The Problem With the Paleo Diet

Is the Paleo Diet healthy for people with autoimmune diseases?

As a dietary approach to heal autoimmune diseases, many well-meaning health professionals have recommended a new fad diet called the Paleo Diet or a modified version called the Wahls diet. Is this really a healthy diet? Could this diet even be worsening the conditions of those with autoimmune diseases? My answer is that the Paleo diet and any diet like it is both unhealthy and will definitely worsen aspects of autoimmunity in those who have it.

Here’s Why the Paleo and Wahls Diets Don’t Work

The philosophy behind these diets is that we eat like our “hunter-gatherer ancestors.” This means there is a major focus on meat, fish, eggs, vegetables, fruits, nuts, and seeds while completely eliminating most all other foods.

Here’s the problem. Leaky gut is the foundation problem for every autoimmune disease. Having said that it’s been shown that even a single meal containing saturated fat from animal foods causes a breakdown in the lining of the small intestine which is leaky gut. Studies are showing that animal fat actually causes leaky gut.(1,2) Yet both the Paleo and Wahls diets rely heavily on meat and animal products for nutrition and as a result both of these diets actually are perpetuating leaky gut instead of healing it.

Meat, Cancer and Growth Hormones

Besides inducing leaky gut there are more issues with the high-meat Paleo Diet and Wahls Diet. Most meat has been found to contain large amounts of a particular estrogen hormone called Estradiol which is known to promote cancer.

Anything that increases or prolongs a woman’s exposure to estrogen increases her risk of breast cancer. In addition Estradiol induces tumors in rats, mice, and hamsters and when its levels become elevated in humans there is also a corresponding increase in breast and uterine cancer.(3)

High Fat, High Protein and High Cancer

Another component found in the high-meat Paleo Diet that will drive up your hormones is fat. Studies show that high dietary fat intake is associated with elevated serum estrogen and androgens leading to increased rates of breast, colon, and prostate cancer.(4)

The Paleo Diet is also a very high-protein diet. According to a Harvard health study diets high in protein have been shown to promote tumors and increase metastasis to the liver and lungs, as well as contribute  the formation of kidney stones.(5,6)

Therefore the Paleo and Wahls diets are going to worsen your leaky gut, wreak havoc on your kidneys, and drastically increase your risk of heart disease and cancer. Instead of using the Paleo Diet, we found a completely natural and healthy diet that stopped my autoimmunity in its tracks and actually strengthened my immune system instead of suppressing it.

If you would like to learn more about this natural diet and what it includes you can get our free eBook, “The 5-Step Plan that Healed My Autoimmune Disease.”

I hope you’ve been informed, and blessed by this post.

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Sources

(1) Deopurkar R, Ghanim H, et al. “Differential Effects of Cream, Glucose, and Orange Juice on Inflammation, Endotoxin, and the Expression of Toll-Like Receptor-4 and Suppressor of Cytokine Signaling-3.” Diabetes Care. 2010 May; 33(5):991-7.

(2) Erridge C, Attina T, Spickett CM, Webb DJ. “A high-fat meal induces low-grade endotoxemia: evidence of a novel mechanism of postprandial inflammation.” The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. 2007 Nov; 86(5):1286-92.

(3) Liehr JG. Is estradiol a genotoxic mutagenic carcinogen? Endocr Rev. 2000 Feb;21(1):40-54.

(4) Nagata C, Nagao Y, Shibuya C, et. al. Fat intake is associated with serum estrogen and androgen concentrations in postmenopausal Japanese women. J Nutr. 2005 Dec;135(12):2862-5.

(5) Li C, Bai X, Wang S, Tomiyama-Miyaji C, et. al. Immunopotentiation of NKT cells by low-protein diet and the suppressive effect on tumor metastasis. Cell Immunol. 2004 Sep-Oct;231(1-2):96-102.

(6) http://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/5-steps-for-preventing-kidney-stones-201310046721