I been sick for a long time and need some advise

#1

Hi everyone,

I’m new here and hoping for some advice. Over 5 months ago, I started the carnivore diet after experiencing lingering withdrawal symptoms for several years following SSRI medication. These withdrawals left me with a very sensitive nervous system that reacts poorly to many things. My main issues are extreme fatigue (both physical and mental), widespread pain (especially in my arms, legs, and neck), and memory/concentration problems.

The carnivore diet helped for about 2 months. I had more energy, less pain, better digestion, and felt more social. However, severe constipation was a major downside.

Feeling better motivated me to try exercising again. Unfortunately, after 2 weeks, I got extremely sick. All my symptoms returned with a vengeance – inflammation everywhere (lymph nodes, throat, tonsils), migraines, and widespread pain. My brain fog was so bad I could barely function. This lasted 10 days, but I haven’t fully recovered.

While I’d like to quit the carnivore diet, I seem intolerant to most other foods. Introducing vegetables, fruits, or grains triggers severe inflammation in my neck, head, ears, eyes, arms, and legs. This comes with extreme fatigue and brain fog as well. This cycle has been happening for the past two months.

I’m currently trying to reintroduce fiber for constipation, with limited success. I can tolerate some lentils, but too much triggers all my symptoms again.

Has anyone else experienced something similar?

(Edith) #2

Sounds like you have very bad leaky gut. You may want to look into the GAPS diet. I’ve heard that helps heal leaky gut.

(Alec) #3

Rick
A big welcome to this forum and this community. I hope you find a home here.

It sounds like you have some severe issues to deal with, and alas I have no experience like yours to help you with. However, here are my thoughts, and please take them as gentle suggestions…

  1. I think carnivores in general have proven that you don’t need to eat fibre. The common advice for constipation is to up the fat… are you eating lots of fat? Butter, cheese, egg yolks, cream, very fatty meat, streaky bacon: all these will help constipation. You can also try more salt, that also helps.
  2. Your inflammation issues suggest to me that carnivore is the right path… you might go all in and do a strict lion diet for a while to see if it helps. Lion is just beef and salt. That’s it. Hungry? Eat a steak? Still hungry? Eat another. And nothing else. Just beef and salt.
  3. For now, with your experience, I would recommend you do not exercise. All exercise causes some level of inflammation, and that is what you are currently battling. So, to calm things down, I reckon you stop exercising (for a while, not forever).
  4. If you can fix your constipation through increasing fat, and then going real hard on a Lion diet, and you don’t exercise, I think you have a good chance of calming your inflammation down.
  5. Have you had any blood tests done on your inflammation? CRP? If so, what do your doctors say? Have they given you any suggested paths to fix things?
  6. I think your focus should be on calming the inflammation down for a few months. I would try to keep it really simple: no exercise, lion diet with as much fat as you can eat to avoid the constipation.

Welcome again, and I really hope you can find some answers here that help you.
Cheers
Alec

(Edith) #4

Or maybe just going for walks for now?

(Alec) #5

Perhaps. But if I was him, I would do nothing but eat fat and beef for 4 weeks and see if I could get the inflammation down. And sleep a lot.

(KM) #6

Welcome!

To me this indicates a possibility of acute infection, something beyond an ongoing dietary issue. Possibly mononucleosis? Have you seen a doctor?

