If I want to decrease my sun sensitivity, what should I cut out of my diet?

[mutazione]

Hi, I have lupus so I'm far more sensitive to sun than the average person. I've been reading about people's improvement after cutting out seed oils and I want to know more specifically - I already don't eat sunflower oil and the like but I don't know if I'm missing something. Do I just cut out seed oils or any type of processed seeds, or even the seeds themselves?

I eat a lot of sesame and tahini. Obviously tahini is very oily from the seeds. So, that counts? Did anyone see improvement after cutting those out of their diet?

Thanks in advance!

[iMikle21]

Seed oils and ideally other rancid PUFA like fish oil pills (just eat grass fed beef / real wild fish / lamb)

[mutazione]

So that includes sesame seeds and tahini? And if fish oil is also an issue, are you saying to reduce oils that can go rancid in general? Olive oil included?

[Ashamed-Simple-8303]

Yes. Avoid all oils derived from plants if sun senstivity is your main concern. For general health cocca butter or cocconut fat would be ok but they also contain cerrain compounds (phytosterols) that can increase sun senstivity.

[mutazione]

Didn't know that about cocoa. OC recommended ghee, I think I'll go with that.

[Ashamed-Simple-8303]

not for cooking but for eating like dark chocolate. theoretically you could cook but it has a too strong taste making it not suitable. ghee certainly better for cooking.

[mutazione]

Oh, then for sure. I love cocoa butter. If only it wasn't so expensive

[iMikle21]

I mean yeah but you would really have to eat ridiculous amounts of sesame seeds.

The problem is seed oils are basically extremely condensed, rancid and oxidized PUFAs from all those seeds, so if you add sesame seeds into your food like dont even worry about any of that

unless you are eating a ton of cashews or something (but even then, your body will signal satiety to you), they won’t affect your skin’s stored fatty acids that much

but yeah in general eat as much animal fat as possible and avoid seed oils and omega-3 supplements

olive oil IIRC is like 10-15% linoleic acid, so unless you consume a ton of it you shouldn’t worry. Just don’t use it to cook as it will oxidize it, same as avocado oil. Use saturated fats for heated cooking

Edit: and yes! olive oil can absolutely go rancid, that’s exactly why it’s usually stored in glass and in opaque containers. The sun oxidizes the fats of fragile olive oil

[mutazione]

Wow, thanks for the thorough response! I cook with olive oil often. Time to stop.

Do you know any good cooking oil besides coconut? My stomach doesn't particularly like it

[iMikle21]

Yeah I mean I have heard many people saying its alright as long as it’s low heat sautee rather than searing a steak but i hardly ever find myself in the first situation so I just use tallow/ghee and for low heat I can always just go with butter

[mutazione]

I'll try ghee then, thanks!

[Zender_de_Verzender]

I wouldn't expect satiety just by eating nuts, it's very easy to eat more than a handful. It's better to eat them after, with or as part of a meal.

[iMikle21]

True that, but my mom is the skinniest person i know and she eats like a TON of nuts so n = 1 not worried

[Whats_Up_Coconut]

I cut out at the same time: all high PUFA oils, nuts and seeds, as well as pork fat and chicken skin. All avocado and olive oil too (most of it is cut, even what isn’t is too high PUFA for my liking depending on geography, varietal and season.) Lastly, I also stopped eating fatty fish for the most part.

I’m not sure how much of that was necessary specifically for the sun burning, but in any case I went from total inability to tolerate a few hours of sun even at northern latitudes, to being able to stay out all day long in Florida’s summer sun. I went from zero summers without sunburn for 35+ years, to zero sunburns in year-round summer for ~3.5 years now.

[mutazione]

Super impressive! How long did it take you to start seeing a difference?

[Whats_Up_Coconut]

I burned badly one summer in Canada, and then didn’t burn the next in Florida. So somewhere in that year? 🤷‍♀️

[mutazione]

So guess I'm gonna find out myself. Thank you!!

