Your skin looks green and prickly, annie.

BTW, I avoid google and so I used startpage search engine instead and it gave me the picture below. Which one is you and which one is mh3?

Halp, I did this - tripping on 1P-LSD while eating microwaved cottage cheese. But I guess it's okay [SFW]. Anne seems to be real indeed. Hallo Anne!

Re: food sensitivities

I just want to put in that I solved many food sensitivities on my own. I used to avoid gluten because it gave me brain fog, dairy because it made me itch, legumes/beans because they made me bloat like *mad* until I felt like I was going to literally pop, red meat because of joint inflammation, nightshade veggies for the same reason... I think there's more.

I used to be like, "I can't eat ______" all the time for like 5 years straight. People believed me, I believed me. The truth was, I *could*, but I just had to do it smartly.

I eat all the abovementioned things without the problems they used to give me.

With bread I started incrementally with tiny amounts of local, organic, sourdough bread. Gradually increased that, also combined it with cheese per a suggestion by a celiac friend.

With cheese, I started also incrementally with small amounts of raw, local PARMESAN. Start with the hard, raw cheeses. Just eat that parmesan, and eat the rind, too. I combined it, in the beginning, with apple cider vinegar, salt, and raw garlic. This was MAGIC. Like a probiotic entactogen.

I also began drinking small amounts of local raw, grass fed milk. I first combined it with apple cider vinegar. (If that sounds gross look up soured milk.)

[If it appears difficult to find such high quality local ingredients, make it an adventure/treasure hunt! These things are out there, and when you find the little farmer or baker or whatever that has what you need, not only you do benefit, but you are investing in a kind of community that desperately needs the support in this day and age.]

With meat, potatoes and tomatoes, believe it or not, KETCHUP was my savior, along with his trusty sidekick, hot sauce. If you can find raw chili peppers, even better. If you want to digest proteins better, you gotta incorporate spicy things into your diet.

Ketchup helped probably mainly because of the vinegar. For potatoes, I *needed* spiciness to digest them. And when I did, god, did I feel good (after years of not eating any potatoes).

As for beans, I ate soaked beans (EDEN brand of canned beans are pre-soaked) starting very very small and patiently working my way up, combining with ample amounts of raw apple cider vinegar and garlic. Oh, and CUMIN. CUMIN CUMIN CUMIN. Pile on the cumin (keep pilin' til it's almost too much. It's a forgiving spice.) This will cut down on gas tremendously.

With care, eating high quality foods gradually in certain combinations worked for me. Now I am starting to eat less quality things like store-bought cream cheese or roast beef or regular bread, and it's not a problem anymore. I just had to go through that initial period of about 2 months of carefully combining these foods and not being afraid to go overboard with certain ingredients in order to optimize digestion and assimilation.

So now, when I hear people say, "I can't eat _____," I want to say, "You know what? Yes you can. You can actually, if you are strong enough, take your hand, pick up the piece of bread, open your mouth, and put it in there." The longer you avoid a certain food the further away your body is from being adapted to digesting it. You may have a reaction of some kind when you eat it, but you know what? You can deal with it! There are ways to eat these foods that will minimize these reactions.

And you need to, because when you cut out entire food groups, you are depriving yourself of certain nutrients, amino acids, flavonoids, and lord knows what else. Variety is essential to balance, which is essential to health.

And lastly, food is meant to taste good.

/rant

No offense but I know for an absolute fact that i never need put a grain or legume in my stomach again. Cutting them out was the only thing that allowed my initial recovery from my neuropathy. I went from having to drop out of school because i couldn't sit in a chair without being in firey pain to having some sort of quality of life back, aside from my recent flare which was totally my fault. I had neuropathy in my arms, back, and abdomen for months and occasionally behind my eyes and on my tongue. Made the diet changes and it receeded back to my lower legs from where it came relatively quickly. Had another relapse while maintaining my diet and instead of taking seven months i recovered in two weeks that time. And I'm fairly certain there are little to no nutrients i'm missing out on. The evidence that those foods are remotely necessary or even moderately healthy is pretty scant and I do try and eat a whole lot of things that others neglect like organ meats and occasionally insects when i can. If anything i need to increase my intake and variety of those. It's not all about digestibility, but I'm particularly avoiding those groups because they contain various classes of suspected enterotoxins which can enhance intestinal permeability to bacterial endotoxins and perpetuate inflammation. If i ever get the dysbiosis under control though i'll surely go to town on some chips and dip In moderation of course...

Anne mind if i ask what your symptoms were? Your post was really encouraging. Perhaps i just need to give it more time. Before i fucked everything up with antibacterials again, i was actually doing a lot better. It felt like i had plateaued for a bit, but maybe in time i'll slowly improve if i keep at it.

