Kickas.org Forums Treatments, Drugs and Alternatives NSD and diet-related; Hello again

Hello dear friends,

It has been some time since my last post. I have been struggling with the diet(and pain). I ve waited to see some consistent success to post here any updates but it didnt happen. Then i didnt feel very good lately and didnt even feel good enough to post here, although ive been reading posts.

Here is a quick summary of my diet and AS struggle:

I wanted(needed) a quick result, so I stoped eating every suspicious thing. My diet was an intersection of NSD and auto immune protocol. So;

. No dairy
. No starch
. No gluten
. No nightshades
. No nuts, very rare seeds,spices and walnuts
. No mass produced anything
. Almost always salad with meat trying to keep acid/alkali balanced
. fish and chicken/turkey at lunch and dinner.
. Red meat once in a week
. Limited fruits, mostly figs, dates. Careful to not combine with proteins.

What i ate most of the time :

1. Greens
2. Onion, garlic without limiting
3. Lots of EVOO, some coconut butter
4. Fish, chicken, turkey
5. Dates,figs, blueberries, gojiberries
6. Coconut milk

Besides these, i supplemented with calsium, zinc, sprulina, reishi, grape-seed extract, omega-3.

And what happened with this brilliant diet?

Well, for 2 months it was ok. In a week pain lowered to half, from 8/10 to 4, that is without medication. But it continously fluctuated; for 2-3 days average pain level was 3, next 3-4 days 6. I never changed what i ate but while i was good for one day, the next day even if i ate same things i felt bad. But during this 'ok' times, rib pain started for the first time, although not severe.

After 2 months it started to worsen. Then i suspected of the supplements. I found starch in one of them. Got rid of it. But it continued to get worse for 1 month, no matter what.

After that, for 2 weeks, i broadened my diet to include nuts, seeds, egg and diary to see if i can gain some weight. The pain became unbearable I returned to initial diet .

Now for 3 weeks i have been in a ridiculously high pain although eating very limited. Even juicing seems to help very little(been juicing for 5 days).

Man i feel so exhausted. Now diet doesnt seem to help me anymore.

I lost 12kg(25 pounds?) since i started dieting. And i have no room for loosing weight.

I dont know what else i can do to make this diet work for me.

Any ideas, suggestions, helps pls? I am very confused and frustrated and so much pain that i cant think clearly.

Hi MSK! Sorry to hear you are in pain and not feeling well. I know people here will have ideas to help support you. After John's posts (Dragaon Slayer), he has listed information, which may be of help, such as:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/4rrat7wt9t8qonf/ASprotocol2.pdf

Thank you for posting what you eat, I am so impressed at how well you are eating, and so sorry you are so frustrated, feeling worse, losing weight. When I am having a flare up, I need to be careful about fruit and supplements. If I were you, I would switch from the dried fruit to berries (frozen berries without sugar). Dried fruit can be challenging to digest, having too many natural sugars, for some people.

I just wonder if you take a little break from the supplements, maybe it will give your digestion a chance to rest. Maybe just use the fish oil right now, nothing else. Just my suggestion, thinking about what I have experienced. Another thing is that some people have problems digesting garlic and onion. To get the flavor, you can gently cook the onion or garlic in some oil, and then discard the garlic and onion. Again, just what I learned and have done before when my stomach was bothering me.

I imagine you are feeling really hungry and any minute you are going to reach for some baked goods, if that's right, maybe consider baking with coconut flour? This would be non starchy and would help you feel full, and add calories.

Some more ideas:
Smoothies with coconut milk, coconut butter, and berries and honey.
Consider adding back in lactose free cheeses, not a great amount, but just some?
Coconut ice cream (homemade) with coconut milk and honey and vanilla.
I'm not a fan of red meat but for you I'd say go for it and increase your servings each week, and make sure you have some olive oil on your salads or added to your stews or soups, for those extra calories.

I hope you feel better really soon.

At first look, your foods all look safe to me!

All I can suggest is:

I only take ONE supplement, no others. I take curcumin extract, very anti-inflammatory, works like a natural TNF blocker. http://www.turmeric-curcumin.com/

I have drawers full of supplements I tried in the past, and I don't believe they ever did any good.

I also suggest adding in seaweeds & mushrooms for their important properties and nutrients. Try some Asian style soup broths, like homemade Pho with added seaweed and mushrooms. And in dulse flakes, wakame, kelp noodles. Shiitake mushrooms are also wonderful.

Are you eating any fermented foods? I would add in some raw sauerkraut. I also eat raw fermented pickles, chickpea based miso and beets (miso & beets have starch). Drinking water kefir is also great. I believe fermented foods do magical things for our bodies and help us to absorb nutrients we would otherwise not digest and absorb easily. Lots of gut healing properties in fermetned cabbage. I find I need to consume at least one if not 3 fermented foods each day, I just don't feel right without them.

Are you blending your greens? We absorb so much more out of our greens when then are blended and "pre-digested" for us. Have you tried blending some fruit and baby spinach? Or I like to also make a raw cucumber gazpacho soup: blended cucumbers, spinach, basil, avocado, celery, garlic, pinch sea salt.

