Does anyone have any good recipes for a strict Lyme Disease diet?

I have been instructed to avoid: all sugar (including alcohol), zucchini, grains, potatoes, tomatoes, gluten/wheat, dairy, bell peppers, most fruits (unless high in fiber), peanuts (and most tree nuts), and other inflammatory foods.

I don't eat meat, but recently began trying fish (so far only trout & tilapia) that are locally & holistically farmed and don't contain mercury. I also don't eat garlic or onions or anything else strong in this kind of flavor, nor anything spicy, these things hurt my stomach.

I've been struggling to find recipes and have been eating the same meals every day which becomes BORING.

Breakfast: 2 seasoned eggs, kale, an apple, and 100% fruit juice (7g of sugar per 8oz - 100% juice, so I have about 4 oz & dilute with water).
Snacks: Cashews and other acceptable nuts & sometimes a salad if not with dinner.
Dinner: Tilapia/Trout with broccoli and carrots, & sometimes a salad if not as a snack.

That's all I eat. Anyone??

[JackieCalifornia]

Aggh.  That does sound ... painful.

I too am on a careful diet, but focussed a bit differently from yours.

I'm guessing no tomatoes because they are in the nightshade family?  (Tho I don't know how that promotes Lyme.)  
===========================================
What really surprises me is the ban on the humble zucchini.  It's not in the nightshade family, if that's the problem:

==Nightshade (incl. tomatoes):
Kingdom: Plantae
(unranked): Angiosperms
(unranked): Eudicots
(unranked): Asterids
Order: Solanales
Family: Solanaceae


==Squash, melons, cucumbers:
Kingdom: Plantae
(unranked): Angiosperms
(unranked): Eudicots
(unranked): Rosids
Order: Cucurbitales
Family: Cucurbitaceae
==================================================
But back to the larger question:  what can you eat?  Maybe ....

-Beans -- kidney, garbanzo, black-eyed peas, etc.
-Brussels sprouts (excellent when sauteed in extra virgin olive oil with a little salt) and with carrots (and if you can take it,onion), with a little water added toward the end
-Eggs
-Apples (lots of fiber)
-Applesauce (with nothing added)
-Green peas?
-Blueberries?
-Bananas (with or without Ghirardelli unsweetened cocoa powder sprinkled on -- honest, it's NOT bitter)
-Quinoa, which acts like a grain but is really a SEED.  I had never had it before, but it is fabulous.  It has all the essential amino acids, which is hard to find in one place.
-Rice has no gluten.  Brown or red rice is nice.  Asheville has a Whole Foods with that nice row of rice and quinoa bins ... that's where I shop here.
-Olive oil.  Extra virgin.  It makes everything taste better, both cooked and raw.
-Are you okay with lemons/limes?  That adds zing and Vit C.

I saute onions in olive oil, add vegetables and a little water, then salt at the end.   Without without quinoa, it's filling and tasty.  If you get fresh herbs like basil, that helps too.  You can saute them before putting the onions in the oil, or just chop raw and sprinkle over the final dish.  I don't have trouble with onions, but garlic is hard on my stomach ... both are good against bacteria, so I read.  

A current favorite of mine is to make quinoa (KEEN'-wah) and put it while hot in a big bowl with frozen peas and canned garbanzo beans and salt.  Really tasty to my palate.  Or replace the peas with blueberries or chunks of apple.

Quinoa and beans make a complete protein, which is important nutritionally.

Salmon is very good because of the particular fish oils it has.  When I'm too lazy to broil salmon, I eat it smoked from a package.

Roasted turkey from the deli (without preservatives) can start to taste really good when everything else is boring, and I'm not much on meat.  It's nutritious too.

That's off the top of my head.  I was on a very strict diet for a good while, but have been very content NOT to add back dairy or gluten.  

Hope that helps!  I'm still puzzled about the zucchini. ....

[ree427]

I like to recommend the book entitled "Recipes for Repair: A Lyme Disease Cookbook" by Gail Piazza and Laura Piazza. You can purchase it from Amazon. It's worth the $25.00.

[kt_pierce]

- No bananas (no starches+high sugar fruits)
- No rice (grains are causing inflammation, but I'm working hard on being able to handle brown rice, just hasn't happened yet)
- Only beans & legumes permitted: black beans, chickpeas, kidney beans, lentils, navy beans, peas, pinto beans

Tomatoes are inflammatory foods, as well as potatoes. Not sure why, but the Lyme Disease Solution book and my doctor both are very stern about this.  :(

Also, there is a small list of fish I'm permitted to eat, including salmon, but I've been a vegetarian my entire life and I've only been trying fish for a few months. I've started with a good, clean fish that doesn't have any fishy flavor at all: Tilapia.

