Paleolithic Diet - Anybody Tried?

[motif]

I am trying this now and it seems to work fine, there is something right about it...humans are hunter and gatherers not grains and dairy eaters.

The Paleolithic diet is a dietary regime which some people believe to be effective in treating multiple sclerosis. The diet was first popularised by film writer Roger MacDougall. MacDougall was diagnosed with MS in 1953. His condition progressed steadily until he changed his diet to one which is essentially the same as what is now called the Paleolithic diet.

At the nadir of his disability, MacDougall was "was unable to use my legs, eyes, and fingers ... even my voice was affected, and I was quite unable to stand erect, even for a few seconds". By 1975, after several years on the diet, a neurologist pronounced his reflexes, muscle control, gait, and movements to be normal and could only detect a slight nystagmus in one eye.

The Diet

The broad basis of MacDougall's diet is:

* No foods that contains gluten. This means avoiding all cereals - wheat, barley, rye and oats - and foodstuffs containing them such as:

o breakfast cereals

o pasta

o bread

o beer, whisky and many other alcoholic beverages

o cakes, biscuits and other foods containing flour

* No foods that contain dairy produce:

o liquid milk and cream

o butter

o cheese

* Low sugars, in particular, no refined sugar. MacDougall recommends using honey and fruit sugars to sweeten food.

* Low animal fats. High unsaturated fats. This means avoiding beef, pork, lamb, goose and duck. Wild and free-range meats are preferred to meats that come from modern agriculture.

* No foods to which you are allergic.

* Vitamin and mineral supplements to counter any deficiencies. MacDougall put together this list for his own use:

o Vitamin Bl: 25 mg

o Vitamin B2: 15 mg

o Vitamin B6: 75 mg

o Vitamin B12: 250 mcg

o Vitamin C: 300 mg

o Vitamin E: 200 iu

o Chlorine Bitartrate: 120 mg

o Calcium Gluconate: 900 mg

o Calcium-D-Pantothente: 150 mg

o Folic Acid: 200 mcg

o Lecithin from flax: 300 mg

o Magnesium Carbonate: 900 mg

o Nicotinamide: 500 mg

o Inositol: 120 mg

Nowadays, many people with MS would add a form of Vitamin D, called 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3, to this list.

MacDougall emphasises that everyone is different and that it's not necessarily the case that what works for one person will work for everyone. He advocates finding out what works for you.

He also states that you have to follow the diet for a while before results can be seen.

Clearly, MacDougall's diet is radically different to a typical Western diet. It's important to have a balanced diet and you must take care to ensure that you're getting all the basic foodstuffs that you need. Many people have developed recipes that adhere to MacDougall's diet. Perhaps the best place to start if you're looking for culinary ideas is Ashton Embry's MS-Direct web site. Embry is the father of a person with MS and has spent a great deal of time researching dietary strategies to fight this disease.

The Theory behind the diet

MacDougall's diet has become known as the "Paleolithic Diet", and is based around a theoretical framework which derives from evolutionary biology.

In essence, the theory goes as follows:

* Humans evolved in the forests and savannahs of the late Pliocene and Pleistocene ages - two and a half million years ago until 11,000 years ago. Because this period coincides with the appearance of stone tools, it is called the Paleolithic which derives from the greek "palaios" meaning old and "lithos" meaning stone - hence the old stone age. As far as any one can tell, the Paleolithic corresponds with the birth of our genus, homo.

* During this period, early humans lived a hunter-gatherer lifestyle and ate meat which they hunted or scavenged, fish which they caught and fruit, nuts, berries and other vegetable matter which they harvested from naturally growing resources. They would have supplemented this diet with foodstuffs from a wide variety of other sources such as honey, grubs and insects. Essentially, their diet was pretty similar to that of modern day hunter-gatherers and did not include the products of agriculture such as cereal crops, dairy produce, high fat meat and refined sugar.

* At the end of the last glaciation, around 11,000 years ago, fully modern humans began to cultivate naturally occurring high-yield grass mutations and to domesticate goats, sheep and cows. This agricultural revolution caught on and spread around the old world very rapidly and today it provides the dietary basis for the vast majority of the world's population.

* The argument goes that our bodies have evolved over two and a half million years to deal with a hunter-gatherer diet. Conversely, they have not evolved to deal with the products of modern agriculture which has only been around for the last 11,000 years or so - a mere flash in the pan in relation to this vast time span. In particular, our bodies have not evolved to digest cereals (especially wheat), dairy produce and high-fat meat.

* Advocates of the Paleolithic diet maintain that, because our bodies are not evolved for it, a modern diet is inappropriate for our bodies and the root of a whole gamut of diseases. These diseases include not only the more obvious ones like celiac disease (gluten intolerance - gluten is a constituent of wheat), lactose intolerance (lactose is a constituent of milk) and diabetes but also multiple sclerosis and other autoimmune conditions.

Whether or not one ascribes any validity to the evolutionary tenets of the argument, it is still possible to maintain that diet may very well play a role in the cause or treatment of multiple sclerosis. It is known that dietary elements are involved in other autoimmune diseases (for example, type 1 diabetes and celiac disease), so it is not absurd to postulate that the same may be true of MS. There is some solid evidence that certain proteins found in wheat and dairy produce could play a part in the etiology and/or pathogenesis of multiple sclerosis.

Gluten

Neuropathic Coeliac Disease (celiac disease) is a manifestation of gluten intolerance that can present with central nervous system white matter abnormalities not altogether dissimilar to the lesions caused by multiple sclerosis [Kieslich et al, 2001]. In some individuals, these abnormalities are observed without the digestive problems that are typical of the disease.

