Jennifer's Recovery Log

[tara]

Let's just say it ended with me giving in and eating vegetable fried rice and beef teriyaki and questioning if I want to continue done the Peaty path.

I see no contradiction between learning ideas from Peat, and using that along based on observing how your own body responds to food, eating food you can eat that supports and restores your health and metabolic rate.
I have not anywhere read from Peat that he thinks people should persist in eating food that causes severe negative health reactions. The only protocol I have seen him loosely suggest is 'perceive, think, act'.
I reckon that if you take into account the ideas he has written about, and everything else you have learned, including from watching to see how your body responds to different foods, and you can figure out what to eat food that supports and restores your health and metabolic rate, that counts as a Peaty path, even if it doesn't look like someone elses.

If it ends up being high PUFA or low protein or low carbs I'll be surprised.

 

[thebigpeatowski]

Jennifer, I have had moments where I seriously questioned what I was doing too, whether I wanted to continue or not...There were some absolutely terrifying times, but I can honestly say that it has been worth it.

We all take our own circuitous paths and in fact I think it's most beneficial to learn and apply Peat's writings in a such a unique/individual fashion. Pretty sure that's precisely why he doesn't write a diet book per se. We're all so different!

Now I find myself thinking about his remarkable principles (what little my brain can actually grasp) and I giggle like a child because I feel like I've stumbled upon a secret treasure. A masterpiece with exceptional possibilities for TRUE healing, even for people displaying distinctive differences. There is no one right way. :2cents

 

[Jennifer]

Thank you, tara and BP!

Yeah, I agree the path isn't the same for everyone. I think what I get hung up on is Ray's more "ideal foods" viewpoint and knowing what he has stated in many of his articles and email exchanges about specific foods and specific conditions. For example...when I'm nauseous or have the flu, the only thing I can usually stomach is dry toast or some kind of starch and knowing what I've read from Ray about how starch can possibly feed bacteria and penetrate the intestinal lining and knowing that I'm currently dealing with an infection/inflamed gut, I figured it wasn't wise to have the starch.

I'm still getting massive brain fog and dairy still causes it the most, along with dropping my temps so I don't know how to proceed at this point. I'm going to write Ray and see if he can help me get to the bottom of this because I've been "Peating" for two years now and I really can't take this anymore. This pony has run out of tricks. I really don't want to bother Ray, but I've tried everything I can think of and what I've been able to understand from his work. To not have clarity of mind is so unnerving for me. I feel like I live my life in a muffled fog and I get where all I want to do is sleep. The sad part is, when I took the Neomycin a while back, the first day of taking it cleared up the rash, brain fog and my blurred vision, but all of that came back after a few days. I just don't know how to get rid of this bacterial infection long term.

 

[tara]

Sorry the fog came back - I imagine that would have been disappointing. I'm back to low milk intake again too, now, for the sake of a clearer head. I'd guess that avoiding brain fog is more important than drinking milk, though I sometimes can't resist anyway, because I like it so much.

 

[thebigpeatowski]

I had yet another sacrilegious thought: in your specific case Jennifer, I recall you mentioning that your overall hormone levels were quite low, correct? You have NO body fat whatsoever and aren't currently menstruating, yes? Please correct me if I'm wrong, but giving into your craving might just be your body telling you what it needs. I know, blasphemous for sure.

My point is that PUFA fried rice might not have the same detrimental effect on you that it would most certainly have on someone like me. (I have many more pounds of body fat than you do.) I can actually feel the estrogenic effects after I have consumed a large amount of PUFA.

I am in NO way advocating a high PUFA diet, but if that's all that sounds good at the moment then I say eat it and enjoy (and maybe take some vitamin E). If milk makes you feel poorly then you really need to follow what your brain fog is telling you, just find another bio-available source of calcium.

 

[Jennifer]

Sorry the fog came back - I imagine that would have been disappointing. I'm back to low milk intake again too, now, for the sake of a clearer head. I'd guess that avoiding brain fog is more important than drinking milk, though I sometimes can't resist anyway, because I like it so much.

