sulfur gives me migraines

Question
Hi - I am exploring changing my diet due to psoriatic arthritis which lead me to this forum.  For 2 years I have been developing PA at 56 years old, and looking for a cure. I do not use any OTC or pharmaceutical drugs. I have discovered on my own many things that help, very alkaline diet, no prepared foods, no sugar.  I have eliminated toxins as much as a person can do, living near Seattle.

I also have a gene mutation (CBS) that causes me to get migraines from eating sulfur, and it barely takes any sulfur rich foods.  Using the search feature turned up nothing.

Sulfur foods:  garlic, onions, all animal meats (including grass-fed) and fish, eggs, and curciferous vegetables (broccoli, cabbage, brussels sprouts, cauliflower etc) plus many many more foods.

Is there a way I can eat the raw paleo diet when sulfur causes me 3-day migraines?  Sulfur seems to be such a large part of this diet. Would my PA improve if I abstained from the sulfur foods?

Thanks

Answer
Hi,

This is a difficult question to answer as I am no biologist. I have good news and bad news.
I did some checking on this CBS mutation and the following  online excerpt came up:-
"Elimination of sulphur-heavy foods appears important: namely cruciferous vegetables, onions, garlic, eggs.

Many researchers claim that individuals who are CBS ++ or +/- , or who have CBS pathway up-regulations, must eliminate flesh proteins. However I have found this not to be the case, in most instances"
So, if the above is correct, animal foods, other than eggs, should be fine. You might still be getting migraines from eating cooked animal foods(?), but it is always possible that raw animal foods either cause minimal or no trouble. For example, I have known some people who were highly allergenic to pasteurised/heated dairy but who were subsequently fine after consuming raw dairy.
Looking elsewhere online, I do see a lot of advice for CBS-sufferers to not eat processed foods as those are more likely to be sulphurated. Well, a raw, palaeolithic diet is about as unprocessed as one can get!
Then there is the psoriatic arthritis. It is now well-known in scientific circles that heated toxins, derived from cooking, such as advanced glycation end products, are a major cause of inflammation in the body, especially age-related inflammation such as in the case of arthritis, type 2 diabetes, alzheimer's, etc. etc.  Here are some studies:-
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16037267
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3257625/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3583887/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_glycation_end-product
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22168993
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15975084
Other  heat-created toxins which are formed by cooking/heat are nitrosamines, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and heterocyclic amines. Both polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and heterocyclic amines also happen to be components of cigarette-smoke and car-exhaust fumes. Given that these various toxins are so heavily related to age-related decline, it is unsurprising that rawpaleodieters routinely report feeling and looking a lot younger than their chronological age after they have been rawpalaeo for a few years.
Just by not eating cooked foods, your body has time to spend on getting rid of the toxins built up from eating cooked foods for many decades. This is why (water-)fasting helps even cooked-food-eaters. if you in addition, eat raw animal foods as well as some raw plant foods, then your body also gets the opportunity to really rebuild itself. The caveat, I am afraid, is that the longer one is on a cooked diet, and the older one is, the more painful the transition might be.  That is, it is possible you might not get absolutely all the advantages you might have gotten if you had started going rawpalaeo at the young age of 25, and healing/recovery will be slower. You may also experience harsher detoxes when first transitioning.
All I can really suggest for now is to try raw animal foods and see if they have a different effect on you than cooked animal foods. Perhaps the best bet would be to try raw vegan(minus the cruciferous vegetables of course) and then slowly introduce small amounts of raw animal foods(no raw eggs) into your diet to see if they have an effect on you re migraines.

HTH,
RPG.
Feel free to follow up with further questions if you need to

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