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Rachel's log
@luisa do you have any fruit in your diet? I'm doing low fodmap fruits but i still feel that is not helping my digestion. I'm eating a lot of potatoes too(low fodmap) so that's why i have to change the strategy because it's a lot of fiber and it's backing up my system.how many grams of insoluble and soluble fiber are you getting in a day? I don't seem to do bad on rice if i try, but I'm worried about b1 being depleted. Then there's the worry about too much protein from chicken as well. Gathering all these variables looks quite challenging especially if one has constipation and a huge dysbiosis.
I would be careful with eating a lot of potatoes daily. They are nighshade + are high in oxalates..
Thanks for all the suggestions. The most doable for me is to swap out some of the beef for chicken, though I will need to eat more chicken to get the same amount of calories. I'll also have to switch to conventional vs organic as I can't afford organic chicken. Probably the least of my worries at the moment. Also I should be able to manage the iceburg.
I agree re the amount of potatoes I currently eat. It's far from ideal, I'm just rather stuck as it's the only carb I can eat in any quantity consistently. I do tolerate parsnip so I can increase that a bit, and although I haven't had any in a while I did tolerate swede. My main issue with swede is it is considerably less calorific than potato and if I swap out much potato for swede I'm increasing the volume of food a lot. I'm pretty much maxed out re food bulk. I will put some back in though if I can as variety is likely a good thing. Unless I pretty much go all meat (which I'm not prepared to do incase I get stuck with even fewer food choices, also I can't afford it), I need the calories I get from potatoes.
Thanks for the reminder re oxalates. I have no idea if they are an issue for me or not. I did look into it but didn't have enough alternative food choices to really explore the matter. I'm hoping in time with the eggs that I'll be able to add some foods back in and then I'll be mindful as I switch to lower oxalate foods in case I need to do so slowly.
@dom I take sunfiber 5 g twice a day, I don't really have the count on how much fiber. I haven't eaten any fruits in a while until very recent, a couple of days ago that reintroduced a bit of blueberries, very small amount though, it seems to be going well. I'm not planning to be restricted this long, the plan with my naturapath was first to find a baseline where I'm not constipated and bloated then once that happened, which it did for me then start reintroducing one food at a time, slow and small. I was eating Kamut bread and rice without issue, but I only added the kamut bread after white bread worked for me and also after the sunfiber, I was more stable by then. I filled the rest of calories with extra virgin olive oil, cucumbers, iceberg lettuce, protein from chicken or salmon, avocados, some arugula. Honestly lots of things started improving when I was able to have one bowel movement every day and that only happened after I added the eggs. Is there something that you take for motility? if I don't get the urges in the first hour of waking up I take 500 mg of vitamin c on empty stomach and that has not failed me, magnesium doesn't really work for me. Motility is very important to stabilize constipation, you might need a little help at the beginning, I did, now only use it if it doesn't happen in the first hour.
I have been having some thoughts re choline and my situation. I've been trying to make sense of things in the context of choline. I am pretty excited about choline as it seems to me this could be the thing I've been missing. My progress has been disappointing and I've had the sense for some time that I was missing a big piece of the puzzle. I am really hoping that choline is that piece. Time will tell.
Prior to the latter part of this year, my improvements from eating low VA have been painfully slow but there nonetheless in terms of my mental health and chronic fatigue. My gut however has not improved. Then my gut deteriorated further although my improvements in other areas have persisted.
It’s been puzzling me why my gut has suddenly got worse. (Bloating, pain, inflammation, highly reactive to food was previously managing on occaision.)
I was vegetarian for about 10 years and then vegan for a further 10 years giving me low dietary choline. I was also severely eating disordered for a number of these years further compromising my nutrition.
I have poor PEMT status meaning that I have a higher reliance on dietary choline to meet my requirements.
I have been highly stressed for many years with poor mental health.
All of the above will make it likely that I was deficient in choline before my health declined further into chronic fatigue and before my VA toxicity.
I did start eating meat again (about 13 years ago) but wasn't eating a lot until going low VA and even then I wasn't reaching my dietaty requirements even assuming good absorption.
I think that I was just about holding my own in terms of choline, not enough to really repair things but not so lacking that I was getting significantly worse.
It’s been bugging me why things have recently changed so much re my gut when I’m not actually doing anything different re diet etc.
What has changed?
1) I am currently going through the menopause meaning that my eostrogen levels are declining which further compromises my ability to make choline (lowers PEMT function). I am therefore more reliant on dietary choline.
2) I get insufficient folate via diet and don’t supplement. This has been the case for at least 4 years and likely longer. When you have insufficient folate this pushes you into a back up pathway in the methylation cycle which uses choline. This would increase my need for choline.
3) I underwent a 9 day fast in July in the hopes that this would help my gut heal. I now suspect that this was a big mistake and that in order to gain weight / rebuild cells after the fast I greatly increased my need for choline and that this is a big part of what caused my gut to get worse.
So I basically gave myself a big demand for choline at a point in my life where my ability to make choline was in decline and I wasn't getting enough via diet. I think I tipped myself from a moderate deficiency into a more severe deficiency.
I started eating eggs at the beginning of Jan and apart from some bloating and short-term problems sleeping, it has gone remarkable smoothly. I am now just about on 2 eggs a day. I’m hoping to increase this to 3 eggs a day over the next month.