Oh no, you too, tara!? Did you always get brain fog with milk or is that something that developed after you had taken it out of your diet for an extended period of time and then reintroduced it?

I've noticed a trend with many people who, like myself, took dairy out of their diet for years and when they tried reintroducing it, they now suffer negative symptoms from it. I never had a problem with it before following a restrictive diet and getting sick which leads me to believe it's this lousy infection that's the source of my issues.

 

[Jennifer]

I had yet another sacrilegious thought: in your specific case Jennifer, I recall you mentioning that your overall hormone levels were quite low, correct? You have NO body fat whatsoever and aren't currently menstruating, yes? Please correct me if I'm wrong, but giving into your craving might just be your body telling you what it needs. I know, blasphemous for sure.

My point is that PUFA fried rice might not have the same detrimental effect on you that it would most certainly have on someone like me. (I have many more pounds of body fat than you do.) I can actually feel the estrogenic effects after I have consumed a large amount of PUFA.

I am in NO way advocating a high PUFA diet, but if that's all that sounds good at the moment then I say eat it and enjoy (and maybe take some vitamin E). If milk makes you feel poorly then you really need to follow what your brain fog is telling you, just find another bio-available source of calcium.

Yeah, that makes sense what you're saying, BP. That's why I decided to give in and eat the fried rice. I think the reason why I broke down and had some was simply due to the fact that for weeks, I had been starving and all I wanted was some starch and like a big stubborn OCDer, I kept telling myself not to have the oatmeal or potatoes I had been craving. After two weeks of not having any and desperately wanting relief from the nausea and vomiting, my body won out and I broke down with the fried rice. Had I just had the oatmeal or potatoes, I could of spared myself the less than ideal PUFA rich rice.

The funniest part is I stopped craving the fried rice after that day I had it. Also, I woke the next morning and the two week long nausea and vomiting I had had was gone. I think you're right and what you said is very much that of a balanced and healthy mindset. I don't want to get to the point of feeling bad because I ate some PUFAs since after developing some serious food phobia from following 80/10/10, I never want to get to that point again where I'm afraid of even natural foods like rice or potatoes. I was worried that was happening again from following the stricter version of Peating (starch-free) for these past 6 months. Because when other people give in and have bread or potatoes every now and then because they're really craving them or they're eating with family, I don't. I literally follow a diet to the T and I believe that can get me in a lot of trouble because I ignore my body's signals for an extreme perfectionism. It really is a detrimental habit I've been trying to break. You would think almost dying doing 80/10/10, I would of learned my lesson.

 

[tara]

I drank lots of milk happily throughout childhood (mostly standard pasteurised homogenised grass-fed glass-bottled ~3% fat). Thank goodness, because I think I would have been starving without it. Then reduced it significantly but did not eliminate milk from late teens. I started getting brain fog I think early twenties. I can't remember the details, but it could be that this coincided with changes to standard milk supply - homogenisation, possibly changes in dairy herd, glass > carton. Also, I was vegetarian for about 5 years, so was trying to get a lot of my fuel and protein from bread and cheese, along with lots of lentils and beans etc, probably inadequate protein. I may have gone a few days without dairy now and then, but didn't try to systematically avoid it till a naturopath suggested it (mid thirties?). She suggested yogurt instead, assuming it was lactose problem. I did notice a clearer head if I avoided all dairy, and I went long periods with very little, but didn't have discipline for complete elimination. I had similar experiences of brain-fog the couple of times I tried goats milk (yum). Aged cheeses, yougurt, and skim milk powder seems to affect me worse than fresh milk.

Progest-e helps, but I'm still not happy with the overall effect. I was drinking lots of milk for months while taking progest-e last year. Sometimes I felt fine (and very happy to be drinking milk) and sometimes I didn't. And you know how it is with brain-fog - it makes it hard to figure out what to do, like stop drinking milk till you feel better ('It was fine last week, so it should be OK today).

