Biofilm and Acidity
It is common knowledge in the CF community that people with CF are prone to being too acid. It's just not deemed to be medically significant and is not treated as an issue in its own right, though it sometimes gets treated sort of incidentally if you get bad acid reflux or something.
I think this is a major issue that fundamentally compromises the immune system and actively fosters the development of biofilm which is known to be associated with antibiotic resistant infections. I have seen some research at some point suggesting if you can get acidity and inflammation down, you can begin to break up biofilm and you can then successfully treat previously antibiotic-resistant infections.
I think this is a major part of "the normal progression of CF" -- that as you get steadily more acid, your infections become more intractable and they then treat you with stronger antibiotics, which is an assault on the body and weakens the body. Our current approach to treating CF is to "nuke it from orbit" because CF is deadly scary horrible stuff and we seem to overlook the detail that the war zone we are nuking is the body we hope to save.
Nuking infection ends up being a not great approach. If you have a hard to treat infection or chronic issues, it's better to figure out where things have gone wrong with your body chemistry and work on your body chemistry. A more alkaline diet can do wonders to start breaking up biofilm and making ugly infections easier to treat.
Lettuce, celery and cucumbers are the big three alkaline 'super foods.' I don't tolerate cucumbers or celery that well so I spent some months having a bowl of lettuce as part of my lunch about four or five days a week to work on reversing my acidity.
I also somewhat often choose corn-based foods instead of wheat to try to skew things more alkaline. And I avoid peanut products most of the time and avoid peanut oil as "the work of the devil" because it's very pro-inflammatory and hard as hell to reverse.
I grew up in Georgia which is the peanut capital of the known universe. Ugh. So I had to reverse some habits I grew up with. And read labels a lot because peanut oil is commonly used in snack foods throughout the US.
But this does not have to be hard. If you are getting a taco at Taco Bell, you get the corn shell taco instead of the wheat shell taco and you ask for "extra lettuce." And that can skew the pH of the meal enough to gently help you heal instead of making you gradually and steadily sicker.
But if you are really, really sick with any kind of inflammatory condition, just adding a LOT of lettuce to your diet can make a difference. I was eating it like four days a week or more because if I skipped it one day I was okay but if I skipped two days in a row, my lungs were noticeably worse.
I think this is a major issue that fundamentally compromises the immune system and actively fosters the development of biofilm which is known to be associated with antibiotic resistant infections. I have seen some research at some point suggesting if you can get acidity and inflammation down, you can begin to break up biofilm and you can then successfully treat previously antibiotic-resistant infections.
I think this is a major part of "the normal progression of CF" -- that as you get steadily more acid, your infections become more intractable and they then treat you with stronger antibiotics, which is an assault on the body and weakens the body. Our current approach to treating CF is to "nuke it from orbit" because CF is deadly scary horrible stuff and we seem to overlook the detail that the war zone we are nuking is the body we hope to save.
Nuking infection ends up being a not great approach. If you have a hard to treat infection or chronic issues, it's better to figure out where things have gone wrong with your body chemistry and work on your body chemistry. A more alkaline diet can do wonders to start breaking up biofilm and making ugly infections easier to treat.
Lettuce, celery and cucumbers are the big three alkaline 'super foods.' I don't tolerate cucumbers or celery that well so I spent some months having a bowl of lettuce as part of my lunch about four or five days a week to work on reversing my acidity.
I also somewhat often choose corn-based foods instead of wheat to try to skew things more alkaline. And I avoid peanut products most of the time and avoid peanut oil as "the work of the devil" because it's very pro-inflammatory and hard as hell to reverse.
I grew up in Georgia which is the peanut capital of the known universe. Ugh. So I had to reverse some habits I grew up with. And read labels a lot because peanut oil is commonly used in snack foods throughout the US.
But this does not have to be hard. If you are getting a taco at Taco Bell, you get the corn shell taco instead of the wheat shell taco and you ask for "extra lettuce." And that can skew the pH of the meal enough to gently help you heal instead of making you gradually and steadily sicker.
But if you are really, really sick with any kind of inflammatory condition, just adding a LOT of lettuce to your diet can make a difference. I was eating it like four days a week or more because if I skipped it one day I was okay but if I skipped two days in a row, my lungs were noticeably worse.
