Paleo AIP Basics

There are a many different places on the web which talk about the Paleo Auto-Immune Protocol diet. Some are more verbose than others. In this post I want to give a relatively high-level rundown of the Paleo diet as well as the Paleo AIP variant. I also want get into the why of these diets because that is what has helped me buy into and maintain this lifestyle change.

The Paleo diet stems from what scientists think paleolithic man ate. The idea is that our bodies have evolved over millions of years to process certain kinds of food more easily than others. Scientists believe that a hunter-gatherer would eat only foods which can be easily sourced (i.e. hunted/captured/gathered) at any time. As a result, paleolithic man's digestion has certain expectations about what will be consumed.

Hormones

Part of why people think that the Paleo diet works (and why I think it works) is that when the body is getting the same nutrient profile that its ancestors received then the body feels nutritionally satisfied and will settle into its optimum balance. On the flip side, when the body doesn't get the nutrients is it prepared through evolution to receive then the body feels nutritionally starved and will work to protect itself for the future.

Paleolithic man had to get through times of plenty (spring and summer) and survive through times of scarcity (winter and famine). Individuals had to do this for decades, and genetics had to do this for generations, automatically, and without modern farming techniques. Consequently, all bodies (not only humans, but every creature on this earth) have evolved to adapt to their nutritional environment. That environment changes with the seasons and the cells of all creatures have evolved to react to the profile of nutrients they receive across the entire year.

Winter is Coming

When fall is coming on and plants aren't as nutritious as they were in their prime then the body (and more specifically its cells) is nutritionally starved. As a result, cells and put out hormones that say "winter is coming; pack away energy for later."

You would think that our brains would be in control of stating "winter is coming" because we can visually perceive the signs of fall. But that knowledge in our brain is somewhat isolated. The remainder of the cells in our bodies can only watch what nutrients actually come into them. As a result, they only know the environment based on their food; if they are not getting enough of the right nutrients then they think "winter is coming." Hence, even though we may restrict calories, if we are not getting enough variety of other nutrients then our body will start gaining weight.

The good news is that if we get the right variety of foods--irrespective of calories--so that our cells are receiving the nutrients they need to function optimally, then the cells start putting out hormones which say "It's spring-time; time to clean up!" The Paleo diet it thought to help mimic the nutrient profile paleolithic man needed during the spring and summer; and because of modern cultivation and global shipping our cells do not need to pack anything away for winter.

Reducing Stress

Related to an unhealthy nutrient profile is stress. If our body is under chronic negative stress then it starts to put out hormones that say "winter is coming." I say negative stress because exercise can be a positive stress that causes our bodies to put out hormones that say "time to get active!" and can counteract some of the negative stress we may have including counteracting stress from work and from our diets.

In my own life, my sleep apnea was putting me under significant negative stress which is part of why I kept gaining weight leading up to getting a CPAP machine (the other part is that I was using sugar to keep myself going because I was so exhausted). In your own life, if you feel tired all the time then you might need to get your sleep assessed and treated before you can start to see big results.

Autoimmune Stress

With autoimmune disease the body is constantly under stress; The body itself appears to be the enemy. Contributing to that stress is the foods we eat; they can contain naturally occurring chemicals that stimulate the immune system. Such foods might have been a precursor to the autoimmune disease in the first place. For example, my inverse psoriasis started 20 years ago while I was living in Thailand, 155 lbs, and eating a lot of peppers. I had trained my mouth to ignore the spices so that I could better-integrate with the culture, but my immune system was under constant stress because of the capsaicin in peppers.

The idea of the Paleo AIP diet is to match the Paleo diet and to also remove anything which might be causing autoimmune responses. When the body is no longer trying to fight off invaders (i.e. foods that stimulate inflammation) and is able to get the nutrients it needs, then it can finally relax and divest itself of its fat reserves.

The Paleo AIP lifestyle also includes some exercise and plenty of sleep. I exercise about 20 minutes once per week (although I am trying to step that up to 20 minutes 3-4 times per week). I still need to get more and better sleep (the CPAP can only do so much), and I have reduced some of my other stresses by not working at home, not watching TV anymore (they generate artificial stress to keep you hooked through commercial breaks), and not going on Facebook or other social media (it seems that all things ad-based generate stress to keep you coming back).

But aside from sleep, exercise, and general lifestyle, we're here to talk about food.

Allowed Foods

The Paleo AIP diet focuses more on eating the whole animal and not just the muscles; meaning lots of organ meat. However, I've stuck with standard cuts of meat and have found tremendous success. I buy grass-fed, grass-finished, tri-tip beef and, between my wife and I, we eat about 1 - 1.5 lbs each day at dinner. I'll give you my spectacular recipe in a future post.

