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Carnivore and Bile Acid Malabsorption
I think the bean protocol would work wonders but it won't be immediate, could take a long time to turn things around.
Quote from Janelle525 on March 19, 2025, 6:27 amI think the bean protocol would work wonders but it won't be immediate, could take a long time to turn things around.
Of course you think that.
Hi @tricky! I'm sorry you are having these problems still. I have been lower VA for about the same time as you. I too still have tons of gas. I sort of wonder, as you do, if this is just some factor of long-term detox. Bad stuff is coming out... I guess that is the definition of detox.
It is annoying, uncomfortable, gets in the way of human interaction...but it isn't life-or-death. I just accept that it is part of my fate.
Detoxing vitamin A is the slowest thing ever. When I look at my teeth and gums I can see that I've come a long way, but I'm not done.
Old people are known for being fartatious. (I think of the problems of old age being often about VA overload, which I think most people hit eventually). I think gas may be something we just have to accept.
I think that better breathing can help, as it helps lots of things. Abdominal breathing can help just to get it expelled because of the physical workout that the abdomen gets. But also, I think that better breathing probably is a way for the body to rid itself of unwanted gases. Better breathing is an input, an exercise, and a detox. I think I've seen changes in my BM's to be "less sticky" and perhaps that is down to better digestion with better breathing. Perhaps "less sticky" is just the ticket.
Gas is from adrenaline, which can be completely unrelated to diet, and more related to our stress particularly emotional. It causes fermentation no matter what you are eating. The more you ferment food instead of digest it the more health problems we have.
Quote from Janelle525 on March 20, 2025, 6:50 amGas is from adrenaline, which can be completely unrelated to diet, and more related to our stress particularly emotional. It causes fermentation no matter what you are eating. The more you ferment food instead of digest it the more health problems we have.
This is the kind of non-sensical stuff you swallow as a Hurd animal and the reason I responded the way I did to your last comment (and the reason I stopped interacting with your posts a long time ago).
You either ingest gas by swallowing it, or it is produced endogenously through chemical reactions. Generally, if you're ingesting it by swallowing air (primarily because you're eating or drinking inappropriately), it is regurgitated in the form of burping, which is not my problem. The primary ways gas is produced endogenously are: (1) substances like bicarbonate secreted in the stomach and duodenum that neutralize gastric acid, and (2) bacterial fermentation. In the first case, you again will likely regurgitate most of that gas as a burp, which is not my problem. By process of elimination, fermentation is the cause of my lower intestinal gas, which typically shows up about 10-12 hours after I first eat, which, wouldn't you know it, is approximately when you would expect bile to reach your ileum/colon, which is where it begins to encounter large bacterial populations for the first time in a non-SIBO gut.
Adrenaline levels can be related to swallowing air and intestinal gas production via the stress response, but to say "gas is from adrenaline" is, well, exactly the type of thing I would expect Karen Hurd to say lol.
I've put a lot of thought into this recently, and I don't think we can know all that is necessary to unravel this one...AND I will say that after years of constipation, and also at times alternating burning diarrhea for no reason that I could understand...Karen Hurd is DEFINITELY on to something. I won't attempt to explain why, but after following her basic ideas concerning soluble and insoluble fiber, very very little sugar, and plenty of starchy foods, meat, and some low A vegetables....I have been pooping incredibly better for eight months now, better than in my entire life to date, and despite an incredibly stressful time in my life. The woman does not have everything figured out, but she sure as heck has me happily digesting the food I eat lately. 🙂 (Many people have different experiences, even in my own family, but I'm noticing that for some of us, the soluble fiber piece is key. One of my children eats almost no beans, but subsists on a half-dozen or more bananas (green all the way to yellow, he doesn't care!) per day plus meat and eggs; it works very well for him!)
Oh, I forgot to mention: I was very gassy for the first couple of weeks, but then I became and remain not gassy at all, except for very occasionally for no apparent reason. Gas is definitely not entirely what is relayed in the physiology textbooks...and Hurd is on to something concerning hormones triggering fermentative digestion FOR THE SAME FOOD that should ordinarily be digested by the body with no or very little gas-producing digestive processes.
Glad to hear you and your family are finding success.
