Help! After a trip to A&E I need some advise

(Alex Caldecott) #1

Hi everyone,

So I started eating Keto about 6 months ago. Although its been a learning curve and challenging at times I have loved every second. I’ve lost around 3 stone and also enjoyed all the other benefits of keto.

Anyway, last Friday night I had a particular bad day and ended up drinking 5 pints of larger and ordering a pizza. I should add that I have cheated a few times in the 6 months, with no issues. Although I haven’t drank alcohol for the entire 6 months.

Saturday morning I felt a bit fuzzy as I would expect, still got up and cracked on, took the dog out with my one year old and all was fine.

Then at around 9.30 I had a searing pain start in my stomach area, it continued to get worse until I called my girlfriend back from work because I was panicking. Never felt pain like it.

We called 111 and I was advised to go into A&E. They checked me out and could find NOTHING wrong.

The pain subsided and I went home. Since then I have been feeling very strange indeed. Lower gut feels sore and its just not right.

I don’t really know what I’m asking here but I wondered if anyone had similar experience?

Should I get back on the wagon, or keep eating normally until I feel better and then start keto again?

Any advise / input would be appreciated!

(Polly) #2

That sounds like a scary experience.

I have not had anything like that happen to me, but I avoid wheat and all other grains because they make me feel ill. You may find this is an extreme reaction to grains.

My inclination would be to pick up keto where you left off and avoid cheating again with anything from the grass family.

(Bob M) #3

Those are always difficult to diagnose. I’m going to hypothesize the lager may be the culprit.

Like Polly, wheat causes me issues. I do have pizza (the real variety) every once in a while, but I get allergies and the like basically the next day. So, I go back to keto and everything goes away.

Searing pain does not sound good, though.

For me, I got fat drinking good beer, eating pizza, and eating ice cream (in that order). I’ve had one beer in the last 5+ years, and only had that because the family we invited over gave me one. I do eat pizza and ice cream from time to time, but these are triggers for me, so I make it very, very infrequent.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #4

It sounds like a reaction to the beer and pizza. That is a high carbohydrate load, and your body is less-accustomed to dealing with it. I suspect that your low-carb diet has altered the composition of the bacteria in your intestines, and that the carb load may have resulted in some gas as a result.

My advice would be to definitely continue to avoid carbohydrates, and if you must drink, avoid beer and lager and stick to the hard spirits, which have less of a carbohydrate content. You are also likely to find that it takes far less liquor to get you drunk on a ketogenic diet, so when you do drink, avoid driving.

BTW, another possibility, unrelated to your diet, is that your appendix is starting to go. I had occasional sharp pains, sometimes accompanied by nausea, for about eighteen months before my appendix became inflamed enough for them to realise what the problem was. The symptoms were difficult to distinguish from those of a heart attack, but an EKG done during one of the attacks revealed no problems with my heart. Eventually, I was stricken with overwhelming pain, went to A&E, and it turned out to be my appendix. They got it out just before it burst. So if you have another episode like the one you had, strongly suggest to the doctors that they consider your appendix, even if you don’t really fit the profile for appendicitis.