Dr. Kyle Warren
Meghan Feir Walker
From Paleo and Carnivore to plant-based and GAPS, there is no end to all the diets you can stumble upon in your search for getting healthier. This can make it confusing to know which approach to try, particularly when you have chronic health conditions. Understandably, one of the most common questions I get asked by chronic Lyme and co-infection patients is, “What diet is best for chronic Lyme disease?”
If you’re like most of my patients, you have already tried various diets. While these approaches may have helped you feel a little better, your problems with chronic symptoms, Lyme, and co-infections remained.
In this article, I’ll explain my diet experiences and the food approaches that have worked the best for my tick-borne illness patients as they undergo my Lyme and co-infection protocols.
Should you fast if you have Lyme?
Before we jump into any specific diets, I want to address fasting. As intermittent fasting becomes increasingly more popular in online health spheres, I get asked often if fasting is good for those with Lyme disease because many patients are curious to see if fasting will improve their symptoms. While fasting can be an excellent tool to help the body rest and digest and support cellular regeneration, Lyme patients can be particularly sensitive to fasting.
When it comes to fasting, I usually prefer a 12/3 fast, which is to fast for 12 hours and stop eating three hours before bed. For example, if you go to bed at 10 p.m., you’d stop eating at 7 p.m. and have your next meal at 7 a.m. the following morning.
Some people go up to 16 hours of fasting, but I don’t recommend this long a fasting window for my Lyme disease patients. Their adrenals are usually tanked, and they often are unable to burn fat efficiently. Instead of burning fat, cortisol and stress often rise if the fast is too long.
The best approach for Lyme disease diet
Over the last 20 years, my wife and I have tried over 23 different diets. Yes, that’s right. Twenty-three diets. Why did we go through the hassle? We wanted more energy, relief from chronic symptoms, and a more natural approach.
While many people can greatly improve their health and wellness by switching to healthier eating methods, it took us years to realize that our problems couldn’t be solved by diet alone. Early on, we didn’t know that the bacterium was the main driver of our inflammation and symptoms and that diet could only help to a point.
In recent years, my family and I have continued to eat quite healthily, but we’re no longer abiding by severely strict food regulations as we had before. Although we have since found relief from our chronic health conditions through Lyme and co-infection protocols, we believe there needs to be a balance between everyday living and eating healthier.
Stop the diet obsession: Food is important, but it’s not everything
When you have chronic health conditions, sometimes it’s hard enough to survive, let alone follow strict and inconvenient diets. Yet the majority of the time, my patients don’t have a problem with self-control and discipline. In fact, I have to rein them in from their uber-strict diets.
For those who can, I don’t recommend going off the deep end into extensive food limitations. Eating healthy doesn’t mean you never enjoy a treat, go to a restaurant for an anniversary, or enjoy a piece of birthday cake. It’s about making good choices the majority of the time and not feeling guilty when you do indulge a little. It’s about balance.
The reasons people eat what they do are multifaceted and involve much more than getting their recommended intake of basic nutrition and energy for the day. Eating is a part of social and family life, traditions, celebrations, holidays, and enjoyment. For this reason, extended, overly restrictive diets can sometimes do more harm than good.
Throughout all the diets my wife and I have tried, the rules we followed progressively became stricter and stricter. We went from gluten-free living to no gluten and no dairy to no sugar to Paleo to autoimmune Paleo to GAPS, etc. Soon, all these diet regulations became a huge burden.
Don’t get me wrong; these diets can greatly improve many people’s health. But it can become a problem when it starts controlling your life or becomes unmanageable.
Restrictive diets can lead to food phobias
Many people, for a time, need to follow a strict diet, but one of the downsides is that this can lead to food phobias. As I, my wife, and many of my patients can personally attest, going on particular diets can become an obsession that can lead to the demonization of certain foods.
One of the most extreme versions of food phobia is called orthorexia, which is considered an eating disorder. The fear of certain foods can cause a sharp increase in anxiety, avoidance, and guilt. This food phobia is mentally unhealthy and can lead to symptoms because of the immense stress it can add to a person’s life, mind, and body.
How can something good evolve into something harmful?
Here are a few examples of how helpful diets can become a mentally unhealthy fear for many people.
