What About Dairy? Diet for Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis
ALS Diet Pages
Many people in their quest for their best diet have undergone "allergy" tests, and have been told they are allergic, for example, to dairy. This really means proteins from the milk aren't being fully digested in their digestive tract, likely due to dysbiosis (excessive bacterial and fungal overgrowth) and are leaking through a highly permeable gut (caused by the dysbiosis) and once in their bloodstream these "macroparticles" of protein seen as foreign invaders (in the same way as a virus would be seen) causing a series of events leading to allergic symptoms. However, most people I've talked to don't have any outward "allergy" symptoms to the foods to which they are told they are allergic. Some factors to consider are:
- In fighting ALS, you do need to obtain enough calories to sustain health and weight. Giving up dairy to consume, say, soy milk (which is a processed product containing a higher percentage of free glutamates) may not be in your best interest. Using rice milk is higher in arginine than you want, and high in fiberless added sugars.
- Are you truly allergic to dairy, or to the hormones, pesticides and antibiotics in commercial dairy?
- Once you are on the path of whole, organic foods, and your gut flora normalizes, you may find you don't have an allergy to dairy after all, and you can fully digest the foods you need.
- High quality, organic yoghurt contains the probiotics that can help you on your way to a healthy gut intestinal environment.
On the other side of the coin, neither a sedentary, elderly or very ill person should consume dairy. Nature intended that milk be for the infant of the animal that produced it. Cow milk proteins are many times larger than human milk proteins and that only begins the litany of problems with adults consuming cow or any other animal's milk. For one thing, dairy can quickly create an excess of mucous in anyone, but especially someone who doesn't frequently do the kind of exercise that assists in the elimination of mucous (like jogging). Dairy should certainly not become a main staple in the diet of someone not in the best of health, but if used, should be treated more like a "condiment". Adults can live nicely without dairy - very well, in fact. A whole, organic "plant-source" diet rich in vegetables, beans and fruits with a much lesser addition of organic meats and poultry, healthfully sustains entire cultures around the globe. A reasonably healthy person, in fact, might presume they could live out a long, healthy life if all they ate was whole, organic plant foods, including those (like nuts, seeds and grains) only avoided in illnesses where nitric oxide and cell proliferation is involved.
That said, you sometimes have to prioritize. If you must choose between a doughnut and an apple, eat the apple as long as it's organic. If your choice is between a piece of pie and a fruit salad, eat the fruit salad, as long as it's organic. If you find it is difficult to obtain enough calories to maintain enough weight, eat some grains, as long as they're organic. When that point comes that you feel like you don't ever want to see another vegetable, that's that day you have some organic chicken and organic brown rice. You normally avoid dairy, but see everybody else at the gathering eating icecream, so have a cup of organic yoghurt with organic strawberries. You get the picture.
ALS Diet Pages
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Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis
Please click the PDF icon to the left to read or download the entire 36 page Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Diet by Dr. David Steenblock
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