Substantial improvement with (strange) dietary adjustments

[Viala]

Hey, Viala, thanks for your messages, which were very interesting.

Hey, thanks for your reply as well Wonkmonk!

I would suggest longer soaking of legumes would produce some degree of bacterial activity and that would also involve the production of lactic acid by lactic acid bacteria.

Now that I think of it, the water after soaking legumes for 24hrs doesn't smell like a typical sourdough, so chances are it's ok. I will test this as well. For now I have already prepared a baker's yeast batch of rice and will cook it tomorrow. I am very curious if this will make a difference.

What I will do when making hummus in the future is soak the chickpeas in water >70 C (160 F) because that kills all the bacteria.

I just saw you had a similar idea. Pre-frying should work just as well.

Soaking in a hot water is better though, easier than baking and better than frying where temperature distribution may not be even.

That's a possibility, but normally, all bacteria you take from commercial probiotics are ubiquitous. They are everywhere in soil, food and people. It's unlikely that you introduced a new strain that made you sick in to your digestive system.

If you think lactic acid is a problem specifically, I think that can be purchased in a pure form, so theoretically you could test that hypothesis directly (won't taste great though).

Some people got lactic acidosis from taking probiotics, too much of lactic acid forming bacteria can lead to dysbiosis and that creates amount of lactate that the body cannot cope with. It is rare but possible.

When I already had ME/CFS some probiotics could cause a severe fatigue soon after taking them, I discovered later that d-lactate strains were the most problematic, that is l. acidophilus, l. delbrueckii and many others, very common in most probiotics, but in general, with lactic acidosis any lactate producing bacteria will give the body more work. I never had problems with pickles or yoghurt before. There's also a theory that our reaction to probiotics may depend on our genes and SNPs, some people may be more vulnerable.

I believe that the bacteria itself were not the problem but introducing a high amount of them was. Acidosis may be the cause of my ME/CFS just not sure what is the major culprit, I also have problems with other acidic compounds. I did a lactate test and it was within range but closer to the upper limit, but if it's d-lactate acidosis, it will not come up on a regular lactate test because it detects only l-lactate form.

If I activate the yeast with some warm water beforehand, shouldn't the yeast have a headstart and crowd out all the other bacteria, at least for a while, and when they catch up, a good deal of the nutrients they need to make the harmful compounds would already be digested, absorbed or consumed by the yeast?.

I am not sure if this would be safe. I remember reading about drinking baker's yeast as it is supposed to help with hair growth and others warned against drinking living yeast because it could cause yeast overgrowth. They were very clear to kill it first with high temperature.

Ken Lassesen has an entire website dedicated to changing microbiome in ME/CFS. I have tried some of the probiotics recommended there including Mutaflor, but it didn't change much. I've had more success with altering my diet.

 

[Viala]

Come to think of it, the first (and only time) I tried probiotics in early 2017, along with terrible bloating, joint pain and fatigue that came along with it the following year I was diagonsed Hypothyroid.

It's possible that's how it started. It may be helpful to check what these probiotic strains were. I took a probiotic that had a lof of strains including d-lactate producing bacteria.

I will try this. Would microwaving raw parboiled rice for 2-3 minutes prior to boiling work too or does it need to be in an oven, soaked and than cooked?

Microwave heat gets rid of most living things, but how it would affect rice, maybe you'd get rice popcorn? I'd choose soaking in hot water or frying, I am wary of microwave ovens in general.

 

[Wonkmonk]

I don't think it's quite that simple. The yeast will consume sugars and starches, but won't deprive the other microbes of proteins, fibre, etc, that they prefer.

Yes, that's right. I probably won't do it anyway because I am afraid of methanol poisoning. Who knows...

 

[Wonkmonk]

Some people got lactic acidosis from taking probiotics, too much of lactic acid forming bacteria can lead to dysbiosis and that creates amount of lactate that the body cannot cope with. It is rare but possible.

Ok, another reason not to do the yeast thing, at least not regularly.

