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Dr. Horwitz shares how food supports autoimmunity.
Dr. Horwitz:
Generally what we recommend is an anti-inflammatory diet. Some components of the diet can be very helpful whether obtained in supplements or in the normal course of your diet. Essential fatty acids, fish oils, very helpful anti-inflammatories; they attack the inflammatory cascade at a very high level and you could really ameliorate quite a bit of inflammation using sufficient doses of fish oil, EPA and DHA.
Flax seed, not so much because that has to be converted to a fish oil-type fat. So people who are vegetarian are at somewhat of a disadvantage when it comes to that. While we are mentioning vegetarians, avoiding animal products, animal proteins, meats and dairy are often very helpful and we often use this as a trial intervention. We recommend a vegetarian diet or a plant-based diet at least, with most of the protein coming from plant.
So we recognize that vegetarian diet may be optimal. Most people will not be able to do that, but a plant-based diet so if you can get the bulk of your proteins coming from plant-based sources we feel that tempers the immune reactivity quite a bit.
About Dr. Randy Horwitz, Ph.D., M.D.:
Dr. Randy Horwitz, Ph.D., M.D., received a B.S. degree in biochemistry from the University of Illinois, and a Ph.D. in Immunology and Molecular Biology from the University of Florida. He received his medical degree from the University of Illinois, and completed his residency in Internal Medicine at University Hospitals (Case Western Reserve University) in Cleveland.
Visit Dr. Horwitz at the Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine