Anyone get better using diet? How long to see results?

[Faith1989]

i have little ones that come and go, only one prominent one. My veins go away for a bit when i put tears in so obviously its because they are dry. My tear break up time is like 3 seconds. I do compresses twice a day and wash with a product called Lid n Lash. I use Alrex and serum also. My eyes are still dry :S I am praying I get to the triumphs section with the diet. Eat to Live is very informative on nutrition, but has nothing about rosacea. I seen on his website though under success stories, sjogrens people said their dry eyes cleared up on it, and some people said their rosacea and acne went away. Who knows? I am sure it didnt happen over night

Good luck!

[William53]

I've been following Dr Weil's anti-inflammatory diet since April 2013. I don't count calories just try to eat the right foods. Eat super healthy breakfast, pretty healthy lunch and then am a little more flexible with dinner, but still mostly healthy. I have best success maintaining the regimen when I'm not my own Diet Nazi, so occasionally if I'm out and feel like having a burger (including the bun, right, cause bread is on the bad list) and fries I just go for it. Workout MWF at the gym and then walk the other days. For context, I'm a 60 year old guy with MGD and bleph exacerbated by severe allergies.

I don't understand the eye effect; might be helping, maybe not. Like many of us, I have a lot of regimens, meds, treatments, issues in motion and it's hard to figure what's working. But diet and regular exercise are something in my life I can control - unlike my allergies and my dry eyes - and being in shape, feeling healthy lessens my stress level, makes me feel physically and mentally just better, and hopefully is strengthening my immune system.

[eye_allergy-kids]

Hey everyone!

So the last week and a half, I have been trying to eliminate any real inflammatory foods from my diet and kind of go low sugar. I am sort of following the "Eat to Live" plan but still eating lean meats and low fruit. I have been struggling to keep from cheating and feel like I may have improved minimally? I am not sure..

I just feel deprived, i guess thats part of the detox. It feels like just another thing "I can't do because of my eyes"

I am just curious and hopeful people can tell me they are better on the anti-inflammatory low sugar diet, and how long will it take, IF it does work?

Thanks friends. I NEED some encouragement!

I am following past two years results wonders... It takes atleast 6 - 9 months to know concrete results

http://www.dryeyezone.com/talk/showt...pathy-Ayurveda

[Faith1989]

Thank you for your reply! I will look through all the links within the next week! Happy to know you have found success.

[Faith1989]

Also, would this work for all types of inflammatory responses in the eye? or just allergies?

[NotADryEye]

I think an anti-inflammatory diet helps a lot. But a I also think it is important to find the foods that cause inflammation for you individually and to which you are sensitive. You would need to figure out the food sensitivities yourself, which can be tricky, or you can get tested for foods to which you have sensitivities.

You might also want to avoid foods that are high in Omega-6's, which are inflammatory, and increase foods high in Omega 3's, which is anti-inflammatory. You can see results in just a few days if you do this - in as little as 1 week to 1 month.

[NotADryEye]

Also, would this work for all types of inflammatory responses in the eye? or just allergies?

If you have allergies to foods, you should not consume the foods at all.

If you have sensitivities you should avoid the foods for 6-9 months, depending on the severity. Then you can try to add the foods back to your diet, one by one but waiting 4 days between consuming a single food item to see if you have an adverse response.

Inflammatory foods are not necessarily bad foods. It is just that they cause inflammation. Inflammation by itself is not always bad. Sometimes you want to have some inflammation when you have an injury or a cold or flu, for example. The inflammation is the body healing itself. In Ayurveda they call it "heating." Chicken soup has a heating effect, for example, and is a common folk remedy. It turns out, chicken, especially the skin, is high in Omega 6's, which are inflammatory.

What you want to avoid is chronic inflammation. So if you have chronic inflammation you don't want to exacerbate the inflammation by consuming foods that cause inflammation.

Maintaining an anti-inflammation diet should help systemically. But it won't help allergies. Allergies are different.

[eye_allergy-kids]

Also, would this work for all types of inflammatory responses in the eye? or just allergies?

this way of treatment cures (controlling, suppressing, supporting are what doctors do) all skin, cancer, headace , asthma, many other dieases.

Remember I am not a doctor, dietrician, or naturopath. All my finding through my experience.

I have given lot of books and findings from all over world. Only thing is you should find naturally grown fruits, veges, and natural envirnment.

[KyleDryEyes]

Get most of your calories from FRUITS and Starches. Greens are good too, but hard to fill up on.

NEVER consume dairy, refined fats (olive oil is TOXIC) or processed food.

I have tested this very systematically with myself and whenever I consume refined fats whether it be from dairy (butter or cheese) or oils (any vegetable oil) I have serious issues with my eyes. They get very dry and red two to three days after consuming them. It also takes two to three days for the toxic food to clear out of your system.

