Do you need to permanently cut out dairy and gluten from your diet?
Do you need to permanently cut out dairy and gluten from your diet or is it okay to consume them if you feel like you tolerate them?
So it's a really great question. And it's complicated because there are some patients who think it's okay and they tolerate it meaning they, they don't get diarrhea or constipation or bloating and they don't have an immediate reaction, right?
So there's this sort of feeling like I must be okay. But then when you look at their level of systemic inflammation that is present, and sometimes when you go back to the diet and you figure out what might be the culprit and sometimes it's a dairy and sometimes it isn't. It's very often gluten though. And that's the unfortunate thing is that the majority of people are probably gluten intolerant on some level. There are many reasons why that is and the gluten that's available now It's different from gluten 50 years ago or a hundred years ago.
I do think that it's become more Allogenic or has allowed the body to sort of react more. So I do think that the majority of people if I'm really going to try to get them better I want them to eliminate gluten and maybe dairy depending. Listen if you're doing great, your MCAS is under control and you have no issues. That's a different conversation.
If you're really trying to figure out how to get your system under control your mast cells better, the diet is a piece of it. And I would go one step further and say it's not just about eliminating gluten and dairy it's about making sure that you're getting the right nutrients. This is this is actually the number one issue that I see and that is that, that patients, well, sometimes because they're reactive to a lot of foods and sometimes because they just don't know. You know, they hear a lot of noise in the media about the types of diets that they should be following. Diet is it should be personalized and individualized, but I would say that protein should be prioritized.
Getting enough protein in the diet is so important for the immune system overall for healing of connective tissue, for muscles which help your bones. There's so many reasons why and so one of the things that I would really think about is not just what you should need in your diet but what you should eat more of in your diet and protein, particularly animal-based protein, to be honest, would be ideal.