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Sugar and seed oils are two separate doors into the same room. Closing one doesn’t close the other.
Inflammation & The Terrain Protocol
I hear this all the time: “I already cut sugar. I don’t understand why I’m still breaking out, still getting hives, still so inflamed.”
Here’s what’s usually missing: sugar and seed oils are two separate doors into the same room. Closing one doesn’t close the other.
Sugar contributes to inflammation partly through insulin. Chronically elevated insulin is thought to upregulate an enzyme called aromatase, which converts other hormones into estrogen in fat tissue — one contributing pathway toward estrogen dominance. Estrogen dominance is associated with more sensitized mast cells, which may lower the provocation it takes for them to release histamine.
That’s the pathway most people have heard of. It’s the reason “cut the sugar” is common advice. And it’s correct — as far as it goes.
Seed oils take a completely different route to the same destination. They’re loaded with linoleic acid, an omega-6 fat that your body converts into arachidonic acid. Arachidonic acid feeds directly into the same inflammatory cascade that produces prostaglandins — signaling molecules that, again, lower your mast cells’ threshold for reacting.
Different starting material. Same end result: a more reactive, more easily triggered immune system.
This is why “just cut sugar” so often falls short as a complete strategy. You can be doing everything right with your sugar intake and still be cooking every meal in canola or soybean oil, still ordering restaurant food fried in the same oils, still filling your histamine bucket from a completely different direction than the one you fixed.
This is also why I don’t treat the Three Drivers — grains, sugar, and seed oils — as interchangeable or optional extras you can pick and choose from. They’re not three versions of the same advice. They’re three separate mechanisms that all funnel into the same outcome: a lower threshold for the exact reactions you’re trying to get rid of.
But for some women, that third open door is still enough to keep the bucket full enough to spill over. If you’ve cut sugar and you’re still reacting, the question isn’t whether you’re disciplined enough. It’s whether you’ve actually closed all three doors — or just the one everyone talks about.
Want to understand how The Terrain Protocol works as a complete framework? Start here.
Source: Sergeant et al. Effect of Dietary Linoleic Acid Intake on Eicosapentaenoic Acid Status and Lipoxygenase-Mediated Oxylipin Biosynthesis in Healthy Adults: A Randomized Controlled Trial. Nutrients. 2026;18(11):1814. PMID 42280457.
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If this is sounding familiar — the hives, the rashes, the reactions that seem to come out of nowhere — you don’t have to keep guessing. Let’s connect the dots between your hormones, your inflammation, and your skin, and build a plan that actually addresses what’s driving it.
Reach out and start connecting the dots.