A few simple rules I live by now:
1. Stay hydrated. Drink a quart of water before meals.
2. Eat a diet rich in fruits and vegetables. Only eat WHOLE foods. Do NOT add oil to your food. NO OIL!!!!
3. Get enough sleep.
4. Exercise. Build up to where you can do 30 minutes of exercise each day. 2 or 3 days being very vigorous. Get your heart pumping.
5. Don't expect a miracle pill. It won't happen!

Do this and your eyes and rest of your body will thank you.

Cheers, Kyle.

[KyleDryEyes]

See my other post below.

I disagree STRONGLY with the "Eat to Live" plan, unless you like feeling famished and fatigued all the time. That's not the detox, that's the 'I'm not getting enough carbs'. Eat MORE fruits, not less! Eat LOTS of carbs, but keep it very low fat. Fruit is the best, but steamed rice, potatoes, pasta w/ fat free sauce are also good sources of energy.

I'm on a HIGH sugar/HIGH carb LOW fat diet and my eyes are better than ever. It's been months now and I rarely need drops anymore.

[Faith1989]

Thank you for posting! The eat to live plan is lots of fruits and vegetables, no animal products, little starches, no refined foods! I am getting better but still have redness in my right eye. Did you see a difference in the redness too? How long did it take? I think my eyes hate dairy too, as well as processed sugars!

[Katewest]

I thought light olive oil and coconut oil were ok?

[KyleDryEyes]

It's hard to say how long it takes. I think it depends on where you are coming from. I was eating a lot of junk food and decided to eat a little more healthy because I started training for a marathon. So instead of getting a burger and fries for lunch, I packed my lunch and started eating more fruits and veggies. But I was still eating large cheese pizzas on the weekend. This "healthier diet" started in August 2012. Over the next few months I began to notice improvements with my eyes. I'd have days with little to no issues and even a whole week sometimes. But I was still frustrated because the condition of my eyes were very inconsistent. Why were some days SO good and others so BAD? So in January 2013 I started documenting everything I ate and began to correlate what foods my eyes don't like. I had identified dairy as a big culprit, mainly cheese.

This year my diet has consisted of mostly fruit and starches with some veggies. I've been known to eat 40lbs of bananas in a week. I buy fruit by the case. I eat a lot of fruit. In the evenings I usually eat my starches. I don't like the eat to live plan because they tell you not to eat too much fruit. My eyes feel the best when I'm eating a lot of fruit.

I've had bad reactions to olive oil similar to cheese. Maybe some olive oil may be OK if it is not rancid. I say this because my eyes have not reacted to olive oil every time, but I still don't want to chance consuming rancid oils. I had some oil in the pantry that was getting old and it caused some serious redness in my eyes. After that reaction I stopped using oil altogether. So I've been doing things like making my own pasta sauce without added oil. It's been over a month with no oil or any overt fats for that matter and my eyes have been great. Even after working in front of the computer all day, my eyes still feel fresh. That never used to happen. That's why I'm back on this forum. I feel like I need to let folks know.

Not sure about coconut oil. I'm not going to eat it because there is no nutritional value in oil anyway. I highly recommend the food diary. Lists all the foods you eat each day and note how your eyes were. I found that foods that I've eaten 2 or 3 days earlier affect my eyes today. For example I could eat a cheese pizza tonight and my eyes would still feel great tomorrow, even the day after that. But on day 3 I'd wake up and my eyes would be red first thing in the morning. It takes 2 or 3 more days for things to clear back up. Also pay attention to the foods you've eaten over the past few days when your eyes are doing good. For me it's lots of fruits.

I hope this helps. Let us know how you progress.

[littlemermaid]

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2646454/ The Role of Omega-3 Dietary Supplementation in Blepharitis and Meibomian Gland Dysfunction (An AOS Thesis) Marian S. Macsai, MD. Trans Am Ophthalmol Soc. 2008 December; 106: 336–356. PMCID: PMC2646454.

Still the best info I've ever read on this 'oils' problem. Fig 1 shows at what point the types of oil become inflammatory. I think coconut oil is a law unto itself, very long-chain fatty acid or something. Important that the properties of oils change on cooking, so we are avoiding anything that's solid before or after heating.

I'm trying to find out what meibom oil and sebum is made of, and there are people working on that. I was always hoping we could thin it out by eating oily fish and stopping animal fats.

From our Food and Inflammation Diary, it looks like there are personal triggers too, eg we cannot use tomato, fruit juice, sugars, wheat. Small amount of honey seems OK.

KyleDryEyes ~ this is excellent experience you are giving us, thanks so much

[Faith1989]

Kyle, did it help with the lids and/or decrease ocular inflammation?! So you no longer use tears?