Is there any particular Pernicious Anemia diet plan to adopt as treatment?
No.
Pernicious Anemia, by definition, is when your B12 deficiency is the result of your body being unable to absorb B12 through the stomach – most often due to autoimmune attacks on Intrinsic Factor (the protein that drives absorption of B12), or the gastric parietal cells, which are what produces Intrinsic Factor in first place.
When you have Pernicious Anemia, no diet plan in the world is going to help you get enough B12 into your bloodstream, and ultimately your cells. You will need lifelong injection therapy to live a normal life with as little symptoms of Pernicious Anemia as possible.
However, there are some dietary best practices to adopt once you’re tested and diagnosed with Pernicious Anemia and on proper treatment.
Pernicious Anemia Diet Plan
When you begin injecting B12, your anemia will get better and better and you’ll begin to produce red blood cells normally. During that period, your potassium levels may drop. Because of that, we recommend monitoring potassium levels and making sure your diet is rich in potassium foods especially during the first few months of injecting. Here are some potassium rich foods to consider:
- Baked sweet potato with the skin on.
- Salmon.
- Watermelon.
- Coconut water.
- Dark leafy greens like spinach or kale.
- Avocado.
- Banana.
- Butternut squash.
- Beet.
- Pomegranate.
If you’re diabetic, make sure you don’t go above 100g a day of carbs. Also, remember that vitamin B12 and folate (vitamin B9) need each other to function correctly. If you’re not on the upper end of the recommended folate range, we recommend supplementing, but not with folic acid which is not nearly as effective as l-methylfolate, which we recommend.
Autoimmune Diet Protocol
Here’s a good Pernicious Anemia treatment diet plan for you to follow.
Some leading autoimmune researchers have put forward the idea that the main cause of autoimmune disorder development is leaky gut. When leaky gut occurs, proteins, toxins and other particles flow into your circulation and the body develops an autoimmune response to those invading compounds. And if those compounds resemble your own tissues, your body starts to attack itself, and you get an autoimmune disease.
Pernicious Anemia is an autoimmune disease, before anything else. We recommend something similar to the diet described in Dr. Sarah Ballantyne’s book. A good measure of prevention and maintenance could be taken by eliminating all potentially allergenic foods, the most obvious one being grains (rice, bread, pasta, etc), legumes (beans, peanuts, lentils), seed oils (canola oil, soybean oil, etc), dairy products, food additives (think gums and emulsifiers), refined sugars and processed foods. Removing all those from your diet is recommended even if you’re a healthy human being.
If you want to take extra caution, some other potentially allergenic, inflammatory foods that may or may not irritate your gut and trigger autoimmune responses are:
Eggs, nuts and seeds (including their herbs, like cumin, coriander, nutmeg, etc), coffee, chocolate, alcohol, dried fruits, alternative sweeteners (like stevia, xylitol, etc), and the “Nightshades” (family of vegetables that include eggplant, potatoes, tomatoes, okra, peppers, and spices derived from them – chili, paprika, cayenne, chipotle, red pepper, etc).
So you can do an elimination phase, where you avoid all of the above food and let your body recover, and then once symptoms have improved, slowly reintroduce some of them to see how you respond.
This isn’t a specific Pernicious Anemia diet plan, but a plan for everybody with an autoimmune disease to follow. You’re left with the following foods:
- Meat, poultry and fish.
- Coconuts, fruits & vegetables, except for the Nightshades.
- Animal fats or coconut/palm oil for frying (saturated fats, very stable in heat).
- Vinegar and Olive/avocado oil for dressing.
- Herbs that aren’t from seeds.
- Water.
- Broth or tea when you wish for a hot drink.
Focus on those foods for a while, allow your gut to heal, and then gradually introduce them (if you still crave them) one by one to see how you feel. You might be surprised.
This autoimmune diet protocol had been demonstrated effective against inflammatory bowel disease in a study in 2017. Eleven of the fifteen studied patients had total remission after six weeks of eliminating all the foods above, and five weeks maintaining the protocol. Imagine that for 19 years you have a disease that forces you to know ahead of time where toilets are whenever you go somewhere, and then you go on this diet for two months and suddenly all symptoms are gone. That is very impressive. That is not surprising to me, as we do know there is a connection between specific foods to some autoimmune conditions.
This protocol eliminates major offenders to gut health. Gluten, for example, is perhaps the most notorious one. It tends to pry open the tight junctions in the gut, allowing passage of toxins and food compounds into the circulation, triggering inflammatory and autoimmune responses. Gluten free diets have been shown helpful against Autoimmune hepatitis, Type 1 diabetes, Rheumatoid arthritis, and Multiple sclerosis.
By the way, you may also want to avoid NSAIDs, which is bad for your gut lining. Good luck with your Pernicious Anemia diet plan, and best of health.