- A patient follows a particular diet to get fit, but they take it to an extreme degree by unnecessarily eliminating healthy foods. They don’t react to these foods negatively, but they remove them anyway. If they ever “slip up” or “cheat,” as they call it, and eat something that isn’t approved, they feel immense guilt and shame.
- Someone follows a low FODMAP diet because they have SIBO. Even after their SIBO is under control, they might become scared to eat foods like onions and garlic again because they now view these healthy foods as enemies.
- A person has to follow a low-histamine diet because of MCAS and becomes scared of eating avocados and other healthy foods again because they had intense reactions to high-histamine foods in the past.
- Some patients have been placed on multiple diets at once because of their highly inflamed, reactive bodies. They have whittled their diet down to eating only a few foods, and they fear these safer foods will become a problem, too.
In all of these cases, the root cause must be addressed properly. Otherwise, a patient may develop additional food sensitivities, nutritional deficiencies, and food fear, and eating becomes a time of dread or shame instead of pleasure.
Unwarranted food fear vs. avoidance necessity: Who needs to follow a strict diet?
Food phobia is a complex issue that is often strongly linked to health trauma and the horrible symptoms and incidents patients have gone through. For many people, their fear of certain foods is well-founded because they have had extreme reactions due to allergies, sensitivities, intolerances, or certain conditions that make them highly reactive. In these cases, avoidance is necessary—at least for a time.
While there are many conditions where people must avoid certain foods, let’s use histamine disorders as an example. A portion of my patients have extreme histamine sensitivity and/or MCAS, and it can be dangerous for them to consistently eat too many high-histamine foods.
If you have Anaplasma, Bartonella, Babesia, or mold illness/sensitivity, you’re more susceptible to developing or having issues with histamine.
Low-histamine diets should only be used as a short-term therapy because once you fix the underlying problem, you shouldn't have to avoid any healthy, whole foods (unless you have allergies or other conditions).
While avoiding certain foods for a time is understandable for some conditions, avoiding healthy foods for several months or years can lead to additional issues. This is why addressing the root cause(s) of food sensitivities and intolerances is absolutely necessary. In many instances, the root cause of these food issues can be addressed and remedied.
Food isn’t always the enemy or the healer
My diet became a monster in my life, and although we were eating healthier, we weren't becoming healthier.
Eventually, I realized this was because we were struggling with infections, including Lyme disease, and although eating healthy is an excellent way to live, it doesn't fix everything. It was disheartening that, despite our efforts, our health wasn’t noticeably improving.
I run into many people who are discouraged because all their hard work in adhering to strict diets hasn’t fixed their issues.
A key indicator that food alone isn’t your enemy nor your healer is when changing your diet doesn’t noticeably improve symptoms. It may sound obvious, but when you’re in the throes of chronic illness and you’re desperately seeking relief, you can easily keep going further down the rabbit hole of foods to eliminate.
Many people can improve their health, lose weight, and feel amazing by following strict diets. It can improve their gut, immune system, and overall health. However, while making more beneficial food choices is a great way to support the health of your body, many problems can’t be fixed by diet alone, including Lyme and tick-borne infections.
Lyme disease is an infection that can’t be cured by eating a surplus of vegetables. Despite implementing intense diets, Lyme bacteria still wreak havoc on the body by creating inflammation and scary symptoms. Eating extremely healthy won’t give a Lyme patient the standard, expected results.
Diet still impacts Lyme, and sugar drives inflammation and disease
While diet alone can’t heal you from Lyme disease and co-infections, I’m not telling you to eat Twinkies all day. No matter what condition you may face, your diet will impact your overall health and well-being.
Of all the inflammatory foods to avoid, I advise all my patients to limit sugar and processed foods. Sugar is the biggest thing you need to look out for when dealing with any infection, Lyme included.
Two hundred years ago, Americans, on average, ate two pounds of sugar per year. In 1970, Americans were eating up to 123 pounds of sugar per year, and in recent years, Americans typically eat at least 152 pounds of sugar per year.
