The Paleo Approach: Reverse Autoimmune Disease, Heal Your Body Kindle Edition

I just got the book today and went through the whole thing, not carefully reading the immunology parts at the beginning because that's a little heavy for me right now. But I appreciate that it's there because I will go through it more in depth. I don't like diet books that make things superficial; I want the explanation for things and this book gives them. Beautiful pictures as well.When it comes to the actual diet the author recommends, my thoughts were 'holy cow, is she serious', because it was so restrictive!I got this book because I realized I was getting sick to my stomach (indigestion and bloating) really bad after I was having some ketogenic-friendly peanut-butter and almond butter sandwiches with a new low carb/grain free bread I found at a local health food store. I realized my body might need more help than what I was giving it with my already strict dairy free, gluten free, ketogenic, no artificial ingredient, factory farmed free diet. Like that isn't strict, right?So, this book did provide information that gave me insight as to why nuts could be messing me up, because they disrupt the gut. Could be eggs, too. That was in the bread I found. When I read one of Dr. Gabriel Cousin's books a few years back (I have 3 of his, forgot which one mentioned it), he mentions that Macadamia nuts don't need to be soaked, so I'm guessing those are safer to eat than this author suggests and so I will keep eating those. Also, this author suggests that we don't eat stevia and doesn't present a good case for that. She also says to stop eating spices that are seeds such as mustard, cumin, ect. That is the point where I was like 'is this author serious?!'. She really is!So, if all goes well, she gives a protocol for re-introducing foods into the diet, but apparently I don't need to worry about that for quite some time...Also, there aren't recipes as an FYI.So, my bottom line is that this is a well-written, beautiful book that provides some hope, but I doubt that I could adopt such a strict diet as to cut out stevia and spices that are seeds. Other foods that are purported as being health foods by various gurus that this book's diet says to exclude are chocolate, chia seeds, xylitol and erythritol. This book tries to make it sound like the diet isn't as restrictive as we think by having list of foods that we can eat that are full of obscurities that I've never heard of before, and others I'd never be able to find. Seal, sea lions, camels and beavers are acceptable red meats. You can even eat starfish! For the ketogenic people out there like me who can't eat the mid-high carb foods on the list, don't worry, plenty of leafy greens are on the plan such as lizard's tail, melokhia, fluted pumpkin leaves, poke, orache and more! Take away the obscurities and the list isn't as vast.While waiting for this book to arrive, I stopped eating nuts except for macadamia and cut out egg, and that alone took away my bloating and indigestion. I have psoriasis which has not gone away after being strictly gluten free for over a year (and dairy free for nearly 3 years), and I think the gut has a lot to do with it, so I'm hoping the info here about legumes and nuts, lectins, and all these anti-nutrients really does the trick. The scientific community, which doesn't seem to embrace diets at all, is starting to explore the gut microbiome. This author might have written a book that might save our country millions of dollars if giving up these foods that destroy the gut truly help us heal.And in case anyone was wondering, yes I know nightshades are bad for psoriasis. Yes, the author talks about that. Yes, I've been nightshade free before and no, that didn't work. In combination with being grain, nut, legume, and dairy free, maybe it will. And going nightshade free means getting rid of half the spices I have, which is why getting rid of even more seasonings seemed outrageous. So, I can't say I'll follow this 100%, and there is room to make some really big changes without doing this 100%.**Update Feb 5 2015**It's been a bit over a month so I'd like to give an update since I've given this diet some time. Key points:*With all the things I had to give up on this diet, I found myself not needing stevia for anything, so I've ditched it even though my autoimmune disease isn't hormonal so I see no reason why I'd benefit from not eating it.*I was using Garden of Life probiotics for several years, and I thought they worked really well (compared to the million others I've tried) but I had to stop because they weren't in compliance due to nightshades, so I switched to the soil based organism probiotics recommended in this book. Not only do they work better, but they don't need to be refrigerated and you don't have to take as many pills. Huge plus!*My sinus got noticeably better in the week I started, very quick results. Not 100% better though. Not 50% better, actually. But better than before.*There was so much info in this book that I missed the details that although coconut is permitted, only in small amounts (besides coconut oil). Whoops - I was eating way too much coconut for the first month! No more coconut wraps, milk, nor cereal. Huge bummer.*I ended up not cheating with spices and macadamia nuts although I was tempted to. I've never eaten in restaurants nor other people's houses, so I know there was no unknown cross contamination affecting my results. However, I had to cheat with some cold lozenges when I got fatigue and a sore throat. It's a bigger setback to get sick than to have a few lozenges even though every single one I saw at both a standard pharmacy AND my local health food store had prohibited ingredients. Anybody looking for a business idea please make us some grain-free zinc lozenges...*My skin is unaffected so far by the diet. I wouldn't expect miracles in a month, especially since I was eating more than a few tablespoons of coconut every day. So I will give this a few more months before deciding whether it actually helps my psoriasis. I will update accordingly.*Besides that, I find that I am skipping breakfast for the sake of it being too monotonous to eat a lunch/dinner style breakfast. So that's not great. Nobody said this was a fun diet...either way, it's not meant to be forever. If it works, you get to introduce food back. If it doesn't work, you'd be a fool to keep doing it. So I'll plug away for a few more months.**Update 9/26/15**I could have kept going on the diet for quite some time longer, but I got an intuitional feeling that it was time to move on and reintroduce other foods even though my skin problems, asthma, ect didn't go away. That was back in March, maybe. So, I've been off the diet for about half the year and I'm doing relatively well. I did break out in eczema from exactly four bites of organic macaroni and cheese, but after taking gluteneaze supplements, that cleared up. So, now I'm eating almost everything this book says not to but I'm not having the original problems that resolved when I gave up dairy 3 years ago (mental fog), nor have my seasonal allergies came back bad after reintroducing gluten, nor has my mental fog and bad ups and downs from glucose swings came back after not being ketogenic. So I think there was definitely progress made from healing my gut on this diet. I continue to take Prescript Assist probiotics. My psoriasis, which didn't clear at all on the diet, has cleared maybe 90 percent by now though! My arms and shoulders have none, my face has almost none, torso has very little, and my shins were my worst area, and they are 75% better. So, I don't know whether to attribute that totally to the diet, meditation, or what, but I have no regrets with the month and a half I spent on this diet, nor do I regret stopping when I felt like it was time rather than staying on for what would feel like eternity. So I have upgraded this to 5 stars, but one of my bottom lines besides this diet being worth it if your problems are bad enough is that it's like a psychological prison for how restrictive it is. But at least it's temporary!