I have ordered a low dose liquid folate supplement. I am reluctant to supplement but I can’t increase my dietary folate until my gut is improved so think this is worth a try. If I tolerate it, I plan to start low and build up to the RDA as a short term measure.
I’m working on my stress levels. I started doing exercises to stimulate my vagus nerve early Dec in an attempt to get myself into a parasympathetic state more of the time. I set a timer and try to do an exercise each hour. I’m hoping that as I keep stimulating my vagus nerve it will strengthen and I will move into more of a healing mode than a stress mode.
There are encouraging signs re the vagal exercises. I started noticing changes after a week or so. I am not so reactive and things that would previously have tipped me over the edge, I’m more able to brush off. For example I couldn’t find the car in the car park and instead of going into a panic and catastrophising that it had been stolen, I laughed and thought, well it must be here somewhere, and soon found it. This is a huge change for me. When I do get stressed, I am coming out of it quicker.
I'm also taking epsom salt baths (about 3 months now). I have them 3 x a week, 4 cups Epsom Salts. I did a week of daily baths a couple of weeks ago and then went back to 3 a week. I plan to keep this going for the time being.
So my plan is to continue increasing the eggs to 3 or maybe 4 a day, hopefully add some folate, continue the vagal nerve exercises and then sit back and give it some time to work. Hopefully in a few months I will see some improvements to my gut.
@rachel It sounds encouraging and you're supplying a good explanation to support your low choline possibility. The choline will help the gut plus some other things. I suggest a little sulfur food as well might help the gut. I ate onions throughout. Be aware also that the eggs will improve absorption at some point and that they do have some folate as well as selenium, B5, protein and sphingomyelin. The eggs contribute to a very strong detox so other detox pushers need slowed down. Find your number of eggs that replenishes your choline slowly. It could be 2, 3 or 4 eggs. 4 eggs does create a strong detox though and on that number I've had to slow a lot of other things down and it's also best to avoid high fat too much from other sources.
@rachel Stress and anxiety, I have found, is a condition you can suffer from for decades without even realizing you have it until you manage to get rid of it. The discovery that my stress and anxiety was caused by my biochemistry (mainly vitamin A toxicity), and not by external factors, has been a life changing experience for me.
@alastair yes, I would agree. I kept improving my dietary health and stress and anxiety (worst at high vit A) reduced. Now with choline replete OCD only returns with caffeine and I'm much calmer in a potentially annoying situation.
@andrew-b thanks for the warning about overdoing the eggs. I'm just so eager to see some improvements. I'll have to keep myself in check and make sure I don't overdo it 🙂 Onions I can probably do. I did use to eat them. I can't remember why I stopped, might have been something G Smith said but I'm moving on from that now. I'm not throwing the baby out with the bath water but I am questioning much of what he recommended and going for a much more balanced approach.
@alastair yes it's easy to normalise stress. I've had periods of time when I've had constant butterflies in my stomach from anxiety and it got to the point where I didn't notice them unless I thought about it because it was normal for me. Now sometimes I feel like I used to years ago, and I had forgotton what it was like. It's like rediscovering my old self. It's only fleeting at the moment but nice when it happens. I'm certain that a big part of my stress has been biochemistry and toxicity. There's also some learned responses I think. It's like I need to prompt my body to reset the stress thermostat to a lower level.
@rachel - if I could double like your posts I would! In fact virtually everything you have written I could have written too. I think I reduced my choline at a point where I needed more (menopause, detox and a huge stressor). I think that my stress has been a driving force in my ill health. Moving on and going for a more balanced approach - yes and yes!
It seems like you are going in the right direction which is great to hear. I’m still in a mess. I went through menopause just after starting the vA detox. I had two years where I’d probably stopped making much choline endogenously and I stopped eggs but I didn’t eat enough meat to cover RDA for choline. I was also very stressed which burns through choline. At the end of 2020 my liver tests were a disaster. I now know this is exactly what one would expect with a choline deficiency, high ALT and raised triglycerides. Luckily I did my own research and added back eggs, but enough to stop further decline I think, rather than enough to replenish. I still have much to repair I think. Cell membranes get weak. Nerves can be affected. Probably underlies my recent seizures (although immediate cause is excess glutamate it seems). Best not to run ourselves into choline deficiency in the first place!!
I’m currently doing a program to reset my ‘maladaptive stress response’. I also do Heartmath every day. I’m interested in the techniques you have found useful? Any techniques that gets your system into parasympathetic state will be beneficial (the choline helps with acetylcholine too, required for good parasympathetic function, although this has some complexities as some people have issues with synaptic breakdown). I hope I’m heading in the right direction but time will tell.
Thank you for your post. I’m in complete agreement. This is exactly the point I’m at.
Edit: I think Epsom salts is really helpful as it provides much needed sulphate and magnesium. However, just be aware of potential blood pressure drop induced by the heat and magnesium as it’s a vasodilator. My first seizure followed a hot magnesium bath and I suspect the drop in blood pressure as the trigger that started the excitotoxic process. I’m now doing warm footbaths instead. I’m sure my set of circumstances were exceptional but I just wanted to mention.