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My crazy diet experiments (3+ years)
Hi,
I want to share my diet experiments here, maybe it helps somebody.
About me: I am a 27 yo male from Germany, so excuse me if my english isnt perfect. I grew up never eating any liver, organ meats or supplements.
Took accutane for 6 months at age 19 to clear up acne. Since taking this horrible drug, I have the following health problems:
- a very dry nose that is always congested on one side when lying down. Doctors say this comes from a dust mite allergy, so I guess Accutane gave me this allergy because I had no problems with breathing before and this 100 percent started with accutane.
- I also developed very dry skin. Still have this 8 years after taking this poison.
- Eyes got dry as well but not to the point that it was ever a huge problem for me. I just cant wear contact lenses for more than like 10 hours anymore or else my eyes will get red.
Up until age 23 I didnt really care about these problems. Of course they are annoying but it was nothing that messed up my life.
Then with at age 23/24 I noticed that I got a little bit of acne again, which I think is a positive sign, since it signals that I detoxed the drug in a way (is this true?). I for sure produce more oil again.
But around this time I also developed the following health problems:
- seb dermatitis/ dandruff. I got it first on my scalp and then it spred to my forehead, nose, eyebrows and beard.
- I also got high blood pressure (like 135/90) even though I was never overweight my whole life and always did lots of sport and have a good body composition. When I have high blood pressure my face gets extremely hot and red to the point that it looks horrible.
- I also often had bad reactions to certain foods, started vommitting sometimes, got extremely itchy and so on.
- tinnitus
At first I thought this was all caused the extreme stress I had during this time. I definetely think it played a role, but overall I think it was more likely a combination of long-term accutane damage and eating foods I was reacting to. I forgot to mention that I noticed that my food intolerances are also probably caused by accutane since it messes up your digestive system.
While I could still function at a decent level with the accutane damage, these new problems made it impossible for me to enjoy life anymore. So I decided to try everything I can to heal myself. I mainly want to heal seb dermatitis, since it annoys me the most.
These are the diets I tried, everything in chronological order:
- Whole foods diet, nothing processed anymore.
I only felt slightly better, not much happening.
- Whole foods diet, no dairy, no gluten
Cutting dairy definetely helped me, as I found out years later with trying to reintroduce some dairy, dairy is probably my biggest trigger and really messes me up in a big way. It doesnt matter if ist raw dairy, organic, grass fed whatever. For me it is the worst food ever. I would rather drink coke or corn syrup. Milk is the worst, but also butter and cheese (all raw, organic, grass-fed) is not good for me. I can eat those and not get a terrible reaction but I doubt I could heal anything while having any dairy.
About dairy: I read a lot from other people, success and healing stories and so on, I can say with confidence that for at least 90 percent of people dairy is a problem and they do much better without it.
While cutting dairy and gluten helped me, still no progress in any of my health problems
- Low salicylates diet
Didnt help at all. Same with low oxalate diet.
- Calorie restriction
This helped me for sure, but you cant do it forever. Also it only helps to lower inflammation but doesnt cure anything for me.
Since nothing helped me so far, I went to do extreme things out of desperation and I finally got some results:
- Only Fruit + salad (fruitarian) for 8 months. I even ate only organic grapes for 40 days.
Pros:
- Acne gone
- Sebderm improved very much but it did not heal completely
- Itching much better, sometimes gone
- Perfect digestion, no gas, no constipation
- High blood pressure gone
No changes with: Dandruff, congested nose/ allergy, dry skin, tinnitus
Cons:
- You lose all muscle and fat
- Fruit acids and sugar will destroy your teeth longterm
- Mood swings, I didnt feel grounded and calm.
- Lower sex drive
- I personally dont enjoy eating only fruit, I love fats and meat.
- I dont think this diet is sustainable long term.
At the end of the 8 months I needed to stop the diet to save my teeth and in order to gain some weight back, because I was only skin and bones.
- Nutritional Balancing diet = Little bit of meat, a lot of cooked vegetables and some corn chips + tons of suplements
I didnt do it for long so I cant say much about it. I was on it for maybe 2 months and then I read about all the success stories of the carnivore diet and stopped. I doubt that this diet is that great though, seems like a cult diet as well.
- Carnivore diet for 8 months
I pretty much ate only beef and lamb the whole time, since I noticed might have some problems with eggs as well. I also eat the meat raw, because some claim this is better. I also ate only cooked for a few weeks. Personally I dont feel any difference other than cooked tastes better. I also tried grass fed only for a couple of months: again, I dont feel any difference. I also tried all fat to protein ratios, salt/ no salt and for like 2 months I tried kidney and liver because organ meats are recommended by some. I liked the taste of raw liver, but overall I really felt no difference whatever I did.
