The Keystone Approach: Autoimmunity and the Microbiome

Purchased as my little has Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis & I want to know as much as I can to help her on her (possible) lifelong journey with it. Beautiful book, well written.

The good points...I loved this author's organization. She didn't take you down winding circular paths like other authors do who take too many pages to make their point. Overall she backed up her work with research. My favorite chapter was the one on probiotics.The bad...But, she kind of lost me in the diet section. She cites all this research supporting a Mediterranean diet and then proceeds after that to obliterate it to a high meat, limited vegetable diet. It was in this chapter that I started looking more closely at her research citations. There is a paragraph where she talks about soy and quinoa having saponins which hurt the gut. I read the research articles she was pointing to and it didn't add up to her recommendations about avoiding those foods. Her reason for avoiding soy is based on "animal studies" she say. That one animal study is a study on the effects of soy on a fish's gut. Fish should NOT be eating soy. Of course soy is bad for feeding to fish and on their gut! Why are we comparing fish guts to human guts? Secondly, she cites an article about the saponin content in quinoa. Yes, saponins are bad for the gut, but what she neglects to point out from the research article is that everyone knows that when you prepare quinoa, you are supposed to wash it to remove the saponins, and the research article confirms that the saponins are indeed removed when they washed the quinoa. Besides that, when I searched PubMed.gov on research articles on soy and quinoa, I found positive articles about those two foods regarding the gut and microbes. So, after that, I was getting pretty leery of her diet recommendations. Again, I am disappointed that she uses the research on the Mediterranean diet, which is a primarily plant-based diet with lean fish, to justify her version of the typical all meat with limited variety of veggies diet. Anyways, I didn't get my antennas turned on until that chapter. I don't want to go back to the beginning of the book and check every reference. But maybe when you read it, you might want to do that.Overall, I really appreciated her writing style and organization. I personally do read PubMed.gov quite often, so she certainly provided me with a lot of references to look up on the probiotic stuff, as I want to research that more.

I am so thankful for this book! It has saved me and getting me off pharmaceutical drugs! There is a review listed where someone gave low stars and not to follow this advise for Psoriatic Arthritis because it can cause SIBO. If the reviewer read the entire book and followed the recommendations, he/she would have read that she addresses SIBO. I also took the recommendation for supplements for SIBO and have had unbelievably results. They have taken time. 4 months since I started and I did do the advanced recommendations.My overarching diagnosis is autoimmune arthritis, but I believe it is the subcategory of Psoriatic Arthritis because I had one skin patch on my knee that started last summer.I went to the dermatologist in September after trying everything to help this unusual patch. A biopsy was taken and all I got back was “general eczema.” They gave me steroid cream which dried out and thickened my skin patch but was not healing it.I went to the rheumatologist the month after because of all the pain I was having in my joints and my general doctor referring me. (I could not even dress myself at this point. I am only 48 years old). He never did a biopsy. In December they gave me the “autoimmune arthritis” diagnosis after ruling out MS, Lupus, Crohn’s, etc.After my diagnosis I went crazy on a search for more. I found The Keystone Approach by Rebecca Fett. After following the recommendations in the book for Psoriatic Arthritis, these picture progressions are the physical evidence of my healing.The Keystone Approach explains the science for greater knowledge and understanding. The book gives specific recommendations for supplements, probiotics, digestive enzymes & supplements and diet changes depending on the type of autoimmune you have.** It is worth noting, I went right to the ADVANCED method recommendations from the book. There are 3 levels for each autoimmune. I wasn’t going to mess around and went directly to the most changes. It was hard, it still is hard. I swallow more supplements and pills a day than I could ever imagine but it is working.

I arrived at this diet on my own through years of trial and error when the paleo and AIP diets stopped working for me after several courses of antibiotics, but it’s so helpful to learn the science behind it. I can’t recommend this book highly enough, especially for people managing autoimmune conditions or the horrible effects of antibiotic overuse. Truly a game changer.

Diagnosed with autoimmune disease rather predictably since its affected most of one side of my family, I had the worst flare of my life which really took me out of commission and then worsened. A relative suggested this healthy food/anti-inflammatory approach to getting well that sent her lupus into remission. I was skeptical but sort of enjoyed this microbiologist's frank approach to addressing autoimmune because they honestly state that we're living in the dark ages of understanding the microbiome and they don't claim to have all the answers. I now believe pretty much all adults should be on a complex probiotic cocktail because of the pervasiveness of antibiotics. It's an elimination diet, so you gotta be in for a long haul of trial and error though.

This "approach" is worth trying

I have Psoriatic arthritis so thought I would read this book. I have been following program with neutral results. But am continuing as I think I have had a leaky gut for a long time. The recommendations are good! The recipes are average.

This book is a great addition to the repertoire of books that consider how diet affects disease, with this one aimed at people with autoimmune arthritis and related conditions. I am slightly surprised to consider myself in that group. I have read widely in recent years because of my health, and find that the author's conclusions support many of my own gained over this period: in short, avoid grains, eat more vegetables, scout out your own personal food intolerances, consider probiotics, and don't go overboard with saturated fat. The author explains things clearly and backs everything up with scientific references, much of it quite recent - too recent to have been incorporated into mainstream medical practice yet. This is emerging science so it won't necessarily all prove to be effective in the long run or for everyone, but it's absolutely fascinating stuff and my personal experience is that there is little to lose and potentially everything to gain from trying to personalise your diet. My only reservation was the author's outright rejection of organ meats, based on their arachidonic acid content, which seems rather a narrow perspective on a food that is otherwise viewed as a nutritional powerhouse in terms of its vitamin and mineral content. The second part of the book is taken up with recipes and references, so it's not a long read. I'd love to read more from this author about the emerging science of nutrition.

Like others have mentioned, it is difficult to reference without an index. Why would the author choose not to include?Will update if the recommendation alleviate my condition.Update : My Psoriatic arthritis has become worsen after following the recommendation for over a year like the daily 30000iu vitamin D, the variety of Probiotics, stated dosage of Curcuma. Hope the author has continued her research and publish more findings. I was having high hope. Will continue anyway.

I have not been able to lose any of the weight I put on due to methotrexate and painkiller. But as a side effect lost two stone in 4 months .It cleared up my skin from splits and sore peeling skin . Have stuck with it to help my RA