Having a Flare....Would love your input

CathyMe. · Post by **CathyMe.** » Thu May 28, 2015 5:19 am

I have a diet very much like yours Jean(low carb, high fat, moderate protein) and have had normans for over a year. I eat a ton of greens, including spinach, kale, swiss chard, etc., and have been able to add back in eggs as well. Donna, I can tolerate coconut oil and love the stuff and that's the main fat in my diet.

JFR · Post by **JFR** » Thu May 28, 2015 5:22 am

Donna,

I use a lot of coconut oil and some olive oil. I no longer seem to have a problem with eating vegetables or fiber so I saute vegetables in coconut oil or add homemade oil and vinegar dressing to salads. Some people add coconut oil to coffee but I don't like how it tastes so mostly I just add lots of coconut oil to veggies. I also eat fish cooked with coconut oil and fatty meats. Bacon can supply a lot of fat too.

Jean

dfpowell · Post by **dfpowell** » Thu May 28, 2015 6:39 am

Cathy & Jean,

Thank you for your responses, I will work on getting more coconut oil into my diet. With the diet changes, my gut is better than it was with the higher carb foods. I am also experiencing normans, which makes it worth the effort!!

Post by **tex** » Thu May 28, 2015 11:01 am

Donna wrote:With the diet changes, my gut is better than it was with the higher carb foods.

I really believe that during the early stages of recovery from the damage caused by the inflammation (and this effect slowly diminishes as our intestines begin to heal) virtually all carbs are a problem for our digestive system, because we are unable to produce enough of the enzymes necessary to properly digest many carbs (because of the damage to the small intestine caused by the inflammation). As we heal, we slowly regain the ability to produce those enzymes, and so we regain our ability to digest those carbs. But until we are mostly healed, we are better off without carbs. And of course after we are healed, there is really no particular need to increase carb intake, since we are generally healthier without them.

IMO, the human digestive system did not evolve to digest any more than small to medium amounts of carbs, because our early ancestors only ate carbs to prevent starvation, whenever their hunting or fishing expeditions were unsuccessful at supplying enough meat for their needs. Meat was by far the preferred fuel in those days, but one will eat almost anything of course, to prevent starvation. That simple concept was the driving force that inspired the neolithic period of our evolution. Rapid population growth led to over-hunting, resulting in an acute shortage of available meat. The switch to agriculture was necessary to prevent mass starvation.

Thus began the long-term decline in human health due to diet deficiencies. Today, as a population we are just as deficient in protein and saturated fat as our neolithic ancestors, not so much because of necessity (our ancestors didn't have a choice), but because of misguided dietary advice by "experts" who should know better. We are now approximately 300 generations past the transition to agriculture, and the health problems that slowly evolve from too many generations of compromised diets are really beginning to take their toll. You can't feed a population of carnivores a diet of mostly carbs and realistically expect them to thrive.

Tex

dfpowell · Post by **dfpowell** » Thu May 28, 2015 9:25 pm

Tex,

Thank You for your thoughtful response. It supports what I have been reading.

Shar76 · Post by **Shar76** » Thu Jun 25, 2015 5:49 pm

***Update***

Good news, folks! I wrote about my flare on 5/18, and since that time I have been very faithful to a bland, GF EF DF SF diet, I wanted to let you know that I'm much improved with even a few "normans" in the mix; Frequency is much decreased, 1-2 BMs/day; and foul odor has left the building. Needless to say, I'm thrilled, but will not even begin to take this for granted. MC is always lying in wait, and I promised myself not to mess it up this time. I will proceed much more slowly with any additions as you suggested, and actually plan to stick with the bland until "norman" becomes the rule of the day.

As an aside, I went to my PCP for a routine appointment and mentioned the Flare and that I'd had D for a month. Her solution......antibiotics because, as she said, bacteria is what causes the colitis....quote: "it's inflammation, you know". D'Oh, really?!! I explained to her again what actually causes the inflammation of MC and that I was taking steps to remove those causes from my diet. I also told her I was much improved from a month ago and that in no way would I take an antibiotic w/o her first ordering a culture and O&P to prove that an abx was even necessary. She was unwilling to do so, saying we should try the antibiotic first and if that didn't work....THEN a culture, etc. Ummmmm, no thanks!! Honest to God, these people scare the cr*p out of me and I feel for those w/o medical knowledge and/or access to this group.

