Food and RLS
By Dr. Victor Jean Ouellette, February 2004.
Many people with RLS have noted that food has an effect on this condition. When it comes to food, I have found, as a clinician for more than 30 years that five diets are of help with human problems. Usually what people are looking for in food modification, are five things.
1. Weight loss
2. Weight gain
3. Pain Relief
4. Optimal health
5. Athletic performance
enhancement
The five diets that I have found containing good information to learn, are as follows.
1. Pain Relief Diet (www.PainReliefDiet.com) [The diet I created for my patients.]
2. Paleolithic Diet (Caveman Diet. Dr. Loren Cordain’s diet)
3. Eat Right 4 Your Type Diet (Dr. Peter D’Adamo’s diet)
4. Calorie Reduced Diet (The CR diet or Calorie Restricted Diet)
5. Zone Diet
The first three diets listed above try to teach that certain foods are not good for you. The problem is that many of these foods are tasty foods that give a lot of satisfaction for one reason or another. Usually they are high in fat (oils) and sugar and this sets off the satiation reflexes and the serotonin pathways which all make us feel good when we eat them.
The food industry is very aware of this and they create food specifically to bring us back to that particular brand. We end up consuming foods that set us up to feel good but in a sort of artificial way by setting up a memory of a particular food with a particular good feeling.
It is something akin to Pavlovian conditioning where the scientist (Pavlov) trained his dogs to salivate at the ring of a bell. It is very difficult to break that Pavlovian conditioning that we created in ourselves by consuming these foods so frequently. We all want to feel good and we want to feel good ALL the time.
Some people have very efficient metabolic systems that conserve energy while others have faulty genes which all lead to excess weight when Calories consumed outstrip Calories burned.
However, there is another problem with food that I have come to understand just a little. As explained in the Paleolithic diet and the Eat Right 4 Your Type diet, some common foods may be harmful to humans. Just because they have been consumed for centuries does not mean they are good foods for humans. Some |
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foods set up reactions which are immune response related, (as explained in the Paleolithic diet data on various web sites and in various scientific papers), and some foods set up other reactions.
Some foods are vasoactive. They set off the blood vessels in the body. Some of these foods are MSG (monosodium glutamate), Nitrosamins (red colour added to meat to preserve it and give it a red colour), and Tyrosine (found in pickled herring, red wines, some cheeses, bananas, avocados and other foods).
Some foods are what are called Neurotransmitter Inhibitors. They block the normal flow of nerve neurotransmitters which is what makes one nerve communicate with another nerve. Some of these neurotransmitter inhibitor foods are solanine and chaconine (cholinesterase inhibitors), found in potatoes. Other related products in the other nightshade foods are tomatodine found in tomatoes.
Some of these neurotransmitter inhibitors are found in small quantities in many other foods. Here is an excerpt from the second edition of my book Dr. Ouellette’s Pain Relief Diet Manual which is not ready for publication as yet.
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“Some other foods that also have small amounts of cholinesterase inhibiting compounds are, broccoli, sugar beets, rutabagas, pumpkins, squash, carrots, Valencia oranges, strawberries, lima beans, asparagus, radishes, and turnips. If you have a meal that has all of these foods in it, in addition to some of the other nightshades, then you may wonder why you feel funny. Luckily Solanine is not absorbed very well.”
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I believe that scientists will come to prove that certain foods bring about a type of plugging of the system by either making red blood cells more sticky or by causing some other back up in the blood or the lymphatic system. This back up then leads to lowered oxygenation and the build up of partially digested foods in soft tissues. The result is a host of problems like Restless Legs, Chronic Fatigue, Fibromyalgia skin hives and red patches and others.
If various foods summate to create problems, as I believe they do, then learning how to deal with that summation will be paramount. Scientists will eventually discover how and why these food cause harm and also if the damage is permanent or temporary. Hopefully damage is temporary but one may find that a surprisingly small amount of an offending food can set things off again. Celiac patients have learned this as have peanut allergy sufferers.
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Until scientists make these discoveries we have to fend for ourselves. That means discovering for ourselves what foods we react to.
How then does one go about discovering what foods might be harmful to them? How does one stay away from foods identified as harmful?
The first question is fairly easy to answer but takes quite some level of perseverance. The second question is very difficult indeed to answer. It may require a sort of epiphany or peak experience or even a peak LOW experience to set one’s resolve.
If you start with the Pain Relief Diet (PRD) you will have eliminated a large majority of foods that for decades nutritionists have been saying cause problems in humans. If you then refine the PRD by avoiding the sub groups of food harmful to your blood type (according to the Eat Right 4 Your Type theory), then you will have a good place to start. There will be lots of foods left for you to eat. You will just have to learn what these foods are and you will have to learn to deal with the LOSS.
Yes, the loss. When you drop these PRD-Poison foods as I call them, you will experience a loss probably as great as a loved one leaving you. The change in your lifestyle will be profound and you will be left in Limbo-Land dancing around trying to figure out how to get satisfaction from food.
It does not mater that nature designs food only to prolong your life. YOU WANT SATISFACTION TOO. Ah, some people eat to live while others live to eat.
Your task is to transform yourself into some one who eats to live but also garners some sort of satisfaction from grazing. That means eating lots of green leafy vegetables and lots of fruits. Don’t get me wrong now. Humans are meant to eat meat. That is why we have a gene to program our digestive systems to digest elastin, a protein found only in animal tissue.
The non starchy vegetables and fruits have many advantages from super phytonutrients, flavonoids, and minerals to vitamins that keep you looking young and living long.
Two more very important principles now.
1. Consume LOW Calorie
meals
2. Do not consume any food or drinks other than plain water, within 4 to 4.5 hours before going to sleep.
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| This is very important. You do not want your digestive system in absorptive mode when you go to sleep. There are several reasons for this. Suffice it to say it is better to go to bed hungry than consume food before bedtime particularly if you have a condition like restless legs.
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| Dr. Victor Jean Ouellette |
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