I'm a 50 year old male. Normal weight. 15 year low carb refugee that's been doing the milk, OJ, select fruit, liver, gelatin, egg yolk thing for about 6 months. I have noticed in the past that when I consume anything with sugar, including fruit, juice or granular (I've even tried glucose powder) that I experience pretty severe memory impairment. About 6 months ago I decided to bite the bullet and completely abandon low carb / carnivore with the hope that my memory would eventually improve, however it is definitely not improving.
Specifically what I'm experiencing is that my memory of the events from a couple days ago begin to fade. At 2 days I can still recall things if I am prompted with a note that I left myself. By 2 weeks those memories feel like they were a year ago. Once a month has gone by I may be completely unable to recall the events. I'm not talking about random events here. I'm talking about projects that I spent 10, 20, 30 or 40 hours on, being completely erased from my memory. I have a much better memory of things that happened 3 years ago than of things that happened 3 months ago.
There is definitely some connection to the amount of sugar in my diet as I can immediately worsen my memory of a given day by simply by having maybe 10 or 15 tablespoons of granular sugar (not all at once) or half a watermelon in a day.
This has been going on, on and off for 15 years (consistent with my sugar intake level fluctuations) but is definitely worsening now. I've seen 8 doctors including 2 neurologists (1 of which was a memory specialist) and none have any idea what is going on. I've had MRIs and quarts of blood labs. Everything looks normal.
Realizing this symptomatically looks very similar to a thiamine (b1) deficiency I've been supplementing b1 heavily for about 2 years with no improvement. I've tried TTFD, thiamine HCL, thiamine pyrophosphate, benfotamine, sulbutiamine in EVERY reasonable quantity and dosing schedule.
I'd just go back to low carb except these higher carb levels have improved my energy sufficiently that I no longer loath life.
I'm currently trialing a zero sugar experiment where I get all my carbs from white rice. It's been a week now, but it's a little difficult to quickly tell if things are improving as my symptoms are very much a lagging indicator.
Anyway, any help would be greatly appreciated.
@haidut I know you frequently have brilliant insight into bizarre things so I would certainly love to hear any (obviously not medical advice) thoughts you might have.
Specifically what I'm experiencing is that my memory of the events from a couple days ago begin to fade. At 2 days I can still recall things if I am prompted with a note that I left myself. By 2 weeks those memories feel like they were a year ago. Once a month has gone by I may be completely unable to recall the events. I'm not talking about random events here. I'm talking about projects that I spent 10, 20, 30 or 40 hours on, being completely erased from my memory. I have a much better memory of things that happened 3 years ago than of things that happened 3 months ago.
There is definitely some connection to the amount of sugar in my diet as I can immediately worsen my memory of a given day by simply by having maybe 10 or 15 tablespoons of granular sugar (not all at once) or half a watermelon in a day.
This has been going on, on and off for 15 years (consistent with my sugar intake level fluctuations) but is definitely worsening now. I've seen 8 doctors including 2 neurologists (1 of which was a memory specialist) and none have any idea what is going on. I've had MRIs and quarts of blood labs. Everything looks normal.
Realizing this symptomatically looks very similar to a thiamine (b1) deficiency I've been supplementing b1 heavily for about 2 years with no improvement. I've tried TTFD, thiamine HCL, thiamine pyrophosphate, benfotamine, sulbutiamine in EVERY reasonable quantity and dosing schedule.
I'd just go back to low carb except these higher carb levels have improved my energy sufficiently that I no longer loath life.
I'm currently trialing a zero sugar experiment where I get all my carbs from white rice. It's been a week now, but it's a little difficult to quickly tell if things are improving as my symptoms are very much a lagging indicator.
Anyway, any help would be greatly appreciated.
@haidut I know you frequently have brilliant insight into bizarre things so I would certainly love to hear any (obviously not medical advice) thoughts you might have.
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