Recent research has shown genetic similarities between people with celiac disease and some other autoimmune diseases including multiple sclerosis [Ref]. It is also possible that a proportion of people with multiple sclerosis represent a misdiagnosed group of people with celiac disease.

Whey Proteins

There is some good evidence that the incidence of multiple sclerosis is higher in areas of high cow's milk consumption [Malosse and Perron, 1993], [Malosse et al, 1994], [sepcic et al, 1993], [butcher, 1986] and [butcher, 1992].

More recently, detailed immunological studies have been carried out by Michael Dosch's team in Ontario, Canada. They have looked at potential triggers for multiple sclerosis and type-1 diabetes focusing on dairy proteins especially those in whey [Dosch et al, 2001] and [Dosch et al, 2001]. One particular milk protein, butyrophilin, has been presented as a potential antigen which may be similar enough to Myelin Oligodendrocyte Glycoprotein (MOG) to spur the immune system to attack myelin in a process known as molecular or epitopic mimicy. Independent studies by a group in Germany have reached similar conclusions [stefferl, Schubart et al, 2001].

Interestingly, the German group have used heavy doses of butyrophilin on mice with an experimental model for multiple sclerosis called EAE. They have found that this strategy, called immune tolerance, reduces the effects of the disease.

Studies

Ashton Embry's Direct MS organisation is funding a very small study of the Paleolithic diet to begin next year (2002). As I understand it, limited funds will restrict the study population to 12 people with relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis. It will be hard to draw many firm conclusions from a study of this size. However it is to be hoped that they will achieve positive results and spur larger, richer organisations to fund larger research projects.

One of the difficulties in analysing the Paleolithic diet is that it is a very broad based diet involving several foodstuffs. Even if Embry's group do find the diet therapeutic, it will be hard to know which elements of the diet were beneficial and which were superfluous. Even if the study does not achieve positive results, that does not mean that diet has no bearing on the disease.

What is urgently required are some well-designed, large population studies on the dietary intake of individual proteins such as butyrophilin. For some reason and in the face of pressures from many people with MS and a few researchers, diet has largely been ignored by those who fund research into the disease. This is perhaps understandable in the case of pharmaceutical companies but it rather a perverse line for the NMSS to take given that they claim to be representing the interests of people with MS.

As things stand, no one knows the cause of MS except that it involves the interaction between a person's genes and one or more unknown environmental factors. It is as reasonable a hypothesis as any that one or more dietary elements might be among those factors.

[vbecton]

Howdy. Yep, I losely follow the Paleo diet allowing myself to cheat on processed foods about 2-3 times per week (gluten-free sliced bread, etc...). This diet actually gave me my lightbulb moment that gluten was causing my problems.

Plus, it was a good segway into gluten free eating because there is no gluten allowed on the diet (by default). It sure makes eating easier than trying to replace all my carbs with a gluten-free version. I heart this diet!

[chasbari]

Initially tried the "almost like the typical western diet, let's replace all our foods with gluten free equivalent" diet and really only got less worse. Within 48 hours of going paleo all of my complications from celiac seemed to start getting miraculously better. Makes compliance a no-brainer and I also follow the anti-inflamatory guidelines as to nightshades because of the ravages of rheumatoid arthritis. My RA has responded incredibly to paleo. I do eat more eggs than Cordain recommends but it is my way of getting plenty of cheap protein. Oddly enough, my cholesterol numbers have never looked better, my acid reflux went away and all else has gotten much, much better. The only real problem I have is trying to get my family to stop thinking I must belong to some sort of food cult as they think I just need to return to the above mentioned nearly western gluten-free diet. Not going to happen anytime soon.

[knittingmonkey]

I am trying this now and it seems to work fine, there is something right about it...humans are hunter and gatherers not grains and dairy eaters.

I'm heading this way, easing into it. I'm sure it's good for us celiacs to examine why we want to eat a different version of the foods that got us into so much trouble to begin with. I look at gluten-free labels in the market and don't want to eat any of it. I still eat a little dairy, but it's raw dairy primarily, a serving of potatoes once a week, rice? seldom...

[motif]

it just seems to me that no gluten/no dairy diet is NORMAL, natural diet for humans, not just we are freaks and do not tolerate some food.

Those without visible celiac problems may have some hidden complication because of eating such food, so we're maybe lucky our symptoms are obvious.

[YoloGx]

it just seems to me that no gluten/no dairy diet is NORMAL, natural diet for humans, not just we are freaks and do not tolerate some food.

Those without visible celiac problems may have some hidden complication because of eating such food, so we're maybe lucky our symptoms are obvious.

I have been eating semi paleo for some time. It is a good anti candida as well as anti gluten diet and it gives me so much more energy! Eating grains overall does not agree with me. Maybe I can do it twice a week if I am lucky. Just recently I have gone off casein as well with good effect. I can now eat a little low glycemic fruit each day whereas before I could not without courting the "itchy b%$@#ies." Am using anti fungal herbs too to good effect. I agree, from what I have read eating paleo would help most people with a variety of degenerative diseases plus make the general populace much healthier and clear headed overall. But will they? Food addictions abound. This really is the rub! So many people eating empty foods to fill a hole that can never be filled... reinforced by the big agri business and media.

I continue to be amazed at Mac Dougal's story... I almost got Parkinson's but didn't, probably due in part at least to following this diet in a semi way for years despite getting CC'd all the time but not knowing it...Only more recently (in comparison -- i.e., the last two and a half years) am much more strict about it, with good effect! At first I treid eating alternative grains a lot but it just did not agree with me very well at all. I now feel like I have a whole new lease on life--and ironically am just now writing up an outline for my hypnotherapy class which includes suggesting the paleo diet for better health--once they get a bit of hypnotherapy to help them effect the needed changes...