"Lose 10 Pounds in 10 Days!" and "Get the Body You've Always Wanted" are some common come-ons that you might hear this time of year about ways to (supposedly) get healthy. But what if the tagline for a diet was "Figure Out What's Keeping You Up At Night" or "Finally, Get Rid of Your Chronic Headaches." Now, we're talking.
Enter: the elimination diet. A way of eating that's more about getting healthy and relieving ailments, by removing various problem-causing foods from your diet, than fitting into a pair of skinny jeans. It's also a huge buzz word lately.
"Elimination diet" was number 9 on Yahoo's list of top-searched diets of 2014. The nation's top progressive docs, Frank Lipman, MD, Mark Hyman, MD, and Alejandro Junger, MD, all prescribe some form of it. Celebrities, like Gwyneth Paltrow, have tried it and trendy health coaches, like the ones at Urban Detox Club, recommend it to their clients. So what is it exactly?
If you think about it, you probably have some "ailment"—whether it's a chronic stuffy nose, trouble sleeping, or headaches that you've wanted to get rid of (and your regular remedies aren't exactly doing the trick).
Los Angeles-based Dr. Junger, whose books called Clean and Clean Eats give some indication as to his stance, says that certain foods might be the cause of those problems. And cutting them out can help you put the puzzle pieces together about why you're experiencing these conditions—largely by helping you learn which foods might be making you feel crappy.
Source: prevention.com