Thanks you all SO much for sharing and caring!

Shar in MS
xoxox

Shar76 · Post by **Shar76** » Thu Jun 25, 2015 5:51 pm

I hope I just postd that update in the right place!! lol

Post by **tex** » Thu Jun 25, 2015 6:09 pm

Shar,

Great! Thanks for the update.

Shar wrote:She was unwilling to do so, saying we should try the antibiotic first and if that didn't work....THEN a culture, etc. Ummmmm, no thanks!! Honest to God, these people scare the cr*p out of me and I feel for those w/o medical knowledge and/or access to this group.

Ain't that the truth. I sure agree with you there. Taking an antibiotic without a good reason, is a bit like shooting a shotgun down a dark alley, just in case there are any bad guys there waiting to mug someone. You and I would never consider doing that. Why do so many physicians have such a cavalier attitude about the use of antibiotics?

Tex

Shar76 · Post by **Shar76** » Thu Jun 25, 2015 6:24 pm

LOL, Tex, so true. My husband likened it wetting the house down and calling the Fire Department in case the house caught on fire.

Gahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!

Sheila · Post by **Sheila** » Fri Jun 26, 2015 7:07 am

My MC and celiac genes were triggered by an aggressive dose of antibiotics for an ear infection. A good doctor who will listen and is interested in YOU and YOUR issues is a treasure. I am very thankful for my GI doc and new PCP. You were very smart to tell your doc a resounding "NO".

Sheila W

Shar76 · Post by **Shar76** » Fri Jun 26, 2015 12:17 pm

A good doctor who will listen and is interested in YOU and YOUR issues is a treasure. I am very thankful for my GI doc and new PCP.

You're so right, Sheiila, and very, very lucky!! Unfortunately, I have neither. You have a sense of my PCP from my last post, and my GI, when I was diagnosed, told me it was not necessary to make ANY dietary changes. Instead it was "Here, take this pill" which was Entocort, and if that doesn't work we have more. Oy!! I had a gut feeling (pun intended) it was food-mediated and went searching on the internet. I am very grateful to have found this group with all its knowledge, love and support, and btw, I also said NO to the Entocort.

Shar in MS

Sheila · Post by **Sheila** » Fri Jun 26, 2015 12:35 pm

It did take some effort to get my GI doc to understand that diet was an issue for ME. He hasn't necessarily extrapolated that to his other MC patients. I know one woman who went to him, was diagnosed with MC and prescribed Entocort. She didn't have insurance and he kindly wrote her scrip for a compounding pharmacy and saved her a lot of money. I had been trying to convince her to change her diet for a couple of years without any success. When I last saw her she had just started Entocort and was feeling better but said my doctor didn't tell her to change her diet. She was extremely resistant and perhaps he just didn't push it. Sometimes I just scratch my head.

I spent a lot of time telling my GI doc about "Potty People", gave him the web address and told him about Tex's book. After showing him the results of my positive for celiac genetic tests, he was pretty surprised. I'm sure he thinks my MC is related only to celiac. However, he has been very empathetic and willing to listen. Yes, I'm lucky my GI doc really listened to me and did as I asked. However, I had to do the research and get help here on this site and come up with my diet plan.

Sheila W

Post by **tex** » Fri Jun 26, 2015 6:26 pm

Shar,

The possible implications of your tagline just dawned on me. Have you by any chance read my posts about my ordeal with magnesium deficiency a few months ago, that was precipitated by a reaction against an antibiotic? I had apparently been magnesium deficient for years, but a reaction to an antibiotic apparently finished off my last remaining reserves of magnesium, and the symptoms became quite severe. Interestingly, I had many/most of the symptoms of all of the diseases listed in your tagline.

Diabetes Type 2
RLS...since diagnosis of CC
Anxiety/Panic Disorder
Hypertension

Starting with the first one (symptoms of diabetes), frequent urination was a constant problem. I was always thirsty, and despite drinking excess water all day, most mornings when I woke up I was dehydrated, because almost all of the water I drank went straight to my bladder. I had to get up several times each night to empty it (normally, I never have to get up during the night, nor is going to the bathroom an urgent matter the next morning). And yes, my blood sugar was elevated, despite not changing anything in my diet.

