Substantial improvement with (strange) dietary adjustments

[Wonkmonk]

One experiment at least for some chemicals is to try sublingual absorption. For me, cumin worked just as well sublingually (with the residue spat and rinsed out) as when swallowed, so I took that as evidence that the digestive system wasn't involved.

That's fascinating because I had a similar experience with nitric oxide. Oral nitroglycerin, which is absorbed in the mouth didn't do much worsening, but Isosorbiddibnitrate which is swallowed and slow-release cause horrible crashes for several days. Both release nitric oxide in the body, but nitroglycerin never reaches the gut.

That's one reason why I also assumed the problem is gut-related and might very well have to do with the microbiome.

But I have never found a way to derive a benefit from that hypothesis as all probiotics and antibiotics didn't do much. Maybe the bacteria that do it are ubiquitous, so it's impossible to get rid of them. I thought maybe fruit is bad, especially when mixed with other problematic foods, not because of something bad in fruit, but because it feeds the bacteria which then turn more of the other foods into harmful products.

That would explain why fruit alone has a very different effect than fruit with other foods, even if other foods are in the next meal.

I have experienced the following.

Fruit --> Lentils --> BAD
Fruit --> Mushrooms --> BAD
Fruit + Whole grains --> BAD

All three are high choline foods.

I will check this in detail in the coming weeks. Will try fruit and then pasta and Zucchini or cheese and white bread, which is low in choline.

Thank you so much for this interesting suggestion. This is so helpful for getting new ideas.

 

[Dysfunkion]

Hello Dysfunktion,

Thank you so much for this fascinating report.

There are so many similarities, at least in principle. Other triggers in your case, but a similar pattern.

My first question is when have you last checked your thyroid function (including all autoimmune antibodies for Hashimotos and Graves disease)?

My experience is: The thyroid must be perfect. TSH consistently between 0.5 and 0.9. Otherwise, nothing ever works.

Second, I can only encourage you to try to figure out what's going on and not get distracted by thinking "this is so weird, it can't be diet." I wasted 6 years thinking this.

The complexity is enormous and the journey to try to figure it out was very discouraging. Meal mixing, meal timing, meal preparation, food selection, oil selection, meal size, supplementation, accumulation...it all plays a role.

My guess would be, if your case is similar to mine, that you could tolerate some of the foods you mentioned, if you ate them in isolation (like really ONLY that one food) and with a 6 hour window before and after the next meal to prevent mixing. Others you might tolerate once a week or twice a week in low doses.

It currently looks to me like I can have a lot of foods I thought I should never had if I do it like this.

The thyroid is probably the only thing that I haven't had tested and I should get that done. I have Gilberts and have always had elevated liver enzymes, they say it's benign but at this point I highly doubt that. Pancreas and kidneys are fine. I tested positive for Lyme disease but the next appointment I had at the doctor where they would have prescribed the antibiotic they just brought up I had high IGG levels but my IGM was normal (currently trying to specifically get a result print out but we're having issues with the stupid web portal). Haven't been tested for any coinfections though.

And yes that is what I'm trying to do now through the process of elimination and patterning/isolating. Currently I'm on day 2 of dinner fasting, tomorrow I'll make something but I'll leave out the sunflower oil I was using. Seed oils in general might be very problematic, I don't have a way to cut all of it out currently but taking all of it out of dinner most of the time could only help. What sucks though is how limited I am with food as it is, I'm already down to a small pool of things I can consistently eat without getting severely ill. And yes I'm not wasting any time anymore, I'm sick of living like this though I know I probably complain too much. It's stress relief in the moment when my body is acting up but I have no idea what specifically is the problem with it now besides that I ate this at this point during the week and did this at that. All I know is that every time something goes south it always starts in my guts.

That's fascinating because I had a similar experience with nitric oxide. Oral nitroglycerin, which is absorbed in the mouth didn't do much worsening, but Isosorbiddibnitrate which is swallowed and slow-release cause horrible crashes for several days. Both release nitric oxide in the body, but nitroglycerin never reaches the gut.

That's one reason why I also assumed the problem is gut-related and might very well have to do with the microbiome.

