Meet Jeanette, she has lupus. (A chronic autoimmune disease in which the body’s immune system becomes hyperactive and attacks normal, healthy tissue. This results in symptoms such as inflammation, swelling, and damage to joints, skin, kidneys, blood, the heart, and lungs.)

(Jeanette mentions PatientsLikeMe in her video. PatientsLikeMe is a free website where people can share their health data to track their progress, help others, and change medicine for good. It’s an online community with over 2,500+ conditions.)

Now, the rest of the story.

Jeanette says she turned to dietary changes when she stopped taking Plaquenil due to severe side effects, including retina damage. She started logging her food intake for a few weeks, she noticed how some of her favorite foods were causing issues ranging from stomach pains to full inflammation. That’s when she started paying close attention to what her body was telling her and realized she needed to do something about it.

Jeanette didn’t go on any specific diet at first, she started eliminating certain foods like sugar (which was causing major fatigue and pain), garlic (causing major inflammation in her knees), eggplants (fatigue and pain in her feet), bean sprouts (stomachaches) and alfalfa (full inflammation and full flare) — some of the known foods that lupus patients shouldn’t eat [learn more at lupus.org].

Then Jeanette noticed how meat was causing fatigue and noticed inflammation directly in her knees. She gave up red meat for two weeks, felt good and noticed a reduction of pain. Then she gave up chicken the following two weeks and felt even better. “It was so amazing that I decided to give it up for good.” After the first few months without meat, my doctor started noticing my blood work was improving drastically, so she began reducing her medications since she was no longer flaring or feeling pain. After a full year she reduced all medications to zero and even stopped infusions.

(Everyone is different, so these foods and dietary changes may not affect you the same way. Talk with your doctor or a registered dietitian about finding foods that work for you.)