Steak made me feel horrible...but what weirded me out is that the symptoms reminded me of how awful B-vitamins make me feel. What?

[Wilderbessy]

Ok so...it was rather peculiar. A while back I tried Jarrow's B vitamins twice (B right) and...I had a terrible reaction to them. The niacin flush sure, but it was like my limbs started burning up but there was this internal coldness and weakness and numbness--I felt limp, weak, like my body was lowkey suffocating. Nausea, a horrible headache and feeling of brain fog. Eye pain (especially the under eyes). Difficulty breathing. A tension, stress. Trembling even. Racing heart beat.
It was a specific set of symptoms.

What struck me this morning was that I kinda gave in and cooked myself up a big steak, slow and nicely; it was probably a little over half a pound, unburnt. I put it over a bed of spinach (which historically has made me feel better) and...what shocked me was about an hour later those symptoms started pouring over me again. The same ones.
In the past some beef with spinach has treated me very well, so I have no idea WHAT happened.

Did I overdo the meat or something? Is the B vitamins in the meat having a similar effect for some reason? It's so mysterious because tbh these symptoms are extremely specific.

 

[Wishful]

Could be a lot of things. I've had bad reactions to too much B2, B3, B12, tryptophan, and palmitic acid (part of the fat). Also, a large amount of fat or protein may change how your digestive system works (more enzymes, more inadequately digested stuff travelling further, etc). If there are no lingering effects, I'd just recommend avoiding big steak meals. If you're curious about why it happened, you can experiment with different amounts of different meats (and fat ratios) and/or large doses of B vitamins.

There's a bunch of foods that I've learned to avoid for ME reasons.

 

[BeADocToGoTo1]

Hi Wilderbessy,

All the symptoms sound familiar to me. To add on to Wishful's comments, please check out the following post on pancreatic enzymes required to properly break down the food. 1/2 pound of beef is a lot for a completely healthy athlete to digest, but if you have any form of issue with breaking down the food your body struggles.

https://forums.phoenixrising.me/thr...y-epi-and-chronic-fatigue-syndrome-cfs.62997/

 

[Wilderbessy]

Hi Wilderbessy,

All the symptoms sound familiar to me. To add on to Wishful's comments, please check out the following post on pancreatic enzymes required to properly break down the food. 1/2 pound of beef is a lot for a completely healthy athlete to digest, but if you have any form of issue with breaking down the food your body struggles.

https://forums.phoenixrising.me/thr...y-epi-and-chronic-fatigue-syndrome-cfs.62997/

Hm...actually...someone mentioned histamine issues being related to those issues sometime. My allergist wrote it off as pseudoscience jargon. But, I can say for a fact that zyrtec and benadyrl despite the "drowsy" effect has always helped me feel quite a bit better and there is a chance that I get even better the longer I don't eat, and only take the pills. I know this by experience (but I always end up giving out on my fasts, I want food too much.) That and aspirin or ibuprofen, definitely doesn't just make the pain go away.
That connection definitely spooks me...ok, guess I have a lot of reading to do. .

 

[BeADocToGoTo1]

Hi Widerbessy,

Fasts can be tricky, especially if you are deficient in a particular nutrient (e.g. vitamin, mineral, amino acid, fatty acid). Intermittent fasting can be helpful, but anything extreme can backfire, especially when there are other health issues. One other thing to keep in mind is the initial effect of going into ketosis, can make you feel horrible. Especially if your body is used to a lot of sugar (in any form) it is a type of withdrawal when suddenly cutting down drastically. I now eat my food in a 10-12 hour window during the day, which will get my body to produce ketones naturally that I can measure in the morning. But nothing extreme and I eased into it over time.

When you are in pain, that is a signal that something is wrong. It can be many things of course, and just as an example, in my case I had many years of non-stop pain as a result of being deficient in amino acids, essential fatty acids, minerals and vitamins. I was also sensitive to almost everything I ate for a while as my body was in an uproar. For me it came down to removing bodily insults, fixing nutrient deficiencies, fixing microbiome dysbiosis and taking pancreatic enzymes that my pancreas was no longer producing enough of. Of course your underlying issues can be completely different from my experience, but it might be an avenue worth looking into.

Have you done any nutrition/metabolite type tests to see whether you are deficient in anything?