Pros:
- Acne gone
- Itching was good as well
- Perfect digestion
- Higher sex drive
- More calm compared to fruitarian, but you are also more stressed without any carbs.
- You can maintain a somewhat healthy weight on it. But it is hard to gain weight at some point with just meat.
- Sports performance is ok, but with carbs it is way better.
Cons:
- High blood pressure came back, when I did intense training. I suspect that for me stress can definetely cause high blood pressure on its own. Really weird. But no carbs puts the body under stress for sure.
- Worse sleep
- Skin got even drier at the end of the 8 months
- Sebderm didnt improve at all! Remember this is the main reason Im doing all this.
- No changes with: tinnitus and dandruff
I also tried adding in starches like potatoes and white rice to the carnivore diet. Sadly I get acne from those if I eat them in large amounts. Also digestion is way worse with potatoes.
- Raw Primal Diet (Aajonus Vonderplanitz): Consists of raw animal products + a little bit of fruit and honey
I only tried this diet for 2 weeks and then later for 1 week while being on the carnivore diet. I had to stop both times because the raw milk gave me problems right away, I developed new rashes on places that were always healthy before. Also flared up my sebderm. After this diet I can say that I will probably never ever consume dairy in my life again.
My blood test:
I did a blood test while being on the carnivore diet.
I was low on:
- B2/riboflavin: This was extremely low and I think is the cause for my sebderm/dry skin/dandruff.
- Magnesium
- Selenium
- Iron (after eating only red meat for months lol)
I was high on:
- Alkaline Phosphatase
- B6
- B1
I wasnt tested for Vitamin A.
After doing some research on vitamin a toxicity, I found out that B2 and Selenium is needed to detoxify Vitamin A. Also high Alkaline Phosphatase could indicate vitamin A toxicity. I dont think the b2 deficiency was caused by carnivore, but maybe it got even worse on it. My guess is I have been b2 deficient ever since I took accutane.
Overall outcome:
All these years I had the impression that my body never fully recovered from the accutane damage. All these extreme diets I tried actually healed many people from sebderm and much more severe conditions. For me however nothing seems to fully work and I think it is because of the damage accutane did. Dont get me wrong: I definetely got some improvements, but they come very slow (meanwhile I hear from other people that they heal eveything they have in 3 months on carnivore or fruit juices). Also if I mess up with eating the wrong thing I get a very hard reset and destroy months of progress within a couple of days.
The last month I did a 20 day waterfast and now I eat only fruit, salad and beef/lamb. Everything raw. Lets see how long I do this crazy diet, haha. I didnt do it long enough yet to make a clear evaluation the new diet and if the water fasting was beneficial or not.
If it fails, I will for sure try a Vitamin A detox diet like you.
If you have any questions, feel free to ask. I hope this was helpful or at least entertaining to read for some.
That is very interesting about the B2, @max-3 ! And selenium too, eh?
I remember when keeping goats for a while that selenium was important for them. "Deficiency symptoms include poor growth rate, kids being unable to suckle, white muscle disease (cardiac and skeletal muscles have white spots), sudden death by heart attack, progressive paralysis and retained afterbirth." (sometimes I think more is known about nutrition for animals than humans, LOL)
I do sometimes wonder if those who have the worst results from accutane or a wapf diet are those that had an underlying deficiency.
Your frutarian trial sounds similar to the one we discussed last week with the poster named michele.
From my understanding on how accutane works, you wouldn't have to 'detox' from it per se, since it's a metabolite of retinol, and so it doesn't get stored in the body. This means the way past accutane use affects you is that you have to recover from the damage it already dealt to your cells and make sure that damage doesn't interfere with the elimination of actually stored VA.
The latter symptoms that you got are clearly worth looking into VA for an answer, but if you hop on a low VA diet, you might not see the improvements that you expect given the aforementioned potential damage from accutane. The liver is one of the organs that regenerates the fastest, but 60mg is a pretty dicey dose. Since your acne came back, its likely your liver is at least somewhat good to go. Either way, I suggest you take into account fasting and other anti-aging protocols, as well as supplementing taurine, glycine and maybe vitamins e & k.
On another note, B2 is necessary in the use of fat for energy (as B1 is for glucose), and thus a keto diet of any kind would exacerbate your issue. This guy gives a pretty thorough explanation on how B2 deficiency can cause your SD:
Obviously, I wouldn't recommend you eat liver or dairy, so you can try a supplement. I personally eat beef heart to get my B2, since it's way richer in B vitamins than regular muscle meat and it seems to be just as low in VA, plus it has lots of CoQ10, which could help with the recovery from accutane.
