I don’t like restrictive diets, French women have a way about life for eating everything but in moderation. The first time I heard of elimination diets I never thought I would ever use one. When my son started regularly having difficult behavior and a runny nose, I knew something in his diet was throwing him off and that doing an elimination diet made sense.

I go with the principle that if one member of the family does something then we should all do it. How mean it is to eat yummy bread in front of an 8-9 yo and tell them “no” you can’t have any?

After that I started using an elimination diet in my practice and was really happy with how helpful it was. Let me share with you how I go about it.

There are 2 ways I go with an elimination diet:

• Depending on the clients symptoms, I will recommend to eliminate the food most likely creating the problem. For example coffee for a client suffering from chronic low back pain or milk products for clients suffering arthritis pain.This strong minded 80 year old woman came to consult with me in France with a lot of arthritis pain. I told her 3 weeks without milk, cheese or any other dairy. She was mad at me for suggesting such a thing and when she left I wasn’t sure she would ever come back. I had just left it at “you should try it, see how you feel, after 3 weeks you’ll start eating cheese again and you’ll know and decide what you want to do”.  I didn’t hear from her at all for 5 weeks and then she came back. She told me first she wasn’t happy with me because I was right. She had felt really good right after the healing session we did with her pains 80% gone.  She started the dairy elimination diet that day and the pain came back slowly in her joints but never to the level of what she had before. On day 22 when she ate cheese again she was convinced that nothing would happen. She had terrible gas pains that night and the next morning her joints were all inflamed and painful.
• For my clients that have neurobehavioral issues like ADHD, Autism, Learning Disabilities and Alzheimer’s, I will recommend to eliminate all foods that could trigger an immune response that creates inflammation somewhere in their body.