nightshade connection

With any elimination diet, you should 100% cut out everything that you believe is causing the problem. Once you have a baseline, ie your HS is under control, then and only then should you even attempt to reintroduce anything that you cut out originally.

Look at it this way, if the diet fails to work because you havent cut everything out, how will you know its nightshades that is causing the problem?

If you have already started, then carry on. Its worth finding the cause, trust me. You'll feel better for knowing exactly what is going wrong in your body.

I cannot eat ANY! The first month of going nightshade free I didn't realize shredded cheese was coated with potato starch. That tiny bit kept me slightly inflamed. Once I started shredding my own cheese, I went into remission. At Thanksgiving, I accidentally at some turkey with a seasoning on it. I developed cysts by that evening! I have to be very strict. I can't eat peanuts either and I had a piece of pb fudge and within hours developed an outbreak! No nightshades takes total dedication and preparation but it's worth it to me because I can be a better wife and mother when I'm not in excruciating pain!

I cannot eat ANY! The first month of going nightshade free I didn't realize shredded cheese was coated with potato starch. That tiny bit kept me slightly inflamed. Once I started shredding my own cheese, I went into remission. At Thanksgiving, I accidentally at some turkey with a seasoning on it. I developed cysts by that evening! I have to be very strict. I can't eat peanuts either and I had a piece of pb fudge and within hours developed an outbreak! No nightshades takes total dedication and preparation but it's worth it to me because I can be a better wife and mother when I'm not in excruciating pain! Oh and eating out is very hard. I have to research ingredients of restaurants thoroughly before I can eat out.

As the others said, even the smallest amount of nightshades could set you off, and they're in so many processed foods it's almost impossible to keep track. And ingredients lists aren't always very helpful, they usually don't come right out and say "potato" or "tomato" or "paprika", it'll say dextrose, lactic acid or maltodextrin. So definitely educate yourself about what those ingredients really mean.

By far, the easiest way to keep track of what makes you break out is by keeping a food diary. Breakfast, lunch and dinner and all the snacks in between. Make sure you have that diary with you at all times and write down everything you're eating, while you're eating it, otherwise you might forget later (speaking from experience here), and also write down the time of day you ate those foods. If you have a breakout, you can go back and look at what you ate, and try to put two and two together. I started using one, with the intention of stopping as soon as my elimination diet was done, but I still use it, a year later. Every once in awhile I might stumble on something that makes me breakout and it's super easy to go back and identify what it was, and then of course avoid it like the bubonic plague. But more importantly, I've also discovered that certain foods that do contain small amounts of nightshades don't set me off.

For example, potatoes and tomatos, no matter how miniscule the amount, cause breakouts under my arms and girly parts within 12-14 hours like clockwork, but certain peppers don't seem to bother me quite as much. I can actually have a little paprika here and there without a breakout appearing, I just have to be very careful about how much of it I eat. I don't eat it on purpose, but if I happen to stumble into something with paprika, it's not a big deal, unless I eat a lot of it.

Seriously, I can't stress the importance of a food diary enough. That was how I found out about my issues with nightshades to begin with, and how I've been able to reintroduce certain foods into my diet without compromising my health in the process. And as much as I love nightshade vegetables, and pizza and roasted red potatoes, I love not having hideous, exploding puss-filled cysts ravaging the most sensitive parts of my body even more. And I just feel so much better overall. I think you'll be surprised at just how good you feel once you've cut them out. It's not easy, but it's worth it.

Good luck!