About B2: My deficiency in B2 was extremely severe. I basically would have to quadruple it just to be in the lowest range of normal again. Funny thing is: Prior to the blood test I already started to supplement it, since I saw the video that you posted. Also I always ate a lot of beef heart, it seems this wasnt enough for me.
Then I went on supplementing B2 and biotin in megadoses just as the guy from the video said for like 3 months. Didnt change anything for me, but changing the color of my urine... Im pretty sure I pissed out all of it. Though it also could be that I didnt supplement it long enoug and someone like me would have to do it for much longer. I just hate taking supplements for some reason.
Selenium: My deficiency was pretty mild, I think B2 is the bigger problem for me.
If your severe B2 deficiency was due to the accutane, it probably wouldn't have taken years to show up. At the same time, no single food or diet could induce a 'severe' B2 deficiency that couldn't be fixed in a matter of weeks with supplements, so I would highly suspect VA as the culprit.
I suggest you already give low VA a shot, since it's a very long process to see results. You don't even have to make huge changes for a start, just make sure that the fruit isn't high in carotenoids and the salad could be swapped for parsnip/celery root/cauliflower/cabbage etc.
Yes I will try zero/low VA at some point. Beef+white rice would be my favorite diet on earth anyways, Im just kind of affraid that the white rice will give me crazy acne again, which makes my face looks worse than the sebderm.
Edit: Would be really interesting to see, if other people here have a B2 deficieny as well? So then we could make a connection between B2 and vitamin A toxicity.
Thanks, Max.
Do you think you have benefited from your fast? Was it just water? I am starting to believe that accutane disrupted our immune systems and that's why even though we try many things that should cure/help us (carnivore is the perfect example) we still do not get 100% better. I think fasting can be the answer we have been looking for. I have been researching and it may be possible that fasting restores the immune system (my intuition right now is that accutane affects the immune system in some way and immunity has memory, so it's like you are trapped unless you can recover your immune system, some research suggests that fasting renews your immune cells: that´s my view but I have no idea and it could be completely wrong). That's why your experience with fasting is so important (but I think it should be strict water, not juice or fruit fast) because if you have experienced benefits maybe my theory is not non-sense). I am fasting right now at the moment, around 48 hours on and I hope to do at least 23 days (depending on the circumstances).
PS: I have been carnivore for around 2-3 years now, most of the time strict and my main symptoms are more or less manageable, but as you said, every time I eat anything other than meat (specially carbs or sugar) it destroys me for some weeks. So definitely I still have a problem. My main problem is staph infection (folliculitis, itchy and sore scalp, skin rashes, redness) so I know it is related to the immune system. When I eat only meat, my skin improves greatly but still not 100%. If I eat something different, I go back to zero and the skin is terrible for a couple of weeks.
Thanks again and wish you the best.
Yes my fast was only water for 20 days. I followed the advice of Loren Lockman, he is one of the leading experts on water fasting, so I did it just how he said. No added eletrolytes, 4 Liters a day, sipped at a slow pace and resting as completely as possible.
It is too early to say if I benefitted or not. I just can say that if you do fasting, you should do a long water fast. Short fasts didnt do anything for me.
I dont think my immune system is bad, other than the skin issues (they arent that bad as well), Im pretty heathy and I almost never get sick.
We are very similiar. As long as I eat right I seem to be fine, but if I eat wrong it goes downhill fast.
I think we are able to fully heal, otherwise I wouldnt be trying all this. Now that I know my triggers, I just need to avoid them for ever basically.
Best of luck with your fast.
I gotta say that fasting is probably the single best tool to recover from accutane use, at least from my experience.
However, my situation was quite different from yours: I was on accutane twice, but I was on a much lower dose (10mg), and I didn't get significant or lasting side effects outside of dry skin on certain areas of my body. The first time around, I also had a woke doctor who told me to avoid high VA foods while on the drug. I have an autoimmune disease (hashimoto's) that got worse after my accutane use, but I didn't make the connection after the first cycle since it showed up right before taking it. I did notice my antibodies go up twofold after experimenting with it a second time, and that's when I figured this stuff is poison no matter how you look at it.
A 20 fast is quite extreme and unnecessary, no one should fast for that long unless you attempt to lose extreme amounts of weight in the shortest amount of time. I think 3-5 days is more than enough, with more frequency. I do a 5 day fast every other month, and eat one meal a day outside of that. I sometimes ramp that up to two meals in a 4 hr window when I struggle to gain weight before another fast.
Although my situation with accutane is probably one of the most fortunate ones you could hear, it still left its mark on me, and increased autophagy through fasting and exercise helped me recover far more than any adjustments I made on my plate, at least thus far.
Btw I dont even know my exact dosage of accutane. I only remember I took a low dose as well.
I also think fasting is more effective than any diet to get out toxins. Thats why every animal on earth does it when it gets sick or badly injured.