Thanks for your honesty!! to be perfectly honest, the healthiest people I know eat grass fed meats, full fat dairy and other whole foods (including of course veggies!) LOL, and so the food debates continue! LOL. My holistic doctor treats Interstitial Cystitis. Her patients have to eat red meat every day (maybe less after treatment but never vegetarian!). I feel MUCH better when eat red meat. In addition to the obvious merrits of zinc and iron, red meat changes the gut microbe profile. Many, many of my doctor's patients came to her after years of veg or vegan diets that just pushed their poor bodies too far in one direction and encouraged the gut microbes that feed the IC. Also making the body too alkaline, which then askes the body to produce more acid to balance. We in the west are so extreme. Chinese medicine coaxes the body to balance its own PH! No PH forcing through alkaline diets and detox diets. People feel "better" on vegan diets because hopefuly they are finally eating whole foods. But beware the long term vegan diet! Auto-immune conditions are lurking!!! She also does not believe in saunas and colonics as that has made her poor IC patients with leaky guts SO much worse. No lymph massage during treatment either. Slow and steady wins the race!!! After what I see that white sugar has done to friends I will never eat it again. I have not had it, nor yeast in 1.5 years. So I am hoping that as you indicated, avoiding yeast and sugar and taking probiotics and minding my sleep and lifestyle choices I can enjoy the occasional adult beverage (sugar free of course). I really applaud your thinking holistically about health and healing. Chinese Medicine has so much to offer the west and practitioners like you help to form a bridge between east and west.

One more thing. I would be curious too to see that of your patients that relapsed, were they drinking sugary drinks and also eating sugar daily? This is what would be interesting to figure out. I suspect some of that would be the case.