 

[JES]

According to some sources, meat provides us with about 20-30% of the RDA of B vitamins across the whole group. Meanwhile, supplements like Jarrow's often come packed with 1000% or more of the RDA. I bet the reason you reacted to the steak had nothing to do with B vitamins, whole food sources contain such minuscule amounts compared to supplements. Any kind of concentrated B vitamin supplement, especially B1/B2/B12, makes my heart race as well and increases anxiety. Spinach by the way includes lots of oxalic acid, which some of us react badly to.

 

[valentinelynx]

Hmm. There is a thing called alpha-gal syndrome where one gets an allergic-type reaction to red meats. This syndrome is (bizarre!) transmitted by a kind of tick common in the SE United States, the Lone Star tick (named after Texas). This "meat allergy" seems to be pretty rare, but it may be underreported.

 

[BeADocToGoTo1]

JES has a really good point. I remember getting racing heart and dizziness from high dose B vitamins a few times. It is easy to overdo vitamins (and minerals) as many are shared across different pills as well as used as ingredients in packaged and fortified food products.

 

[wigglethemouse]

That and aspirin or ibuprofen, definitely doesn't just make the pain go away.

Aspirin is also a mast cell stabiliser as described in Afrin's book "Never Bet Against Occam" - well worth a read if you suspect mast cell issues (you mention possible histamine issues which are often mast cell related)

 

[Wilderbessy]

Hi Widerbessy,

Fasts can be tricky, especially if you are deficient in a particular nutrient (e.g. vitamin, mineral, amino acid, fatty acid). Intermittent fasting can be helpful, but anything extreme can backfire, especially when there are other health issues. One other thing to keep in mind is the initial effect of going into ketosis, can make you feel horrible. Especially if your body is used to a lot of sugar (in any form) it is a type of withdrawal when suddenly cutting down drastically. I now eat my food in a 10-12 hour window during the day, which will get my body to produce ketones naturally that I can measure in the morning. But nothing extreme and I eased into it over time.

When you are in pain, that is a signal that something is wrong. It can be many things of course, and just as an example, in my case I had many years of non-stop pain as a result of being deficient in amino acids, essential fatty acids, minerals and vitamins. I was also sensitive to almost everything I ate for a while as my body was in an uproar. For me it came down to removing bodily insults, fixing nutrient deficiencies, fixing microbiome dysbiosis and taking pancreatic enzymes that my pancreas was no longer producing enough of. Of course your underlying issues can be completely different from my experience, but it might be an avenue worth looking into.

Have you done any nutrition/metabolite type tests to see whether you are deficient in anything?

Ok don't have much time to respond! So, I think that could be possible and I could test it out. Fasting is one thing, fatty foods and low carbs is another--I'll see how keto treats me.

I wanted to try out the enzymes--is https://www.amazon.com/NOW-Foods-Su...ocphy=9031521&hvtargid=pla-561351289867&psc=1 ok? It has Betaine in it which has been somewhat helpful for me so it's not that risky. i saw the more expensive ones, they're just way too steep for me and...I see that this one contains similar-ish stuff?

Last time I checked I had fairly low nutrient levels for magnesium and calcium, and defiencies in D and zinc. And with or without the bizarre steak and B vitamin flare up I do suffer from fairly consistent pain. It's not anything that would be a bother, but the general lifelessness and lethargy make it bad to me.

Tbh, aside from one day (which for some reason was the only day I ever slept in daytime, woke up feeling the best I ever have)--I had three days where my digestion went totally crazy, it was acting completely different, felt different, and was great for once. During those days I gradually felt better and better too. So, I feel as if my GI system might be related to how I feel? I just don't know if it's causational in nature or just an after thought.

 

[Wishful]

It's quite reasonable for gut changes to affect how your feel. Maybe your extra sleep changed your microbiome, or allowed inflammation in your gut to subside, with all sorts of downstream biological changes. I had type IV delayed food sensitivity for 2.5 years. Nothing I tried would stop it. Then I had some curry with canned coconut milk that was a bit 'off', which flushed my system out really well. The type IV sensitivity was completely gone after that. Maybe there was one species of bacteria that was causing the sensitivity, and the food poisoning reduced the population enough for the rest of the microbiome to finally wipe it out. Antibiotics--which I'd had several times during those years--didn't stop the problem, probably because it would have reduced the populations of protective bacteria too.

Keto diet made me feel worse, but I'm not sure that I'd reached the full ketogenic state. So yes, changes in your digestive system can affect your ME symptoms. Experiment to see if you can find any that help you.