I hear what you're saying caryn but it's worth a try. All that stuff is poison for our bodies anyway. Thx guys.

Well, the way to get rid of inflammation is to get rid of whatever your innate immune system is reacting to - and if it reacts to those foods, then eliminating them will reduce inflammation levels. The trick is that a predisposition to react to foreign proteins is a predisposition to react to foreign proteins, and placentas are foreign, and you can't eliminate them until delivery...

The good news, though, is that second pregnancies often go much better because the spiral artery remodeling from the first pregnancy makes it easier for the second placenta to embed. I'm not sure how true that is in lupus patients, who just have generally annoyed immune systems, but I'm pretty sure they are still supposed to have a lower risk of PE in a second pregnancy.

interesting! i don't have a clue if a gluten free diet will help even 1% but i figure it's worth a try. ya know? that's so awesome that you feel better gluten free and other family members. i just think there's a link. it seems that everything with my body (low platelet count, elevated liver enzymes, chest pain, arthritis, fibro, etc etc) is linked to inflammation. soooo, how do i get rid of the inflammation. i was on my way to taking steroids after flexerill, lyrica, neurontin other meds didn't work. i tried adding so much to my diet (selenium, fish oil, flax seed oil, pineapple) but it seemed to do nothing. once i eliminated all yeast, flour, sugar i felt like i was healed! so, lo and behold i google inflammation and pre-e and come up with information. i figure it can't hurt! thanks for your input!

My sisters have done awesome on yeast free diets in the past, but it turns out one is allergic to wheat and one probably has celiac (has gene & symptoms, just not had a biopsy to definitively diagnose). We are all on thyroid meds too.

I believe I'm intolerant to gluten, since it is a delayed migraine trigger for me. My aunt with lupus & RA also does better on a gluten free diet. In our family at least gluten sensitiviity seems to go hand and hand with autoimmune disorders and low vitamin D. When my vitamin D or thyroid levels were low in the past I have also experienced bone pain.

I dunno if diet will help chances of pre-e any, but for me at least I have less headaches & migraines now on a gluten free diet. I don't know if there is a connection or not but my morning sickness has been better this time around also.

That's the thing, I [i][b]did[/b][/i] eat yeast, flour, and sugar while pregnant. Since I wasn't supposed to solely low carb while pregnant, I started to every now and then have sandwiches, cheese, night shade veggies, ice cream (sugar) etc. Things I hadn't eaten for the past 2 years. So no, I wasn't strictly eliminating all the things that trigger inflammation.

Anyway, thanks a bunch. You answered my question. Lol. As far as you know, there's no evidence regarding my diet per se and preeclampsia. I'll see how it turns out. Thanks caryn.

It's unethical for doctors to recommend things for which there's no evidence base. If there's evidence, sure - and if you've found that it helps your lupus symptoms, great! - but it always makes me twitchy in the context of preeclampsia. If I'm reading your post correctly, you'd agree (given your history) that eating this diet which reduced some of your symptoms of other conditions didn't prevent or obviously ameliorate your preeclampsia. And I'm just saying that makes sense, because in preeclampsia the inflammation in question is an innate immune response to the foreign proteins produced by the placenta, which is not, genetically speaking, part of our bodies.

There's evidence that salt restriction helps some people who are salt-sensitive hypertensives, and evidence that modifying diet helps diabetics, so docs are free to recommend those lifestyle modifications to patients.

They want you to keep coming back. :) I'm not to keen on many doctors right about now if you can't tell. I still take plaquenil for lupus. I tried to go without for 6 months and couldn't but all the others, including steroids are gone.

Anyway, i decided to keep doing what I've been doing. Inflammation plays a huge role in so many illnesses. Instead of focusing all attention on medicine that causes other issues, I am continuing to find a way to try and solve the problem. My diet has drastically helped my lupus and fibromyalgia. It can't hurt at all. All you're doing is not eating foods that are horrible for you anyway. I don't see how recommending we stay away from horrible foods is unethical. Salt, high blood pressure. Sugar, diabetes. Yeast, who would want to eat yeast anyway??? Lol. I know it tastes good but when you know what it does to an already delicate body, you have to refrain. Anyway, never mind me. I don't like Western medicine @ all. Overall. I think there's a huge conspiracy.

When I say "no evidence" I mean "no evidence that it helps with preeclampsia." The thing about Western medical ethics is that it is unethical for docs not to recommend you to the therapy with the best evidence; otherwise they're just making stuff up. So they advise you about the things that are known to work.

Thanks Caryn. I haven't read about my specific diet either. I'm just curious. Doctors practicing western medicine I believe want us to stay ill so we keep coming back and get prescriptions. I'll just continue with my diet and be very strict. Won't hurt. My rheumatologist also said there's no evidence that modifying lifestyle (diet) works. It does. ;)

I don't know if anyone's researched this diet per se, but so far essentially all research into modifiable lifestyle factors has turned up "no result." Inflammation is just the body's innate immune response to foreign organs, and in preeclampsia, the foreign organ that our immune systems are all worked up about is the placenta. And there's no way to make that not be a foreign organ, kwim?

There's a possibility that in some people, the additional inflammatory burden of pregnancy added to their high baseline inflammation levels triggers the preeclampsia syndrome, but that is looking somewhat less likely as research proceeds, except possibly in the case of obesity, where lowering BMI preconception may lower risk of preeclampsia. They're still trying to work that out; we officially say that the correlation between obesity and preeclampsia is probably because of underlying genetic predispositions to *both* become obese in a modern environment *and* develop preeclampsia .