But I have never found a way to derive a benefit from that hypothesis as all probiotics and antibiotics didn't do much. Maybe the bacteria that do it are ubiquitous, so it's impossible to get rid of them. I thought maybe fruit is bad, especially when mixed with other problematic foods, not because of something bad in fruit, but because it feeds the bacteria which then turn more of the other foods into harmful products.

That would explain why fruit alone has a very different effect than fruit with other foods, even if other foods are in the next meal.

I have experienced the following.

Fruit --> Lentils --> BAD
Fruit --> Mushrooms --> BAD
Fruit + Whole grains --> BAD

All three are high choline foods.

I will check this in detail in the coming weeks. Will try fruit and then pasta and Zucchini or cheese and white bread, which is low in choline.

Thank you so much for this interesting suggestion. This is so helpful for getting new ideas.

Fruit in general is so bad for me, I don't dare touch it anymore. Interesting that lentils is there and I have an issue with those too. I don't think I ever tried fruit before any of those listed there though as when I was eating more fruit I wasn't having any of those foods specifically.

I think my issue is largely gut microbiome related because all of this got so out of control it ruined my life over the course of a month during the summer (I believe it was July things went south). I was on lions mane for years which horrible thing have happened to people on alone but specifically me that wasn't the case until I started using saw palmetto for hair loss and that's when I got PFS with ssymptoms largely presenting like PSSD that started with severe gut bloating over the course of that month that proceeded into neurological problems worse than I ever experienced in my life. I was one of the people with almost complete skin numbness, ED, loss of libido, sensory blunting, and severe fatigue. I initially started getting better when I cleaned up my diet a little bit but didn't get further until I started using vitamin K2 which got my back my methyl-b12 as it was after the crash one of the things I became severely sensitive to that I still needed to function. I don't know if this was due to a microbiome shift it initiated and I don't think I'll know until I take it out and see what happens (which I was going to do starting tomorrow). My next improvements I got was after some days of activated charcoal followed by a week where I had a tea of cistus incanus which gave me some kind of viral like sickness for a bit over a week. After that day where I had the cistus tea I heard about osha root for Lyme disease so I started that, instantly I got back more skin sensation and mental clarity than I ever had that hasn't subsided. If I stop the k2 and nothing regresses right now or even hopefully improves more than I'm sure there is something going very wrong in the gut microbiome. This is going to take a while to root things out so I probably won't have much to say for a while besides some status updates on how I'm feeling on the surface now and then.

edit 2/22 - So last night since I wouldn't have had enough energy to get through my busy day today without something for dinner I made myself some rice, peas, and cabbage with no oil this time (technically besides peanut butter in the morning and a little from tortilla chips I've kicked out all other seed oils and haven't had any in little more than half a week, same goes for tofu). I've noticed that cabbage alone cooked in water makes my sinus all stuff and I get really brain foggy which then the next day (today as I type this) turns into a weird, twitchy anxiety. I've had it plenty of times in fried rice when I was making food with sunflower oil but alone it does this. I'm gonna try cauliflower next, I know broccoli is fine too. I swear it just gets weirder and weirder with my body.

I had peas before cooked in only water in a significant amount with cabbage before but that cabbage I was using was from the bag of plain coleslaw I just dumped in with no purple cabbage and a little bit of carrot. I also went out to eat before and there was a grilling station with cabbage that I added some too my dish though not a large amount and nothing bad happened. I wonder if this had to do with something that was sprayed on it or the fact that I also ate some of the outer leafy layer. I as I was eating got a weird somewhat feverish, brain foggy feeling, and a ton of post nasal drip which has not occurred with even the whole bag of plain coleslaw dumped into the pan. I don't know what to think here on this weird crash. I've looked into oxalates and salicylates but I think that is a nonfactor in what is going on here. I've had a similar feeling crash months back from quercetin itself and the anthocynanin crash also includes low energy like this but doesn't entirely feel the same. If I'm ok with caluiflower and broccoli in the same context I think I may need to try the bag of plain cole slaw to know more on what might be going on. This certainly has a trend of plant compounds though. Whatever it is, isn't in or is in very tiny amounts in green peas. This is going to take a long time I see to work out but at least it seems like I'm with this getting closer to isolating the problem. I also remember I had the most improvement over after osha root capsules which I still have on hand and may in a certain context try one of again. I am suspecting something in my guts is producing something that is doing this based on my overall experiences here.