Thanks for the ideas, I think the only thing you mentioned that I might could try is quinoa, although it's not on the list of permitted foods.

I ate 2 eggs for breakfast; that's all I've had to eat today. It's 6pm right now and I'm starving. It may not help that I have the worst decision-making skills while I'm hungry.  

[kt_pierce]

I'm afraid of spending money on books like this that only turn out to be disappointing. I don't have insurance and spend every last dime on medical costs. Nearly every Lyme Diet recipe book turns out to contain maybe 4 out of 100 recipes that I can actually use. They think everyone eats meat! Although, if I could make some actual meals happen with the nuts, seeds, eggs, etc. that I am allowed to eat, I'd be getting more protein than many meat eaters.

I appreciate the help, you guys! Still hunting for a way to eat. Hopefully I'll find something some day. I've lost 6 lbs in the last few weeks, and I'm already a twig. In total, I've lost 20 lbs trying to get through this diet. I can't lose any more weight!

[kt_pierce]

I decided to compile a list of foods I CAN eat:

Beverages:
- Purified water
- Unsweetened fruit juice
- Green Tea
- Vegetable juice without tomato
- Carbonated water (i.e. Perrier)

Fruit (2-3 servings/day):
- Apricot
- Avocado
- Blackberries
- Blueberries
- Cantaloupe
- Cranberries
- Date
- Fig
- Mango
- Pear
- Pineapple
- Prune
- Raspberries
- Watermelon

Nuts & seed:
- Almond Milk
- Bazil nuts
- Cashews
- Flaxseed
- Pecans
- Pumpkin seeds
- Sesame seeds
- Sunflower seeds
- Walnuts

Veggies (5-8 servings/day):
- Asparagus
- Broccoli
- Brussells sprouts
- Carrots
- Celery
- Cucumber
- Kale
- Pumpkin
- Romaine lettuce
- Spinach
- Squash
- String beans
- Tapioca (cassava)
- Watercress

Grains:
- Oatmeal, organic, slow-cooked

Beans & Legumes:
- Black Beans
- Chickpeas
- Kidney Beans
- Lentils
- Navy Beans
- Peas
- Pinto Beans

Herbs/spices/sweeteners:
- Sea salt
- Basil
- Black pepper
- Cardamom
- Cilantro
- Cinnamon
- Cloves
- Ginger
- Garlic [although I am sensitive]
- Parsley
- Oregano
- Rosemary
- Stevia
- Xylitol and sorbitol

Protein:
- Eggs
- Tilapia [a small list of other fish as well, however, this is the only fish on the list without a fishy flavor - which is not tolerable after a lifetime of not eating fish/meat]

Cooking Oils, etc:
- Apple Cider Vinegar
- Extra Virgin Olive Oil
- Ghee (clarified butter)
- Honey (no more than 2 teaspoons/day - raw, unheated)
- Margarines without transfats (i.e. Earth Balance or Smart Balance)
- Raspberry vinaigrette dressing
- Vanilla Extract

^ Everything listed above are foods I CAN have. Again, thank you so much for any helpful advice/recipes you may could share!!

[JackieCalifornia]

That's an impressive list!  

I don't use recipes ... I never could figure out how to cook without a cookbook till I met someone who learned from her Italian grandmother.  Basic approach:  Heat the olive oil first till it ripples a little, then add the washed, chopped herbs and stir them around a little till they get limp, then sautee any garlic and onion you might be using (optional) till they are limp, then add the vegetable(s) and wait a few minutes, stirring so the oil gets all over them, then a little water (not enough to make soup, just an inch or so), lid on, stir once or twice till cooked to your liking, a dash of balsamic vinegar right before it's done, plate it, salt it, mangia!  Go for slightly undercooking so it doesn't end up mushy.

I use that same process, with minor variations, in nearly everything I cook.  My oven broke a couple of years ago, and I don't miss it ... I stove-top cook everything.  You can make omelettes with vegetables too, and don't have to eat the eggs solo.  Vegetable soup made like in my previous paragraph is great, just put more water with the vegetables at the last stage.