 

[Wonkmonk]

Ken Lassesen has an entire website dedicated to changing microbiome in ME/CFS. I have tried some of the probiotics recommended there including Mutaflor, but it didn't change much. I've had more success with altering my diet.

Thanks for the info. I tried several different probiotics early in the journey and it didn't appear to make a difference. I also think altering the diet is most promising.

 

[Wonkmonk]

I will try this. Would microwaving raw parboiled rice for 2-3 minutes prior to boiling work too or does it need to be in an oven, soaked and than cooked?

I think what's most important is that the rice (all of it!) has over 70 C (160 F) for at least 2 minutes. No live bacteria relevant for us humans can withstand that heat. (I heard some bacteria near how wells on the bottom of the sea can, but they aren't relevant for us)

 

[Viala]

So I've checked baker's yeast and I don't have typical lactate side effects from this rice, also no side effects from rice cooked normally without any soaking. I don't tolerate well this type of fermentation though, so will have to look for other options to remove phytic acid.

I can only wonder how much lactate was in that sourdoughed rice I ate before, probably a lot. This dietary journey sometimes feels like walking through a minefield.

 

[xploit316]

I think what's most important is that the rice (all of it!) has over 70 C (160 F) for at least 2 minutes. No live bacteria relevant for us humans can withstand that heat. (I heard some bacteria near how wells on the bottom of the sea can, but they aren't relevant for us)

Thanks Wonkmonk. Just so I understand, you are saying to heat raw rice or after boiling the rice?

 

[Dysfunkion]

I also do terrible with yogurt and tofu! I wonder if there is something to the metabolic products of lactic acid bacteria observation. I get about the same results from consuming both. blurrier vision, somewhat more brain burny, fatigue, and lots of brain fog. With yogurt the fatigue is a lot more pronounced though and with the tofu the brain burning thing is a lot more pronounced. I'm ok with soy beans themselves and can consume some soy sauce with no issues in smaller quantities.

I don't think crowding out the lactic acid bacteria would be able to be done with yeast though in small amounts and it could cause other serious problems in the amount you'd need to do that. I'd be worried about it fermenting carbs and sugars in my digestive system and making a big mess in there. I've given up on trying probiotics, just about everything I've tried has made things worse. I got better with herbal antibiotics though like osha root and cistus (which I still drink daily).

 

[Dysfunkion]

I have stumbled upon a really weird one that I can't figure out. Eating plain rice I cooked in my pot makes me extremely lethargic and wheezy yet if it's softer (like say I cooked it in a pan after that a bit mixed with more water saturated broccoli or caulflower) and it's eaten with large amounts of garlic this will lessen the blow but harder to digest thing even other carbs don't do this. I can't ever recall rice plain from the chinese takeout place doing this though which is more interesting (I honestly might start doing this, its not even that expensive per container of steamed rice), it's like a reaction to a certain condition of the rice made in a pot itself and appears to be associated with the firmness of this specific rice where cooking it a certain way will negate what happens to various degrees. I wonder how I'd react to the plain brown rice cooked like this. Bizarre.

edit 8/01 - It was that rice specially! I made myself some brown rice before and had a plate, no issues. Not a single reaction, not even in the portion I added some soy sauce to. I noticed the white rice I had been using was also enriched and it didn't say it on the bag itself, this whole time I thought I was eating plain white rice. There is only 2 things that could be the issue here with the rice, it's either the starch (there was no clouds of it at all in the brown rice pot) or the added vitamins which could possibly be degraded upon cooking with certain ingredients which is why I didn't even notice how much worse this rice was making me feel in the background when I cooked it and added some to a pan with a lot of garlic, salt, and vegetables. Interested to see how without the rice over the course of the next few weeks I feel but first I also want to fast for a couple days and then try plain jasmine rice without any extra vitamins or additives to see how I react to that.

 

[Wonkmonk]

This dietary journey sometimes feels like walking through a minefield.

This describes it perfectly

Thanks Wonkmonk. Just so I understand, you are saying to heat raw rice or after boiling the rice?