 

[Wishful]

Maybe the bacteria that do it are ubiquitous, so it's impossible to get rid of them.

I think it is difficult to completely eliminate a strain. I had my type IV food sensitivity for 2.5 years, which included many dramatic diet changes and several bouts of antibiotics that had no effect on the sensitivity. Then some spoiled coconut milk gave my gut a good flushing out, and the next day the type IV sensitivity was gone. A difficult-to-eliminate microbe would explain that. The flushing out may not have eliminated all the cells, but might have "changed the battlefield" allowing protective microbes to finish the job.

As a counter story, how did I manage to lose a common and apparently critical strain, resulting in fermentable fibre intolerance? No obvious gut-altering actions I can point to. It just happened, and a capsule of probiotics just happened to have the correct strain to repopulate my colon. I expect it can happen to other people too: suddenly feeling worse or developing a weird health problem, without an obvious reason why. A problem can suddenly disappear for no obvious reason, but maybe it's because a bit of produce you ate happened to carry the right strain for repopulation.

It's too bad that leaving a can of coconut milk out a bit too long isn't a reliable method for resetting our digestive microbiomes.

 

[Dysfunkion]

I Ate a bunch of gluten last night, surprisingly this doesn't induce the weird immune thing. A bit more tired ad slow but that's it. So essentially this doesn't even touch the PFS/PSSD symptom pool. Meat makes me feel horrible with beef being the worst but still doesn't do the thing specifically besides intense cognitive fog and slowness. But it appears certain plant compounds do. Whatever they are, are very abundant in the closer you get to the outside of green cabbage. Broccoli and cauliflower doesn't do this same thing that induces PFS specific symptom pool reactions but does make me feel a bit warmer and induce some nasal drip. Have not had any tofu or seed oils to cook with in over a week now and can't tell if in the background it's helping specifically.

What I'm going to try next is after a couple days having rice, peas, and bean sprouts together with no garlic, 2 days later having the same thing with garlic, 2 days after that having the same thing but with tofu added, and two days later trying potato and sweet potato together with nothing else added. I'll work fromthere after I gather that data, 2 days of dinner fasting seems to give my immune system enough time to at least distinguish reactions to food before I try anything longer term. There is also smaller dietary changes I can make but for result stability's sake I'm keeping that all the same as I get this together.

What is the most interesting is that the next night from the cabbage reaction cistus tea, a dose of osha root the next morning, followed my cistus tea the next day pulled me right out of it. What this can mean to me is that there is an immune process that got out of control from the compounds in the plant as it doesn't seem from nutritional information there is anything special about green cabbage. There might also be a gut pathogen that was allowed through these compounds that is dormant causing these issues allowed to attack and cistus/osha root is able to beat it back down. I have also consider glyphosate poisoning as it was very bitter and metallic tasting unlike other veggies I been having lately and even in comparison to the broccoli/cauliflower I had last night. I have initially weeks back gotten progress from some days of activated charcoal use and the night after the green cabbage reaction I had some before I had the cistus tea and it also somewhat helped. I also had no herx like reaction to it like I did the first times weeks back to it, same trend with the cistus and osha root. So my symptoms getting generally better as also consistent with being less reactive to these 3 things. Whatever this is going it is not very reasctive to any carbs, sugar, or gluten. Though honey causes massive bloating and brain fog along with fruit, fruit induces far more brain fog though quicker. Bee products are fine and I been using propolis with no problems (it's an inflammation life saver actually).

 

[Wonkmonk]

The thyroid is probably the only thing that I haven't had tested and I should get that done.

100%. Super important.

 

[Wonkmonk]

I am suspecting something in my guts is producing something that is doing this based on my overall experiences here.

I think so, too, because when I eat pure lecithin, which is basically choline and fat only, no protein, no carbs, nothing happens. When I eat lecithin or a choline supplement (citicoline) with any other food I tried, it strongly worsens me. Something is happening in the gut, I suspect the bacteria are making something out of the choline and they need most importantly protein but possibly fat or carbs also help them make it. It could be TMAO or a similar compound.

