In my 26 years of medical practice allergies and asthma were 2 of the most common complaints I faced. What I came to understand is that all allergy symptoms are caused by our own immune system overreacting. I had a military career. On Army Bases there were 5 levels of alert. It’s pretty easy to make an analogy between the Army Alert Levels and the general level of inflammation in our bodies.
There are a lot of blood tests that tell when the general level of inflammation in our bodies increases and serve like a “speedometer” showing the amount of inflammation in our bodies. The blood test that doctors use most often to measure this is called “C-Reactive Protein”.
Having a high level of inflammation in the body puts people at much greater risk for allergic conditions like asthma and nasal allergies. Here’s a quote for this study: “Conclusion: Study results demonstrated that children with respiratory allergic diseases had greater concentrations of hsCRP in serum compared with healthy children.”
The way I like to think about this is to again use the analogy of the immune system being the “Army” for our bodies. Any attack by a foreign organism (infection) or substance (pollen or dust mites), or damage to the body is going increase the Alert Level of our Immune system and the C-reactive protein speedometer is going to rev up.
The good news is that ketogenic diets like Zero Carb have been shown to drive inflammation and C-reactive Protein down. Here’s a quote from this study: “The HFLC group had greater mean decreases in serum triglyceride (P=0.07), and hs-CRP (P=0.03),” (“HFLC” stands for High Fat, Low Carb diet, another name for a ketogenic diet.)
Asthma has a large allergic component and is an inflammatory disease treated in most cases with the strongest anti-inflammatory medication we have – “Steroids”. But steroids have many severe side effects, especially with prolonged use. It turns out there is good evidence dating back to 1930 that ketogenic diets, as well as controlling over half of childhood seizures, can control over half of childhood asthma cases. Here’s a quote from one of the early studies: “In this series of selected children with chronic asthma refractory to various forms of modern treatment, the ketogenic, and relatively low carbohydrate – high fat diets alone have proved efficacious to the extent that the chronic asthmatic state in the majority of instances was controlled or entirely cleared up, at least for a sufficient period of time to permit such a child to get its bearings.” Here’s a link to the full article: Asthma and ketogenic diets
So if I had an allergic condition I would definitely try a ketogenic diet like Zero Carb.
On about page 2/3, you say HFLC stands for High Carb Low Fat. Oops.
Hey Paul,
Great post!
When I was Keto, I eliminated my lifelong asthma symptoms by getting my D3 level up to 80 ng/ml. I needed 8000 IUs to maintain that level.
Now that I am Carnivore, I will probably cut down on my supplemental D3.
You have the exact right of it, my friend. We’ve been lied to for our entire lives about food. Thousands of years ago, humans ate meat and only consumed plants for medicinal purposes. I had severe asthma for 20 years, and was using my rescue inhaler anywhere from 5 to 25 times PER DAY! And then i started the Carnivore Diet. The first 3 days i continued using my inhaler, then the fourth day my asthma was GONE! I haven’t used my rescue inhaler since–not even during or after vigorous exercise! For those that don’t know, the Carnivore Diet consists of meat, eggs, butter, and cheese, though when you begin you start with meat ONLY for the first 30 days and then you slowly add in the eggs and butter and cheese to see how they affect you. Myself i cannot tolerate anything but meat because it aggravates my asthma, but it depends from person to person. If you have asthma then i highly suggest you give the Carnivore Diet a serious go. What “scientists” don’t tell you is that carbohydrates cause internal inflammation, and the reason why you poop so much after eating lots of fruits and vegetables is because we cannot digest the plant material. You have been lied to about food your entire life, and the doctors don’t want you to get better because they’d be out of the job!!!
Nice one. For people who really want to cure their asthma and allergies, i suggest to check out PaleoMedicina Hungary. It is an entire institute that uses a specific form of the carnivore diet to heal their patients from basically all (chronic) diseases of human society. They furthermore are able to heal almost all auto-immune diseases!! Extremely strong protocol.
Their diet is different to that of traditional carnivore so people need to stick to some specific guidelines.
Some general guidelines are: no dairy, no grain fed meat (only grass fed), focus on meat and fat from 4 legged animals, keep to a specific protein-fat ratio to ensure ketosis (this means eating up to around 300 grams of meat and getting most calories from animal fat), the fat protein ratio is: 2:1 (so per 1 gram of protein, eat 2 gram of fat), the fat protein ratio should also be per meal (not only per day), people should include around 400 grams of liver and 200 grams of brain or bone marrow per week for adequate intake or vitamins and minerals, besides that other organ meats are also benificial but not as necessary as liver and brain/bone marrow, keep eggs out in the first 6 weeks (auto-immune patients may want to exclude eggs for the first 6 months), it is good to know that eggs are not necessary as everything we need is in the meat and fat (especially red meat and fat from 4 legged grass fed animals), meat can be eaten raw but is not necessary for healing.
Also good to know: it is not necessary to follow a transition diet to get in ketosis. I believe PaleoMedicina advises to just jump in cold with their diet (even many auto-immune patients). For some specific auto-immune patients, such as diabetes patients, you may want to check their website and advise before you jump in due to initial blood sugar issues).