Hi Jennifer and John,
It was a pleasure meeting you both and listening to John’s lectures on Sunday. So much information! It was a great day! Lot’s of aha moments. I had some questions for John.
1) Do you have any good recommendations for breakfast that include protein/fat and not eggs. My IGG was through the roof on eggs which is my favorite for breakfast. I ate them everyday to help with hypoglycemic issues and I am wondering if that was a bad idea.
2) Along the same lines, I don’t eat cow dairy but I am wondering about whey protein
3) You mentioned herbs that support healing of the gut. Can you give me some recommendations?
4) Where do you get you PGX fiber?
5) Do you have any resources (besides your awesome shows) that correlate western medicine with TCM D&D.
The information you shared was absolutely wonderful! I am going to see if the school can have you back to talk about food allergies, autoimmune diseases and reading labs. I know you are extremely busy and I apologize for the many questions. I am one of those people who has to chew on things for a bit so I can formulate questions.
– Colorado School of Traditional Chinese Medicine Student
Dear CSTCM Student,
You really know how to sweet talk a guy. Those classes, along with the Diabetes and Pi Wei Lun classes that I did last weekend, are my favorites! Chew well. There was a lot of information in the Diabetes class and I don’t want you to get indigestion.
1) Jenny’s breakfast favorites for gluten and egg free breakfasts include Salmon sausage patties from www.vitalchoice.com, avocados and wild boar bacon, Rudi’s gluten free toast. I concur with her suggestions. Any meat that you can tolerate or make a congee with meat or organ meat. Ghee is great to add to everything as it is a yeast killer, supplies major fuel for the heart, and does not contain milk proteins.
Eating a food that you have a current IgG problem with will cause inflammation in a dose dependent manner; the more you eat, the worse it is. It takes 4-6 months for the body to “forget” the specific immunity causing the IgG problem that has been created to foods. Every time one eats those foods it basically starts the clock over, so it may take another 4 months. Whenever there is severe food sensitivity long term there WILL be leaky gut problems. This is a Pi Wei Lun (Treatise of the Spleen and Stomach) type of problem. Following the 4 basic steps of Li-Zhu medicine:
• Fortify spleen to boost qi and cause proper upbearing of pure yang (and proper downbearing of turbid yin)
• Clear any of the 6 depressions involved to allow for proper coursing of the qi.
• Clear pathogenic heat
• Treat any branch problems
With food allergies we will typically see patterns such as: Liver depression qi stagnation assailing the spleen and stomach with damp heat in the middle jiao. We often see a combination of a cold middle jiao with pathogenic heat, just to confuse things a bit more. Long term this would lead to kidney yang xu and other patterns.
In treating this with TCM and supplements I would first determine how significant is the Liver depression. If it is a core problem I might look to Qi rectification, stasis resolving formulae such as Shu gan San or Chai hu shu gan san as a starting formula. If there is not liver qi as a core problem I would go with spleen fortifying, damp resolving, formulae such as Liu Jun Zi tang. If more dampness I might use Xiang Sha Liu Jun Zi tang. If more of the depressions are involved I might use Bu Zhong Yi Qi San as a core formula and add herbs for branch problems. For example; if there is diarrhea with the other depression you could add Bu Gu Zhi or Shan Yao with the core Bu ZhongYi Qi San to make a very efficient formula. Or add Huang Lian or Huang Bai to BZYQS for specific heat clearing. The “three huangs” are all anti-bacterial and anti-candidal. The spleen clearing medicinals were perfectly formulated for leaky gut problems. If there is cold stagnation in the middle burner or significant kidney yang xu, or the naturopathic concept of adrenal fatigue, I love Fu Zi Li Zhong Tang. FZLZT dries the spleen, fortifies the spleen, lung and heart qi, warms the middle jiao, and warms and supports middle and lower jiao cold.
With IgG problems there is always a great deal of small intestine inflammation, which allows for much easier attack, adherence, and penetration between cell walls by candidial hyphae. Often there is pathogenic yeast as an ongoing, perhaps non symptomatic, problem whenever we see significant IgG problems. So, we must simultaneously:
• Avoid the foods for 4-6 months. Rotate any other foods eaten.
• Resolve yeast in an ongoing manner (I like TCM formulas and supplements such as undecyclenic acid, capryllic acid, grapefruit see extract, etc, for this)
• Increase Intestinal Secretory IgA to restore immune function (I like TCM formulas, saccharomcyes cerevisia if no allergy or Crohn’s disease, colostrum, cod liver oil, Vitamin D, Vitamin A, krill oil, etc for this)
• Increase beneficial intestinal flora ( increase fiber, use soured foods, take probiotics)
• Increase pancreatic enzyme output or ingest endogenous food enzymes (Spleen Qi tonics, herbs to resolve food stagnation, querecetin, endogenous enzymes)
• Heal the lining of the small intestine. (Spleen Qi tonics, middle jiao heat clearing herbs, Fish oil or Cod Liver oil, Evening primrose oil, black seed oil, etc.)
• Warm or cool the middle jiao as appropriate (TCM formulas)
• Liver and gallbladder support for circulating immune complexes, cic’s, caused by the IgG/macrophage/antigen process. (TCM formulas, milk thistle or extracts such as sylimarin or sylibanin, artichoke, beet tops, dandelion, etc.)
2) By far the worst dairy allergies are to casein, particularly to beta casein A-1. Whey is typically less than 10% as likely to be a problem. If you tested positive to whey you should avoid it, otherwise I would go with it. Rice protein works for many people. Pea protein for some others. Always avoid casein and soy proteins.
3) For healing the gut, see the formulas above. All spleen tonic herbs are good in general. phlegm/damp clearing medicinals are often important in small doses; such as chen pi, qing pi, ban xia, etc.
4) I use PGX fiber which is a konjak mannan product. We get ours from “Natural Factors”. I personally use their “slimstyles” product as a meal replacement rather than eating during the day at work. I have my patients either do the slimstyles or take the PGX capsules before meals.
5) I love Treatment of Western Diseases in a TCM clinic and Evergreen herbs clinical manual as starting points. They don’t cover supplements, but they do a wonderful job of creating correlations.
Thanks for the kind words. It was really great to meet you in person. It was a very friendly group of students and I really enjoyed seeing Denny again. Hope to see y’all soon.
Be Happy!
– Dr. John Nieters, L.Ac. DAOM, FABORM
