Symptoms (especially brain fog) much better when avoiding fiber

[tedstark]

Anyone else like this? If I eat chicken and white rice for 2 days my symptoms are dramatically better than when I eat my normal diet including vegetables. Introducing something as simple as raw celery will cause my worst symptoms to appear again.

Trying to determine if there's another underlying cause of my CFS-like symptoms that's aggravated by gut activity (e.g, autoimmunity + systemic inflammation caused by infection, with systemic inflammation exacerbated by bad digestion), or if a bad gut is the root cause of my entire condition

 

[Levant]

How do you fare on a low-FODMAP diet vs low-fibre?

 

[xebex]

I have similar i guess. If i eat pure pre-biotics which is essentially pure fibre, I'm talking potato starch or inulin powder it gives me severe anxiety. Doesn't seem to affect the ME though. But my thoughts are that possibly your gut bacteria is in a very fine balance and adding fibre puts it over the edge and adds to symptoms.

 

[tedstark]

How do you fare on a low-FODMAP diet vs low-fibre?

I think the FODMAP diet helps, but it isn't as good as a no-fiber diet

 

[Rufous McKinney]

Anyone else like this? If I eat chicken and white rice for 2 days my symptoms are dramatically better than when I eat my normal diet including vegetables. Introducing something as simple as raw celery will cause my worst symptoms to appear again.

I have alot of IBS-d type stuff. This can be viewed in chinese traditional medicine as too much wind. So I went on a diet myself, the Tibetan wind diet..for a while.

Oily, warm smooth. These qualities..suggest that less fibrous is usually better when dealing with these issues.

So I stopped eating salads. I stopped almost entirely eating raw vegetables, I eat very few. I can eat a stick of celery, so that seems ok here.

Bitter greens are off the diet. All these people living on kale. Those bitter greens are tough to digest. And raw? thats crazy.

So I ate alot of root vegetables, roasted mostly. potatoes carrots (fennel root is good for wind dispersing). Potatoes became my friend, I had avoided them due to that blood sugar issue. Of course, there are lots of types of root vegetables...

So this wind also manifests as joint issues..blowing around. My joint issues..odd pains and cold dense things inside bones...this all stopped.

While I don't think the gut messed up is the CAUSE of ME, its a big contributor to the disrupted body, and I can remember gut problems when I was 7. Sixty years ago.

 

[andyguitar]

Trying to determine if there's another underlying cause of my CFS-like symptoms that's aggravated by gut activity (e.g, autoimmunity + systemic inflammation caused by infection, with systemic inflammation exacerbated by bad digestion), or if a bad gut is the root cause of my entire condition

Could it be some thing as simple as fibre causing irritation of your GI tract?

 

[tedstark]

I have alot of IBS-d type stuff. This can be viewed in chinese traditional medicine as too much wind. So I went on a diet myself, the Tibetan wind diet..for a while.

Oily, warm smooth. These qualities..suggest that less fibrous is usually better when dealing with these issues.

So I stopped eating salads. I stopped almost entirely eating raw vegetables, I eat very few. I can eat a stick of celery, so that seems ok here.

Bitter greens are off the diet. All these people living on kale. Those bitter greens are tough to digest. And raw? thats crazy.

So I ate alot of root vegetables, roasted mostly. potatoes carrots (fennel root is good for wind dispersing). Potatoes became my friend, I had avoided them due to that blood sugar issue. Of course, there are lots of types of root vegetables...

So this wind also manifests as joint issues..blowing around. My joint issues..odd pains and cold dense things inside bones...this all stopped.

While I don't think the gut messed up is the CAUSE of ME, its a big contributor to the disrupted body, and I can remember gut problems when I was 7. Sixty years ago.

do you have a hypothesis about what sort of mechanism could link trapped wind to joint pain?

Could it be some thing as simple as fibre causing irritation of your GI tract?

I feel like soluble fiber causes most of my problems, and it's supposed to be physically soothing to the gut as opposed to irritating... but it's a possibility

 

[Rufous McKinney]

do you have a hypothesis about what sort of mechanism could link trapped wind to joint pain?

I don't, but I experienced it. For instance, I was experiencing the feeling in my foot and heel- as if somebody was blowing bubbles into a milkcarton. Thats exactly what it felt like, like air is blowing around in there. So that went away and has not returned. I'm not on the diet as strictly right now.

So the very cold dense pain feeling deep in a bone- I don't really know why, but my chinese practioner identifed it as wind.

I still have wind issues in my neck and get at night, neck popping demands which are real strange.

I have experienced considerable help from chinese herbs, while receiving close to zero help from western medicine, hence, thats my doctor mostly.

Last winter, I stood up, my foot had fallen asleep and I went down, fully on my ankle. (thank good ness for wall to wall padded carpetting). Oh boy did that hurt. Oh brother did I think I broke something. Then it was- wow I can't walk, at all. So I got herbs to soak this sprained and likely bone bruised ankle. And that did help. But eventually my ankle became incredibly cold: like an iceberg was parked inside it. I had to get a second batch of herbs to soak it in, to clear that.

So I see aspects of body illness from the energetic perspective, more than others. The Tibetan wind diet is grounding. it grounds energy, so your less blowing around. So I ate sheep cheese. And bone broth is the other key player.

So interacting with all this wind stuff is something is up with our loss of collagen. Thats contributing to gut permeability, blood brain barrier, body communications..all of it. so I made bone broth out of heavy bones. Not chickens. And all thats somehow making or feeding wind.

 

[Rufous McKinney]

Could it be some thing as simple as fibre causing irritation of your GI tract?

Its likely the fiber is causing some irritation to inflamed tissue. That inflamed tissue is likely to be more permeable, so that could lead to PEM and problems with LPS or other related issues that seem to leave us feeling poisoned.

