Some people just can’t face the full elimination diet, and where there are particular foods that you suspect, a reverse elimination can also work well. With this method, you would eliminate suspected foods for a week at a time till you see an improvement. The benefit is that if there is a particular food or group that is causing most of your problem, you could find it without having to eliminate everything. The trade off is that it can take a lot longer, and you may go through withdrawal symptoms more than once. Although you would get more dramatic results with the full elimination diet, as long as you manage to identify all major intolerances, you can still have a good result.<\/p>\n
The most common intolerances are wheat\/gluten\/corn, dairy products and sugars. This is because these are foods which humans have only started eating in the last 8-10,000 years, when we started farming. So we haven\u2019t had time to adequately adapt to them, and many people have problems eating them. Next most common are foods which are eaten regularly. Once our digestive systems start to become weakened, any foods eaten too often can become new intolerances.<\/p>\n
Before launching into even a reverse elimination, you should read the chapters from Robert McFerran’s book<\/a>, and read up about how to do the full e-diet<\/a>, so that you understand the principles involved and what you are likely to experience.<\/p>\n Step 1 \u2013 Eliminate all grains (wheat, rye, corn, rice, etc) from the diet for one week. If grains are causing you problems, you will get some withdrawal symptoms at this stage. If you get a major improvement, (about 4 days), stay off the grains for another week, then start testing. If you have some improvement, but not enough, go on to Step 2.<\/p>\n Step 2 \u2013 Stay off the grains, and also eliminate all sugars from the diet for one week. This includes eliminating alcohol. See Beth Loiselle’s list of allowed foods<\/a> for a whole food diet to help you here. You will almost definitely have withdrawal symptoms in this stage. If you get a major improvement after clearing the withdrawal, start testing. If you have some improvement, but not enough, go on to Step 3.<\/p>\n Step 3 \u2013 Stay off the grains & sugars, and also eliminate all dairy products from the diet for one week. If you get a major improvement, start testing. If you have some improvement, but not enough, go on to Step 4.<\/p>\n Step 4 \u2013 Stay off the other stuff, and also eliminate all foods that you eat regularly, especially common allergens like peanuts, soy, eggs, nighthade veges & oranges. Either eliminate them one at a time, or come up with a list of likely suspects, and eliminate them all together. At this point you should also eliminate caffeine (coffee, chocolate and tea). Legumes can be hard for some people to digest, so stay off those too.<\/p>\n If you don\u2019t have a major improvement by this time, it would be very unusual. In that case, you may need to consider a full elimination diet, or some other kind of chemical or heavy metal toxicity.<\/p>\n Otherwise, move onto the testing phase.<\/p>\n Generally the guidelines for testing foods are to reintroduce a new food every 4 hours, with the exception of grains and dairy, which need 2-3 days. Sometimes you will get an immediate reaction, so know straight away, but you need 2-3 days to be sure you\u2019re OK on a food. If you get a reaction, don\u2019t test anything else for a day.<\/p>\n There are two ways you can select your order of reintroducing foods. Either start with foods you\u2019re pretty sure you\u2019re OK on, so that you build up your list of OK foods faster. Or start with foods you desperately want and see how you react. The foods you crave most are the ones most likely to give you a reaction, sadly. That\u2019s because we are addicted to the foods that make us sick.<\/p>\n This stage is the same as with the full elimination diet, so see that page for more details on this stage<\/a>.<\/p>\n Once you\u2019ve identified your lists of OK foods and foods to avoid, you\u2019ll probably need to avoid those foods for 6 months to a year. That\u2019s how long it will take for your body to repair. After that you may be able to reintroduce some foods, but it would be wise to keep them for occasional treats, rather than every day.<\/p>\nPhase One \u2013 Identify Intolerances<\/strong><\/h4>\n
Phase Two \u2013 Reintroducing & Testing<\/strong><\/h4>\n
Phase Three \u2013 Repairing the digestive system<\/strong><\/h4>\n