stri8ed

Maybe its something in the skin which is bothering you. Have you tired peeling it and see if that makes a difference?

Another possibility is its only the raw tomato you have problems with. Its a known thing that cooking a food alters its proteins, and hence the body can respond differently to a food cooked vs raw. You could try cooking it to see if that makes a difference.

You are more help to me than you could ever imagine. today was particularly bad. Very hopeless and scared all day. I'm glad I logged on and saw some more advice from you.

 

Instead of looking at this as a really bad day, I'm going to look at it as the motivation I need to finally heal myself. I ate my regular breakfast today and that was no good, I felt the mind-fog creep in full force starting in 5 minutes and being fully present 30 minutes after I ate. I did still have a little when I woke up but it got much worse afterwards.

 

I am going to start the rotational diet today. Here's my question, there won't be that many foods that I have in the rotation, so is it ok to eat a lot of the one food at a time? For example, if I'm having snap peas and broccoli for breakfast, can I eat a lot of them? I am worried about my weight so I eat a lot but I feel like that is probably making it worse instead of better. I started my food journal yesterday, and will be keeping detailed notes. I'm just wondering if I should keep taking the probiotics and vitamins or not. I'm not sure if they're helping or hurting yet. Part of me thinks I should keep it as simple as possible but I also don't want to leave out any possibly allies.

 

Thank you very much for your example for the rotational diet. There are a few things on there I can't eat. I am deathly allergic to shellfish, I can't have green beans or potatoes (sensitive), and I am going to keep the fruit out of there, but I'm sure I can find something to eat. Is say the difference between trout and salmon a big enough difference to count as a rotation? How about spinach and arugula? I'm just trying to make sure I do this right.

 

I am about to leave for work so I'm going to pick up some coconut oil on my way there and switch that out for my olive oil. I'll also drop the eggs/hummus/hemp seed just in case I am now sensitive to those (although they didn't show up when I did my food sensitivity test, my experience tells me otherwise).

 

Alright, I already eliminated coffee and alcohol so I will leave those out. I was using them more to self medicate anyway so hopefully I'll have no need for them when I am finished. No more spicy peppers either, got it. I did find a salt/spice blend that I really liked so I'll pick up more of that instead of more peppers for flavor, should help a little bit. I haven't been exercising much anyway but I'll keep that in mind. Does a 30-minute bike ride count as strenuous exercise? Maybe I'll ride in a low gear and go slower once it finally warms up.

 

Good to know on the fasting. I'll probably stop it but if I don't get better soon maybe I'll fast for a day or two and then jump right into a rotational diet. I have the spread-sheet covered in an old-fashioned pen and paper mini-notebook. This way I can carry it with me all the time so I can always make notes. I didn't buy those books yet so maybe I won't do the SCD but I'm going to look into it a little more anyway.

 

I can't thank you enough. You've really given me some hope today, and that counts for a lot. How long did it take for you to start feeling better once you stringently followed your diet? I'm assuming it will take at least 6 months to heal fully, but if I could start seeing signs of improvement before then I would be ecstatic. 

With regards to portion sizes, it would be a good idea to limit the amount of high protein foods you consume (legumes, meats, fish etc). I personally do 4-5 ounces of a given protein and it appears to be working fine (no new allergies). You can have as much oil as you want without worrying. I try to do decent sized portions of the starches and veggies, and I use liberal amounts of oil to get in sufficient calories and maintain my weight.

I agree with the simpler is better approach. I personally cut out all my supplements (except free-form glutamine), and I plan to re-introduce them soon. The probiotics may be important in your case, so Im not sure about that.

With regards to food families, I personally like to play it super safe, so yea I consider salmon/trout one food. There are dozens of different fish and veggies available so why not play it safe. There are many foods you can probably still eat. For potato alternatives: lotus root, cassava, yams, and perhaps even buckwheat (a safer grain).

A 30 minute mild bike ride sounds fine, and is probably beneficial. Thats probably what fasting is best for, reducing inflammation so you can start with a clean slate. I personally use google docs for my spreadsheet, as I can access it from my computer and phone.

Right of the bat, if you eat a meal composed of foods that you have never eaten before, and you dont experience the usual reaction after, then that would be a good indication that your symptoms are indeed immune/allergy-based (as opposed to digestive), and there is a good chance this approach will work for you.

Assuming that is the case, once you cut out the foods you are reactive too, and drastically improve your omega 6/3 ratio, then within a week you should feel noticeably better. The fact that you react minutes after eating a food, will be helpful in identifying and eliminating problematic foods.

If you still experience a strong reaction after eating new foods, then I would consider looking more into the SCD diet type approach.

A couple more things that I forgot:

 

-Does anybody have problems with coffee and alcohol? I read that these can make the membranes more permeable for up to a week after. I've stopped them already, but it would be nice on occasion.

-Does anybody have problems with spicy peppers? I read these can be an issue too, I'd hate to give these up

-Does anybody have problems with exercise? I read that can be an issue but I really don't think I could give that one up (I like bicycling and rock climbing)

 

Would fasting help? Either a juice fast or a complete no-anything fast? I did a 48 hour juice fast a while ago and I felt good (hungry) but I was also juicing a lot of apples which could have stalled the healing process. It seems like figuring out everything that gives me a reaction (which seems to be everything) is going to take years if it's not impossible. I guess it just depends on how long it takes the intestine to heal itself.