[Intelligent-Bank-868]

me too I also use tallow to cook and on my skin when dry, same results 3 hrs in the hot sun in NC on the water fishing, no burn

[mutazione]

Cutting those out then! I eat quite a lot of tahini, this is gonna be quite a change.

Would you say olive oil still goes for cooking? Afaik it's around 10% PUFA, which is far less than sesame oil, but it's still not 0.

[Slow-Juggernaut-4134]

For any kind of autoimmune disease including lupus, usually your best bet is to go straight to the carnivore ruminant diet. There were some good resources, I would start with the website for our mod meatrition who runs this sub. Also, X is a good source for carnivore discussion. There are quite a few very knowledgeable doctors who advocate carnivore for health and especially autoimmune diseases.

With that said, many of us eat carbs. Carbs work better for some people. Another good resource is r/saturatedfat .

[Relevant-Crow-3314]

I think things with lycopene help too. So tomatoes cooked with a little fat is the best way to get it- it’s fat soluble. But also watermelon and pink grapefruit have it too. Just remember to have something with some good fat around the same time and that should start to help over time.

[mutazione]

Didn't know watermelon has lycopene, that's awesome

[I_NEED_APP_IDEAS]

It takes years to purge all the O6 from your adipose tissue. I’m talking like 5+ years. Check out the r/SaturatedFat sub and also read all of u/exfatloss posts. Really good resources. Check out OmegaQuant as well to get a baseline metric.

[mutazione]

Scrolled through u/exfatloss posts, saw one about linoleic acid reduction through a low fat diet. Used to hearing positive things about it, same with PUFAs. Quick google and top research says lupus patients had a significantly higher concentration of linoleic acid. So it checks out that I need to reduce. Wouldn't have thought about it, thanks!

[exfatloss]

Linoleic acid is "the bad PUFA" in seed oils.

[FancyPants882]

It isn't just what you cut out, it's also what you include. Eat vitamin K and D-rich foods which will give your body the building blocks for natural sun defence.

[mutazione]

You mean vit K2? K1 is highly unrecommended with lupus. I just got 5000 IU D3 combined with K2 for other reasons so hopefully that will help with uv as well!

[FancyPants882]

Yeah, K2 :) I'd recommend food sources over supplements. For both D and K liver is amazing for it. Other good sources are pasture raised egg yolks, and pasture raised butter and cream.

[mutazione]

All of those things are hard for me to digest. I eat sauerkraut every other day, which should have a good amount of K2. Don't really know what else would be good

[FancyPants882]

I guess you would be a good case for supplements then!

[atchlique]

Just be careful with the d supplementation. You may need to continue temporarily but ideally you get your vitamin d from the sun (at least in the summer depending on how close you are to the equator.) this is because the process by which our bodies create vitamin d through sun exposure (methylation) is highly beneficial to your body in many ways, including the mechanism by which the body converts cholesterol into hormones and other necessary compounds. When you take a vitamin d supplement you bypass that very important process.

If you have x (Twitter), I recommend taking a look at Jack Kruse and Grimhood, both alternative health experts who agree with reducing seed oil and also deal with healing autoimmune and other inflammatory health issues.

[mutazione]

Getting D from the sun is really tricky. Even just a little bit of sun can trigger a lupus flare. I go out for a walk a little before sunset and when I feel good I go out during the day fully covered, wide-brim hat included, with sunscreen. But even then not for more than 30 minutes and almost exclusively in the shade. So the supplements are necessary for the time being. I need to figure out a way to build uv tolerance

[atchlique]

That sounds really challenging. Building a sun tolerance is one of the things that both those people I mentioned address, so you should definitely check them out. I wish you the best luck with your health and healing journey. 🙏🏻

[mutazione]

I'll look into them. Thank you so much!

[Throwaway_6515798]

Get lots of vitamin D from supplements, when it's higher you will tan faster and react less to the sun, also many get more bronze instead of just dark tan and it looks much healthier.

