dairy ... a trigger food for psoriasis? [long]

[steelem]

ham - thats very healthy but always keep the body guessing what food its going to have the following day.. ie

breakfast monday oats & blueberries tuesday cornflakes & an apple wednesday bran flakes & a banana thursday smothie blueberries strawberry yoghurt oats

your mid morning & afternoon snacks can be the charles smoothie..

do the same with lunch & dinner keep the body guessing cut out the rubbish plenty of salads vegetable fish & lean meats - choose 1 meal with potato /rice /pasta

[H.A.M]

Thanks for the replies.

Steelem I'm kinda confused as to why you think I should keep the body guessing what foods its gonna get. It's not like it has a mind of its own. Is there something I'm missing? The only downside that I can think of of having a strict diet that you follow everyday is that it can get quite hard on your mind. Other than that I think I'll get most of the nutritions I need from the diet and I  doubt my body cares if its from X food or Y food as long as it gets what it need, no?

The main reason why I'm cutting out on so many stuff like rice/pasta and what not is because I wanna have the same results Charles did.

[steelem]

ye your missing what most ppl dont realise - balanced diet is key to anything - ive been studying nutrition over the past year - tweeks here and there a year of avocado spinach smoothies but hey i know understand the keys to balance and that is dont have the same thing day in day out - keep the body guessing..

[Vladex]

Hi.  As I mentioned in other posts, I am well along in clearing my psoriasis in large part due to stopping all dairy consumption.  However I never read anything which could possibly explain the dairy-psoriasis connection.  Until now.

"The China Study" by T Colin Campbell is a very interesting book.  It compares the western diet and its impact on people with the equivalent in China back in the 1970s (..the Chinese took meticulous records on dietary habits, diseases, and other related information).  Of course the conclusion is that a diet rich in animal fats and protein (including casein, from milk) are bad for you.  It causes all sort of illnesses, cancers, etc.  But beyond all this, the author, a renowned researcher, also discusses his thoughts on autoimmune diseases.  Here are some excerpts:

"
One of the fundamental mechanism for this self-destructive behavior is called molecular mimicry.  It so happens that some of the foreign invaders that our soldier cells seek out to destroy look the same as our own cells.  The immune systems "molds" that fit these invaders also fit our own cells.  The immune system then destroys, under some circumstances, everything that fits the mold, including our own cells.  This is an extremely complex self-destructive process involving many different strategies on the part of the immune system, all of which share the same fatal flaw of not being able to distinguish "foreign invader proteins from the proteins of our own body.

What does all of this have to do with what we eat?  It so happens that the antigens that trick our bodies into attacking our own cells may be in food.  During the process of digestion, for example, some proteins slip into our bloodstream from the intestine without being fully broken down into their amino acid parts.  The remnants of undigested proteins are treated as foreign invaders by our immune system, which sets about making molds to destroy them and sets into motion the self-destructive autoimmune process.

One of the foods that supply many of the foreign proteins that mimic our own body is cow's milk.  Most of the time, our immune system is quite smart.  Just like an army arranges for safeguards against friendly fire, the immune system has safeguards to stop itself from attacking the body it's supposed to protect.  Even though an invading antigen looks like one of the cells in our own body, the system can still distinguish our own cells from the invading antigen.
.
.
.
The immune system uses a delicate process to decide which proteins should be attacked and which should be left alone.  The way this process, which is incredibly complex, breaks down with autoimmune diseases is not yet understood.
"

The author then talks about Type 1 diabetes, an autoimmune disease.  Apparently there is close association between this disease and cow's milk consumption in infants.  Additionally, folks with the disease experience considerable relief (require less insulin medication) if they are placed on a dairy free diet.  So what does this have to do with psoriasis?  Perhaps a lot.

Apparently autoimmune diseases have a lot in common.  Firstly, they are often clustered together (differing autoimmune diseases often occur in the same families).  They are more common the further away from the equator you go (yes, vitamin D supplements are smart), and the author suggests the incidence of automimmune diseases is broadly proportionate to the amount of cow's milk consumed. 