For TMAO, it has been shown in studies that if dietary choline is low, especially from eggs (lecithin!!), e.g., if someone goes on a vegan diet, levels drop dramatically and when eggs are added to the diet, it takes a few days until TMAO levels are back up again, presumably because the gut microbes that make it multipliy or have to get going making it again.

That would explain the effect that @Aidan also reported, which is that some foods only cause symptoms after repeat consumption.

 

[Wonkmonk]

I actually logged in just to say how bad red peppers (probably all peppers) are. All nightshades might have to be avoided, but red peppers seem to be the worst.

It seems to be worse when they are dried, because symptoms are stronger with paprika powder or with peppers that are a bit older and dried out a bit, which I used in a Ratatouille the other day. Symptoms persist even 3 days later.

Potatos and eggplant (both peeled) seem to be much les problematic, but I largely avoid the whole nightshade group now except a few tomatos here and there.

 

[Dysfunkion]

I think so, too, because when I eat pure lecithin, which is basically choline and fat only, no protein, no carbs, nothing happens. When I eat lecithin or a choline supplement (citicoline) with any other food I tried, it strongly worsens me. Something is happening in the gut, I suspect the bacteria are making something out of the choline and they need most importantly protein but possibly fat or carbs also help them make it. It could be TMAO or a similar compound.

For TMAO, it has been shown in studies that if dietary choline is low, especially from eggs (lecithin!!), e.g., if someone goes on a vegan diet, levels drop dramatically and when eggs are added to the diet, it takes a few days until TMAO levels are back up again, presumably because the gut microbes that make it multipliy or have to get going making it again.

That would explain the effect that @Aidan also reported, which is that some foods only cause symptoms after repeat consumption.

I've largely lately been seeing what happens upon consuming vegetables together in various patterns, waiting a couple days, and trying something else. Together in different patterns does not seem to do much noticeably. Vegetables in general give me slight unknown immune like reactions I noticed though but manageable one's that don't snowball and go anywhere bad (a bit more of a warm flushed feeling in the face and brain foggy but nothing much). I have also been experimenting with gluten in isolation windows without any vegetables up to 4 days at a time to dissect my reaction to that. The only thing I have not tried again is tofu or soy sauce since starting this. I also don't really plan on having those ever again save for soy sauce in small amounts so I felt no real need to anyways. Also noted myself that lecithin itself doesn't do anything to me and I haven't directly supplemented choline before so I don't know on that specifically what would happen but I have been having it in vegetables lately so I suspect itself doesn't do much to me either. Noticed more brain fog and lethargy or rice or rice and fats with all veggies. Rice plain itself doesn't do this, just fills my belly and otherwise doesn't really do anything, same with any fats I commonly consume so I suspect the same thing may actually be going on there in my case too.

I am largely vegan, will eat seafood now and then but because of my issues with land meat I have completely dropped it again. Seafood I noticed though in a dish seems to do nothing more than induce a bit more lethargy at most. Mussels give me a mild but manageable histamine reaction. Usually I just use squid if I'm having some. On it's own seafood much like rice doesn't seem to do much of anything at all. Chicken/deef/pork to varying degrees give me major brain fog, lethargy, depression, and digestive issues. The more things they are combined with, the worse it is. Usually one of those reactions takes a good couple days to resolve completely, still have not gotten to the bottom of it and I don't think I ever will.

edit - I have also noticed something weird with my reaction to gluten itself. Gluten tends to make me i na very simply way more brain figgy and a bit tired. But in the morning there is this repeatable phenomenon where when I drink coffee after a night of having a larger amount of gluten it will produce a somewhat more uplifting effect that isn't there normally (which is just a little more general physical/mental energy with a bit of a calmness right after drinking some black coffee with nothing in it).

 

[Dysfunkion]

I actually logged in just to say how bad red peppers (probably all peppers) are. All nightshades might have to be avoided, but red peppers seem to be the worst.

It seems to be worse when they are dried, because symptoms are stronger with paprika powder or with peppers that are a bit older and dried out a bit, which I used in a Ratatouille the other day. Symptoms persist even 3 days later.

Potatos and eggplant (both peeled) seem to be much les problematic, but I largely avoid the whole nightshade group now except a few tomatos here and there.

I never have anything with tomato so I don't know about that but for me I have no issues with nightshades specifically, I can eat as much potato or pepper as I want and like rice not much happens.