#7

My first attempt at Keto lasted about 5 months and was successful. weighed 13 stone and went down to 10 st 4 lbs perhaps a bit too drastic. Constipation beat me. Tried over the counter laxatives but they didn’t work. Out of desperation, went back to eating carbs. Cured my constipation, but I felt crap. Constantly hungry and waking up to eat chocolate and ice cream and other carbs. It took me weeks to stick to a keto diet. Had been a vegetarian for 30 years, but I began to consider a carnivore diet… So I bit the bullet and just ate Eggs, Bacon, Fish Steaks and that’s it. When I felt hungry I just ate more eggs and bacon etc. Also ate more salt, butter and fats. I avoid cheese and Codeine medicine. Guess what (touch wood) my constipation cleared up. Also for years I had shoulder pains. neckache, knee ache, brain fog, depression and just wanting to sleep. If I mowed the lawn, I’d ache for days after. I’m 70 and retired, and basically thought my symptoms were because I’m an old fart. But I my aches and pains have got much better. I’ve found to lay off the exercise. If you are aching then rest. If you are tired then sleep. Don’t beat your self up about it. I’m an Alcoholic, but haven’t drank for 28 years. To me carbs are like booze, once I have them I can’t stop. Me I have to quit em all. I’m no expert, nor have I any medical training, just felt you know you’re not alone Rick and don’t give up! Good luck mate.

(Robin) #8

I assume you are not referring to how often you poop, when you say constipation. Carnivores often go days without BMs. I understand it’s because our body utilizes the majority of the meat.

I have no real advice for you, other than introducing and eliminating foods slowly to know for sure which may be causing those symptoms.

Lots of good advice already. You’ll get there.
Best of luck. Keep us in the loop.

(Alec) #9

Great point. Do you mean by constipation that you can’t pass poo or you have to strain really hard? If it is simply not pooing for 3 days, then welcome to the Few Poos Club!! :joy::joy::joy: Totally normal on carni!!

(Alec) #10

Mick
What a great story, and great advice from an experienced fella! :+1::clap:

#11

Thanks Alec:+1:

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #12

I think you’ll find that increasing your fat intake will help with that. Dr. Anthony Chaffee, a neuro-surgeon in Perth, Australia, hypothesises that the liver makes enough bile for the amount of fat we need, and fat intake over that amount simply gets excreted. He therefore advises eating a bit of extra fat to prevent constipation.

My own experience tends to indicate that Dr. Chaffee is right. I have also found that, on keto, salt intake is important. I got constipated when I didn’t get enough. I find that as a carnivore, I want less salt, but that a certain amount does help prevent constipation. I try to listen to my body and give it what it wants. As long as the salt tastes good, I put it on my food, and I love fat, so getting enough to avoid constipation is definitely not a problem!

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #13

I’ve also seen people here claiming that they solved their leaky gut problem by going keto and avoiding fibre. There is good and growing evidence to show that β-hydroxybutyrate strengthens the tight junctions between intestinal cells, so going keto can clearly help.

(Edith) #14

Interestingly, I’ve been keto for seven years. It did not help my problem with dairy. After my seven month carnivore trial, I become less sensitive. I became less over reactive. I think there was some sort of gut healing that went on during the trial. Who knows? Maybe if I stayed on carnivore longer, it would have gone away completely. Unfortunately, by the time I got to the seven month mark, my body was not happy. Which is why I stopped.

#15

Hi VirginiaEdie,

Thanks for your quick response! I’ve been interested in the Gaps Diet for a while, and a friend even lent me a book about it. The whole concept of gut healing sounds really interesting, especially since I’ve always suspected I might have a leaky gut.

For the past 5 months, I’ve been making a lot of bone broth, hoping it would help. However, I have to be very careful – drinking too much at once triggers nausea and makes me feel unwell for days. In fact, the first week I tried it, I ended up in the hospital with severe gut pain. The doctors thought it might be my gallbladder and ran a CT scan, but everything looked okay except for some inflammation in my colon and small intestine.

They also did some blood tests, and a few things came back abnormal. My neutrophils were high (84.8), lymphocytes were low (9.1), and my uric acid has been elevated for about a year (8.52 at the last test). I was hoping the diet would help lower it. The doctors wanted to put me on antibiotics, but without a clear diagnosis, I wasn’t comfortable with that, so I went home. Thankfully, the pain started to fade away on its own over the next day.

The strange thing is, the same thing happened the next week after drinking bone broth again – though the pain wasn’t as bad. That’s when I decided to take a break from it for a while. I also tried making sauerkraut about 6 weeks ago, but it didn’t sit well with me either, so I stopped that too. Maybe I can try reintroducing it in the future.

