“Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead”
Luckily he seems to have improved his health, but I worry about the long-term effects...
Looks like a good movie. But why is he on a juice fast?
Because vegan physician ‘Dr.’ Joel Fuhrman told him to eat this way. Poor Joe Cross.
In the trailer Joe describes how he likes to eat two pizzas. That’s not slices, he points out, that’s pizzas. Joe has a wheat belly, as you can clearly see.
Joe mentions that he’s got urticarial vasculitis, which is a rare, chronic auto-immune disease of unknown cause.
Hmm... Wheat belly and a chronic auto-immune disease. Could it be?
“Dermatitis Herpetiformis Presenting as Chronic Urticaria“ (Powell, 2004)
Dermatitis Herpetiformis is also known as celiac disease, which is a subset of wheat poisoning. Sure enough. Of course the juice diet wouldn’t include any wheat, one would imagine. Urticarial vasculitis and chronic urticaria seem to be two aspects of one disease (Krause, 2023).
Joe Cross is a perfect candidate for a paleo/primal diet. The fast he does in the movie is a high-fat diet, as he’s using the stored fat in his body to fuel himself. A low-carb paleo/primal diet replicates this, sustainably, unlike the mostly-vegan approach Fuhrman advocates, which starts out high-fat, but turns low-fat as soon as Joe runs out of body fat. High-fat diets are sustainable, low-fat diets are not.
Fuhrman’s diet, which is some ways is a vegan take on the paleo diet, is way better than the two-pizzas-a-day diet, but it’s not optimal.
And I feel for Joe, I really do. I did the Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead thing myself, and it sucks.
P.S. How’s Joe doing?
“JC: At the beginning of the movie I was 310, after juicing for 60 days I lost about 80-85 pounds – thereabouts. I lost another 20 pounds for the next three months by just eating plant foods, such as fruits, vegetables, nuts, until I was off full medication. So that was five months of me like that and I was down to 210. Then since that – Feb. 8th – and three and a half years later – I’ve fluctuated 220 on the low side and 240 on the high side. Most of the time I sit at about 230. So that’s about a 85-90 pound consistent weight loss.”
“Chronic urticaria: A cutaneous manifestation of celiac disease”:
“Celiac disease, or gluten-sensitive enteropathy, is an immune-mediated disease of the small bowel that results in malabsorption. It classically presents with gastrointestinal symptoms including chronic diarrhea, weight loss, abdominal bloating and anorexia. It is becoming more frequently identified in asymptomatic patients with a diagnosis of deficiencies related to malabsorption of iron, folic acid, vitamin B12 and vitamin D. It is increasingly identified as a cause for early or refractory osteoporosis. Occasionally, celiac disease presents with cutaneous manifestations alone. Dermatitis herpetiformis is a well-recognized cutaneous manifestation of celiac disease. Other cutaneous manifestations include alopecia, angular stomatitis and aphthous ulcerations. Described here is a case of a 24-year-old woman who presented with intermittent urticaria and gastrointestinal complaints. She was found to have celiac disease on small-bowel biopsy. Both her gastrointestinal symptoms and urticaria resolved when she was put on a gluten-free diet, suggesting that her urticaria was a cutaneous manifestation of celiac disease.”
Original post March 8, 2011
References
Krause, Karoline, Hanna Bonnekoh, Jannis Jelden‐Thurm, et al. 2023. “Differential Diagnosis Between Urticarial Vasculitis and Chronic Spontaneous Urticaria: An International Delphi Survey.” Clinical and Translational Allergy 13 (10): e12305. https://doi.org/10.1002/clt2.12305.
Powell, Gavin R., Anna L. Bruckner, and William L. Weston. 2004. “Dermatitis Herpetiformis Presenting as Chronic Urticaria.” Pediatric Dermatology 21 (5): 564–67. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0736-8046.2004.21509.x.
Your original post was 2011, 15 years ago. Have you checked to see how he's doing now?