I could be wrong, but I've got the impression that Hurd's dedicated followers and success stories are predominately women, and that this may be because a woman's hormonal system predisposes her to intestinal issues that binding agents like fiber help to resolve (or mask if it is not actually fixing the underlying hormonal problem). Does that agree with your experience following Hurd?
What most irks me is that Hurd's food advice is really not very unique, so in my mind she doesn't deserve much credit for that. What is unique is her explanations for why that food advice works, and those unique explanations seem outlandish to me, even when acknowledging that we don't know everything about the human body.
"Gas is definitely not entirely what is relayed in the physiology textbooks..."
What is your reason for saying this exactly? As someone who has been dealing with abnormal amounts of gas for decades, I find the "textbook" explanations sufficient.
"and Hurd is on to something concerning hormones triggering fermentative digestion FOR THE SAME FOOD that should ordinarily be digested by the body with no or very little gas-producing digestive processes."
I mean, this probably relates back to the relationship with adrenaline - we know that stress disrupts the normal digestive process and likely causes more undigested food to reach the lower bowels where it is fermented by bacteria. I don't understand why we have to invoke some weird new explanation of Hurd's that doesn't seem to mesh with [what appears to be] well-founded existing knowledge.
I haven't had enough time to delve into the theories nor the online community to know whether it's predominantly women who find success with Hurd's ideas (and I just don't entirely agree with her about seed oils and saturated fats), but I do know that after I started this low A experiment, and saw such immediately helpful as well as short-term detox followed by IMPROVEMENTS, I decided that I would never again continue with something long-term simply because it was "supposed" to work, or because others said it would.
I have literally tried every single dietary tweak that I learned about that "should" be useful, and only a few have helped, for my physiology or for my various kids'...and don't get me started on how difficult it is to find anything at all that will help my husband! The dogmatic vegans, carnivores, paleo, high meat, low fiber, high fiber, all potato, herbal protocol only folks...I find it useful to hear their experiences AS their experiences, not their prescriptions, if that makes any sense. If it doesn't work for me, then it doesn't work, but I'd love to hear why you think it does for you, and how. This is why I'm constantly (when I have time) interested in new things to try - for that niggling ~15% of Treatment Resistant issues that we all have...
Anyway, all that is to say that even though I used to eat tons of beans as a vegetarian, and I then for years at a time tried to deal with both gas and digestive and other issues by "starving" my gut flora of different types of fermentable fiber OR not eating any carbohydrates at all, followed by years of eating a "balanced" diet with lots of starch and lots of meat and some low A veggies...I can't tell you why these things didn't work while Hurd's ideas do...but that's the case. For me. And in some cases what works for me has been therapeutic for some of my kids, but in other cases it hasn't. Same thing with carbohydrate reduction or selective omission of certain carbs. In some cases we tried low-carb or "specific carbs" for years, because it "should" work, and in some ways and at times it caused incredible things. And long term, in some cases the Incredible Things deteriorated into Not Great and ultimately that approach was harmful until we changed it up. And that is an interesting hypothesis about women's hormones being one reason Hurd's ideas might be working - we certainly have a hormonal cycle that is quite fragile when under assault by this modern world! But some of my male family members also find this approach useful.
So I don't have any studies to show you, because at this point my research mostly consists of: me hearing about something new, determining whether it might be relevant or not, and if I try it, I see if it works or shows a response within a week or three. If it doesn't yield anything noticeable, or after three weeks it's a Net Problem, I let it go. If it works, I continue. And sometimes I try to find out more, but sometimes I don't have the energy and I just go with what works until I hear about something else to try or add to the protocol. 🙂 Right now we are living with mold, which is such a health downer that I'm also trying NOT to try much except to survive until we have healthy housing. Then I'll resume detox efforts. Also some family members are trying brain retraining/limbic system somatic approaches that are very fascinating and, I think, part of the puzzle. This is my middle-aged exhausted Scientific Method, for now. 🙂
Being a mother of multiple kids is surely more than enough work on its own, you can hardly be blamed for only digging skin deep into these ideas if that's all you've got the time and energy to do. I'm not sure how long you've been living with mold, but that might be another reason a lot of soluble fiber seems to be helpful for some of your family...depending on your particular gut flora and intestinal health, it's possible that mold toxins coming out in your bile are being reabsorbed before being excreted, and copious amounts of soluble fiber might be binding those and preventing reabsorption? I know that alternative practitioners often use various binders for mold issues.