The Elemental Diet

So I’ve been eating nothing but the Physician’s Elemental Diet powder for 12 days, and I am beat. But before I get into what happened, let me give a quick background on what exactly it was that I did, and my doctor’s reasoning behind it.

What is The Elemental Diet?

Elemental Diet

An elemental diet is a diet that proposes the ingestion, or in more severe cases use of a gastric feeding tube or intravenous feeding, of liquid nutrients in an easily assimilated form. It is usually composed of amino acids, fats, sugars, vitamins, and minerals. This diet, however, lacks whole or partial protein due to its ability to cause an allergic reaction in some people.

Wikipedia

Basically, the Elemental Diet is a powder that you eat exclusively for a period of 2-4 weeks. It is completely pre-digested, so your body doesn’t need to do much work to break it down.

Why the Elemental Diet?

These were the main ideas behind putting me on a 2-week elemental diet:

Clear up SIBO, which my doctor suspects I had, and improve my gut flora balance
Give my digestive tract a chance to rest and heal from any inflammation
See if I had any improvement in my gut symptoms (diarrhea, heartburn) and neurological symptoms (fatigue, concentration, brain fog)

Here is what I noticed while on the diet:

Mental clarity - On the whole, I was able to think more clearly and consistently. I started reading novels again and for the most part I am able to follow them!
Physical energy - Came and went. One day I would be walking 2 miles, two days later I would only have the energy to walk a short distance.
Body load - For the most part my heart rate slowed down and I was able to enter a deeper state of relaxation at night (except in the cases where I drank too much of the diet in a short time too close to bed). Before the diet, my chest was often tight at night and my breathing constrained.

I’ve been off of the diet (and on a khichdi-only diet) for a couple days now. I am noticing the heartburn is just starting to come back today even though I am currently taking no Betaine HCl.

Right before I started the Elemental Diet and right before I stopped it, I sent in uBiome Explorer and American Gut Project samples. They will take months to process, but when they come back I will be interested to see if my gut microbiome changed at all as a result of the diet. I’m planning to share those results, so either subscribe by email or follow me on Twitter if you are curious to see them when they come back.

The plan from here on out:

Eat only Khichdi for a few days
Introduce more and more real food, one food group every 3 days or so
Try Alfalfa, Horsetail and Nettle tea as an antihistamine to see if it helps cognitively
Take the antibiotic Augmentin to try and clear up my sinus opacification
Start on the Visibiome probiotic, gradually ramping it up to an aggressive dose
Take green banana powder as a prebiotic

This I hope will continue to shift my gut bacteria in the right direction, and resolve some of the gut and neurological issues.

I chronicled my whole day-by-day elemental diet experience on Twitter, which I would like to share with you:

Elemental Diet - Curated tweets by gutfeelingblog