I think both...my hypothesis is that much of the problem is caused by somthing that's produced from protein, carbs/fiber and possibly something like choline by ubiquitous lactic acid bacteria and that much of this happens outside the body already. So whatever you eat, you don't want it to sit around and give the bacteria a chance to be active. You want everything basically sterilized.

I also do terrible with yogurt and tofu! I wonder if there is something to the metabolic products of lactic acid bacteria

Same, but tofu much more than yoghurt, presumably because the soy beans have much more carbs and fiber. My hypothesis is that ubiquitous (so no chance to kill them) bacteria need protein, possibly choline and a fermentable carb or fiber substrated to cause the problems and that this can happen both outside and inside of the body.

I don't think crowding out the lactic acid bacteria would be able to be done with yeast though in small amounts

Yes, I also no longer think that works and I abandoned the idea.

Please see my next post for some interesting new info on this hypothesis.

 

[Wonkmonk]

I realized in the past weeks that hummus and falafel (once every three days) suddenly caused more symptoms than they used to and I think I found the reason:

I used to make my homemade pita bread with a lot of yeast and a short warm ferment (2-3 hours). A couple of weeks ago, I switched to a long overnight cold ferment, which makes the bread a lot more tasty. Now, I learned today, the reason why it's more tasty is that the yeast goes dormant at lower temeratures and instead what is active at low temps is...drumroll ...lactic acid bacteria. The bacterial activity, not the yeast, produce the nutty flavor that gives cold fermented bread it's character.

Now what happened? There is protein in the bread, there is choline, there is fiber/carbrs (dough contains sugar), there is some oil in the dough (which I think helps the process, too) and there is lactic acid bacteria over 24 hours. This in theory should be conditions in which the compounds get produced that make me so worse and it looks like that's the case.

My second theory is that they get produced in the Tahin paste (sesame). The bacteria have all the nutrients there as well, but their activity is probably much curtailed because of a lack of water. I have also found that margerine and vegan mayo make me worse. Both contain lecithin (choline) and probably traces of protein and carbs needed for the process (after all there is such a thing like "cultured butter" so bacteria can live their to some extent).

I will check these hypotheses: (1) Go back to quick fermented bread, (2) Make my own Tahin from fresh sesame right before use. (3) Drop vegan mayo and margarine from my diet, (3) Lower the soaking time for the chickpeas to make falafel.

 

[Dysfunkion]

Tonight I had plain jasmine rice and another portion I added a little strong home made garlic sauce to. No negative reaction no matter how much I eat unlike the other white rice, it's the enriched rice that was causing the issue! No sudden mind melting fatigue, no brain fog, no rock in my belly felling, no acid burning in my belly from hell, and no dry mouth.

The ingredients added to the enriched rice I was having were iron (ferric orthophosphate), niacin, thiamine (thinamine mononitrate), and folic acid.

 

[Wonkmonk]

Tonight I had plain jasmine rice and another portion I added a little strong home made garlic sauce to. No negative reaction no matter how much I eat unlike the other white rice, it's the enriched rice that was causing the issue!

Excellent that you found that out. If you wish, you should be easily able to ascertain that hypothesis by adding the vitamins in question and iron to other foods that can be tolerated and see if there is the same reaction. If that's the case, I'd say that's Q.E.D.

 

[Wonkmonk]

I have learned this week that oxalic acid remains a problem. I am occasionally testing prior hypothesis to see if maybe the suspected thing wasn't responsible and is good to eat and it was actually the effect of something else that's also in the same food.

Sadly, it seems oxalic acid must be limited. I found out by eating hummus with lots of tahin. There are studies saying that sesame seeds may contain almost 3% of oxalic acid, which is a huge amount.

"This study establishes that the oxalate content of sesame seeds 2.8g/100g of seeds, probably the highest of any known food."

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4615-2556-1_142

It also seems that much of the oxalate is in the hulls. I always thought that I could tolerate Tahin from hulled sesame seeds better, so that's consistent with the hypothesis that it is actually the oxalate and not something else.

