Meditation + Autoimmune Reintroduction
AIP Reintroduction
The reintroduction phase of the autoimmune protocol diet can be daunting, especially once the diet has worked and you are feeling amazing, free from the symptoms and chronic inflammation that autoimmune disease inflicts. However, it is extremely important to reintroduce foods into your diet to be able pinpoint exactly which ones cause an autoimmune inflammatory response in your body and the ones that don’t. After some time eating AIP, it is common to feel afraid or hesitant to reintroduce foods that may be inflammatory. After all, we did all of this work and are finally feeling like symptom-free superheroes, why mess that up just to try a food you have already gotten used to living without?
Reasons to Reintroduce
There are several reasons. First and foremost, staying too long on the Autoimmune Protocol diet can bring about nutritional deficiencies that can cause other unwanted health complications. Autoimmune disease is enough to navigate as it is, so it is important that we brave the potential pain and try reintroducing foods one at a time.
Another reason is that many foods eliminated during the AIP elimination phase, likely will not cause immune-triggered inflammation for you. Over time with reintroduction, there will emerge a list of foods that you successfully reintroduce, foods that do not cause you pain or discomfort even when consumed in large portions, and a second list of foods that do. The foods that do are the ones you will want to avoid indefinitely, although you may try reintroducing them again later once your symptoms have calmed and you’ve achieved other successful reintroductions. The foods that don’t cause you pain will be the foods that do not trigger the particular immune-induced inflammation in your system, and are therefore safe to eat. Once you have been able to successfully prove with gradual reintroduction (we will get to more on this later) that a food from the AIP elimination list does not cause pain for you, there is really no reason to continue eliminating it from your diet. In fact, many foods eliminated on AIP have an abundance of nutritional qualities to offer that your body needs and wants, so it is of utmost importance to identify over time which ones work for you.
3-Day Reintroduction Method
When reintroducing foods, I recommend the three-day reintroduction practice. Be sure to do this with one food at a time, and to start on a day that you are totally symptom free. This way you will be able to more clearly notice any pain or other symptoms that may arise upon consumption of the food you have chosen to try getting back. On the first day, have a small portion of the food. It is possible you may feel a reaction somewhat immediately, such as within the proceeding half hour or less. Depending on the food and your body, it may take longer such as a few hours later or into the night after first trying it again. If you do not observe any painful symptoms or negative reactions, this food is clear to try again the second day.
On the second day, you will want to have a normal size portion of the food you have chosen to try reintroducing. Take the same measures of observation after eating it, until you go to sleep that night. If you experience a negative reaction this day, it is better to not try the food again on the third day. This may be a food that stays on your unsuccessful reintroductions list.
If you don’t experience any pain or symptoms after trying the food a second time, it is recommended to try it again a third day. On the third day, try consuming a somewhat larger-than-normal portion of the selected food. For example, if you are trying to reintroduce eggs, you might have one egg on the first day, two eggs on the second day, and three eggs on the third day. If on the third day, you continue to experience no negative symptoms, it is likely that this food does not trigger an inflammatory response for you. Felicidades! If you do have a negative reaction on the third day, it could mean that this food may not be wise to reintroduce into your diet, or that you could maybe safely eat it only in very small portions.
Keep observing your body’s signals over time as your begin eating foods that you have successfully reintroduced. The body is constantly giving us information and never lies. It is up to us to make sure we are listening.
How Meditation can Help with AIP Reintroduction
Clearly, this process can be very challenging and requires immense amounts of patience and awareness. Integrating mindfulness practices like meditation can help with the AIP Reintroduction phase for several reasons.
Increasing Awareness of Sensation
First and foremost, meditating helps us increase our awareness of sensation in the body. With heightened awareness of sensation, we are more tuned-in to the body’s physical experience. This is extremely serving for the reintroduction phase of the Autoimmune Protocol diet because our awareness of the body’s reaction to foods when we are trying to reintroduce them is sharpened. As some of these reactions may be extremely subtle at times, heightened awareness makes us better able to determine if a food may be safe for us to continue reintroducing.