Eating 152 pounds of sugar each year isn’t as difficult to accomplish as you might assume. You don’t have to eat candy every day to get there. From baked goods to processed food (even processed meat!), salad dressing to ketchup, and fruit juice to soft drinks, almost everything on grocery store shelves contains added sugar because sugar is highly addictive, and adding sugar to products means customers will crave and buy that food even more. It’s also been a leading factor in our nation’s health epidemic.
The following foods and beverages are the most common ways my patients consume sugar:
- Soft drinks
- Fruit juice/drinks
- Processed grains
- Baked goods
- Ice cream
- Sugary yogurt
- Alcoholic beverages
- Breakfast cereals
- Candy
- Etc.
When you combine the toxicity of too much sugar with infectious bacteria, you’re only adding to your toxic load. How much toxicity can your body handle before it breaks?
In my experience as a doctor and someone who has dealt with health problems myself, sugar and processed food are the most important things to avoid if you have Lyme disease or co-infections. Minimize sugar as much as possible.
My tips for a healthier lifestyle
I have found a low-to-no-sugar approach to be the most beneficial diet approach for Lyme patients because people can block their own healing when they eat too much sugar.
Last year, I had a patient who was stuck and frustrated. They weren’t getting better, despite following the protocols. When I found out they were eating an entire package of Chips Ahoy cookies every day, I told them to cut that out of their diet. Within a month or two of giving that habit up, they rapidly started getting better, and the protocols performed as they were supposed to work.
To minimize your toxic load, I recommend following the Environmental Working Group’s (EWG) food lists. Every year, they share the Dirty Dozen and Clean Fifteen lists to showcase the fruits and vegetables sprayed the most and the least with toxic chemicals.
Tips for a healthier lifestyle
| Foods to Eat | Foods to Avoid |
| Fruits and Veggies | Added sugar |
| The healthiest versions of plants and meat you can, within reason. Choose grass-fed (or grass-finished, if possible) meats | Food that has been processed |
| Organic Foods | Foods with chemical exposure |
| Foods on the Clean Fifteen List put out by the EWG | Foods on the Dirty Dozen List put out by the EWG |
| Nuts and Seeds | Dairy |
| Healthy Fats (EVOO and eggs) | Refined Grains (white bread, pizza dough with white flour, etc) |
If you’re interested in more information on minimizing inflammation with food choices, check out Dr. Peter Osborne (the king of no-grain diets) and Dr. Terry Wahls (she recovered from MS using diet). While I might not follow their teachings to a T, they both have influenced me as a doctor and in my daily life choices. They emphasize how to avoid food that drives inflammation, pain, and neuropathy, such as processed grains.
Since Lyme disease already drives inflammation, pain, and neuropathy, taking out or minimizing processed grains is beneficial for those suffering from inflammatory infections and diseases like Lyme. Remember, you can block the immune system’s ability to kill Lyme and other infections when you eat too much sugar, not to mention the many other problems too much sugar consumption can have on the body.
Don’t block your own healing
While diet alone can’t defeat Lyme and co-infections, ignoring the quality of your diet will block your healing. I believe this needs more emphasis because I have patients who are sick because of our tainted food supply. There is too much sugar and there are too many chemicals in food, and that has to change if we want to be a healthier nation.
We don't want your diet to overwhelm or consume you. Most of our patients come to the clinic with limited energy. Don’t spend the energy you do have on obsessing over your diet. Stick to the basic guidelines. While this does take some research and self-control, sticking to whole foods makes it easier and less confusing to shop.
In your daily life, try to choose healthy foods like fruits, vegetables, and meat that are minimally processed, don’t contain added sugars, and have lower chemical exposure — the foundation of a healthy Lyme diet.
The goal surrounding food is to make sure you’re not eating in a way that prevents your body from healing. My goal as a doctor is to help you know where to put your effort to get effective results. While there is no one-size-fits-all Lyme disease diet, understanding how to nourish your body can make a meaningful difference in your healing journey.
Take control of your health
If you’re ready to take control of your health, reach out to our clinic and set up your free consultation with one of our team members. They will go through your history, symptoms, and next steps with you.
Discovering what your body is fighting is the first step in recovering. You can get better from Lyme, co-infections, and autoimmunity!
To learn more about Lyme disease and co-infections, check out our Lyme page and blog.
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