 

I just started my food journal again, so hopefully that will help.

 

I am also going to buy the Mark Pimental book recommended in this thread and the one I am more excited for is "Breaking the Vicious Cycle: Intestinal Health Through Diet". It sounds like this one that covers the specific carbohydrate diet will be a lot of help to me.

Coffee and alcohol are both bad for a leaky gut. I would definitely eliminate them.

Spicy peppers are known to be bad for a leaky gut as well. Why not replace them with some good anti-inflammatory spices. Eg: garlic, cumin, turmeric, cinnamon.

Intense exercise for long periods of time has been proven to make a gut more leaky. Moderately paced exercise would probably be best.

I have done a 3 day water fast before. I felt really good, which was nice because it confirmed that my problems where all food based. But ultimately, fasting is a stressor in the body, and it cant be done forever so you need to to find a way of eating that will work for you and can be sustained.

I log all my meals in a spread-sheet online. This was super helpful in identifying which foods where problematic for me.

From my understanding, the SCD is for people with a damaged intestinal villi, which causes them to have trouble digesting complex carbs, which leads to bad digestive symptoms  In my case none of my symptoms where digestive, but rather they where all immune based, and the SCD diet did nothing for me.

Stri8ed - Good to know, thank you. The way I was diagnosed was through a urine reagent test. I am trying to find the sheet of paper that I have that explains it but I can't seem to find it at the moment (I'm tearing my house apart looking for it). The results of it said something along the lines of, "severe bacterial dysbiosis, "leaky gut syndrome", consider comprehensive stool analysis". I'll find the sheet sooner or later to get more information. From what I remember it was something along the lines of the reagent binding to the toxic metabolites, and a certain amount of drops is required to turn the solution clear. More drops meant more toxic metabolites.

 

I have been looking for my "trigger foods" for 3 years now and all I ever do is eliminate another food only to get reactions to still be getting reactions and then I attribute it to a new food and eliminate that, I was running out of foods to eat! It is really hard for me to do the rotation diet because my diet is already so limited (no corn, gluten, dairy, fruit, grains). There's not much left for me to rotate. I will try and do that, but I definitely love having my eggs in the morning. I feel so helpless not being able to eat anything. I will definitely look into coconut oil. Doesn't that have a lot of natural sugar though? Olive oil is another one of the things that I love but if it helps me get better I'll do whatever it takes. I know there are a lot of places around that sell coconut oil so I'll pick some up next time I'm at the store. Shoot, it looks like my hemp seed that I love so has a 3:1 ratio of omega-6/omega-3's. So it looks like I should probably ditch that too and switch to fish oil for my omegas. I wonder if there are any food sources of omega-3's that are low in omega-6's. Lot's more research to do.

 

 

 

Sorry for the post that jumps around, I was trying to address everything that was posted but there was a lot of information! I really, really appreciate all of the help everybody. I was starting to worry when there were no responses for a while. Sometimes I get really depressed, anxious, and scared about what's going on in my body and more specifically my head. It's hard to do this and it sounds like a lot of you are in the same boat. I hope we can all help each other and support each other while we go through this. It's no fun, that's for sure. I don't wish this upon anybody, but I am also glad I am not alone. My eternal gratitude goes out to each and every one of you.

There is actually a specific test you can take which measures your level of gut permeability (leaky gut). Though If you are developing multiple new food allergies, this is a strong enough indication of a leaky gut.

I have been through that cycle before. Eliminating a food, feeling great for a few days, and then feeling like crap again. Eventually after loosing dozens of foods I learned why this was happening. Simply put, when you have a leaky gut you can become allergic to anything you are eating often enough, especially protein dense food.

You will be surprised. With some creativity you will find there are many foods you can still eat. Here is my current diet:

Day 1: B: cherries,grapes. L: taro root, coconut oil. D: asparagus, lamb, coconut oil.

Day 2: B: Mango. L: white potatoes, coconut oil. D: cod fish, artichoke, coconut oil.

Day 3: B: oranges. L: plantains, coconut oil. D: swordfish, green-beans, coconut oil.

Day 4: B: figs. L: yams, coconut oil. D: Canned oysters, okra, coconut oil.

This is actually a very tasty, filling, and nutritious diet. I understand in your case you want to eliminate fruits, so you can just replace breakfast with a different set of proteins. Eg: shrimp, whitefish, catfish, herring. Oils do not need to be rotated, as they have close to zero protein, and hence are very un-allergenic.

Coconut oil does not have any sugar, and I find it to be just as tasty as olive oil. The hemp seed ratio of 3:1 is perfectly fine. Though if you have been eating it often, I would be suspicious that you may be reactive to it. The best sources of omega 3 is fish. Some of the fish highest in omega 3: salmon, trout, sardines, herring, mackerel. Along with eliminating reactive foods, the omega 3/6 ratio is super important for calming inflammation.

My heart goes out to you. This stuff is no fun, but it must be dealt with. Just remember the body does not work randomly. For every effect there is a cause. The key is to find that cause, and eliminate it. Dont give up.

Hi

Many people with celiac disease also have a leaky gut, which can cause you to develop new food allergies. Please refer to my post here.