Help, just been told by a Dr to switch to a paleo diet to reduce inflammation.
Well your doctor is talking bollocks to start with. I don't care if he's a senior consultant. Go and Google this. There's no scientific evidence to prove it's better than other diets - it's just that it's not ultra processed so it should help improve health from that point alone anyway. It's a fad diet in effect.
I know it's banded about as a treatment for MS but there's little actual proper science behind this so I'd be cautious about a doctor who tells you this.
I have a friend who has MS and lives by a paleo diet. He got to a point where he struggles to maintain weight now - he's fit and very slim. It's a difficult diet to maintain. For starters it's gluten free, which means eating out becomes difficult. And it's even more difficult because he can't have pulses and he can't have dairy. He lives a lot off grilled meat and vegetables or simple oven tray bakes of meat and veg. Even his wife calls it miserable as a diet and she's supportive.
Another friend has an another auto immune condition and he is carb /starch free but eats a lot of meat and dairy to make up for it. He needs the diary because he has to have steroid medication and this affects his bone density. There is evidence that starches can be problematic for his condition. He's an otherwise very healthy bloke.
Being vegetarian on top of being paleo sounds like a massive stretch tbh - it's a really challenging diet without that additional factor. I've catered for my first friend in the past and without pulses and legumes and wheat it's extremely difficult as it is and the second friend has a challenge to eat well generally by his own admission because everything has carbs/starch in.
Plus you are already talking about eating dairy and pulses so you aren't interested in following the doctors advice and going paleo anyway, despite saying you wouldn't be doing it without your doctors advice! If you were following his advice, you would be doing a proper paleo diet! So in essence you are picking and choosing what you want to do anyway!
As I say, going gluten free / looking at your starch consumption and going ultra processed free is probably enough of a health benefit without calling yourself paleo because if you are eating pulses and dairy but not meat you aren't following a paleo diet anyway!
You should get enough benefits from that. There IS research saying there's a link between gluten consumption and autoimmune conditions so this is probably what I'd focus on. One of the things about ultra processed foods is precisely because they tend to be packed full of gluten / starch products. There is a growing body of evidence about non-celiac gluten sensitivity and autoimmune conditions and concerns about starch consumption.
I think setting yourself up to do an exceptionally hard diet is generally setting yourself up to fail as it's so hard to maintain long term.
If you start with ultra processed free and gluten free, its challenging enough. If that makes a difference that might be enough without going further. Eliminate and test - if it doesn't work, move onto eliminating the next thing. Plus calling yourself paleo when you aren't only serves to confuse.
So whilst I think your doctor is talking bollocks I also think there's something in what he says to an extent - just not necessarily how he's framed it to you. Go away and really look up the scientific evidence on this and your condition not the fad diet evangelists - there's a difference between the two - don't fall into the trap of getting them confused.