If you or a loved one has been diagnosed with chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy (CIDP), focusing on your daily diet may be beneficial. While diet alone cannot treat CIDP, incorporating a healthy, well-balanced diet into your lifestyle could help reduce its symptoms.
CIDP is an inflammatory disease where the immune system mistakenly targets the myelin sheath, the protective covering of your nerves. This inflammation damages the nerves, leading to various neurological symptoms. Although diet is not a cure, it can play a significant role in managing the condition.
The Role of Diet in Managing CIDP Symptoms
A healthy, well-balanced diet that is well-tolerated can be beneficial for CIDP patients. Many plant foods have natural anti-inflammatory properties and are a good source of vitamins and minerals. Conversely, consuming a diet high in convenience foods such as fast foods, sugary and sodium-rich foods, and processed meats can promote inflammation in the body, which may further worsen the symptoms of CIDP.
Foods to Incorporate into Your Diet
Several food options may help manage the symptoms associated with CIDP.
Anti-Inflammatory Foods
Many plant foods have natural anti-inflammatory properties and are a good source of vitamins and minerals. Vitamins like Vitamin C, E, and A and minerals like selenium, copper, and zinc are powerful antioxidants that prevent free radicals from damaging your nerve cells.
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Examples of anti-inflammatory foods:
- Fruits: Citrus fruits, apples, pineapples, and berries
- Vegetables: Spinach, bell peppers, mushrooms, beets, and kale
- Nuts and Seeds
- Beans
Nerve-Supporting Nutrients
The overall health of your nerves is also supported by minerals like potassium and magnesium, which are abundant in many plant foods. Foods rich in omega-3 fatty acids and vitamin B12 are beneficial for CIDP patients, as these nutrients nourish and maintain nerve health and function.
- Vitamin B12: Essential for maintaining the health of nerves and the protective myelin sheath.
- Omega-3 Fatty Acids: Possess anti-inflammatory properties that may help lessen the inflammation in the nerves affected by CIDP. Fatty fish, including salmon, tuna, herring, or mackerel, are excellent sources. Aim for 3-4 oz. of fatty fish at least 2 times per week.
Beverages
- Green Tea: Freshly brewed green tea made from fresh leaves or tea bags can also help reduce inflammation.
- Meat Stock: Make a short-cooked meat stock with the flesh, bones, and connective tissue from any meat you like. Drink 2 to 3 cups per day forever. It’s worth the time to make this healing elixir homemade. It’s cheap and powerful medicine, and you can use the meat for meals!
The GAPS diet
The Gut and Psychology Syndrome diet can be used on patients to treat the hardest of the hard diseases. It’s meant to be a temporary healing diet (usually used for a year or two) so your gut can heal before transitioning over to a bigger variety of foods. The GAPS diet has six intro stages that start with a few days of just homemade broth.
Foods to eat on the GAPS diet:
- Meats of all kinds like locally raised beef, pastured chicken, wild-caught fish and shellfish, pasture-raised pork. Meats need to be high quality and locally raised; free from preservatives, fillers and should be fed non-GMO grains if they are grain fed.
- Cooked vegetables. Any vegetables you’d like just not raw. No salads here folks. Roast, steam, boil, and saute every vegetable.
- Pasture-raised eggs. Eggs from chickens raised on green grass and not in a pen. These eggs have more nutrition and less salmonella than caged chicken eggs and are powerful healing tools.
- Good animal fats. Fat and cholesterol are necessary for re-myelinating your nervous system, which is largely fat. Good quality organic butter, beef tallow from grass-fed cows, duck fat, coconut oil.
- Cultured and aged dairy are all fine. No pasteurized, homogenized dairy. No grocery store milk or Kraft block cheeses. It has to have live and active cultures or say it’s been aged. Raw milk is good, but the GAPS diet does require fermentation before you drink it-usually as kefir. Creme fraiche or other cultured creams are also allowed.
