What is the role of dairy- and yeast-exclusion diets on arresting and reversing an inflammatory autoimmune disease?
A 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 the researchers even thought to do the study was because Crohn’s patients tend to have elevated levels of antibodies to yeast, but Crohn’s is not the only autoimmune disease with increased yeast antibodies. The same has been found in lupus patients, found in rheumatoid arthritis, found in another joint disease called ankylosing spondylitis, found in autoimmune liver disease, and also found in 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? I discuss this in my video Dietary Cure for Hidradenitis Suppurativa.
Hidradenitis suppurativa can be a gruesome disease. It starts out with just pimples, typically along parts of the body where there are folds, such as the armpits, groins, buttocks, and under the breast. Then, painful nodules form that turn into abscesses and drain a thick, foul-smelling pus. And then? It gets even worse, forming active tunnels of pus inside your body.
And, it is not that rare. It has an estimated prevalence of about 1 to 4 percent, which is 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 researchers even think to try diet for the condition? I mean, since Crohn’s is a disease of intestinal inflammation, you can see how a food you react to could make matters 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 five times more likely to have the other, so there may be an “immunopathogenic link” between the two—they may share similar abnormal immune responses. Given that, if cutting yeast out of Crohn’s patients’ diets helps them, then maybe cutting it out of the diets of people with hidradenitis suppurativa might help them. 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. There was an “immediate stabilization of their clinical symptoms, and the skin lesions regressed,” that is, reversed, and 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 also appears to help. Indeed, a dairy-free diet led to improvement in about five out of six patients.
See, those tunnels of pus are caused by the rupturing of the same kind of sebaceous glands that can cause regular acne. In hidradenitis suppurativa, however, they explode, and “[d]airy products contain 3 components that drive the process that blocks the duct [clogging your pores] and contributes to its leakage, rupture, and ultimate explosion.” First, there’s casein, which elevates IGF-1. (I have about a dozen videos on IGF-1.) Second, the whey and lactose, and third, the hormones in the milk itself—six hormones produced by the cow, her placenta, and mammary glands that end up in the milk. So, why not try cutting out dairy to see if things improve?
There is a whole series of nasty drugs you can use to try to beat back the inflammation, but as soon as you stop taking them, the disease can come roaring back. Even after extensive surgery, the disease comes back in 25 to 50 percent 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 though social media, and people have reported successes cutting out dairy and refined carbohydrates, like white flour and sugar. So, a dermatologist in New Hampshire decided to give dairy-free a try, and 83 percent of the hidradenitis suppurativa patients he tried it on started to get better. What’s more, he didn’t even try cutting the sugar and flour out of their diets. Now, he didn’t conduct a clinical trial or anything. He just figured why not give dairy-free a go? It’s not easy to conduct randomized, clinical, dietary interventions, but that doesn’t stop individual patients from giving things a try. I mean, you can understand why there have to be institutional review boards and the like when trying out new, risky drugs and surgeries, but if it’s just a matter of trying a switch from cow’s milk to soy milk, for example, why do they have to wait? “As patients search for an effective path to clearance [of 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.”
But what about the yeast? How do we know it was the yeast? In the study we discussed earlier, 8 of the 12 patients had just gone through surgery, so maybe that’s why they got so much better. It’s similar to when I hear that someone with cancer had gone through the conventional route of chemotherapy, surgery, and radiation before going to some questionable clinic and then attributes their cure to the wheatgrass colonics or whatever else they got. How do they know it wasn’t the chemo/surgery/radiation that saved them? Well, in this study, why do we suspect it was the yeast? Because not only did every single one of the patients get better, “all the patients demonstrated 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 “a slow, but complete, regression of the skin lesions within a year,” but, in every single case, within 24 to 48 hours of taking a little brewer’s yeast or other “yeast-containing foods,” BAM!—the symptoms were back. So, that’s why the researchers concluded a “simple exclusion diet could promote the resolution of the skin lesions involved in this disabling and [perhaps 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 to the editor of the journal complained that the researchers had violated the Declaration of Helsinki, which is like the Nuremburg Code or Geneva Convention to protect against involuntary human experimentation, and asked where was the institutional review board approval for this yeast-exclusion study? In response, the researchers simply replied that they had just told them to avoid a few foods. They had given them the choice: We can put you on drugs that can have side effects, such as liver problems, or you can try out this diet. “The patients preferred the diet.” Let’s not forget, 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 the ravages of the disease.
This is the fourth and final installment of a video series on the role baker’s, brewer’s, and nutritional yeast may play in certain autoimmune diseases. If you missed any of the others, see:
For more on dairy hormones, see:
Check out our IGF-1 topic page if you’re unfamiliar with this cancer-promoting growth hormone, which I highlight in my video Animal Protein Compared to Cigarette Smoking.
In health,
Michael Greger, M.D.
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