 

[Wonkmonk]

Also noted myself that lecithin itself doesn't do anything to me and I haven't directly supplemented choline before so I don't know on that specifically what would happen

Thanks so much for sharing your experiences.

I have looked more closely to choline recently and it looks like it's mainly a problem with fatty meals and on repeat consumption. I will make a separate post on that

Usually one of those reactions takes a good couple days to resolve completely

Same. About 3-4 days after a symptom flareup with a high-fat high-choline meal (e.g., creamy mushroom pasta).

still have not gotten to the bottom of it and I don't think I ever will.

I don't know all the specifics of your case and I am sure that you're not making that statement lightly and that you tried many things, I also know how incredibly frustrating this is, but for me, it really paid off not to give up too early. It took me literally YEARS to figure some of the things in this thread out and I am still finding ways to improve.

But I am also not sure if I will ever "get to the bottom" i.e., figure everything out completely, but I am still confident I can find some more ways to improve if I try some more. I am not sure if it ever will be a cure or send me into remission, but the benefits I have achieved with diet tinkering over the past 2 years have truely been life-altering and almost unimaginable.

I am still moderate-to-severe on most days and moderate on some and I am not nearly at the end of the road, but I can't stress often enough how much better this dietary approach has made my situation.

 

[Wonkmonk]

Quick update:

I think the main problem is the choline-protein(lysine)-fat mix.

1. It seems to be a big problem if choline, fat and protein (lysine) are mixed outside of the body. For instance:

*Store bought frozen french fries (oven-baked) do cause a lot of symptoms, but homemade roast potatos (same amount of fat) do not.
*Soy yoghurt (contains lysine, choline and fat) is terrible, but fried falafel (contains same nutrients) seems to be ok.
*Mushrooms are a lot worse when frozen in a fried state with fat still on them.
*Minced meat which sat in the freezer mixed with the fat is worse than lean fried lean meat.
*Mayonnaise isn't too bad as a condiment although it contains both choline and fat, but protein is missing.

High-protein high-lysine foods DO cause problems even without fat when consumed repeatedly (several meals or days in a row).

BUT: Cheese causes symptoms, especially in repeat consumption, but not nearly as bad. Cheese has a very low amount of choline.

I conclude that for the suspected harmful compound to be produced, cholin, lysine and fat have to be present in the food and it has to be mixed outside the body and sit for a while OR there has to be repeat consumption.

Therefore, I will try to (1) cook all meals fresh if possible, (2) avoid any foods where choline, fat and protein are mixed and it was frozen or sat on a shelf, (3) avoid repeat consumption of any high-choline or high-protein or high-fat meal. Meal mixing must be avoided, too.

2. Sadly, fresh fruit, even alone for breakfast with 6 hours of fasting thereafter to avoid meal mixing, does cause symptoms when consumed in higher amounts or repeatedly. Interestingly, it causes my cums to get inflamed, which I haven't had with other foods so far. It also happens with tomatos, so I suspect that the acid is the culprit. I will try if it also happens with bananas, which have low acid.

Importantly, it appears these symptoms accumulate for weeks. I stopped the fruit 3 weeks ago and my gums are still inflamed though getting much better.

3. I now try to have at least one meal of the day as just 150g (6 oz) of white pasta cooked in water, salt and one zucchini just cooked one-pot with the pasta and smashed with a fork at the end. This very simple meal is tastier than it sounds and it seems to be among the best tolerated meals I ever tried.

4. I used to suspect that going too low on calories makes me worse, but it seems to me now that I was just repeat-consuming foods to avoid (esp. legumes) when I reduced my calories in the past. Today, I think I can go lower if I adhere to the rules in this post (one high choline, high protein meal max every day or every second day). I am still not sure if I need a certain amout of fat or if I could go very low with fat. Fat, even with high-lysine, high choline meals seems to be ok occasionally (avoiding repeat-consumption), but it must be cooked fresh and not be pre-mixed or pre-prepared.

 

[Dysfunkion]

Thanks so much for sharing your experiences.

I have looked more closely to choline recently and it looks like it's mainly a problem with fatty meals and on repeat consumption. I will make a separate post on that

Same. About 3-4 days after a symptom flareup with a high-fat high-choline meal (e.g., creamy mushroom pasta).

