"Dietary Cure for Hidradenitis Suppurativa"
This landmark study suggested that exposure to dietary yeast,
like baker’s yeast, brewer’s yeast, and nutritional yeast,
may worsen the course of Crohn’s disease, an autoimmune inflammatory bowel disease.
The reason they even thought to do the study was because
Crohn’s patients tend to have elevated levels of antibodies to yeast,
but that’s not the only autoimmune disease with increased yeast antibodies.
The same has been found in lupus patients, and rheumatoid arthritis,
another joint disease called ankylosing spondylitis,
autoimmune liver disease, and autoimmune thyroid disease.
So, might avoiding yeast help those conditions too?
They haven’t been put to the test, but hidradenitis suppurativa has.
What is that?
Hidradenitis suppurativa can be a pretty gruesome disease.
Starts out with just like pimples, though,
typically along parts of the body where there are folds:
armpits, groin, buttocks, under the breast.
Then, painful nodules form which turn into abscesses
and drain a thick, foul-smelling pus,
and then, it gets even worse,
forming these active tunnels of pus inside your body.
And, it’s not that rare.
An estimated prevalence of like 1 to 4 percent.
That’s like 1 in 50.
Clothes typically cover it up; so, it remains hidden,
but you can often smell the pus oozing out of people.
There are all sorts of surgical options and chemotherapy,
but why did they even think to try diet for the condition?
I mean, you can see Crohn’s disease as a disease of intestinal inflammation,
how a food you react to could make things worse;
but why a disease of armpit inflammation?
Because there seems to be a link between
hidradenitis suppurativa and Crohn’s disease.
Having one may make you 5 times more likely to have the other;
so, there may be an immunopathogenic link between the two.
They may share similar abnormal immune responses.
So, if cutting yeast out of Crohn’s patients’ diets helps them,
then maybe cutting out yeast might help with HS.
A dozen patients with hidradenitis suppurativa were put on a diet
that eliminated foods with yeast, like bread and beer,
and they all got better, 12 out of 12:
immediate stabilization of their clinical symptoms,
and the skin lesions regressed, reversed,
went away within a year on the diet.
Okay but, how do we know it was the yeast?
By cutting out a food like pizza you also may be cutting out
a lot of dairy,
and that's the one other thing that appears to help.
A dairy-free diet led to improvement in 5 out of 6 patients.
See, those tunnels of pus are caused by the rupture
of the same kind of sebaceous glands that can cause regular acne.
But, in hidradenitis suppurativa, they explode,
and dairy products contain 3 things that drive the process
of clogging up your pores and contributing to the leakage,
rupture, and ultimate explosion.
First, there’s the casein, which elevates IGF-1
(I’ve got probably a dozen videos on that).
Then, there’s the whey and lactose,
and third, the hormones in the milk itself:
6 hormones produced by the cow, her placenta, and mammary glands
that end up in the milk.
So, why not try cutting out dairy and see if things improve?
There’s a whole series of nasty drugs you can try
try to beat back the inflammation,
but as soon as you stop them, the disease can come roaring back.
Even after extensive surgery, the disease comes back
in like 25 to 50% of cases;
so, we are desperate to research new treatment options.
But, patients aren’t waiting.
They’re getting together in online communities,
sharing their trial and error through social media,
and people reported successes cutting out dairy
and refined carbs, like white flour and sugar.
So, this dermatologist in New Hampshire was like,
OK, let’s give dairy-free a try,
and 83% of his HS patients he tried it on started to get better,
and he didn’t even try cutting out the sugar and flour.
Now, this wasn’t a clinical trial or anything, he just figured, why not?
It’s not easy to do a randomized clinical dietary intervention,
but that doesn’t stop individual patients from giving things a try.
I mean, you understand why there has to be institutional review boards
and stuff when they try out new, risky drugs and surgeries,
but if it’s just a matter of trying switching to soy milk or something,
why do they have to wait?
As patients search for an effective path to clearing this horrible disease,
they need support and guidance to follow the most healthful diet available,
free of dairy and highly processed sugar and flour.
Nothing could be more natural.
What about the yeast, though?
How do we know it was the yeast?
And look, 8 of the 12 patients just went through surgery;
so, maybe that was why they got so much better.
It’s like when I hear someone who has cancer
and goes through the conventional chemo/surgery/radiation
followed by some quack clinic in Mexico,
and then attributes their cure to the wheatgrass colonics or whatever they got.
How do they know it wasn't the chemo/surgery/radiation that saved them?
In this study, why do we suspect it was the yeast?
Because not only did every single one of the patients get better,
every single one showed an immediate recurrence of skin lesions
following accidental or voluntary consumption of beer
or other foods like bread.
So, not only did the elimination of yeast result in rapid stabilization
and complete regression of the lesions within a year,
but, in every single case, take a little brewer’s yeast
or something and within 24 to 48 hours,
BAM, the symptoms are back.
So, that’s why the researchers concluded that a simple exclusion diet
could promote the resolution of the skin lesions
involved in this disabling and perhaps actually not so rare disease.
What was the response in the medical community to this remarkable, landmark study?
Why was there no mention of informed consent and ethics committee approval?
Letter after letter saying wait a second, you violated the Declaration of Helsinki,
which is like the Nuremburg Code or Geneva Convention
to protect against involuntary human experimentation,
yet where was the institutional review board approval
for this yeast-exclusion study?
To which the researchers replied, look, we just told them to avoid a few foods.
We gave them the choice: we put you on drugs
that can have side effects, such as causing liver problems,
or you can try out this diet.
And the patients preferred the diet,
not to mention, I would add, that they were all cured!
Anyway, bottom line, by avoiding foods, like pizza,
which contains both dairy and yeast,
sufferers may be able to prevent their armpits
from turning into this: stage 3 of the disease.