Lupus Diet
Planning a Successful Lupus Diet
A lupus diet that can help you keep the disease as dormant as possible is within your reach. The more that is learned about lupus, the more foods you can rule in – or out – of a healthy diet.
If you have lupus, you are probably aggravated by amino acids, due to a block in your metabolism. Scientific findings in human and animal studies confirm the positive effects of removing amino acids from your diet.
Other studies have found that high-fat diets may also aid in the onset of lupus, because they weaken your immune responses. A low-fat diet should be beneficial.
A lupus diet can be vegan, because both dairy and beef products tend to escalate the effects of the disease. One woman with skin lesions typical of SLE patients went on a vegan diet, and her physician was surprised to find that, after just one week, almost all of her facial lesions were gone. At the end of two weeks on this diet, her face was clear. The physician's office practice tried the vegan diet on some more of their patients, and all showed marked lessening of lesions.
In patients with SLE lupus, diet is a factor where omega oils are concerned, as well. When diets were supplemented with omega-3 acids, it was beneficial to the patient. This was also confirmed in animal studies.
Sometimes, SLE patients have myalgia, or muscle pain. This may be caused by a deficiency in magnesium. If this is the case, supplemental magnesium should be of help. In discoid lupus, you may supplement your diet with beta-carotene to help reduce sensitivity to the sun.
There were also some other supplements that were beneficial in dietary trials. They included selenium, vitamin E, pantothenic acid, vitamin B12 and vitamin B3. SLE patients should be sure not to supplement with tryptophan, because it is not properly metabolized.
SLE patients run a higher than normal risk of food sensitivity, and if you can eliminate all of the foods that cause a reaction for you, this may even bring on remission. As an example, one infant boy had lupus symptoms, and it was discovered that he had antibodies to milk. When they eliminated milk from his diet, his symptoms were resolved. They came back when he drank milk again.
If you wish to follow a lupus diet, be sure it is supervised by practitioners or physicians who have experience with lupus cases or other training that will help them recognize illness that can be serious. They also will need to be able to integrate interventions of a nutritional type into your treatment plan in a safe manner.
The safe and supervised adherence to a diet such as the one described here can help you ease into remission from lupus, and make your active time periods less difficult to bear.