I don't know all the specifics of your case and I am sure that you're not making that statement lightly and that you tried many things, I also know how incredibly frustrating this is, but for me, it really paid off not to give up too early. It took me literally YEARS to figure some of the things in this thread out and I am still finding ways to improve.

But I am also not sure if I will ever "get to the bottom" i.e., figure everything out completely, but I am still confident I can find some more ways to improve if I try some more. I am not sure if it ever will be a cure or send me into remission, but the benefits I have achieved with diet tinkering over the past 2 years have truely been life-altering and almost unimaginable.

I am still moderate-to-severe on most days and moderate on some and I am not nearly at the end of the road, but I can't stress often enough how much better this dietary approach has made my situation.

Yeah I was being bitter there but I'm always trying new things simply because there's nothing else to do. If I just sit here and complain nothing is going to get better and I've fallen down so many times that doing so again doesn't hurt me nearly as much because I feel like I've felt it all before with my body. It's also a frustrating part of the year for me too because weather wise we're having a lot of mixed super warm and super cool days which really mess with how my body regulates itself throwing more wrenches intothe situation. I also have PFS (post finasteride syndrome) and was one of the worst possible cases so a lot of my symptoms and dietary changes are also related to that. I'm largely recovered but it's like my brain isn't as fast/reactive to things as it should and it feels like there's still a bit of a cap on my emotions. Currently going on a bit of a dietary detour to test some theory someone on Propecia Help forum had on the condition (if you wanna read into it because it's a lot of information go to the forum and search dolichol, you'll find the old topic on it).

I have been able to get my tinnitus lower though and it correlated with over a week without eating green peas, not sure what the connection was there. It's remained down with little spikes here and there though it's no longer this pressurized mechanical roaring tone and it's now just a general super EEEEE tone. My reaction to carbs in general is now less pronounced too. Potato (besides small red one's for some reason) make a specific kind of groggy feeling into the next day, gluten doesn't immediately make me tired anymore but I feel more blunted the next day, and rice just makes me want to fall asleep past a point but not much else. Potato and gluten don't have the sedating effect on me mentally rice specifically does though.

Seems like all in all I have some complex immune interplay between multiple groups of food I'm eating because I don't know why cutting out a vegetable would all of sudden change how I overall react to carbs. These are obviously long chain reactions of immune mediators too and I underestimated how things could snowball in the background like this before. What I'm wondering now is how I would react to adding back in tofu in a meal but I'm not ready to do anything too risky right now with how much experimentation I already got on my plate.

 

[Wonkmonk]

Seems like all in all I have some complex immune interplay between multiple groups of food I'm eating because I don't know why cutting out a vegetable would all of sudden change how I overall react to carbs. These are obviously long chain reactions of immune mediators too and I underestimated how things could snowball in the background like this before.

I have also made the same experience that the effects are extremely complicated and that reactions to certain foods can depend on what other specific foods I ate or medications I took in the past 3-5 days. There are certainly interaction effects between the foods. It's not like one food always has the same effect, and some foods may have no effect at all if not consumed with certain other foods or in subsequent meals. That's what makes it so tricky to figure it out.

 

[Wonkmonk]

I strongly think now that all foods in which a source a choline and fat is mixed is bad even if the amount of choline in the food is low, and I am not sure if and how much protein has to be present for that.

For instance, I think margarine, which contains fat and lecithin (choline) is bad, even though the choline dose in total is low (one doesn't eat a lot of margarine). Same with mayo, though vegan mayo could be a bit better (no egg, which is high in choline).

I'll remove margarine from my diet for a while to check this.

 

[Dysfunkion]

Ok so really weird recent thing I found from a bad experience gut wise.

For some days before the other day when I went out to that all you can order Jpanese place and ate pretty much everything save for tofu and land animal meat. I was testing a theory for a different condition (I have PFS post finasteride syndrome though am on my way to recovery from it) where you eat a bunch of raw spinach based on a theory called dolichol deprivation every day which was a completely gassy disaster though I did see small isolated improvements from it.