Gahhhh had one of the worst chest pains in a while while writing this. Creepiest feeling not knowing if it's just something in the chest lining/lungs/GI tract or if your a ticking time bomb for a heart attack. Got my heart checked out and cleared, but what do they know

No offense, but I would say pretty much the exact same things you said, years ago, except replace "neuropathy" with "rheumatoid arthritis." I was 10000% sure that the food was exacerbating it. From a short-sighted point of view, it is true. But more long-sighted: There are billions of people who eat those "enterotoxins" and don't experience what you're experiencing. To place the blame on the food is again, short-sighted.

I also believed that I wasn't missing out on nutrients. And for a while, I was doing fine. But after 3+ years of dietary restriction in order to keep inflammation at bay, I was growing weaker. It works up until a point.



You're not gonna get a heart attack. I know exactly what you're talking about. I am/was also dealing with lots of intestinal imbalance issues.

I would say it's either stress, parasites, or both.

I once felt my heart physically "close up" while writing a break-up-like email to a woman in question about a year ago. These things are more connected to the emotional realm than you probably would like to think.

How can you make a blanket statement that food doesn't have an impact? I know it's probably not THE causative agent but it is giving my immune system access to inflammatory substrate by compromising barrier function. If I can eliminate the dysbiosis I probably won't have clinical symptoms in response to those foods, but that doesn't mean they're not still compromising normal barrier function and causing low grade inflammation. And I don't think that's a fair assessment. The number one cause of death in America is cardiovascular disease with cancer and diabetes following close behind. Autoimmune diseases have been estimated in 1/12 all the way up to 1/6 of the population. All of these share similar etiologies. While it's impossible to quantify the relative risk of grains/legumes and so on on these inflammatory states, frankly I don't care what the majority of people do because the trend is heading towards death and morbity by inflammatory illness. So in fact your wrong. Many people are experiencing some version of what I am or will in the future. As for nutrients, all the foods I've cut out are evolutionarily recent additions. It would be kind of silly to assume my metabolism was dependent on them for nutrition and as of yet I haven't seen any evidence to suggest it is. They are tolerated at best, detrimental at worst. I'm doing a lot to try and improve my diversity and acquire everything I need from more wholesome sources. Sources better resembling those which sustained humans long before agriculture. Sources which I am much more confident in the ability of my body to handle and aren't known irritants

I appreciate all that come in a good way. As any human being I always have things to learn. But I have background in biochem which I have sunk into months and months of non-stop reading and personal experimentation and don't appreciate debating what I know for fact doesn't work for me. I've never had RA as far as I know so I don't know if you can relate. But if you've ever woke up one morning to the nerves behind your eyeballs dying I think you would have a different appreciation for why I'm not going to chance on reintroducing the one group of foods who's elimination has made that go away

I find that a bit strange. Carbohydrate is a non-essential nutrient for instance. Why should i put bread in my mouth if i'm getting adverse reactions? Everytime i eat bread, i get bloated for days, feel dizzy and generally unwell. This has developed and wasn't lways the case. I don't know why "toughing it out" would do me any good in the long term. My body ain't gonna adapt to bread to because i continue eating it.

Hey, we're on the same page. I didn't say that food doesn't have an impact. I know it's a trigger. I'm just saying that it's not the root cause.

Bread isn't only carbohydrates. Gluten is a protein with various, arguably salubrious amino acids, for example. Plus, wheat starch also has certain properties as well, not found in other starches.

I didn't say "tough it out." My approach to eating bread again was not to just eat it straight 'til it worked. It was a careful path of gradual introduction, food-combining (not the typical food combining most people talk about), and high-quality, probiotic sourcing.

Well, that's a young age to be suffering like that. Why don't you try another Doctor? If you are suffering like this you need professional help mate.

Loooooooool. Not laughing at you brother, just the notion I have been to so many doctors it's insane. Most of them tried to prescribe me anti depressants and tell me it was all anxiety. Actively avoided ordering necessary lab tests in some cases. The most progressive of them had some mild concept of gut-immune interactions but could only comprehend the very basics of it. Like 90% of this process has been me me me doing research, bringing it to my doctor, and ordering my own labs to confirm my theories. And I've been to conventional GPs, surgeons, neurologists, cardiologists, dermatologists, oncologists, ER docs, gastroenterologists, alternative/functional doctors, the whole nine yards. I am seriously blessed to have some background in biological sciences and enough time on my hands to research because the medical system has been a total and utter disappointment. There is nothing professional help can offer me but dangerous maintenance drugs. And I'm not blaming all the doctors themselves. I've had good ones, but so many times their hands are either tied or their education simply did not expose them to these developing areas of science. If the FDA decides to lift their restrictions on FMT's then I've got a reason to go back. Until then though it's just keep playing with diet and lifestyle modifications and occasional supplements and seeing if I can nudge this thing further in the right direction. That's really all anyone can do for most chronic illness.