It seems that the harmful effects of oxalic acid accumulate and stay for quite a while. That's what made this very hard to detect. But that also means some of it every once in a while might be ok.

 

[Dysfunkion]

Excellent that you found that out. If you wish, you should be easily able to ascertain that hypothesis by adding the vitamins in question and iron to other foods that can be tolerated and see if there is the same reaction. If that's the case, I'd say that's Q.E.D.

What is Q.E.D.? Do you mean just get an iron supplement and sprinkle it on some plain rice and see what happens?

I never tried folate supplementation but I have supplemented with methyl-folate before and I'm pretty sure when I crashed over the Summer (tried saw palmetto for my hair and got PFS, since got out though after a year) it was a big factor and really increased the brain burn but so many other factors were at play I'm not sure what it would specifically do now. Thiamine in all forms gave me a little energy at first and then dropped me and made me extremely lethargic. I have supplemented niacinamide before too and I don't know how different my reaction to niacin alone would be but my reaction to niacinamide is currently a weird wired feeling and then like the thiamine a total drop off into worse territory.

Currently a bit nauseated with some digestive discomfort with some vestibular centered cold like feelings from the last glucosamine disaster but better than I was this morning. There is an immediate connection I noticed between my digestive system, facial nerves, nerves in my spine, and nerves "down below". Reactions that occur in my gut immediate connect to these locations as if something in there is hyperlinked to them to an unusual degree. Last night eating a lot of garlic calmed things a bit but I don't think I'm having anything for dinner tonight. That points to candida for me but garlic has other properties too and this also feels somewhat viral considering the typical vestibular symptoms from the glucosamine flare with the nasal drip and malaise. Not much to do in this situation right now but wait and see how things play out over the next few days.

 

[Wonkmonk]

What is Q.E.D.? Do you mean just get an iron supplement and sprinkle it on some plain rice and see what happens?

Hi Dysfunktion, sorry I should have explained that. Q.E.D. is short for "quod erat demonstrandum" which is Latin for "is has been proven." It is used in mathematics when someone proved a certain proposition.

Yes, that's what I mean, not necessarily on rice only but on any food you can usually tolerate. Buy a supplement (not only iron, but also the vitamins), sprinkle it on top and eat it. If your hypothesis is correct, you should get symptoms when you do this, no matter what food it is. Then you know it's not the food, it's only the vitamins and iron in the enriched food.

 

[Wonkmonk]

I have learned this week that oxalic acid remains a problem.

I am actually not 100% sure it's oxalate, because according to this study, roasting destroys much of the oxalate and the sesame in tahin is roasted.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1155/2023/5394315

It may be something that is created from the oxalate during roasting. I've never really checked non-roasted sesame because I usually only eat it as tahin in hummus, but I suspect it's the same, because other high-oxalate foods like spinach cause the same problems as well.

 

[Wonkmonk]

Some spices have insane amounts of oxalates.

https://www.researchgate.net/figure...of-daily-selected-common-herbs_tbl4_280642641

I found conflicting info on parsely, for which some sources say it's about 170 mg per 100g fresh parsley while others state it may be 10 times as high.

With these new insights, I will try to make a falafel batter that I can tolerate tomorrow.

In order to limit bacterial fermentation, I am going to:
*Soak in the fridge and for just 8-12 hours to limit bacterial fermentation
*Speed up the batter production process to limit the time the bacteria can be active
*Immediately freezing the batter as quickly as possible once and leaving it in the fridge before packaging whenever not used

To limit oxalate contents, I am going to use a smaller amount of cumin and parsley.

 

[Wishful]

With a quick glance at that list, I might jump to the conclusion that oxalates were responsible for my responses to those spices. However, I didn't react badly to cumin, even in much larger amounts than turmeric or ginger, so oxalates are probably not the issue for me. I'm not sure how much oxalate is available in a couple of rhubarb stems, but that didn't bother me either.