I'm suspecting other damage from long-term malnutrition has left me vulnerable to milk proteins. Possibly part of that is gut permeability. Maybe also blood-brain barrier? It's just occurring to me now, but I wonder whether another part of it could low stomach acid (from hypothyroid state) breaking the proteins down inadequately. And may be other things. It could also be that there are other factors entirely that affect my tolerance of milk. I'm hoping somewhere down the line I get other things figured out and can have milk again.
I switched to mostly A2 milk a couple of months ago, which tastes the best, but get seem to get similar symptoms from that.

I don't like that I'm getting too much iron from meat, but it's the easiest way to get lots of protein. I've recently upped my gelatine consumption, so hope that will help. Also eating some fish and shell fish every week.

 

[Jennifer]

Yeah, I know what you mean. I'm not thrilled that I've taken to eating a lot of meat and scallops recently, but without dairy protein I get very hungry for meat and eggs. Plus, the Minocycline has made my protein cravings unreal. I know I had a protein deficiency for a long time, which is what I believe really caused the osteoporosis, but these meat cravings have been insane.

What's strange is when I was on a WAPF diet when I first fractured, I large part of my diet came from dairy and yet I had no brain fog. Though it was then that I started to develop the rash and anything cultured like cheese and yogurt exasperated it. This last time when I took the Neomycin antibiotic, within the first day my brain fog was completely gone, along with my blurry vision. And when I did RBTI, I was put on Diatomaceous earth because I was told I had a bacterial overgrowth due to my high pH so you could very well be right in your suspicion about the low stomach acid being a factor.

I use to drink only A2 milk and it made no difference with me also. It did taste good, but it had more to do with the fact that the cows were 100% grass-fed from a biodynamic farm. Beautiful cows too. The farm's herd are Guernseys and Devonshires they got from New Zealand. Anyhow, I just went with my mom today to see a gastroenterologist and I basically left there even more confused so I'm writing Ray in hopes he can help me get to the bottom of this brain fog and I'll let you know what he has to say. Maybe if you're able to clear the brain fog for good, you'll also get rid of the migraines for good? I'm hoping that happens for my mom because she also gets brain fog and migraines.

 

[tara]

Am I right that diatomaceous earth is good for killing parasites but also rough on the gut lining? It works by cutting up the critters, and can scratch the lining of the GI tract too?
Will be interested to know what Ray has to say. Did any of what the gastroenterologist had to say make sense to you?
Fog and migraines may be connected, but not one-to-one. It would be nice if solving one would solve the other.

 

[SQu]

Jennifer I'm holding thumbs for some really great input for you from Ray.

 

[Jennifer]

Am I right that diatomaceous earth is good for killing parasites but also rough on the gut lining? It works by cutting up the critters, and can scratch the lining of the GI tract too?
Will be interested to know what Ray has to say. Did any of what the gastroenterologist had to say make sense to you?
Fog and migraines may be connected, but not one-to-one. It would be nice if solving one would solve the other.

Yeah, it's to kill parasites, but I had no clue it was rough on the gut lining. That makes sense though because it was during RBTI that I developed the burning gut, indegestion and brain fog. I was also put on enzymes and those immediately caused intense heartburn. That was the first time in my life I had ever dealt with that.

The gastroenterologist said that even though my stool test showed I didn't have a yeast overgrowth, I did in fact have a yeast overgrowth and that yeast are antibiotic and then he started explaining how the French microbiologist Louis Pastuer made this discovery. He then asked if I had been tested for Celiac disease and I told him yes I had the biopsy and he asked how many biopsies were taken and I said one. He said I needed to have eight biopsies to confirm if I have Celiac disease. So yet again another test I had done that wasn't preformed properly. He went on to say that my situation is complicated and that it's going to take a lot of herbs and tests to get it under control. The worst part is, I wasn't there for me. I went in for my mom because she has a hard time understanding the doctors, their medical terms and remembering what they tell her.

So I left his office and went home to contact Ray. I honestly have had enough of the medical establishment and all their conflicting information and inability to preform tests properly. This gastroenterologist was a lovely man, but all I could think was that if I have to do like I did during RBTI, I give up! During RBTI, I was up to like 16 different supplements that I had to take multiple times a day. I kept them in a huge shipping box and had written out my dosing schedule on one of flaps. It was like a giant's version of a pillbox.

