Hi Ron,

I was wondering whether, in your research for your book, you came across any
material on polymyalgia rheumatica. I have a family member and a dear
friend who each have the condition and are on prednisone. I want to
recommend paleo diet, but the standard medical advice is that there's no
dietary aspect to the cause, and I haven't been able to find even any
anecdotal reports on the internet. If it was me, I would assume it had an
etiology connected with inflammation, leaky gut, and molecular mimicry, and
would go strictly paleo. But that's what I do anyway. It would help these
others if I had something more to give them to help them decide to make such
a major dietary change.

I personally would use the approach laid out recently by Matt Lalonde on
Robb Wolf's podcast. He stated that, so far, every autoimmune condition that
has been looked at closely from this point of view, has turned out to have
some version of a leaky gut/molecular mimicry connection. Here's what he
said:

For any autoimmune condition:
Gluten-free alone is not enough.
Lowish carbs, which may increase TSH, but that doesn't mean it's
pathological.
Carbs should be mostly glucose, not much fructose, so mostly roots, tubers,
vegetables, bulbs, but limit fruits.
Peel your vegetables whenever possible because most plant-protective
anti-nutrients are found in the peel.
Forbidden for life:
 All cereal grains: Wheat (spelt, einkorn, durum, emmer, kamut), barley,
rye, triticale, oats, rice, corn, maize, wild rice, sorghum, millet, teff,
amaranth, buckwheat, fonio, breadnut, cockscomb, cattail, chia, wattleseed
(acacia), Goosefoots (quinoa, pitseed, kañiwa)
 Eggs of any kind.
 Dairy of any kind.
 Nuts and seeds of any kind.
 NSAIDs of any kind.
 Nightshades (tomato, pepper, eggplant, potato).
 Alcohol.
 Antacids that contain aluminum hydroxide.
 Oral contraceptives.
 Iodine (if you have Hashimoto's).

(I'm not sure why he didn't specifically mention legumes, but I would add
them to the list.)

What he doesn't seem to acknowledge is that molecular mimicry and
autoimmunity can also happen in response to an infectious agent, such as a
virus. I saw some discussion of PMR and GCA possibly being triggered by an
unknown infectious agent.

Posting this to the Paleofood list, in case anyone else wants to chime in.

Thanks,
Hilary