And so, the author gives a lot of learned speculation. Yet it sounds a lot like he is associating the affect of dairy on those with "Leaky Gut" syndrome.  ...it all sounds plausible to me.


_Lazza


PS - quite surprisingly, the author lists 17 of the top autoimmune diseases ... with psoriasis not being on it!!!  He pulls this list from a medical journal article dated 1997.  The title of the article is "...selected autoimmune diseases".  I hope the author corrects this error should the book be revised.

That just sounds like more stress and fear mongering. Obviously you read these fad diet books so you are susceptible to their tactics. "China study" is just an extreme vegan type book and there are many low carbers and other dieters who use the same scare tactics.

When one digests protein it is broken down by digestive enzymes and the stomach acids and then reassembled, thus ingested proteins can't be a problem as they are dissembled and reassembled, that's why a man doesn't become a pig when he eats pork . All proteins are broken down unless they are clever snake or mushroom toxins which is on purpose and even if you inject it into the blood it will get destroyed by the immune system. All living beings are made of pretty much the same 20 amino acids which make the protein, they are just assembled differently.

[igH]

When one digests protein it is broken down by digestive enzymes and the stomach acids and then reassembled, thus ingested proteins can't be a problem as they are dissembled and reassembled, that's why a man doesn't become a pig when he eats pork . All proteins are broken down unless they are clever snake or mushroom toxins which is on purpose and even if you inject it into the blood it will get destroyed by the immune system. All living beings are made of pretty much the same 20 amino acids which make the protein, they are just assembled differently.

then why are there any food allergies and/or intolerance?

The protein in the food is the most common allergic component. These kinds of allergies occur when the body's immune system mistakenly identifies a protein as harmful. Some proteins or fragments of proteins are resistant to digestion and those that are not broken down in the digestive process are tagged by the Immunoglobulin E (IgE).

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Food intolerances can be classified according to their mechanism. Intolerance can result from the absence of specific chemicals or enzymes needed to digest a food substance

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supplementation with digestive enzymes/bile salts/hcl-pepsin combinations have proven to be effective...

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[Chappers_27]

Eggs are NOT dairy.

Vladex, sounds like you work for the pharmaceutical companies, and are here to make sure people keep purchasing their products :-)

Anyhow, for a real answer to dairy and psoriasis, see below. The doctor has spent 30 years researching psoriasis. Dairy, in some people, causes the release of phosphorylase kinase, which causes psoriasis. And psoriasis, by the way, according to her, is due a defective gene (on the 17th chromosome) which fails to turn off after injury, or infection. Seems plausible to me.

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[Spotted_owl]

Eggs are NOT dairy.

Vladex, sounds like you work for the pharmaceutical companies, and are here to make sure people keep purchasing their products :-)

Anyhow, for a real answer to dairy and psoriasis, see below. The doctor has spent 30 years researching psoriasis. Dairy, in some people, causes the release of phosphorylase kinase, which causes psoriasis. And psoriasis, by the way, according to her, is due a defective gene (on the 17th chromosome) which fails to turn off after injury, or infection. Seems plausible to me.

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Well, about all I can say is that she seems to be about the only one I can find that identifies the seventeenth chromosome as the culprit.  Most references I happened across were to the sixth chromosome.

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A strong genetic predisposition can be seen in psoriasis. Around 8 genetic susceptibility loci (PSORS I-VIII) have been observed (1). Psoriasis susceptibility 1 (PSORS1) locus located on the 6th chromosome is considered to be the most important one and can be seen in up to 50% of psoriasis cases (3).

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Psoriasis is associated with pleiotropic susceptibility loci identified in type II diabetes and Crohn disease.