 

[tara]

Yeah, it's to kill parasites, but I had no clue it was rough on the gut lining. That makes sense though because it was during RBTI that I developed the burning gut, indegestion and brain fog. I was also put on enzymes and those immediately caused intense heartburn. That was the first time in my life I had ever dealt with that.

IIRC Reams recognised a cost to K-min (min-col + diatomaceous earth combo) - not for people whose life-energy was too low. I can't remember what his term for life-energy was, but he calculated a number for it, and he expected K-min to reduce it somewhat. A cost that is sometimes worth it to get rid of parasites that are stealing your nutrition.

 

[Jennifer]

Jennifer I'm holding thumbs for some really great input for you from Ray.

Thanks, sueq! I appreciate that!

So when I contacted Ray, I gave him my latest blood work, a quick summary of my current diet and here's the rest of what I wrote:

"I had an upper endoscopy done two years ago that showed I had intestinal inflammation and I also took the hydrogen breath test for SIBO that came back negative, but showed I had a lot of trapped gas in my colon. This past December I took a Genova comprehensive stool test that found I have a bacterial infection and I'm lacking "good" bacteria. They recommended tetracyclines so my doctor started me on 100mg of Minocycline once a day which cleared up the gnawing/burning in my lower intestines, along with most of the rash, but I continued to have a lot of redness in my cheeks and really bad brain fog so my doctor upped my minocycline dose to 100mg twice a day. Over two weeks have passed and the brain fog and red cheeks persist and I feel flu-like so I just went back down to 100mg a day.

So if you don't mind answering a few questions I have...can a bacterial infection be the source of brain fog and rashes? What would you suggest I take for a Minocycline dose to clear the infection and will I know the infection is cleared when I no longer suffer with brain fog and any redness in my cheeks? Is it common to feel very flulike while the infection is clearing? Also, is starch such as that from new potatoes, Japanese white sweet potatoes and rice okay for me to eat given my intestinal issues or would it be wise for me to avoid all forms of starch completely and permanently?

Lastly, can a fungal/yeast overgrowth develop from taking antibiotics? I saw a gastroenterologist who said that the white I developed on my tongue while taking the antibiotic was thrush and it was caused by the antibiotic. I thought thrush couldn't be brushed off without causing bleeding and if it can be brushed off easily and painlessly, it is due to a bacterial overgrowth in the intestines or locally in the mouth. Can antibiotics cause a yeast overgrowth?"

Here's Ray's response:

"Low cholesterol can be caused by intestinal inflammation, and starches are a common cause. Sweet potatoes are effective promoters of bacterial growth, rice and potatoes can cause gas especially if they aren't well cooked. Do you check your temperature and resting pulse rate occasionally to see if the thyroid is working? Whole blood serotonin isn't very informative, because it isn't harmful when it's bound in the platelets, and harmful when it's free in the plasma; urine 5-HIAA (a serotonin metabolite) is an easy test. Flowers of sulfur (200 mg/day for 3 days) will usually eliminate yeast, and the slight acidifying effect can cause a favorable shift in bacteria in the colon."

I'll be honest, the brain fog must be getting the best of me because I wasn't really sure he addressed my question about dosing the Minocycline or if the antibiotic can in fact cause a yeast overgrowth. So I responded with info on my temps and resting pulse and asked him this:

"Sorry, I'm a bit confused. Do you think my brain fog and the facial rash have anything to do with the bacterial infection or a yeast overgrowth? I've taken 1/3 a teaspoon of flowers of sulphur for three consecutive days in the past and it didn't help with the brain fog or rash.

When dosing, what do you consider a good starting dose for the Minocycline or do you think I should discontinue taking it?"

I was hoping to get to the bottom of this brain fog and dairy issue. Did he indeed address it and I'm completely missing it?