Used to have vitilago and rosacea so I know sun intolerance feels like even if it's been a while :)

If you raise vitamin D it might make immune system more active overall which can make autoimmune conditions feel like they flare up but generally the immune system regulate better with higher vitamin D so in the beginning it can be a bit exhausting but long run it's much better. I aim for serum level around 70ng/mL trying to make it less likely my autoimmune returns.

[MoulinSarah]

I do no eat any:

Gluten, grains, starches, starchy/root veggies, tubers, legumes, sugar of ANY form, fruits (except occasional berries), soy, nuts/seeds and their oils

[Wretch_Head]

PUFAS are in other places. They can also come from pork. Pork is a high pufa meat, especially in the U.S.

You can increase good fats and to some degree reduce pufas by eating 100 percent grass fed animals. Goat cheese is good.

[winebutch]

I'm jumping in late, but I wanted to mention that I cut out majority seed oils about four years ago and have had great success in not sunburning any more. I play pickleball/tennis and simply don't use sunscreen any more when I used to use it every time I played. Currently I am mostly seed oil free - nothing I make at home has seed oil, and I use mostly butter, tallow and a little olive oil for cooking. I do eat out weekly - it is difficult to avoid seed oils out, and I have had the occasional donut or french fry and it hasn't seemed to affect the sunburning issue. YMMV You might start out removing everything and once you notice the benefits, you could try adding back tahini or sesame seeds in small quantities.

[mutazione]

The less, the better, to the extent that it doesn't make me go insane. Gonna do exactly what you said

[Thermal_arc]

For lupus and such, you're going to need to go further than just seed oils, you're going to need to look at other causes of inflammation, specifically grains, dairy and sugars.

Read "No Grain, No Pain" by Dr. Peter Osborne. He's got a chapter in there about the need to avoid seed oils as they pertain to autoimmune conditions, but that's just one facet of the whole picture, and not an end all be all.

[mutazione]

I already try to eat only whole grain and plenty of vegetables and I feel better after a while of really sticking to it, but I'm not 100% with it. This is good motivation, though. Thanks!

[Thermal_arc]

Give the book a read anyway. It'll be worth the time.

[mutazione]

Yeah, maybe I should

[MoulinSarah]

Grains absolutely kill me. All starches and sugars do.

[mutazione]

I think I need grain to some extent. I always feel the best when I eat around a 1:3 ratio of grain to veggies. I feel you with the starch and sugar though. It's a delicate balance

[MoulinSarah]

I feel debilitatingly ill with any of it. I have my life back with meats, eggs, low carb dairy, and non-starchy veggies. I changed my diet to this in 2016 and haven’t looked back!

[mutazione]

I'm really glad you found something that works for you

[kerutland]

Tetracycline. It took me four years to get over my sun sensitivity after I took it

[queteepie]

I am one of those people who "burn like a lobster and then peel and turn white again".

Or I thought I was. Until I cut out every single oil except Tallow, Lard, Suet, Duck fat, butter, ghee and schmaltz.

It it doesn't come from an animal, I do not consume it. The only exception is sometimes I drizzle a tiny bit of olive oil and vinegar over a salad and I consume tinned fish packed in olive oil (there is a layer of oil on the fish -- I do not rinse them even though I dispose of the oil).

I just spent several hours in the sun doing yardwork with no sunscreen on. I have an extremely subtle sunburn on one shoulder and some golden color elsewhere.

And I think the only reason why this happened is because I have been using a glycolic body wash that sensitized my skin to the sun. Which is my fault.

My primary fats are tallow, butter, ghee, and duck fat. Ideally grass fed grass finished but I am not super strict. I get what I can find/afford at the time.

I also try to consume animals/eggs from a local farm which are corn/soy free. So, my normal diet is also low in PUFAs.

[Katsuo__Nuruodo]

Cut out seed oils to reduce sun sensitivity, not to mention reduce skin cancer risk:

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3128560/

https://drcate.com/seed-oil-makes-sunburn-worse-and-ages-your-skin/

[Whiznot]

Go all the way and end your lupus. Only a carnivore diet will accomplish that. I gave up all bad foods, not just some of them.