Hmmm. Just realized you are juicing, so that should be providing you lots of easily accessible nutrients (and answers my last question). Wish I could think of more to suggest!!

All that pain is your body's way of trying to tell you something, like a big blaring alarm. We just need to figure out what it needs, what it is fighting, and how we can help it!

Sorry, wish I could be of more help!

-Andrea

Thanks for responses and suggestions.

Naj, you might be right about dried fruits. But most fresh fruits are starchy here and i cant find frozen berries and such.
I cut the supplements except omega-3 for some time but didnt make any good.
Is coco flour an option when it requires eggs? I love coconut pancakes but im afraid to eat.


Andrea, I am eating mushrooms and saurkraut and started kefir lately. But i will increase consumption.

There is one thing; there are many things that i cant find in turkey like frozen berries, chia seeds, nut butter/milk, macadamia nuts, seeweeds etc.
Nothing out of common consumption foods. So, i am checking your recipes but mostly i see one or two ingredients missing here.And im just a simple guy without food knowledge and i cant replace missing ones with something else.

Right now i am ordering curcumin from the link. I hope it helps. How many bottles would let me understand if it helps, you think?

Hi

You may be missing a trick if you do not use bone broth in your diet.
If you can get a crock pot it will take care of cooking up chicken bones safely if you are out of the house. Broth can be drunk as is or used to make delicious soup.

What stress factors do you have in your life. Are you working? Do you live in healthy environment?

Hi.
What does the broth do? What evidance do we have that it works with our case?
Would be happy ti hear fron your experince.
Thanks
Bman.

Hi Bel,

I will make bone broths, although i dont enjoy the idea.

The biggest stress is pain itself right now. If it was more humanly i would care less bout other things.

Another big stress is food right now : What will i eat right now? Is it Ok? Am i getting enough nutrients? What about calories?

Besides that there are some stress factors regarding what future holds for me;
Im working for now, but will i be able to? If i cant, where will i find money from?
Fusing already started in SI joints in 1.5 years, sucks! Will it go very fast?

Something else is my wife is not understanding enough. She has no sense of saving our money for worse days.
And she doesnt understand I cant take care of myself and how will i take care of a child, let alone it be from a destructive test-tube baby process?

Clearly, everything is pretty much what the disease brought upon me.

Hi,

So sorry to hear you are still in pain. When I started the diet all my pains disappeared for 2/3 weeks but then came back in other areas such as neck, chest, shoulders.

Like you there were things I was still eating that I didn't realise were starchy but I was up and down for a year but definitely not as severely as you are at the moment.

What really helped me was bone broths and fermented foods and a good probiotic. That cleared up all the other aches and pains. I did the GAPS intro and didn't fancy the broths either but as I did them at the time it felt so right.

The goodness that is in bone broth nourishes the gut and helps it heal. I am afraid I can't be more detailed as I had the GAPS book out of the library which explained very well how it all worked. It explained about the importance of homemade broths and fermented foods. Unfortunately I no longer have it so I can't refer to it to explain better. I would think you could google the info though.

I make my own homemade yoghurt which I leave for 24 hours so that there is no lactose present (secondary food for klebsiella). It is really easy to do I use an Easiyo 'flask' and container but don't use their yoghurt. I but a good organic probiotic yoghurt and organic milk to make it.
I must add that I didn't make the yoghurt straight away I started on sauerkraut first. If you don't make your own (I have never been successful, too cold) make sure you buy unpasteurised sauerkraut.

The other thing that may be preventing the diet from working is that you may have some form of parasite infection involved this can stop you from healing. Again I don't know much about this but I know on the GAPS forum people talk about doing a parasite cleanse.

Hope you find answers soon.

Hi Grumpyally,

My wife can make saurkraut and goat yoghurt at home. But i dont eat yoghurt right now. Not that i know it gives me pain but just afraid to.

Actually the diet was working better at first but then what happened i cant figure out. Could it be season? I dont think so bc i was not effected of winter why get worse in spring right?

Hi MSK, sorry to hear about your struggles with the diet.

Here are a couple of ideas that may or may not help with your specific situation.

You say you eat greens - is that just a reference to salad? Or does it include things like broccoli, kale, chard, spinach, etc? A revelation that helped me was that I was eating enough safe carbs. Once I really amped up my safe carb consumption, I did feel better in general. I also lost 27-28 pounds that I did not need to lose, but over the course of the next 4 years, I gained most of it back.

Elimination diets were helpful as were food diaries. However, I found that I had to periodically revisit conclusions I made...Early on for me, I became more sensitive to 'fringe' foods. That is, foods that I was able to 'get away with' ultimately became triggers for me. So every time I plateaued and regressed, I had to revisit what I was eating and then cut things out again.

How are you seasoning your meats? Is it possible that something you are seasoning your fish/chicken/meats with include some starch?

Your calcium supplement - is it a tablet? In my experience I've never found a tablet that was truly starch-free. I've found that binding agents in general are starchy so it's possible that you still have supplements that are problematic.

Best of luck in getting over the next hurdle!