Should You Go On An Elimination Diet To Ease Chronic Pain?
This past summer I was faced with the worst candida of my entire life. It started with one round of medication that my doctor so casually prescribed me. One week later I ended up in the ER for severe dehydration and crazy gut issues. My gut issues, then caused a thrombosed hemorrhoid which landed me in surgery not even one month later.
Unbeknownst to me, while I was under anesthesia, my doctor gave me another round of antibiotics and when I got out of surgery, I kid you not, I experienced the worst yeast infection ever. It was so painful, I would cry at night. I took one round of Diflucan which has always worked for me and nothing got better. Then I took a second round and still no relief.. Then I was prescribed a cream and it worked (sorta) but I could still feel that there was yeast there. Finally, I felt like my doctors didn’t even know what to do so I looked in to alternative healing and that’s when I found my naturopathic doctor Hillary. In our initial consult, I told her that I wasn’t going to do any elimination diets because I had a history of an Eating Disorder and I didn’t feel that would be the right path to healing for me (yes, you can advocate for yourself with any doctor). She was super compassionate and respectful and she did (very gently) mention that there was this one food (that which I will not say) and suggested it may be helpful if I took a small break from it, like 1-2 weeks, because it feeds off of yeast.
And so, thus, brought me in to the world of elimination diets which I hadn’t messed with in almost a decade. I wanted to try anything because the yeast was out of this world painful. By the way, I am still dealing with it almost 6 months later. But this journey has really made me have compassion for anyone and everyone that struggles with chronic pain and chronic health issues. If it’s bad enough you will try anything, and my heart feels for you.
As a side note, in the last 4ish years or so, I’ve seen diet culture take on a different ‘look.’ It no longer is about The Atkins Diet or Paleo. These days diets can look like people eliminating gluten, diary, or sugar out of their diet under the guise of health and so we have to be really careful to separate the two.
Orthorexia can happen in the disordered eating or Eating Disorder department when we start to eliminate foods.
Orthorexia is a term that was established in 1998 and refers to someone having an unhealthy obsession with healthy food. A woman or girl who struggles with Orthorexia might focus on clean eating, fad diets, ingredient lists, and food planning to the point where her health starts to suffer. This is what I mean when I say we have to be really careful about this ‘healthy eating’ movement that underneath, is actually a REAL Eating Disorder.
Read below to see what occurred when I eliminated X out of my diet.
I thought about this food more than I have in the last decade since I healed from my ED. This food (that I was trying to avoid because of yeast) had become so non problematic to me that over the years I didn’t even think twice about eating it. If I craved it, then I just had it in a normal amount and moved on with my life. After eliminating it, in just a few short days my cravings with this food WERE non-stop.
I felt that after two weeks of elimination, it didn’t really make that much of a difference. I still had yeast. I know some people would say you really have to do the elimination for longer but in all honesty I don’t think I could have, because I don’t want to obsess about food that I ‘shouldn’t’ be eating and then I eat it and then I feel like a failure. NTY. I’ve been down that road before and it didn’t end well.
Here is what you should consider before doing any elimination diet to help manage chronic pain.
Do you have a history of an Eating Disorder or disordered eating? Elimination diets may not be a good method of healing for you. Just like some medications don’t work well with people’s bodies, the same thing can be said that some diets don’t work well with people’s mental health.
Ask your practitioner (if you’re working with one) how long this elimination diet is going to last? Timelines are important because it’s nearly impossible to eliminate food groups forever and often leaves people feeling more obsessed with food than when they first started the diet. Ask them what integration looks like (meaning coming off of the diet).
Consider adding in foods instead of taking them away!! There are soooo many anti-inflammatory foods that you could bring in to your diet that can support your healing.
Work on having a neutral relationship with food first, and then once you really feel safe and good and free near all foods you can play around with what foods might feel better for your body than others.
As always, I hope this helps!
Love,
Soshy