Disclaimer: The information below is for educational purposes only and should not be substituted as medical instruction. Consult a medical professional or healthcare provider before taking this advice.
If you have Lyme disease, then you may be wondering what diet you should follow in order to feel better.
Maybe you tried grilled meat, vegetables, and bread for dinner, or chicken salads for lunch and realized that you're still feeling really bad after every meal you eat. With just about every disease, there are food restrictions, at least temporarily.
One thing about having Lyme disease is that you will have to stay away from certain foods because your body becomes very sensitive to each ingredient that you consume. It can be a real struggle. When I was a teenager, I remember having to stay away from many different foods, and I wondered how on earth I was going to eat anything.
It is a very hard process, but I promise you, you will be doing your body a huge favor in order to fight off this disease.
Keep reading to figure out how to protect your body from harmful ingredients!
1. Sugar
Sugar is in almost anything, so this can't 100% be avoided, but I promise you this is the most important thing to avoid eating if you have Lyme disease. Not only does lots of sugar hurt our bodies whether we have Lyme or not, sugar feeds Lyme disease.
Every time you consume sugar, the parasites in your body are being fed. It enables them to grow stronger and multiply each month. You could incorporate more fruit and honey into your diet to balance your blood sugar, because you can't live without sugar, but having only organic forms of sugar in lower doses will help you.
2. Gluten
Gluten is dangerous for a lot of people with Lyme disease because it can cause lots of inflammation and body aches that will keep you in bed all day. The joint pain, headaches, and muscle weakness could be from the gluten that you are consuming. When I didn't consume this at all I could function better every day! When I stopped eating gluten, I also noticed that I lost some weight due to swelling and inflammation.
Gluten is in a lot of foods, including bread (the most obvious), desserts, chips, tortillas, cereal, and a lot of candies.
3. Red meat (and sometimes white meat, too)
This is the one that I know a lot of people will not enjoy at all, but sadly, it's also one of the most important foods to stay away from if you have Lyme. Eating meat when it's actually hurting your body can cause major headaches, body aches, stomach pain, fatigue, and even anxiety. I had to avoid meat altogether, but the good news is that you don't have to stay away from meat for the rest of your life.
I avoided meat for a couple years and then could eat it again when my doctor gave me the okay. It was way easier said than done. Luckily, now there are thousands of vegan recipes on the internet to support diets without meat. When I couldn't have meat, at the time, my body was strong enough to eat gluten, so I ate more bread and vegetables to fill myself up.
4. Eggs
Crazy, right? This one food caused me a lot of pain, and it's one of the easiest foods out of this list to substitute. I used an egg substitute when I could eat cake mix and other foods.
Eggs have a lot of hormones in them, and Lyme on it's own can cause major hormonal balance. Eggs can further disrupt your hormones, leaving you feeling awful. You might notice fewer headaches and fatigue when cutting out eggs.
5. Dairy
No joke, this one was the hardest for me! I love pizza and ice cream, but dairy can literally wreak havoc on your body if you have Lyme. Just like eggs, dairy has lots of hormones in it (the severity of this depending on the way it was prepared). Dairy can cause a multitude of symptoms like aches and pains everywhere, brain fog, anxiety, irritation, fatigue, and many more symptoms.
It felt awkward to not be able to eat the desserts and snacks that everyone else was eating but it is so worth it once you realize you feel so much healthier. You can run errands again, work out again, and wake up early.
What now?
Cutting out these foods is one of the hardest things I've ever done, but beneficial to my health! One thing you can do instead of from here on out not having any of these foods is slowly cut them out of your diet one by one. I was thankful to be strong enough to eat gluten while I had to cut out meat, and have dairy when I couldn't have eggs.
A pro tip I have is to try going one week without one of these food groups. Log your symptoms the day before cutting out the food, and continue to log your symptoms every day. What symptoms lessened or even disappeared? If nothing changed, you could try continuing to avoid the food for another week or two, and if nothing still changes you might be strong enough to eat it. Usually it takes dairy a couple weeks to completely get out of your system so that challenge might take longer.
After that period, try cutting out another group of food that I listed above. You might come to find that it was dairy and gluten that makes you feel terrible every day, and you can stomach some meat and eggs.
You might even notice that it's just sugar that's making you feel awful. Everyone is different when it comes to what they should and shouldn't be eating.
Having Lyme disease is a hard battle. If you have Lyme, let me know if you tried cutting out any of these foods and if this helped you feel better! Thank you for reading!
"Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits, who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases,..." - Psalm 103: 2-3