I recently discovered I could reduce the IBS-d response by just taking an ibuprofin. I don't take such things often. I took it 2 days in a row and felt a whole lot better- somewhere in my gut something inflammed calmed down and then that lasted a while.

 

[Rufous McKinney]

that seem to leave us feeling poisoned.

My brain fog will be much worse during PEM or if I have a day where digestion was more off.

 

[Rufous McKinney]

do you have a hypothesis about what sort of mechanism could link trapped wind to joint pain?

This is a pretty good overview of the general wind concept in CTM. I have more than the wind, rest assured.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5234349/#!po=72.9167

It does not discuss brain fog per se, I suspect. (I read some of that, saved the 24 pages).

We are rather a mess. And then I' am one of the high blood pressure ME folks. Yet I can also, when really run down badly, get POTS-like symptoms.

 

[Rufous McKinney]

or if a bad gut is the root cause of my entire condition

This is pretty interesting....a 2005 discussion by a TCM practitioner in Portland- looking at acupressure points for treatment of brain fog...in this case the focus seemed to be on post menopausal females.

A list of herbs is discussed. I must caution- chinese herbs should be prescribed by a qualified trained herbalist, are never taken alone, are often combined with knowledge of how they interact in the body.

http://www.itmonline.org/arts/brainfog.htm

 

[geraldt52]

If I eat chicken and white rice for 2 days my symptoms are dramatically better than when I eat my normal diet including vegetables

Eating plain chicken and white rice as an "elimination diet" is a very old technique for investigating hidden food allergies, so what you are experiencing may have nothing to do with fiber and everything to do with a food allergy or intolerance. You might want to do the chicken/rice thing for 5-7 days and then begin adding back in the foods you more typically eat, one at a time until you figure out the culprit.

Developing intolerance to foods is very common in CFS, and it is a moving target. I bet I have resorted to the chicken/rice things a hundred times over the last 35 years, invariably finding something else I can no longer eat. What worries me is when I can no longer eat anything but chicken and rice, or even worse, can no longer eat chicken and rice. I also have found that if I mostly avoid a problematic food then I can eat it occasionally without a problem.

 

[Wolfcub]

I can definitely relate to this. For the first 2+ years I could eat anything, but from March 7th last year suddenly my body reacted too dramatically to fibre! I don't so much get brain fog from it just a sense of "creepiness" when I wake up in the morning. It's hard to describe. And exhaustion, and gut disturbance (now some reflux)

It was very hard for me to admit that "healthy" food made me worse. Healthy food has been my normal diet for....like, 40 more years! I always ate at least 5 portions of fruit and vegetables a day....pulses, bran, everything.
Suddenly on March 7th I could only rarely even eat a lentil stew, and had to cut down fruit to a bare minimum.

I tried low FODMAP. Some foods even on that list were too high in fibre for me but some were okay, But my diet narrowed down and it concerned me.
So anyway, as a low fibre experiment I ate white toast, hard boiled eggs, white rice, peeled mashed potato, steamed fish, a few lettuce leaves, a few green beans and nothing else (against my ingrained feelings about needing to "eat a rainbow" and not knowing what to do without healthy food etc.)

And I did find I felt better, clearer somehow, gut not so disturbed, not so anxious when I woke up in the morning, better quality sleep, more steady, not as creepy.
And I still can't get my head around it..... about possible malnutrition....a restricted diet....it making no sense..... (I take a multivitamin/mineral complex and a low dose B complex.)
I try to incorporate my more normal foods from time to time, but I can't get away with it for more than 2 days at a time.

The weird thing was, I did 3 gut stool tests and there was no sign of anything wrong. But my tolerance for any form of fibre has decreased a lot. If I eat it -I get effects. Sometimes I eat it anyway because I can't bear the dietary restriction. And pay the price.

 

[Wishful]

What worries me is when I can no longer eat anything but chicken and rice, or even worse, can no longer eat chicken and rice.

I had to give up rice for afternoon/evening meals, because quickly-digested carbs give me insomnia. I had to give up chicken and other meats for a while, but then tolerated them again, and now I can't tolerate them again (different problem).

My candidate for elimination diet is cornstarch pancakes (cornstarch, baking powder, oil, water). Zero nutrients (and zero fibre), but more filling/satisfying than pure sugar. Very boring though.

 

[Rufous McKinney]

What worries me is when I can no longer eat anything but chicken and rice, or even worse, can no longer eat chicken and rice. I

Dr. Jordon Peterson can only eat...steak, famously. Serious autoimmune issues. His daughter then I think only eats chicken and broccoli, similar issues. They talk about this online.

but more filling/satisfying than pure sugar

isn't corn starch just- sugar in 5 minutes?

 

[Wishful]

isn't corn starch just- sugar in 5 minutes?

Yes, but it feels more filling in the mouth. A meal consisting of a couple of spoonfuls of sugar would be very unsatisfying.

FWIW, I prefer the taste and texture of the pancakes if I mix them with boiling water rather than cold water.

 

[Alvin2]

Dr. Jordon Peterson can only eat...steak, famously. Serious autoimmune issues. His daughter then I think only eats chicken and broccoli, similar issues. They talk about this online.

If i recall correctly his daughter had an epiphany one day that an all beef diet will cure multitudes of diseases and has all the nutrients humans require (false btw) so they tried it and claim they are now cured of all their many medical conditions

 

[Wishful]

that an all beef diet will cure multitudes of diseases

No, no, it's an all-dodo diet that will magically cure diseases. Alas.

 

[Alvin2]

No, no, it's an all-dodo diet that will magically cure diseases. Alas.

Yup, that is exactly why we can't pin down the perfect human diet, we are missing the key ingredient
We are all doomed