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What diet do you follow?

ljimbo423

Senior Member
Messages
4,705
Location
United States, New Hampshire
I'm glad my post was helpful to you!
If you eat tuna often, you might want to have your mercury levels checked. Tuna is one of the foods that is high in mercury. Before I went to the whole foods plant based diet, I ate a fair amount of fish. Most of it was low in mercury. At one point, I asked my doctor to check my mercury levels and it was twice the upper limit of normal!!!!!!!!!! :eek: I cut out all the fish and within a few months my serum mercury level was normal again. So just wanted to make you aware of that!!

I use to eat tuna fairly regularly. Once I heard about it having high levels of mercury I stopped eating it. That was a long time ago now. So glad you posted this!
 

Jemima37

Senior Member
Messages
407
Location
UK
I'm glad my post was helpful to you!
If you eat tuna often, you might want to have your mercury levels checked. Tuna is one of the foods that is high in mercury. Before I went to the whole foods plant based diet, I ate a fair amount of fish. Most of it was low in mercury. At one point, I asked my doctor to check my mercury levels and it was twice the upper limit of normal!!!!!!!!!! :eek: I cut out all the fish and within a few months my serum mercury level was normal again. So just wanted to make you aware of that!!
Thank you.

Yes, I remember reading that years ago. I never have more than half a small tin once weekly. I usually add it to pasta or a jacket potato. Other than that my meals are veggie type meals with very little processed meat substitutes as I don’t like them.

Did you have symptoms or anything due to the high mercury?

Thanks
 

Frunobulax

Senior Member
Messages
134
Did you have symptoms or anything due to the high mercury?

Mercury can even cause ME/CFS (and I'm talking about causation, not contribution). There are a few reported cases that people improved vastly after doing a Cutler protocol detox. Obviously we don't know how reliable these reports are. I'm in two Cutler facebook groups and people report improvement with a host of unspecific symptoms.

Lead is also one thing to watch. Even minor lead concentrations can impair your kidney function, which in turn causes problem in detoxing other stuff.

But neither will cause specific symptoms. That is, there is no "mercury causes headaches, lead causes insomina" or something like that.
 

Timaca

Senior Member
Messages
792
Did you have symptoms or anything due to the high mercury?
One of my CFS symptoms (before mercury was involved) was and is burning, sparking, crawling nerves all over my body. And if I stubbed my toes or banged my elbow, that pain was more intense. Around the time I was tested for mercury, I felt that all these symptoms were worse. And they seemed to lessen (but are still present) now that my mercury levels are back to normal.

It's good that your tuna intake is on the low side. Both my doctor and I were quite surprised to see that my mercury levels were so high!!

Best,
 

Timaca

Senior Member
Messages
792
I use to eat tuna fairly regularly. Once I heard about it having high levels of mercury I stopped eating it. That was a long time ago now. So glad you posted this!
You are welcome for my post! We all learn from each other! I'm glad you are no longer eating tuna. Tuna was one fish I didn't eat because I knew it was high in mercury. I ate a lot of salmon, some tilapia and rarely some opah (because I knew it was higher in mercury). Those other fish are lower in mercury so that is why I was surprised that my mercury levels were so high. But, I was eating fish almost every day. (My lipid levels weren't happy either with the fish....) It made me wonder what other poisons (like dioxins, PCBs) I was ingesting along with the mercury....
 

BeADocToGoTo1

Senior Member
Messages
536
...It's good that your tuna intake is on the low side. Both my doctor and I were quite surprised to see that my mercury levels were so high!
Sadly in these days of overpopulation and overpollution most of the big fish are full of heavy metals and plastics so can only be eaten with caution. Small fish seem to still fare better, likely due to their lifespan being shorter so they have less time to absorb these elements. Your story is sadly quite common.

Whenever you are suffering from ME/CFS symptoms it might be worthwhile to do tests to check for metals and chemical toxin build up. Some of the ones I did in the past included:
  • Great Plains Laboratory Toxic Environmental (GPL-TOX)
  • Doctor's Data Toxic Metals or Quest Diagnostics Heavy Metals Comprehensive Panel
 

BeADocToGoTo1

Senior Member
Messages
536
I will check them out, thanks. I should make clear that I consider a "real food" (fresh ingredients, no processed food) veggie diet to be more healthy than the standard american diet, hands down. However, we react differently to the various antinutrients. Some people may live happily and grow old with a veggie diet, others won't because of genetic differences or insulin resistance.

I live and preach a ketogenic diet which can easily be vegetarian, with a lot of salad, vegetables, olive oil, coconut oil and nuts. (Vegan is difficult in the long run though. You can do it for years, but eventually you'll end up short of some amino acids that are lacking in plants. But some protein from eggs and dairy will fix this.) My beef (no pun intended) is not with the vegetable food, but with carbs (especially processed carbs), antinutrients like lectins and unhealthy oils like linoleic acid (which is carcinogenic, and the staple ingredient in most vegetable oils). These sensitivities are highly individual and often manifest itself only after a long time, so they are hard to detect and it's extremely important to have a personalized diet. Me, I do eat a lot of vegetables, nuts and salad, but nothing that comes from grains or soy, especially no omega-6 oil.

