Okay, now I'm feeling a bit better.
I wasn't feeling too well this whole past week. I thought at first that I was just still exhausted. But then I also wasn't sleeping well. Had a hard time falling asleep, then would wake up between 4 and 6 am completely dead tired but unable to get back to sleep (I usually sleep until 7 and feel at least mostly rested). I was also feeling increasingly apathetic and heavy-headed. I was also avoiding even my husband and kids more and more, just the bare minimum of communication.
Yesterday I had my usual two cups of BPC, with cocoa powder added. Then I had three sunny-up eggs with two slices of bacon (made with dextrose) and some spinach and a small amount of salsa. Then later I had a small handful of almonds and some dark chocolate. And then I started feeling really bad. I was feeling gross because I hadn't showered (so tired), so I thought maybe that's what I need. NOPE. Hot water was bad. Got dizzy and nauseous, then started shaking, and my arms and legs felt all tingly (more than normal) and my head felt really tight. Basically, how I felt when I took tramadol, but a bit less severe. But still awful. And my arthalgia was really acting up.
I took two asprins and asked my son to bring me some popcorn. And texted my husband to bring some bitter lemon tonic and cheap potato chips on his way home from work. After I downed both of those I started feeling better. I stayed in bed and skipped my evening amitryptiline, I got to sleep at about my usual time, and woke up just before 7 this morning. I still feel a bit sick in my stomach, and my joints are not quite back to their usual pain level, but I'm feeling a lot more energetic now.
Ray Peat has a recipe that instantly kills serotonin (made my husband instantly depressed): grated raw carrot with coconut oil.
Yeah, yeah, when I was in bed last night wondering "
WTH?" I started reading Ray Peat forums and came across the carrot salad. I've read some of Peats stuff before, but couldn't figure out what he was on about. And I once got burned by a Stone-ian on an online forum who took offense at the fact that sugar makes me feel ill, so that kinda made me want to avoid Peat too. But Peatians seem to be among the few on the internet talking about
reducing serotonin, though I'm not convinced by, uh, everything Peat. Consuming large amounts of fructose with every meal containing amino acids is an interesting approach to reducing serotonin. But I'm wondering if the insulin response itself from the OJ is enough to send the tryptophan across the BBB.
Maybe today I'll make that carrot salad and see how I feel.
I also learned on my kindle last night, from non-Peat sources, that if you have had serotonin syndrome once you're more likely to get it again. So that may be a factor in why this diet triggered my symptoms. I also learned that many people with social anxiety actually suffer from
too much serotonin. I always thought I was just an extreme introvert who just needed to rest a lot after being social, but now I'm wondering if I may be in the small number of people for whom serotonin is a biological cause of their social issues.
So now I know serotonin really is bad for me. I'm glad the diet in this paper worked for the other lady, but it's clearly not for me!
I'll be keeping an eye on tryptophan and serotonin foods for now on. I'm feeling a bit averse to trying the almonds and dark chocolate snack again anytime in the future. But I don't know about increasing fructose. I struggle with stomach bloating, especially since the first round of doxy. And this past week the bloating hasn't been so bad. So maybe going easy on the fructans is still a good idea for me. Hmm...so I need to figure out what I
can eat.
I'm still considering carnivore as an option. No fructose, and also no insulin response, might be a good approach for me. But right now I don't think it'll work. We're in the process of moving and currently living with my inlaws and my MIL reads those popular women's magazines which for the 30 years have been touting vegetarianism, or better veganism, is the answer to every health problem. So she passive-aggressively cooks very little meat and stocks up on the sweets. It drives me crazy (especially since it's obviously not "working" for her, she's overweight and got breast cancer last year), but it's not a good battle to pick with her. So right now I think I'll go back to hiding my hamburger patties under leafy greens and veggies.