- Sprouted or activated beans, nuts, and seeds. You can have almonds or yes, even almond milk as long as it’s made from nuts that have been sprouted first. Very few store-bought versions are. This means they have been soaked in an acid and water solution then dried before you use them. This helps eliminate phytic acid that robs minerals from the body. No canned beans are sprouted.
Foods to Avoid or Limit
Certain foods can promote inflammation and may worsen CIDP symptoms.
Inflammatory Fats
Foods made from fats such as saturated fats and trans fats can have inflammatory effects.
Convenience and Processed Foods
Consuming a diet high in convenience foods such as fast foods, sugary and sodium-rich foods, and processed meats can promote inflammation in the body, which may further worsen the symptoms of CIDP.
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Other foods to avoid
- Sugar. No sugar folks. Small amounts of honey or maple syrup can be used later but no granulated white sugar. No cookies, pies, cakes or hidden sources of sugar like salad dressings, BBQ sauce or cereal.
- Wheat or white flour. No, there is no bread. No pasta, crackers, donuts…you get the idea. Bye.
- Grains or “gluten-free” foods. These are full of grains from rice flour and other starches. They are junk food just the same as anything else. No rice, no quinoa, no chickpeas.
- Vegetable/canola oils. The “hateful 8 oils” include vegetable, canola, sunflower, safflower and a few others. These inflammatory oils are in everything from mayonnaise to Hamburger Helper and salad dressing.
- Fast food. Nada. Zip. Filled with bad oils, gluten contamination, and a splattering of factory-made ingredients you’ll never get better on any of it.
Additional Dietary Considerations
The Importance of Avoiding Personal Inflammatory Triggers
Everyone’s inflammatory triggers are different, so there are a few reasons you might experience inflammation. Foods that cause inflammation in one person might not cause it in others. Even if you don’t have a chronic condition, you can experience inflammation when you eat foods that you’re sensitive to. When you have an immune response to a food, your antibodies rise, which can cause inflammation. Your body basically sees that food as a foreign body and starts working against it.
Managing Blood Sugar Levels
Elevated blood sugar levels contribute to many chronic health conditions, including diabetic peripheral neuropathy. Refined grains are highly glycemic, meaning they have a dramatic impact on your blood sugar. Being able to control your blood sugar is the number one strategy to prevent neuropathy associated with diabetes.
Avoiding Gluten if Necessary
If you have a gluten allergy or celiac disease, consuming gluten can trigger and worsen your symptoms. Common sources include all food containing white, wheat, cake, or baking flour.
Avoiding Bone Broth
Too many glutamates in bone broth make it irritating to the neurologic system, and you don’t need that. It could actually make you worse.
General Guidelines for an Anti-Inflammatory Diet
If you want to follow an anti-inflammatory diet, focus on whole foods and minimally processed foods.
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Assess Your Current Diet
The first key to minimizing inflammation is cutting out foods that cause it. An anti-inflammatory diet is one that includes minimally processed foods. That typically means staying away from anything that comes in a box or a bag, or anything that has a laundry list of ingredients - especially if they start with sugar, salt, or a processed oil and include ingredients you don’t recognize.
Read Nutrition Labels
Foods that have more than one ingredient can still be made up of whole foods - for example, store-bought hummus, dried fruit and nut snack mix, or pasta sauce. The key is to always review the ingredient list and choose breads and pastas that are minimally processed, minimally preserved, and made with whole grains.
Make Gradual Changes
Drastic changes never lead to long-term success, so give yourself three to six months to make diet changes and to begin seeing results. Start by making small changes that you know will be impactful, and then slowly continue to add on.
Other Ways to Reduce Inflammation
Food isn't the only way to reduce inflammation in the body. Boost the results of what you eat by maintaining a healthy body weight, since weight loss is anti-inflammatory.
The Importance of Consulting Healthcare Professionals
It is recommended to consult with your healthcare provider and dietitian before making big changes to your eating routine. They can provide personalized recommendations based on your specific needs and medical history.
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