Ganesh you mean well, but the medical establishment is a mess in most parts. What psilociraptor describes is fairly typical in my exprience. you go visit a general practicioner, he might order a blood test and then send you to various specialists who all half-ass some standard tests. "Well, nothing wrong with you!". Then you go back to your GP and he just looks at you and says "There is nothing i can do" and makes sure you are out of the door as quick as possible.

You have to do all th research yourself and then suffer the humiliation of not even being able to take the substances you know are helping.

I once thought "professional help" would be the ticket..afterall, they are DOCTORS, the MUST know who else is supposed to know. The fact is, disease and illness is poorly understood and the longer you rely on doctors, the bigger the chance of being prescribed potentially harmful "medicine". Happen to me as well and i probably have to bear the damage to this day.

Protip: If you are getting sent to a "neurologiat" this is to get you to do therapy for your "obvious" psychosomatic illness.

Ok, good to know you tried the 'conventional path', i wasn't sure if you had the opinions of another Doctor, for example.



...True, and i've experienced that enough times too. I totally agree that sometimes it's best to do your own research, especially when the Quack doesn't deliver the right form of 'medicine' that works. However, The thing is, untill you do any 'tests', how do you know what the results would be? What if it really was serious, and you didn't do the tests. Hindsight is always perfect, but it's a luxury of looking back at a past, not aligned to the present.

I'm relieved at the general consensus that doctors are overrated, especially when it comes to dealing with medical mysteries / mysterious chronic autoimmune dysfunction like the OP is dealing with. Been down that route, and it really sucks. Conventional doctors really don't know what is going on with this stuff. Not their fault, of course; the world is changing more rapidly than the establishment can keep up with, methinks.

exhaustion.
endless bad skin.
semi sick feeling all the time.
chest colds that never ended.
extreme mood swings.
degrading of teeth from lack of some vitamins
nail fungi
hair got fried out
scalp psoriasis
poop ranging from water to constipated
micro blisters on fingers and toes and itching galore.
endless sinus infections.
bloating.

^ and it was all pretty much constant.


thing is i was never like that before i went touring and started eating crap food. ( grains)

once i adjusted diet to no grains at all and hardly any milk or sugar, and barked down like garlic and tumeric and spices galore , it all sorta just went away.
now im actually in pretty good shape over all.

it did take a few months to really kick in, and about 2 yrs to normalize.

i consider grains to be the food of cattle and slaves.
unfit for proper humans.

i do have a known corn allergy...........
anything associated with corn whatsoever is like kryptonite to me.

BTW my mom is a doctor, she was reasonably unhelpful,
beyond telling me i smoke too much pot.
in her defense, shes a surgeon trauma expert , so she thinks with knives and steel.

anyway i feel great anymore, and never get sick , cept a once a yr 2-3 day chest cold.

in my case i blame grains.

I love seeing discussion on this topic, as it has been near and dear to my heart for about a decade or so-- I have researched it heavily.

I suffered severe general allergies for over 25 years, and it escalated to the point that I would have sneezing fits that could last a half-hour at a stretch. It was misery.

Long story shorter, I learned that the interface between the food and body is far and away the most important element of nutritional health, because it is that biosphere that allows every function to perform properly. I have not had an allergic fit like that in 6 years.

IF you have food allergies/GI issues (or any other malady, honestly), you should strongly consider one thing above everything else:

STOP EATING SUGAR.

Sugar is far and away the most damaging element in modern human health, and it is linked to nearly every malady that affects people today, from Cancer to heart disease, diabetes, mental illness and on.

No other thing will more positively affect your physical well-being that removing sugar and the related carbohydrates from your system.

Until you do this, nit-picking over bread/gluten types (AKA the Whole Grain thing), is useless, because all carbohydrates are metabolized into sugar, which is the root problem in the lions-share of sickness.

The body is made to run off of fats-- which should be so common-sense obvious that it need not be said--because when one ingests more fuel--of any type, carb, protein, or fat-- they are stored not as sugar, but FAT.
Why?
Why would your body store "extra" fuel as FAT if it was OK with running on sugar?
Humans aren't made to eat non-green carbs. Do you salivate when you're walking through a wheat field? No? It's because you're not biologically meant to eat that stuff. We're not cows. Why would we eat cow food? The fact that we dump in flavorings and cook it doesn't make it more biologically appropriate to eat in bulk, as we do via bread/pasta/etc...