I have personally observed how a ketogenic diet can improve life dramatically, for me and for other ME/CFS patients (and I have tried a lot of different diets before I finally went keto, including gluten free veggie). I have yet to see similar improvements from people on high-carb veggie diets. (Eric Westman gives a good rundown of which diseases can be efficiently treated with a keto diet.) So I'm strongly biased here, and it makes me sad to realize that only few ME/CFS patients have tried to go keto (long and strict enough to see if it works). But then, we're all different and there is no one way that works for everybody. And at least I'll admit that I'm biased :)
Great summary! Real food and going into nutritional ketosis is a great healer. Certainly helped my quality of life.
 
Messages
56
What kind of diet do you follow?

Vegan, mostly whole foods. Avoiding sugar, but not fanatically. No caffeine. Low FODMAP, started three years ago, now modified to include FODMAPs my body could handle, and occasional trigger foods as well. My gut functions close to normal now, but it took a lot of time to get there!

It seems individual differences play a huge role here. Some people can eat dairy and some people can't. Some people need meat, some people react terribly to it. And it's pretty obvious that there are huge differences in what balance of macronutrients we need as well. My body is the happiest at about 20% protein, 20% fats, 60% carbs, but some people would get so much worse from eating that way.
 

Rufous McKinney

Senior Member
Messages
13,251
If you eat tuna often, you might want to have your mercury levels checked. Tuna is one of the foods that is high in mercury.

I am sorely tempted to get these metals checked. I rarely eat fish. Very rarely. In contrast to the Live on Fish people.

Mercury is used in gold mining....and is NOT restricted to ocean fish. Many remote streams have been contaminated. I worked in remote areas and could have- blown it entirely drinking from a spring.

My eye doctor didn't seem interested in- Stanford finding uranium in the CA people..that doctor is convinced we have been Fukashimaed with cesium.

You would want to look into whether your getting enough selenium.....
 

Timaca

Senior Member
Messages
792
I am sorely tempted to get these metals checked. I rarely eat fish. Very rarely. In contrast to the Live on Fish people.

Mercury is used in gold mining....and is NOT restricted to ocean fish. Many remote streams have been contaminated. I worked in remote areas and could have- blown it entirely drinking from a spring.

My eye doctor didn't seem interested in- Stanford finding uranium in the CA people..that doctor is convinced we have been Fukashimaed with cesium.

You would want to look into whether your getting enough selenium.....
My mercury levels returned to the low end of normal after cutting out fish, so I was very pleased. Certainly if you are concerned, it's worth getting tested. In my case, my body was efficient at clearing out the mercury once my intake from fish stopped.

I eat 4 Brazil nuts per week so I'm guessing my selenium levels are decent, but I've not gotten them checked.
 

Timaca

Senior Member
Messages
792
I should also add that I was tested for arsenic recently since I eat rice regularly because I cannot eat wheat. I was pleased to learn that the lab results were: None Detected. :)
 

ljimbo423

Senior Member
Messages
4,705
Location
United States, New Hampshire
I should also add that I was tested for arsenic recently since I eat rice regularly because I cannot eat wheat. I was pleased to learn that the lab results were: None Detected. :)

That must give you some peace of mind. I don't eat wheat either. Can I ask what brand of rice you eat? I stopped eating rice several months ago because I heard about the high levels of arsenic in so many brands.
 
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Timaca

Senior Member
Messages
792
That must give you some peace of mind. I don't eat wheat either. Can I ask what brand of rice you eat? I stopped eating rice several months ago because I heard about the high levels of arsenic in so many brands.
I eat Lundberg's brand rice. I usually mix several kinds of rice together and cook it in my Instant Pot. I usually soak it overnight in some water (or at least for a few hours), drain, and cook in fresh water. I soak and drain to hopefully get rid of excess arsenic, but to be honest, I eat rice in restaurants, in flour, etc and that rice hasn't been presoaked, and my arsenic levels were still None Detected. But I do enjoy having cooked rice....I always have a bowl in the refrigerator!
 

ChookityPop

Senior Member
Messages
583
Ketogenic diet, after unsuccessful carnivore phase I'm back to a fairly moderate amount of meat. And it did make a big difference for me.
Can I ask what you did eat on the carnivore diet? And what other foods you implemented after the carnivore phase?
 

Frunobulax

Senior Member
Messages
134
Can I ask what you did eat on the carnivore diet? And what other foods you implemented after the carnivore phase?

Mostly beef, along with eggs and dairy. Fat was mostly butter/dairy or lard. I try to stay away from processed meat as a rule, but I do eat some bacon and eggs and maybe a sausage or two per month. So the meat was maybe 75% beef, 5% poultry and 20% pork.

I might make another attempt in half a year or so, following the pkd diet as proposed by https://www.paleomedicina.com/en, who want a 2:1 fat to protein ratio by weight (and not calories as usual). I didn't weigh and count macros, I'm pretty sure I was north of 60% calories from fat, but the fat content was not as high as these hungarians suggest.

My usual keto contains some salad, vegetables like cauliflower, onions, green beans and cabbage (I limit lectins and high oxalate veggies but I can tolerate fodmaps), lots of nuts. Olive oil and coconut oil complementing butter and lard. Still a decent amount of protein.