[asdf1234tx]

I'm no expert, but here's the sequence (in reverse order) as I see it (for now): bad-things-happening <<< crazed-immune-system <<< crazed-gut-bacteria <<< 1st-world-bad-living

Anything that treats "bad things happening", or "crazed immune system", or "crazed gut bacteria", will be a bandaid.

I think our first world lifestyles create a perfect storm of bad living that undermines the foundations of a healthy human being from a multitude of vectors. Not enough sunlight, not enough unprocessed fresh foods, not enough exercise, not enough fresh air, long term consumption and exposure to compounds and chemicals that work against your bodies natural processes.

A friend of mine had to go every other month to sit in a chair for 4 hours at a clinic to receive an IV drip that included medication to squash his immune system. Why? Because his immune system was attacking every joint in his body. He could not move without extreme pain without the treatment. Eventually he stopped eating the cheapest and most processed of garbage food, started exercising every day, gave up alcohol and diet sodas, and lost 75lbs. He found that he no longer needed the medication after about a year of turning his life around...

[zilian]

I know it's very tempting to blame everything to our "1st world bad living", but please do not spread misinformation like this about autoimmune diseases. I am 27, always ate healthy and was very active, yet I started developing ankylosing spondylytis 3 years ago, a very painful AI disease which attacks your articulations.

And you know what ? We know that many Pharaohs of ancient Egypt had it too, including Ramses II : https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12548434

So long for the 1st-world, industrialized society as the root of all evils...

Moreover, sounds like your friend was on biologics. Sure, losing 75pds will help lowering the inflammation and pressure on articulations anyway. But there's NO evidence it's not just a pause in flares, sorry for your friend. I met many people with AI diseases and to date have met no one who can prove he "healed" with a change in diet. Happy to discuss about it in PM if some read that comment !

[rosegold]

A recent study indicates clinical evidence for remission through diet in IBD:

"Clinical remission was achieved by week 6 by 11/15 (73%) of study participants, and all 11 maintained clinical remission during the maintenance phase of the study."

Konijeti, Gauree Gupta et al. “Efficacy of the Autoimmune Protocol Diet for Inflammatory Bowel Disease.” Inflammatory bowel diseases 23.11 (2017): 2054–2060. PMC. Web. 9 Apr. 2018.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5647120/

[55555]

That's really great, but I did that protocol strictly for 3 years straight and it never worked for me. (I continued it because it had a good effect on my sinuses, but not my lymphocytic colitis).

[DubiousPusher]

The years before I developed Ankylosis Spondylitis I slept 8-10 hours a night, walked everywhere (I can't drive), ate a varied diet of food I prepared myself from scratch every day, ran an average of 24 miles a week, spent 3 hours a week in weight training, had a single sexual partner, didn't smoke, barely drank, took no prescription medications, used virtually no over the counter medicine, bathed daily, always wore clean clothes, and read my copy of Tao Te Ching every night.

Not sure what I did to bring this on myself. Must've been all the radiation from my smart phone.

So here we have two anecdotes, one as equally useless as the other for understanding anything about the way the universe works.

[wiredone]

Your comment is incredibly ignorant, and positions opinion as fact.

It sounds like this friend of yours was taking a biologic like Remicade. People take these medications (Humira, Remicade Embrel etc) because they have immune system issues - to make a statement that these things are all caused by "bad living" makes it clear how uninformed you are on the topic.

Immune system conditions are also renowned for coming in waves - people can go into remission for years without a strong link to causation, making changes in diet and lifestyle often appear as if "it was definitely eating hamburgers that gave me eczema/arthritis/crohns disease.

The truth is, the medical community doesn't know the cause of these diseases yet, other than potentially linking these diseases to a reduction in "things for your immune system to do" due to our overly clean and sterile living conditions compared to past centuries.