I went on a VERY strict diet a couple of years ago:  vegetables and proteins (eggs, salmon, chicken only) and kept very alkaline (no vinegars, for example) for several months to kick a systemic yeast infection that had been festering for months and none of my docs figured it out till well into the process.  That killed the yeast, and for almost two years now I've eaten just as I describe above, plus adding back fruit, and my weight is stable as a rock.  I eat all I want whenever I want and don't crave a thing.

A couple of random comments:  

--vanilla extract may have an alcohol base; that could irritate your stomach

--margarines, like plastic, are manmade out of chemicals; I stick with extra virgin olive oil

--xylitol and sorbitol are made-up sweeteners; wiki says:  "Sorbitol also may aggravate irritable bowel syndrome, and similar gastrointestinal conditions, resulting in severe abdominal pain for those affected, even from small amounts ingested."  There's more at that entry if you're interested -- I've always had a touchy gut but am fine now that I avoid stuff like this.

--you don't need meat if you are getting complete proteins such as beans and rice.  There are lots of ways to prepare that, variations on a theme ... but they all start with olive oil.

--after a while without sugar and artificial sweeteners, my taste buds adapted to appreciate the sweetness of fruits, so that I, a lifelong sugar junkie, have no interest at all in candy, pies, cakes, etc.  I just sat here now and ate a couple of bowls of fresh blueberries and chickpeas mixed together, and they were so good!

If you are using canned or jarred food, read the labels obsessively so you aren't getting additives or preservatives.  They can cause reactions in sensitive people.  Prepared vegetable juices also sound like their labels need to be read carefully.  I use canned beans (since I never think far enough ahead to soak the dry ones), but even at big chain grocery stores, they sell 'organic' canned beans with no preservatives -- S*feway [that's an "A" that's missing] carries organic beans that contain:  "water, organic beans, sea salt."  That's it!  And really cheap.  Recently bought some at 4 cans for $5.

PS:
-- Chickpeas = garbanzo beans; same thing, diff. name
-- Zucchini IS a squash; still puzzling over your doc's ban on zukes.

[JackieCalifornia]

PS alkaline vs acid:  I always get those backwards.  I was trying to keep an *acid* diet:  lemon yes, vinegar no, etc.  But that was my peculiar situation.  

[tammyl79]

Idea 1 Try baking kale on a baking pan in the oven with olive oil, salt and pepper.
Idea 2 Place cauliflower in a baking dish, drizzle olive oil, lemon juice salt and pepper and bake at 400 deg for about 30 mins
Idea 3 Dip chicken into egg or almond milk, dip into quinoa flour mixed with spices and back in the over. Chicken strips! :)
Idea 4 Put avacodo in a blender, add some almond milk, a bit of stevia and cocoa and mix together. Makes an awesome chocolate shake!

[youvegottobekidding]

Who planned this very restrictive diet for you?
If a doctor or dietician, can't you thump your fist on their desk and demand some recipes?!!!

As far as tough diets go, I have done lots. I have had lyme and bart wreaking havoc in my intestine for 28 years and when it comes to supposedly  helpful diets, I have tried the lot!

By following a few like the one you have described, which bans many foods, I got clinical malnutrition with lots of very alarming symptoms - not what you need on top of lyme disease!
I may have misunderstood from what you have written, but when a nutritionist puts you on a diet that excludes so much food as that, they give you daily meal plans, telling you what to eat at breakfast, what at lunch etc and even specifying how much. They use spreadsheets to calculate how much of each nutrient you will be getting, to prevent what happened to me. Even then they sometimes get it wrong!

After years of this, I have come to the conclusion that you should only exclude a food completely if you know that you are allergic or intolerant to that specific food (not using general food groups) and that it gives you specific symptoms.
Diets that aim to achieve something general like "reduce inflammation" should be described along the lines of "eat less of this" and "eat lots of that" rather than "exclude completely".

There, that's my two cents worth.

[JackieCalifornia]

ktpierce's post above is almost a year old, so don't know if s/he will respond.

But I have a question:  what is missing from kt's list of permitted foods that is so alarming to you?

[youvegottobekidding]

I didn't notice it was an old thread just revived!

In the absence of dairy, I would like to see a full range of meats and including organ meats too. She does mention other types of fish, which you need for calcium, but you also need animal flesh for B vitamins.
If you want to be vegetarian then you do need to have dairy instead.