 

[tara]

Hi Jennifer,
I think I'd have reading clear advice from that response too.
Did your test values show low cholesterol?
Did you tell him you had all the health problems while strictly avoiding starch for a long time? Or could he have got the impression you are eating lots of those starches, and therefore that that's a likely cause for your issues? I wonder if he is responding based on an assumption about your diet.

 

[thebigpeatowski]

Perhaps he has to be careful giving specific medical advice, especially regarding prescriptions? I dunno. Pretty sure he thinks a healthy/high metabolic rate will help keep yeast under control. As you already know, a difficult aspect when you have gut issues is actually getting/absorbing enough nutrition to support proper hormones and metabolism.

Do you take your morning temperature every day before you get out of bed? And an hour or so after you eat breakfast? Again the afternoon? If so, is there a consistent daily pattern? I'm sorry if I missed it, I have very poor recall that way...

I'm sorry Jennifer, vague answers are disappointing indeed. I guess if I were in your position, I might just eat whatever sounds good and feels best in order to pack some weight on to generate some hormones and cholesterol.

 

[Jennifer]

My cholesterol was at 147, so definitely low. I told him my current diet is milk, ricotta (made only from whole milk, vinegar and salt, fruit, eggs, shellfish and pastured meat. I ignored the fried rice I had this past weekend because before that, I hadn't had any starch whatsoever for at least 6 months. I also haven't had any starch since so I don't think that one time made a difference really.

I just received a reply from Ray (He really is so nice for conversing with me) and here is what he had to say:

"Sometimes people have a reaction to the minocycline itself; watching what happens when you stop it, you can tell whether it's helping. A different antibiotic (penicillin V K, erythromycin, or neomycin, maybe) might control bacteria without irritation. When your cholesterol is so low, your body can't respond fully to a thyroid supplement. Thyroid should cause the conversion of cholesterol to pregnenolone, progesterone, DHEA, and the other neurosteroids, but when cholesterol is too low it just increases stress hormones instead. Have you noticed an effect on the fogginess from pregnenolone or progesterone?"

So it looks like I should drop the thyroid supplement till I can get my cholesterol up. I'm not really sure how to do that since my high sugar intake hasn't seemed to help. I suppose avoiding any gut irritants since he says that can contribute to low cholesterol. I'm going to ask him how to raise it and I do have neomycin left from the last time I took it. It worked the first week, but then both my dog and cat became ill. We found out they had cancer and it was a pretty gruesome and stressful 3 months till they passed and then that same month Bee was in surgery to remove a cancerous lump in his eyelid. During all that, my gut problems, brain fog and rash came back full force.

I still don't know how I'll get the weight on without refeeding on insane amounts of calories again and causing major gut irritation in the process. I'm already up to about 3000 a day due to my insane appetite from taking the Mino, but my weight hasn't budged. I think I'm floating around 105. I no longer have a scale so I'll have to check at my next doctor's appointment in a couple weeks.

 

[Jennifer]

Oh and sorry, BP! I didn't answer your question.

My temp in the morning is usually around 97.7/97.8 and it rises to about 98.6 by afternoon and by evening it's around 98.7 or so. It's been fairly consistent for the past two years.

 

[thebigpeatowski]

Okay good, I just wanted to make sure your daily temperature rhythm was intact and that stress hormones aren't propping your temps up.

RP has said repeatedly not to use thyroid meds without enough cholesterol, did your doc put you on thyroid meds?

 

[Jennifer]

Yeah, she did, but at the time she first put me on it, my cholesterol was at 210. Though, I was shocked that with my latest blood work results, she didn't have me stop taking thyroid or at least reduce my dose. She even told me that she wanted to keep an eye on my cholesterol because she felt it was getting too low and depression would most likely develop. I questioned her about my taking NDT, but she didn't think it was a factor. Gee, I can't imagine why I've had so many unexplainable sobbing episodes. I swear, I've never danced so much in all my life just to try and get some happiness flowing through me. I really started to think that maybe I was just some unhappy person now despite being a cheerful and positive person most of my life. This is just one example of what I mean when I say that even though I have a good doctor, I've still had to doctor myself for the most part.