Wegener's Disease/Vasculitis

[CarolynA]

My husband was recently diagnosed with Wegener's Disease, which is a form of vasculitis. He is being treated with Cytoxin and Prednisone, and although he has not gained weight (in fact, he has lost 38 lbs because of loss of appetite early on in the disease), his blood sugar has been pretty high because of the Prednisone.

I have convinced him to try the McDougall progam to try to help, and we are going to do it together, including our 15 year old daughter. I am a vegetarian already, so the change will be less for me.

Anyway, my question is if you have seen anyone else with Wegener's or another form of vasculitis have success with the program and go into remission. It would be great if he could lose some more weight, lower his blood sugar to the point that he doesn't need medication, and go into remission so that he could get off of the Cytoxin and Prednisone.

Any thoughts/advice would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Carolyn

[JeffN]

My husband was recently diagnosed with Wegener's Disease, which is a form of vasculitis. He is being treated with Cytoxin and Prednisone, and although he has not gained weight (in fact, he has lost 38 lbs because of loss of appetite early on in the disease), his blood sugar has been pretty high because of the Prednisone.

I have convinced him to try the McDougall progam to try to help, and we are going to do it together, including our 15 year old daughter. I am a vegetarian already, so the change will be less for me.

Anyway, my question is if you have seen anyone else with Wegener's or another form of vasculitis have success with the program and go into remission. It would be great if he could lose some more weight, lower his blood sugar to the point that he doesn't need medication, and go into remission so that he could get off of the Cytoxin and Prednisone.

Any thoughts/advice would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Carolyn

Hi Carolyn

Following a lifestyle program like the McDougall, can only help, especially in regard to the weight and blood sugar.

I am not familiar with anyone being treated directly for Wegener's with the Mcdougall program but you might want to check with Dr Mcdougall himself.

As I mentioned this morning with vitiligo, this is also auto-immune related so my comments would apply here also.. which are that healthy vegetarian/vegan diets have been shown to have success with other auto-immune and immune conditions so there may be some benefit.

If anyone else knows of any related info that may be of help, please post it also.

Thanks

In Health
Jeff Novick, MS, RD

[CarolynA]

Thanks Jeff. We made some diet adjustments over the weekend, although we did not start the program full-force until today. Just from eating mostly vegan over the weekend we saw that his blood sugar stayed in the normal range, instead of spiking into the 300's after eating. So, I think that he is convinced to give this a good effort. If we could even get that regulated so that he didn't have to be on medications for diabetes, that would help. He has to take so many meds right now, cutting out 3 pills a day would definitely be a blessing.

If this DOES work to help put his Wegener's into remission faster, it is something that the medical community should know about. Maybe I will contact Dr. McDougall...

Thanks,

Carolyn