Restless legs syndrome is a known very common symptom of magnesium deficiency, and in fact, for years I took a magnesium supplement only because of RLS and leg or foot cramps that would sometimes force me out of bed to walk around to try to relieve the cramping in the middle of the night.

Anxiety/panic disorder really puzzled me, because I had no reason to be anxious or panicked. And even though I didn't actually feel as though I were having a panic attack, I had all the symptoms — high heart rate, erratic BP (sometimes very high, sometimes very low, especially when I was dehydrated), rapid shallow breathing — I couldn't take a deep breath to save my life. My breathing was so labored that it would keep me awake during an episode. It was just like having asthma, except that there was no wheezing — I couldn't force my diaphragm to take a deep breath. These pseudo-panic attacks typically occurred during the wee hours of the morning.

My blood pressure was getting higher and higher during certain phases. During the day (and at the doctor's office) it would be way too high. When I got up in the morning (because of the dehydration that occurred during the night), my BP would be too low (sometimes roughly half the level that it was after I rehydrated during the day).

My TSH began to approach zero, so based on that and my other symptoms (hyperthyroidism can cause the same symptoms as magnesium deficiency) my doctor thought that I was hyperthoroid (so we cut my Armour dose in half), and the reduced thyroid hormone supplement helped for a while. But then the symptoms came back, and I finally traced them to a magnesium deficiency, after receiving a flagged magnesium test result in the ER, following the antibiotic reaction.

Magnesium is such an important electrolyte that the body will do everything it can to keep the blood level within the normal range, and it draws magnesium from the cells all over the body in order to do that. That makes the blood tests normally used by doctors to test magnesium levels almost worthless, because they will virtually always show a normal result. The only time the result will be positive is when most of the cells in the body are so low on magnesium that the body is dangerously low on magnesium. That condition can trigger a heart attack or stroke. There is a tissue test for magnesium, but doctors never seem to use it, presumably because it's much more trouble to collect a sample and/or the test is much more expensive.

At any rate, I was lucky that the ER docs included the test. They didn't catch the problem, however, I had to figure it out for myself after I downloaded the test results from "Mychart" a couple of days later. Then the light bulb came on. I was already taking magnesium, and my magnesium level had been tested before, but naturally the result was normal, so I never suspected magnesium until I saw that result from the ER tests.

Since increasing my magnesium intake (including topical application), I'm breathing normally again — easier than I've been able to breathe in probably about 10 years. No more RLS, or leg/foot cramps, no more getting up during the night to go to the bathroom, no more frequent urination, no more dehydration, and my heart rate and BP couldn't be better.

I could be all wet, and magnesium might have nothing to do with your issues, but today when I read your tagline, your diagnosed syndromes caught my eye like a mad bull between me and the fence.

I probably could have been diagnosed with all of those issues if I hadn't figured out the magnesium connection.

Tex

Gabes-Apg · Post by **Gabes-Apg** » Fri Jun 26, 2015 6:42 pm

ditto to what Tex has said, since i read the magnesium book 14 months ago and fixed magnesium deficiency (and other nutrient deficiencies) I have minimised many issues/symptoms linked to hypertension, skin, fibromyalgia, histamine inflammation, kidney issues etc.

worth reading the sticky at the top that has a summary of posts with some good info about conditions and magnesium deficiency.

Shar76 · Post by **Shar76** » Fri Jun 26, 2015 11:18 pm

Tex & Gabes,

I have long suspected I'm MG deficient because the onset of the RLS coincided exactly with my CC diagnosis after 6 months of D. At that time, my Potassium was also low @ 3.1, and serum MG was in the normal range, as it always is, but a very low normal. I took a Potassium replacement and last level was normal @ 4.2, but MG was never tested again and all the supplements I've tried give me D, so I'm not taking any MG right now.

Hmmmm, I was on my way to bed when I saw your posts, so let me write more about this tomorrow. I think you may be on to something!!!!

Good Night All,

Shar