The basic Paleo AIP diet includes the following:

• meat (grass-fed+grass-finished, pasture-raised, or wild)
• chicken in moderation (pasture-raised is ideal but difficult to acquire, while free-range is an okay fall-back)
• fish and shellfish
• vegetables of all kinds
• green vegetables
• colorful vegetables
• cruciferous vegetables
• sea vegetables
• mushrooms
• herbs and spices
• fats
• healthy animal fats
• olive oil
• coconut oil
• avocados
• palm oil (but not palm kernel oil)
• fruit (in moderation; lots of fructose is a problem)
• probiotic/fermented foods
• glycine-rich foods

You will want to get high quality foods from each of those categories, and make sure you get plenty of variety and volume. The more nutrient-dense the food, the better. For example, starchy vegetables are less nutrient-dense, so you should probably eat them in moderation. Whereas foods like broccoli are much better for you (someday I'll teach you my recipe for simple broccoli).

Forbidden Foods

The Paleo AIP diet eliminates the following:

• gluten (e.g. wheat)
• dairy
• soy (all sources including oils, soy lecithin, and many other less-obvious ingredients)
• corn
• grains (e.g. rice, quinoa)
• beans and legumes (e.g. peanuts, cocoa/chocolate 😞, and coffee)
• seeds and seed oils (e.g. chia, sunflower, safflower, canola oil, and palm kernel oil)
• nuts and nut oils (coconut oil is fine in moderation since it isn't actually a tree nut)
• nightshades
• tomatoes
• potatoes (sweet potatoes are okay)
• eggplant
• peppers (even sweet peppers)
• paprika
• seed-based spices (e.g. dill seeds, ground pepper, and pepper corns)
• alcohol

That "no" list may seem daunting, and I admit that it is (I miss chocolate), but it is also crucial. Each of those foods has a component which either causes leaky gut (what seems to be a precursor to autoimmune disease) or stimulates the immune system. For perfectly healthy people these foods are not an issue, but for people with autoimmune disease the reactions to these foods can be strong. I've had reactions to chocolate (high-quality chocolate which had no soy or other forbidden ingredients) as well as "Balsamic Vinegar of Modena" which contains an ingredient called "grape must" which is crushed (and sometimes cooked) grape seeds.

Following this diet means that I can eat few prepackaged foods; soy is everywhere and so are seed oils. Consequently, I end up making everything myself. My staples are the mixed greens from Costco (I will eat a mixing bowl filled with them, dressed with an aromatic, extra-virgin olive oil and vinegar), or the Costco Mediterranean chopped salad which I eat without any of the included toppings (again, just olive oil and vinegar).

For the first while I craved crunchy foods and carbohydrates. I found that I could get the crunch I needed from carrots and sweet potato chips (more on this below). I've also found plantain chips at TJ Maxx; some are better than others, and I avoid any which have "spices" or "paprika" in the ingredient list. Thankfully, when I started the Paleo AIP diet I had already eliminated wheat and corn, otherwise I would have had to contend with super-strong carb cravings.

Sweet Potatoes

Sweet potatoes are actually tubers and are not in the nightshade family. They just happen to colloquially be called potatoes. Thank goodness for that because now I can get my potato chip fix from good sweet potato chips. Someday, when I have a much larger kitchen I hope to make my own chips. I also like making a sweet potato cauliflower mash instead of mashed potatoes.

Increased Sensitivity

Once I had eliminated the major items from the "no" list I found that my body became more sensitive to ingredients on the forbidden list. For example, I ate chocolate periodically for the first few weeks, didn't have any for a week or two, and then tried some again and had an urgent response; it cleared out my digestive tract within 30 minutes. Definitely a sensitivity.

I believe that I got an exaggerated reaction because my body is now hyper-vigilant. My immune system used to be doing all it can to fight off lots of different invaders so it was exhausted from fighting on all fronts. It could only fight a little bit against each front in the nonstop battle. But once the battles ceased my immune system had a lot of idle troops watching for invaders. As a result, now when it sees an invader all of the troops wake up and engage the enemy.

It will take about 6 months of a calm immune system before I can start reintroducing some of those foods. In that time many of the idle troops will die off. There will be some of each kind left so that my body can recreate troops as needed (similarly to how a vaccine trains the body to watch for certain kinds of invaders). Consequently my body's response to future invaders will be smaller, but could become dramatic if I tax my body again.

Despite this roller coaster of immune responses and my disappointment over lost foods, I can honestly say that I am enjoying it. Now that the farmers market season is in full swing I am looking forward to expanding my repertoire of foods. 😋