This doesn't even mention that the grains we grow today are genetically modified for yield and pesticide resistance, having long-since stripped the natural nutrition the strains once had from them to produce cheaper, faster profits for the megalith companies that grow them.
There are mountains of evidence in well-reviewed science literature to reveal these simple facts, and once UNDERSTOOD and adopted, they will change your life. Look this stuff up!

Probiotics are excellent and necessary, and eating things like sauerkraut (home-made is remarkably easy and cheap for us Nexian kitchen-chemists ), kefir, and/or supplements are great...

But if you're dumping sugars into your intestines, all the billions of sugar-centric bacteria are going to continue overpowering other types, reducing nutrient absorbtion, increasing systemic inflammation/permeability, and inviting cancers, ulcers, and whatever else. It also invites Candida and other problems, which also thrive only on sugar.

Keep the conversation going, and take care!!

my total daily sugar intake is about 2 TSP total........

if you read thru history, grains are associated heavily with slave populations.
along with sugar..........

Agree about the sugar. I don't eat sweet fruits anymore. Tried after a long spell of being healthy and healed and felt terrible for the two weeks I ate them (all organic). The type of energy felt cheap, erratic. From what I understand most fruit has been bred to be way more sugary than their ancestorial counter parts. Feel so much better without it.

Well neurologists deal with physical nerve injury as well. The funny thing is though, despite having "neuropathy", my nerves work fine. They are simply the victim of my immune system. The fact that there is no specialty for inflammatory disorders despite the vast majority of chronic diseases being inflammatory in nature is a testament to just how little desire conventional medicine has to go beyond the surface. And if they do they default to calling it "inflammatory dysfunction" like it happens for no reason

Ganesh - You're right i should be careful to mention, seeing a doctor is still important. Even if not for anything other than access to testing. Which is still quite pathetic in most cases, though I'm sure the insurance companies are more to blame for that. They didn't even check for CIDP/guillaine-barre on an autoimmune panel. When i asked them they knew what it was and said it was possible. I suspect the reason they weren't going to do it on a standard test was because the treatment is a $6000 injection once every two weeks for life If you want testing that's going to reveal anything relevant though, be prepared to spend lots and lots of money....

Anne - that sounds awful, but seriously thanks for chiming in. Gives me a lot of hope that this mess can be reversed in time!

Coastal - Metabolism is something I'm only recently delving deep into and hopefully in a few more weeks I'll be a little more educated on it when I'm done writing this paper for my metabolism class. I do think the amounts of sugar in this society are certainly unhealthy (and really refined calories of any type are probably not good as they promote selective feeding of microorganisms. fat can do this too which is why it's used to promote metabolic syndrome in research.) But I think this issue becomes a lot more complex than placing blame on specific calories. The body stores sugars as fats as a form of metabolic control. During times of trauma such as starvation or infection access to carbohydrates is limited and so various changes in energy metabolism occur allowing it to conserve glucose for pathways that fat can not contribute to. One example is the pentose phosphate pathway which generates NADPH and ribulose 5-phosphate which have various functions in the acute phase response such as DNA synthesis for tissue repair and the generation of ROS species to help the immune system fight pathogens. Various similar things occur in daily feeding fasting cycles and if the body were to store sugar instead, it may burn through it for basic cellular functions at the expense of other metabolic needs. And if you run out of glucose it's going to start synthesizing it from proteins which is where you really end up in trouble. That's pretty much the last leg. So storing it as fat allows it to differentiate its function more so than being a more preferred fuel. In fact, in a way you can say the body really cherishes it. That said i certainly don't disagree with everything you said. I think one problem i do actually have is snacking on way too much fruit. I don't think it's right to blame fruit for sugar content, but i do think proportions should always be kept in mind.

There is a lot of talk of methods of treatment from a biomedical science background which is healthy and useful but another system of medicine you could look at is chinese medicine. I would recommend going and seeing a practitioner though rather than self-study as it can be very hard to work it all out on your own and if you don't have the eyes to see ou might overemphasize one pattern and completely miss another plus tounge and pulse diagnosis, especially pulse diagnosis, aren't useful until you've spent a lot of time feeling and seeing many different patients. You should research the best one in your area, they have been known to treat nasty auto-immune diseases and other really strange things that western doctors have given up on.

Best of luck on your journey! It sounds like you've tried a lot of different things and I really hope you can find your answer soon.

A.