December 20^th-21^st Green Bell Peppers
• December 21^st-22^nd Ancho, Pasilla, Guajillo, Jalapeno in chili
• December 15^th, 22^nd, 24^th, Pork Ribs
• December 23^rd-29^th Quinoa—which is when the inverse psoriasis returned.
• December 30^th-31^st Rice, herbal teas
• January 1^st-3^rd 3-day fast
• January 4^th-6^th Vegan diet but added quinoa to test psoriasis response. Quinoa is also causing a bloated feeling so not going to make it part of my diet.
• January 6^th-8^th Garbanzo Beans
• January 8^th-9^th Sushi Rice
• January 9^th-11^th Black Beans
• January 10^th-12^th Lintels
• January 13^th-15^th Potatoes, but he said they must be organic
• January 17^th-19^th in New Orleans. Added dairy and alcohol.
• January 21^st-22^nd Vegan diet
• January 23^rd-25^th 3-day fast. Lichen Planus cleared and Inverse Psoriasis better but not cleared.
• January 26^th-30^th Had a little meat and nibbles of cheese and chocolates. Lichen Planus returned.
• January 31^st-Feb 5^th Aspen trip. Used Vitamin D3 ointment on psoriasis and it went away. Ate fairly well on this trip but did add alcohol and incidental dairy.
• February 6^th-9^th had kefir, coffee, chocolate. Stopped Vitamin D ointment on February 6^th per doctor’s orders. Psoriasis raged. Worst I have ever had.
• February 10^th-March I am struggling to avoid sweets and snacks. Some days I ate vegan, some were only protein and a vegetable. But I added some Costco snacks that I think were triggers. I also had occasional alcohol although I don’t think it is my biggest trigger now.
• Some other foods that are now in my diet that I didn’t introduce over 3 days.
  • Ghee: I purchased a large container of it at Costco and I suspect there may be a slight problem here, I think it will be fine if I make my own, but I think this version has a stabilizer in it because it doesn’t have to be refrigerated and has a very long shelf life.
  • Gluten-Free Soy (Tamari) he prefers I only eat organic soy.
  • Chia
  • Flax
  • Hemp seeds
  • Eggplant
  • Kefir-I am holding off on this for now. I tried it a few times and I am inconclusive about whether it causes a reaction. I need to be more stable for a longer period before I try it again.