Review of "The Paleo Approach" which is a restricted diet which often works to combat inflammation since many people are allergic to gluten and dairy and most people are not allergic to animal flesh or most vegetables (with the exception for many of shellfish and nightshade family vegetables).This is a wonderfully written and researched and visually beautiful book. However, although frequently insightful and on balance a great book which details the common affects on the immune system of food allergies, Sarah oddly fails to emphasize how in addition to food allergies, non-organic pesticide filled meat and animal protein (and sometimes medications) can deliver inflammatory immune system destroying toxins which create the very autoimmune diseases she hopes to help heal. My contention is that over the life of a non-organically fed cow, chicken, farm raised fish, etc (and some wild ocean fish), for example (wild Salmon OK), their fat absorbs and stores the fat soluble toxins from pesticides, antibiotics, growth hormones, mercury, etc that they have been exposed to , and we ingest that poison when we eat them and that non-organic fats from grain sources may deliver similar toxins.(By the way, to state the obvious, if you prepare your own food and avoid gluten and dairy and other foods found to trigger allergies in your body, packaged foods, and restaurants in general, and go organic, you are well on your way to healing your body and staying free of, minimizing, and maybe even eliminating inflammation in your body).Although I am not a physician, I work in health care and quit often see young, mostly overweight women, in their early 20's who have had their health ruined from excessive processed, toxic, fast and fatty foods (most had eaten such heavy fatty toxic foods in excess that they had their gall bladders removed already!) with autoimmune disorders such as MS, Lupus, Arthritis, Crohn's & other bowel diseases , thyroid problems, headaches, asthma, etc. I cannot help but think it likely that excessive fats from fatty foods including non organic animal protein (beef, milk, farmed fish, etc) as well as non-organic pesticide and toxin filled plants and plant oils (which have fat soluble pesticides concentrated in their fat) are a primary delivery system for the toxins which get lodged in the body creating (along with the additional immune system agitating food allergies also of course) debilitating autoimmune diseases. So it seems that fats can help toxins (or vitamins for that matter) in animals or sprayed on vegetables get into the system and care must be taken to eat organic foods as much as possible (moderate natural unaltered organic fats in reasonable amounts consumed with organic vegetables is healthy of course).For instance, I am convinced that in most cases of MS, that that the bodies immune system, having become disturbed and miss-programmed after being unable to accomplish its task of removing toxins and quit possibly already agitated by food allergies (gluten, dairy, shellfish, nuts for some, etc), is really stripping away the myelin sheathing of the brain as it is after the fat soluble toxins lodged in it. As proof that toxins can get lodged in the myelin shealthing, the retina which has myelin sheathing like the brain, can often darken from certain medications which get lodged in same.While the Paleo Approach book is very well written and researched and while Sarah recommends grass fed beef, by not more directly focusing and warning about the serious health risks from non-organic animal protein, Sarah may be doing her readers an extreme disservice and allowing toxins to continue to trigger autoimmune disease and the drug companies (who often own the pesticide companies) go their most profitable way about destroying the health of many individuals. To her credit, Sarah does point out how the average physician in general is grievously lacking in understanding and offering diet based treatment plans which get to the heart of the cause of most autoimmune disease.Hopefully, some day the AMA and insurance companies will wake up and offer dietary counseling and allergy testing to anyone with the onset of autoimmune symptoms (such as the rosacea, headaches, heart disease, asthma, thyroid problems, eczema, celiac disease, etc). It is currently extremely rare to see a young person (often overweight females) with red cheeks and rosacea who was told by their physician that they had the onset of autoimmune Disease or was offered allergy testing or dietary counseling. I have only seen one child, out of 30 with a history of headaches, who has been asked by a physician to get food allergy testing or was asked to experiment try and remove gluten, dairy, and nuts from their diet (as well as other toxins like food dyes, coloring, and artificial sweeteners to see if the headaches go away. You can imagine what other diseases will eventually manifest later in these childrens lives when they following the standard of care of ignoring the cause of the headaches by blaming them on stress and administrating pills. Or what further health disorders will develop from the person who has Psoriasis who is often treated by a poorly informed physician who pours more poison into her system to suppress her immune system with chemotherapy.As a side note, I honestly feel that convincing and in depth studies pointing to unhealthy use of pesticides in the food chain and cattle and animal feeding practices, are probably missing because there is no financial incentive to conduct studies which might reduce the influential drug company and fast food/processed food industries profits (as the drug companies, which also own the pesticide companies, help fund and influence the AMA and FDA policies, as well as influence our government by funding Senators and Congressmen's campaign's with legal bribes called campaign contributions). Not so surprising as probably confirmation of my theory is recent info of a doubling of the rate of early Alzheimer's, with women particularly stricken and of up to 25% of women taking Tylenol during their pregnancy bearing children who are autistic.With this in mind, it is a bit unfair at this point in time in the evolution of Autoimmune Disease treatment, to be critical of Sarah as some reviewers have been, because she does not always refer to well established studies in her book for some of her claims, as for the reasons stated, those studies have often not been made.P.S. I suggest to all people I encounter with signs and symptoms of inflammation to experiment and remove gluten, dairy, and nuts from your diet and go organic for at least six months straight to see if the symptoms of inflammation start to dissapate (being careful not to fall off the diet as your immune system has a memory and it doesn't take much for symptoms to return). Those with mild autoimmune disease could, perhaps, add only one food back into your diet for at least three months if they want to experiment and see if the symptoms return to help identify the offending food (it could be a combined effect though). I have had many people come back to me and say thanks as they now no longer have any headaches or joint pain, etc after doing removing gluten, dairy, nuts and anything artificial from their diet. It can take three years to know if you will get a functional cure. At that time, if you have adhered to the diet and have not obtained a 'cure', I think that it might be helpful as a last resort to work with your doctor and try three months of systemic steroids to try and quell the immune system - being extra careful to continue to remain on the diet during the steroid treatment and from then on. Perhaps the steroid therapy might work at quelling the immune system then since you are no longer feeding the inflammation and probably have purged your body of most of the autoimmune toxins and triggers allowing the steroids to work. By the way, food allergy testing is a good idea and a good adjunct, however, it is often not accurate and not near as good as actually producing results as simply removing all foods known to produce inflammation from the diet.By the way, if your doctor will not consider that food allergies and toxins may be behind your inflammation, I recommend that you either dump him or her and look for a more informed and progressive physician, or at least add to your physicians care a good well informed Homeopathic Physician or Nutritionist.A good book for those looking to help improve a toxic liver and clogged gall bladder which often accompanies autoimmune disease created by the SAD diet (Standard American Diet), may be interested in "The Miracle Liver and Gallbladder Cleanse" book.

