Hi Groundhog & Kathleen. I first looked into anti-inflammatory foods after being diagnosed with gastritis following gastroscopy many years ago, though my autoimmune thyroid condition predisposes to systemic inflammation as well as the development of additional autoimmune conditions. The first Opthalmologist I saw earlier this year did say in his clinic letter that he thinks my likely Sjogren's is secondary to the Hashimoto's. Had been warned so many times that having Hashi's meant I'd likely develop other autoimmune conditions as time went by, so this has been a long time coming! That said, have had the dry eye syndrome for 25+ years, but only recently has any medic shown much interest in it, probably because I'm told the dryness & inflammation are now severe.
I can't add much to what you've already said Kathleen, except perhaps that low gluten diets seem to be increasingly encouraged for reducing all manner of inflammatory conditions - thyroid included. The excellent Gastroenterology dept I attended for some years advised me to cut out wheat to help me manage my IBS-C, but I've found I need to avoid almost all gluten containing foods for this to really work for me.
Prior to menopause I ate a predominantly veggie diet, but when blood sugar instability became a real problem at that time, I found I needed to ensure I had a good portion of protein at every meal to help spread the gylcaemic load & that I couldn't do it on vegetable protein as this doesn't seem to have the staying power for me. So I had to go back to eating meat & fish more often, much against my preference. A nuisance, as animal based protein seems harder to process & aggravates the IBS-C!
I managed to get the gastritis under control by cutting out caffeine & cocoa, drinking only plain water apart from an early morning herbal tea, taking lactase with meals containing milk, reducing citrus fruits, berries & tomatoes, reducing the number of olive-oil based dishes I was eating (have spent lot of time in Greece & love their baked veggie dishes & salads) & eliminating sugar from my diet. I also learned which foods are high in salicylates. Probiotics & natural yoghurt in abundance seemed to help keep the gastritis in check as well, but I had a hunch that yoghurt was aggravating the inflammatory eye condition. So when Sjogren's was suggested as the likely cause, I researched & found articles suggesting a link with lactobacilli & Sjogren's. So I've reluctantly cut out yoghurt altogether as an experiment & each time I reintroduce it, my eyes do seem to become sorer, more itchy & visibly more inflamed. Possibly because probiotics can stimulate the immune system & there's some thought that that's not always a good thing for people with autoimmune conditions.
There's also a school of thought that foods either naturally high in, or causing the body to produce histamine, encourage inflammation & fermented foods & drinks tend to be pretty high in histamine.
Unfortunately I can't eat flax seeds (which as you say, Kathleen, are a great vegetarian source of omega 3 fats) because in common with other seeds, these are high in arginine which is thought to encourage flares of the cold sore virus, which plagues me. Nuts, beans, pulses, cereal foods & cocoa are also high in arginine, so I found it tricky to manage this, given I wanted to eat nuts, beans, pulses & whole grains as part of a high fibre diet, as well as for the cardio-protective properties of the fats in nuts.
Have you noticed anything that seems to aggravate your inflammatory eye problem Groundhog? It can be really difficult to identify food sensitivities when we all tend to eat such varied diets. I've been interested in nutrition right back to early 20s, initially to help manage the IBS-C which has been a lifelong challenge! With conditions that medicine struggles to help, I think desperation often drives us to do all we can for ourselves.
