Kickas.org Forums Treatments, Drugs and Alternatives NSD and diet-related; Frustrating relapse - any advice?

Got back to zero pain on Friday following my fast. Now it's Monday, and I have back pain again despite eating nothing but chicken, red meat, fresh greens, berries, coconut milk and coconut homemade yogurt.

Has anyone found a food journal to be integral to their success? I have not been keeping one.

In looking back through this thread, I was doing my best last summer when I was taking a lot of botanical anti-microbials. I am going to start another round of that.

Also, I certainly have anxiety over my weight. In my past, I did competitive strength training, and this time two years ago I weighed approximately 190 lb. When I step on the scale in now starts with a 16x. I love the way fasting makes me feel, but I feel like I am having to choose between not being in pain and not wasting away..

Hi Exacta - try cutting out the red meat. For many red meat is inflammatory - includes myself !

But well done the fast -

Hi Exata:

* WATER FAST WITH SUPPLEMENTS

I am in the third day of my fast. I at first tried going with only water but I also was adding biofilm disruptors (EDTA, NAC,...) detox supplements (GSH, alpha-lipoic acid, milk thistle,...) and binders (charcoal).

* REACTION TO SUPPLEMENTS OR JUST HUNGER???

I was feeling a little better during the fast but there was a lot of room for improvement. At almost the 24 hour point I took a couple of grams of L-glutamine, obviously on an empty stomach. My hole body began to increase in odd sensations and pain mostly in the neck. Muscles tightened, my neck was tight and burning and I was developing head pain similar to trigeminal neuralgia.

* REACTION REMEDY AND BONE BROTH FAST

I quickly but reluctantly took two paracetamol followed by a carbonated, fizzy anti-acid and then proceeded to make a pot of spinach soup broth and threw in a couple of small Taiwan sausages and sea salt. After one bowl I was feeling better than I have in the past year. So I decided to keep the fast to a bone broth fast.

As an aside I heard a doctor say that an anti-acid like Pepto-bismol is good to counter a Herx reaction.

* FOOD REINTRODUCTION

After the bone broth fast I will reintroduce one food every few days into a spinach or bok choy soup. Each introduction will have me eat it at least three meals in a row to watch for a reaction.

About 2.5 years ago I suspected that broccoli was a barrier to further gut healing. I took it out and noticed an improvement.

So recently have been trying to learn about soluble and insoluble starches, and their relation to resistant starches, FODMAPS, etc. I realize now that cooked broccoli is classified as a soluble starch when cooked. I see that as a great food source for microbes in the small intestine which will sustain SIBO.

I also noticed that nuts and other foods high in inflammatory omega-6 fats made me feel very bad yet those fats are in healthy foods. This may partly explain why going from stir-frying in olive oil to steaming was also a gut healing aid (I think that stir-frying in coconut oil is the best). I wondered what the big deal was about omega-3 and the EPA/DHA ratio in fish oil.

I went to Wikipedia and found a page that listed the omega-3 and omega-6 ratios of many foods and was somewhat surprised to see that the two vegetables that make me feel best were spinach and bok choy and that they had the lowest omega 6 to 3 ratio.

So I will try to stick to green vegetables for now and keep the omega-6 oil very low and the omega-3 very high, and supplement with fish oil.

* KEEP THE MICROBE POPULATION LOW

I feel that all meals should incorporate some form of natural antimicrobial which are typically seasoning. However many are starchy. It might be better to use fresh herbs grown in your windows instead of store bought dried ones. They would be more potent and less starchy.

Onion and garlic also are anti-microbial however they contain oligosacharides which feed microbes; probably good and bad.

I did read an interesting article that said that the "good" bacteria can only metabolize simple sugars when complex sugars and starches are present. In contrast the bad bugs can metabolize simple sugars at any time. The details of the article evade me. So if the diet contains more simple sugars than complex carbs then the growth of bad bugs will be promoted more then the good bugs. This can explain why the more cellulose I eat the better I feel; or in other words, the less starch the better.

This makes me wonder where FODMAPS and soluble starches fit in. They are important in maintaining a healthy gut mucousa but when AS sufferers attempt to include foods high in those compounds then they suffer. So, how can AS sufferers nurture a healthy mucousa that will protect us from compounds we don't want in our body and digest foods for us? I don't know!!! It seems like a barrier we need to figure out how to pass.

* CHRONIC INFECTIONS ARE A BARRIER

I am still taking biofilm disruptors to aid the antimicrobials. I am always changing from one side of the fence to the other regarding using big guns like pharmaceutical antibiotics. I feel that when some infections get embedded into our gut lining that they are almost impossible to get out with natural antimicrobials. The longer they live there the more our immune system will change making remission less likely.

FOOD DIARY

Two and a half years ago I used a food diary. It didn't help. These days I am more willing to go on an elimination diet then slowly reintroduce foods. My mistake often is to reintroduce too many different foods too fast.

Red cabbage might be a good choice of vegetable to make a salad from

I used an online food journal when I started and found it incredibly helpful: www.cronometer.com

It's great as a guideline for starch content since it draws from the USDA database. You can check for each food and it keeps a running tally. You can also add notes, which I used to track my pain levels. Pretty quickly I discovered I could tolerate a max of 2 grams of starch daily.

It's not perfect, since starch can vary by individual item. Kale, for example, is listed as very low starch, but I definitely had issues with it. So you still need to iodine.

It was a great way to get started on NSD. It also helped me through the nutritional side of things, which i was worried about in making such a big shift in my diet, as it tracks calories and nutrients. I would routinely plan hypothetical meals to figure out what I could/couldn't eat and how much I needed to eat well and not lose more weight.

I posted about it here, including a few screenshots:
https://www.kickas.org/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=518133#Post518133

And another one, that shows the log part:

Cabbage always tests a bit starchy for me with iodine. I recommend staying away from it if starch tolerance is low.

I recall you mentioning that cabbage tests positive for starch. Have you tested red cabbage?

Also, you mentioned kale. I read that for some reason it is not good to eat raw kale. Did you eat it raw or cooked?

Yes, I'm sorry to say, red cabbage also tests starchy. It never goes fully dark purple, but definitely has starchy streaks of varying degrees. Some cabbages are worse than others. I eat it now anyways, now that I can tolerate a bit more starch. But it was a no go early on.

I haven't read that eating raw kale is bad for you, but there is research that shows some veg nutrients are better absorbed when cooked. That wouldn't surprise me for kale. I have also come across research that cholesterol lowering effects are better when kale is steamed.

Do we think that overeating (regardless of starch content) can feed Kleb and create disease activity? I ask because at some point I am interested in trying to pack some weight back on.

Is it inadvisable to force feed myself copious amounts of meats, fats, etc?