N Wolf, M Quaranta, N J Prescott, M Allen, R Smith, A D Burden, J Worthington, C E M Griffiths, C G Mathew, J N Barker, F Capon, R C Trembath

Journal Article: Journal of Medical Genetics (impact factor: 5.75). 03/2008; 45(2):114-6. DOI: 10.1136/jmg.2007.053595
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Psoriasis is an immune-mediated skin disorder that is inherited as a multifactorial trait. Linkage analyses have clearly mapped a primary disease susceptibility locus to the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) region on chromosome 6p21. More recently, whole-genome association studies have identified two non-MHC disease genes (IL12B and IL23R), both of which also confer susceptibility to Crohn disease (CD). OBJECTIVE AND METHODS: To ascertain the genetic overlap between these two inflammatory conditions further, we investigated 15 CD-associated loci in a psoriasis case-control dataset. RESULTS: The analysis of 1256 patients and 2938 unrelated controls found significant associations for loci mapping to chromosomes 1q24 (rs12035082, p = 0.009), 6p22 (rs6908425, p = 0.00015) and 21q22 (rs2836754, p = 0.0003). Notably, the marker showing the strongest phenotypic effect (rs6908425) maps to CDKAL1, a gene also associated with type 2 diabetes. CONCLUSIONS: These results substantiate emerging evidence for a pleiotropic role for s genes that contribute to the pathogenesis of immune-mediated disorders.

1q24, 6p21, 6p22 and 21q22.  No sign of 17.

This is not to say Heng is wrong, but I don't see any support for it.  On top of that, I am not too hip on all the emphasis on antibiotics as a primary treatment for P.  I mean, that is how drug resistant Staph got started in the first place.  Too much prescription of antibiotics.  Just my opinion for what it is worth.

[Eveloftus]

I agree with you Spotted Owl that psoriasis has a strong genetic component. That is why P tends to come back after treatment. We are born with those genes and develop P when something in the environment silences or activates the genes depending on the gene. After treatment the P comes back because the genes are still turned on (or off). Maybe sometime in the future treatments will be found that turn on or off the genes involved.

Supplements or diet may improve P in some people, possibly by causing epigenetic changes in some of those genes, which is why some people improve on them. But I suspect that for most people diet/supplements do not improve much their psoriasis.

[Spotted_owl]

I agree with you Spotted Owl that psoriasis has a strong genetic component. That is why P tends to come back after treatment. We are born with those genes and develop P when something in the environment silences or activates the genes depending on the gene. After treatment the P comes back because the genes are still turned on (or off). Maybe sometime in the future treatments will be found that turn on or off the genes involved.

Supplements or diet may improve P in some people, possibly by causing epigenetic changes in some of those genes, which is why some people improve on them. But I suspect that for most people diet/supplements do not improve much their psoriasis.

I agree completely, but will point out a thought that I have had.  I think that in some cases where the Psoriasis has been active for a longer period of time, it may be that changes in the diet or adding supplements may take much longer for the effects to show.  It may be that the improvement is there, but small enough not to be really noticeable and without cause to really be sure and thereby be more patient for a longer term about keeping the changes, people may give up too soon.  It is one of those things I have no way of knowing for sure.  Basically it is just a gut feeling.  Not a lot to go on, I know.

[outdamnedspot]

I kind of like Spotted_Owl's 'it might take longer to show any effects' or 'effects are small' theory.

I am reading Epigenetics by Nessa Creasy at the moment (Charlotte_S is too, I think she said on another thread, anyone else read it?).  In the book the author explains that trying to alter biochemical processes at the end of a long sequence of reactions (as with P - basically we don't know we have it until the evidence shows on the skin, which is the end of the line) is like trying to push a ball up a hill, when the ball is inclined to roll downwards  - it can be done, but it's not easy. 

This particular book is about the generalities of epigenetics, not P.  But there is an interesting section in Chapter 4 about something called histone modification.  I won't bore everyone with the details of this here (as I'm not sure I would get it right even if I did) but when I read this section of the book I thought 'gosh that sounds a lot like P' because these modifications can basically get switched on and off by environmental factors including those that occur as a response to diet. 

In one analysis what we are all trying to do on this board is identify the environmental factors that switch off our problem gene or - more likely?- switch on another gene that masks its effects, via a biochemical process called DNA methylation.

What is DNA methylation?  Well, my brain is hurting a bit, but it seems to be a process by which DNA gets washed with a kind of regulatory molecule, which stops it going wrong.  Basically!  Can anyone put it better than this in simple language - I'm sure they can.

Where does eating dairy, as in the thread title, fit into all of this - dunno!