Cultivating Non-Attachment to Outcome
A main principle of meditation, and perhaps one of its most challenging lessons, is the idea of non-attachment. For example, Vipassana Meditation breaks down the understanding that at least half of the suffering we experience in life derives from attachment to the past (missing something that is now gone, wanting things to be a way they used to be), or attachment to the future (wanting something to happen so desperately that it actually causes you to suffer and takes you out of the present). As we start practicing meditation our attachment to suffering and outcome begins to wane. Even just 5-10 minutes a day is enough to get going.
This psycho-somatic change may be an invaluable weapon for autoimmune protocol reintroduction, insofar as it helps us maintain equanimity regardless of whatever happens when we try to reintroduce an eliminated food. With an attuned sense of non-attachment, developed through a patient meditation practice, we are able to take in stride whatever situation plays out when bringing a potentially inflammatory food back into our system, without reacting or identifying with any potential suffering or pain that may arise. A non-attached AIP reintroduction is not worried about if the food will work out for us our not, it is not longing for anything, it is only observing, aware, and accepting of reality as it is.
Training the Mind to Actualize Impermanence
A lot of meditation techniques function on the basis of focusing on the breath, observing sensation in the body (and thoughts passing through the mind), and not reacting to any of it. Over time, this trains our brains to be able to maintain “perfect equanimity” in the face of any challenging event or circumstance life may present us with.
How it works:
During meditation, we become aware of all kinds of sensations happening in the body. Some of these are “gross” sensations, or surface level, as in they are happening in the physical plane of the body. Some are “subtle” sensations, like vibrations, happening more in the cellular make up of the body. Some of these sensations are uncomfortable while others are pleasant. The thing they all have in common is that they are impermanent and passing.
Although modern science claims there is “no cure” to autoimmune disease, it is possible to live a pain-free life with conscious lifestyle changes such as diet, exercise, sleep, stress, and sun-exposure. Sharpening our sense of impermanence helps us train our brain to not identify with pain or negative symptoms we may feel during the reintroduction process. It helps us keep in mind that any inflammation-triggered pain response we may experience from trying to reintroduce a food is a passing, temporary sensation that we will not feel forever. Of course, this is only true insofar as we take our bodies’ signals to heart and don’t keep eating a food that we discover causes us pain.
Meditation as a tool for AIP Reintroduction
All of this to say, although the AIP reintroduction phase can be intimidating, and starting or maintaining a meditation practice may also be challenging, both endeavors are absolutely worth the work and investment in your own wellbeing. It can be especially liberating to live symptom-free once you have traversed the AIP reintroduction phase without all of the medications rheumatologists rely on to treat autoimmune symptoms. Meditation can help you not only during the reintroduction phase of AIP, but also to reduce stress in your daily life, which can minimize your overall autoimmune symptoms.
The three main ways that meditation can help in autoimmune protocol reintroduction are:
Increasing awareness of sensation
Cultivating non-attachment to outcome
Training the mind to actualize impermanence
If you have never tried meditating before, I can pretty much guarantee you it is not as difficult as the AIP diet. That means you already know you can do it. Try starting with just 5 or 10 minutes a day. You could try in the morning perhaps after your exercise or wake-up routine. You can set a timer on your phone, find a cozy & quiet place to sit, close your eyes, and just let yourself breathe. When the timer goes off, you can close your practice by giving yourself a big hug or taking a super deep breath and exhaling it with a long sigh. It may help to reward yourself after your meditation with your cup or morning coffee or tea, or a healthy breakfast like my jungle fruit salad.
Prioritize Your Own Wellness
No one can make the decision for you. The Autoimmune Protocol Diet, reintroduction phase, and meditation are all practices that indicate you are out there fighting for your own health and happiness. The good news is that meditation has the power to ease the burden of AIP reintroduction as it helps us fine tune our self-awareness and experience the truth of impermanence. The other good news is that you are on your way to feeling better than you ever have. Of course, these things each bring their own challenges but if you didn’t believe you were worth it, you probably wouldn’t be reading this article.
With lots of love,
XO lex of the jungle