Ever since that night I ate out and all of these things mixed in my digestive system I was feeling bloated, kinda feverish, ultra low energy, and a bit weaker. Pooping relieves it a bit more each time I go and I'm going to be dinner fasting again tonight because I just don't want to throw anymore food into that ongoing disaster in there to fuel the fire since when it gets like that literally anything I put down is bad besides a light snack now and then. So I decided to have a little ultra diluted activated charcoal this morning, almost immediately after my senses and mind cleared up a bunch, not completely but a by a lot. I also haven't gotten out everything I ate since then because I'm a bit backed up still but I wonder if this means that there is something in my guts that is being chemically created from very specific food interactions that gets into my CNS somehow where it causes all of these weird neuro-immune problems. Whatever it is spinach, green cabbage (the worst offender), sweet potato could do the same thing, and peas aren't too far behind. Regular potato can do this in large enough amounts and small red potato doesn't. Broccolli and cauliflower doesn't seem to have whatever this compound is in them since they don't present these issues. Gluten does not do any of this specifically so it's not a gluten thing either, plain carbs from rice also don't. It seems to be a compound in these specific vegetables + a bunch of other food reaction but the vegetable compound that is the culprit needs to be present for things to get this out of hand with everything else. Curious to see what would happen if tomorrow I had a capsule of osha root while I feel like this.

If I can find out specifically what is going on here in my guts then I think I can finally target my issues and do what I need to do but I can't imagine what the issue could be besides that it's likely some gut pathogen/bacteria reaction problem because it's not just a simple carbs/protein/fat/ect- issue. Seems to be very specific compound combinations that cause disaster.

Also want to note that when this reaction occured I also got more post nasal drip with the feverish vibes which increased from consuming just about anything when normally when this reaction isn't occuring this doesn't happen with the nasal drip and random other foods. So again there's some cross food group general reactivity going on.

 

[Wishful]

Imagine trying to design an artificial digestive system for humans; one that would handle the typical human diet. I think that would make developing commercial fusion look like an easy task in comparison. Success would probably also remain 20 years in the future for a very long time. The complexity of all those interacting subsystems is amazing. How many creatures had to die out before reproducing in order to weed out life-wrecking interactions in the digestive system? Throwing in new foods, non-food additives, and things that we don't want to consume but can't avoid, to that complex system that didn't evolve to handle them just makes digestive problems more likely.

I'd thank my digestive system for working as well as it does, but I don't understand it well enough to know what foods it would consider appropriate.

 

[Wonkmonk]

Imagine trying to design an artificial digestive system for humans...

Interesting idea. I am now more convinced than ever that diet, digestion and the gut microbiome are MUCH more important for our health than we can even imagine.

 

[Wonkmonk]

where you eat a bunch of raw spinach

For some reason I haven't totally figured out yet, spinach is one of the worst foods to eat for me. It's even worse than kale, which has similar nutrients.

I think it may be the high choline and/or the high oxalate in spinach. I think oxalate as a cause for all sorts of symptoms is really underappreciated. Many people would probably profit from reducing it in their diet.

green cabbage (the worst offender)

Also a problem for me: Pungent brassica (cabbage) and allium (leek, garlic) family vegetables. But again, it seems it's only with fat and protein that the negative effect is most pronounced.

 

[Wonkmonk]

I think I now have solid evidence that allium family vegetables (leek, onion, garlic etc.) cause symptoms mainly when consumed together with saturated fat.

I foraged some wild garlic leaves (I took great care not to misidentify a poionous plants as wild garlic, which can easily happen) and ate it as a pesto with various oils (sunflower, olive, grape seed) and pine nuts. Although none of these is particularly high in saturated fat, as the pesto contained a lot of fat in total, the amount of saturated fat was significant. maybe 15 grams in total.

The result was a strong worsening of symptoms.

I usually can tolerate low-fat mushroom pasta (mushrooms, nutritional yeast, tiny bit of grape seed oil for frying, white pasta), but when I once tried it with a bit bit of garlic and some more fat for better taste and I used coconut fat instead of grape seed oil, it caused very strong symptoms.

 

[Wonkmonk]

I hypothesized that among other things because a guacamole with bread (made with garlic) appears to make me much worse than an avocado-banana puree, even when the latter contains more avocado.

I think the garlic in the guacamole in combination with the fat, especially saturated, is the problem.