Finding The Right Healthy Diet
One of the first questions newly diagnosed SS patients often ask is, should I restrict my dietary iron intake? The short answer is no. The confusion concerning curbing your iron may be traced to diet time-frame recommendations if you are undergoing chelation therapy. So, we will circle back to diet and chelation. SS patients have surface hemosiderin deposits which are entirely different from people who suffer from an iron overload in their bloodstream.
The Mayo Clinics' MIND Diet
The MIND diet is a predominantly plant-based diet that encourages limiting your servings of meat to seafood once and chicken or turkey three times weekly. This diet is easily converted to fit into a vegan or vegetarian lifestyle. Foods the Mayo Clinic prefers you include on a limited basis (or avoid) include red meats, butter, margarine, cheeses, pastries, candy, refined sugars, fried or fast foods.
This is not intended to become your whole diet. Still, you are encouraged to eat the recommended weekly servings per food grouping. The nutrients and antioxidants provided by this plan promote brain health by lowering cell stress, reducing inflammation, and slowing cognitive decline. No worries if you cannot eat every food on the list every week.
Recommended Foods
- Leafy Greens: Six or more servings per week of kale, spinach, turnip greens, collard greens, mustard greens, brussels sprouts, and salads. Greens are packed with nutrients that improve brain health like folate, vitamin E, carotenoids, and flavonoids.
- Daily Low-Starch Vegetable: One serving of a low-starch vegetable daily in addition to the leafy greens. High-starch vegetables might be limited if calories are a concern.
- Berries: Berries should be eaten a minimum of twice a week. Frozen or fresh strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, and blackberries are included for their antioxidant benefits.¹, ² A 20-year study including 16,000 older adults found those who ate blueberries and strawberries had the slowest rates of cognitive decline.
- Nuts: Five servings of walnuts, almonds, or hazelnuts each week are best, but all nuts have benefits. If you choose nut butter as your serving, be careful to choose a brand that does not contain added sugars, high sodium content, or oils.³
- Olive Oil: Use olive oil as your primary cooking oil. If you need a high-temperature oil, try expeller-pressed grapeseed or avocado oil.
- Whole grains: Three daily servings of a whole grain like long-cooking steel-cut or rolled oatmeal, quinoa, brown rice, whole-grain pasta, or 100% whole-grain bread.
- Beans: Your choice of beans should be eaten at least four times weekly. More often, if you're vegan or vegetarian. This includes all beans, lentils, and soybeans.
Brain-healthy eating encourages consuming meat very sparingly. Red meat was eaten fewer than four times a week in the MIND diet study. Beans, lentils, and soybeans offer a vegetable-based protein and fiber-rich source. The Mayo Clinic investigated the MIND Diet vs. Alzheimer's and dementia risk in a study of 923 participants, ages 58 to 98 years, followed on average 4.5 years. ⁴
- Fish and Shrimp: The Mayo Clinic encourages you to include at least one weekly serving of omega-3 fatty acid-rich fish like salmon, sardines, trout, tuna, shrimp, or mackerel. *Note: If you are vegan or vegetarian alternate sources of omega-3 fatty acid foods are flax, chia, hemp seeds, seaweed, algae, edamame, avocados, and kidney beans.
- Poultry: One serving of baked, sauteed, or air-fried chicken or turkey twice weekly. Conventionally fried chicken is not supported on the MIND diet.
- Wine: One glass daily of red or white wine though research has centered on the resveratrol benefits found in red wine.⁵
Diet and Chelation
The MIND diet is packed full of iron, but since the majority comes in the form of non-heme, it really can work with a chelation diet schedule. In addition, we know more now about deferiprone than six years ago. Did you know it only takes an average of seven minutes from the time you take your dose of deferiprone for the molecules to cross the blood-brain barrier? It reaches a peak level in two hours and then heads towards your kidneys to exit your body through your urine.
If you follow a five-day on and two days off dosing schedule, it's probably best to delay high iron-rich red or organ meats until you're on your dosing break. Because of the fat and protein content, it may take your body up to two or three days to pull apart and wholly digest red meat. If you're experiencing bowel motility problems, the time frame could be much longer. In contrast, beans are a high-fiber food that will move through your system at a much quicker rate.
What to do if you're on a seven-day dosing schedule? You could possibly discuss splitting your daily dose schedule into twice a day, taking one-third early in the morning and two-thirds later, before bed. Or you could also choose to limit your red meat meals to the same two days every week, so you have five days to enjoy chicken, turkey, or seafood. But, again, be sure to talk it over with your physician before changing anything.