After a miserable decade that has slowly meandered along, I finally have an outcome!!! Being gluten free over the last two years had helped but I couldn't understand why I had such terrible effects from eating non gluten grain? For the first time someone has explained it to me - so the term molecular mimicry is now in my vocab. The dietary limits imposed by the protocol seemed almost ridiculous and impossible - but having taken the plunge, I am now waking up functioning and my sense of anticipation about life is back. I remember saying to my doctor years ago that I would eat cardboard if it made me feel better; this diet is better than cardboard and I definitely do feel better!!! Immense gratitude.

Excellent book, everything you need to know about AIP, the affects of autoimmune disease on your gut and how doing the protocol will change your life for the better. It is very indepth and can be a little science heavy, but it is good to understand the in would workings of the body but it can be skipped.I have a number of autoimmune conditions such as Raynauds, undifferentiated connected tissues disorder, DLE plus fibromyalgia and since following the protocol my symptoms have reduced considerable and I now have energy and less pain. I have only been doing it for 5 weeks and its been amazing and I've even lost a stone in weight which is even more of a bonus.The only downside is that the book is very heavy, but thats because it has so much information and colourful pictures.I would definitely recommend this book if you want to experience better health if you suffer from one of the hundreds of autoimmune conditions that Sarah lists. It is worth every penny.

Comprehensive book backed by research, not an easy read but very educational with wonderful illustrations, clear guidelines and shopping lists suggests that Paleo is the.answer to heal the gut and improve your health. After a month my blood sugars had dropped to normal limits, and I had lost 11lbs. So far so good!.

This book is chock-full of useful and understandable technical information about the why and wherefore of autoimmune problems and, most importantly, how to help ourselves. Having recently had the bum's rush from my GP ("Oh, the NHS isn't geared to give advice on things like that) and made to feel like a neurotic, this book is a great help.

This booked has literally saved my life and as a side effect I have lost loads of weight ;) This book fully explains the science behind a 'leaky gut' and what foods heal and which make it worse. if you buy one AIP book buy this one before anything elese.