I like the list of nuts, but unless you eat them by the truckload you'd get a zinc deficiency on this diet - you need beef and organ meats, or shellfish, for that. When you get zinc deficiency, it's one of the "runaway" deficiencies that then makes you develop a series of other deficiencies, adn excess accumulation of other minerals that you cannot use properly, eg copper. When I got my manlutrition I developed copper poisoning, with symptoms of copper deficiency, because the copper needed zinc for my body to make use of it.

There's a reasonable choice of pulses but there are no onions or lima beans, which are essential to combine with those other pulses if you are going to get all 8 essential amino acids. (That's why vegan Indians always eat tons of onion in their meals, and also every time they're cooking and get out their lima beans they tell you "these are very important"!!!)
Again, if there were some sources of grade one protein like dairy or meat, this would not be a problem.

I think the fruit list is fine and apricot and canatalupe are gems in that.
However it makes no sense to exclude starches adn include sugar frmo fruit adn honey - what is that trying to achieve? Unless there is an enzyme deficiency that means starches are not digested, in which case you have to exclude the pulse and nuts too and you would be far more sensible to take digestive enzymes with meals instead.

The vegetable list is too restricted - I would like to see a far wider variety and especially some root vegetables, which are the richest sources of minerals and particularly all the antioxidant nutrients - very important to lymies.They are the best source of beta carotene adn vitamin A - it's not just carrots.
If you cut out all carbs from grains and seeds, which this diet does, you need potassium from some other source or you get a deficiency very fast, and the best source for that is root veg.
You also need root veg for decent amounts of molybdenum, and not getting enough of that makes you extremely vulnerable to accumulating toxic heavy metals like mercury, nickel, lead, and many others that you will be exposed to in your food and which you should be able to eliminate as you go along.

I could go on for just about ever on all this, I find it very interesting and have studied it a lot, but anyway, those are the main points!

[JackieCalifornia]

Thanks for the data download!  I'll study it more closely.

Dairy doesn't work for anyone who can't digest it, and there are lots of us out there.  There are other ways to get the calcium.

I eat fish of various kinds (sardines, tuna, sometimes salmon), but not organ meats or beef ... it's been so long that the thought of eating a hamburger or a steak makes me gag.

Beans-and-rice combos provide complete proteins.

B vitamins come in bananas, lentils, whole grains, green vegetables, eggs, turkey and tuna, among other things.

In other words, there are different ways to get to the same destination.

[youvegottobekidding]

I don't eat dairy either, I had to give it up (tragically!) when I became allergic about 4 years go.
Although you can get calcium from other sources, it's really hard to get up to the amount you need. I'm allergic to soya too, which is the next best bet, and unless I stuff fish down for lunch and dinner every day I just can't manage the daily requirement. If try to get it from any other source, you're lacking the vitamin D you need to actually absorb it so you have to plan a meal with vitamin D rich foods as well.  
I take tablets to be on the safe side!

Beware of tuna, it has a lot of mercury and we lymies are not good at detoxing those metals. Generally the bigger the fish, the more time it has had to accumulate mercury, so it's safest to go for the little fishies instead!
(I had my mercuy level measured and it was 81 times the WHO definition of the maximum healthy amnount. Yikes!)
Apparently when many types of bacteria find themselves in a mercury-rich person, they develop mercury an antibiotic resistance in a matter of days. Streptococcus becomes mutiple antibiotic resistant in 3 days when it meets mercury. Scary stuff.

[Valkyrie568]

That is scary stuff! It explains some things about a sinus staff infection my husband spent almost a year trying to get rid of!

Are you going to utilize EDTA chelation therapy to get your mercury level down?

[JackieCalifornia]

Yeah, I've decided to stop eating entirely.  Food is just toooo dangerous.

[youvegottobekidding]

I tried it for one session and it liberated so much mercury all at once I was rocking back and forth hugging my knee, gently groaning, like a lunatic in an asylum.
I am taking a herbal mix that apparently is suppoed to help you let it out more gradually. I don't know if it actually does anything.
I have done lots of reading and it seems most people think mercury does the main damage on entry, so trying to get it out once it's in there is a bit like locking the stable door after the horse has bolted.

[youvegottobekidding]

Haaaaa! I think you're right!  :-)
Maybe if I cut out food altogether I'll get rid of my spare tyre and feel better too?!!

[Imlovinlifer]

Not sure if you can have balsamic vinegar.... but I make my asparagus by mixing some with salt, pepper and butter... Then I drizzle and cook the asparagus for 15min 350 degree oven... roughly.... Also, maybe adding apple cider vinegar would be good...