Let's Get It Started

So I'm starting this as a parallel to my wife's Paleo blog.  We've been following a Paleo diet for a little over two months now, and we want to be advocates for the diet in any way we can.  We've already lost a significant amount of weight, and our overall health has certainly improved.

Let's start with the basics.  A Paleo diet is one where we attempt to eat only the foods eaten by our Paleolithic ancestors (religion aside, as I'm sure much debate could ensue).  This diet defines the primary antagonists as grains, dairy, and legumes.  The claim is that these no-no foods are partly--if not mostly--responsible for the diseases of civilization, such as autoimmunity and certain cancers.  I'll try to explain my understanding of the mechanism behind the food/disease relationship in a later post.

I'm lucky--I've managed to pick up a few autoimmune diseases in my short time here.  When you get an illness, you go to the doctor, and you expect to be cured.  With autoimmunity, however, that's normally not the case.  Doctors are often quick to treat autoimmunity, but for most of us, there is no magic cure.  Currently, I'm on hormone replacement therapy for life.

My body has decided to attack itself...but why?  No doctor that I've seen has ever bothered to try to explain why I'm sick.  It only seems logical that to cure a disease, you address the cause, and Western medicine appears to have a very narrow view of what can actually cause disease.  I have a huge range of treatment options.  I have no curing options.

Or do I?  The claims made by proponents of this diet can be extreme at times (let's put that MS into remission; let's reverse the damage caused by your autoimmunity), and they're almost always anecdotal (not many medical journals are going to publish extensive studies on diets with such radical claims), but they're almost always positive.  As more and more people adhere to a Paleo (or reasonably similar) diet, we hear more and more of these stories of improvement.

So here I am.  I have chosen to follow a Paleo diet with hopes of improvement.  I would love to free my body of disease.  From what I have read, it has happened.  From what I believe, it could happen again.