(Jennibc) #16

Walks help the nervous system. That’s safe.

(Jennibc) #17

It sounds like you have some post exertion malaise (PEM). I suffered terribly from that for years. Interestingly enough it was after I too quit SSRIs abruptly after I got pregnant in 1998 but at the time no one was admitting there was a such a thing as SSRI withdrawal. I ended up miscarrying but stayed off of the SSRIs for a few years while we tried to have kids. Went back on after a successful pregnancy because I’d been convinced by my MD I needed to be on them for life. However, I still had all the weird debilitating symptoms you describe. Finally in 2007 I tapered off the SSRIs because I put 120 pounds on over the years of taking them. Thought the weight would melt away after that. It did not.

I gave up grain in 2010 after reading The Glycemic Load Diet but the was only good for about 40 pounds of loss. I still couldn’t exercise more than a brisk walk without triggering the PEM and I was on medication for all the other symptoms (they had me on Doxepin for sleep and nerve pain) I want to add here that when I gave up grain, the anxiety and mood swings I’d had my entire life, the reason I went on SSRI’s in the first place back in 1994 were gone in less than a month. What a welcome surprise that was!

Fast forward to February 2016 and I picked up the books “Eat Fat Get Thin” and “The Upside of Stress.” I didn’t realize the profound life changing impact either of these would have for me. I was very skeptical of Eat Fat Get Thin but I figured I’d try it since I’d tried everything else and was still 80 pounds overweight. I lost 25 pounds in four months! I’d also done the exercises in “The Upside of Stress” between those two books, I somehow tamed my nervous system - increased healthy fat consumption and viewing stressors is a radically different way. I was suddenly able to jog again. To give you an example of the difference, just a couple of years earlier I spent half an hour playing badminton with my 10 year old son and was in the bed the next few days just because of that level of physical exertion. I tapered off of the Doxepin and have been off of it and symptom free for years now.

By 2018 I completely gave up added sugar which put me into ketosis. That helped me finally lose all of the weight and my ADD went away. I mostly eat meat, leafy greens, avocados, cruciferous vegetables and heavy cream in my coffee. Also some nuts and cheese from time to time. I stay away from commercial ‘keto’ foods. For added fats in cooking I used grass fed butter, avocado oil, coconut oil and when I used oil for salad dressing, extra virgin olive oil.

Christopher Palmer MD wrote a really good book called “Brain Energy” that is worth a read. It does a great job of explaining the connection between our brain health and mitochondria and how dysfunction in our mitochondria is key. If you are not up to reading a book like that, he has been on many podcasts. He’s had a lot of success in treating mental illness with the ketogenic diet. I am not suggesting you are suffering from any kind of mental illness so please don’t take it that way. I am suggesting that brain health is what going on with your nervous system. Here he is on Hubermann if you want to listen https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjEFo3a1AnI

Hang in there and have faith that this will eventually work for you. I’ve been through it. Also, as long as I eat avocados I have no problem with constipation.

#18

Hi Alec,

Thanks for the reply! I didn’t expect so many people to respond, that’s really nice.

The carnivore diet helped a lot! I’ve had stomach problems for almost 20 years, always feeling bloated and slow digestion. I can’t eat gluten and probably other things too, I just avoid them all. The carnivore diet almost fixed everything. I don’t get bloated anymore and digestion is good, especially if I only eat beef.

For the past 5 months, I mostly ate beef, a lot of bacon, and a lot of high-fat stuff like butter, ghee, tallow, pork chops, ribeye steaks, and used a lot of salt. Basically, I was eating 90% lion diet. I got really sick after drinking too much milk and homemade yogurt, so that’s out.

I drink a lot of water, but I was still very constipated (going to the bathroom every 5-7 days and it was very difficult). Maybe you’re right, the carnivore diet might still be the way to go. But I’m worried about some blood tests I did 6 weeks ago when I got sick. No real doctor saw them, only the clinic I volunteer at and a nutritionist. I can share the results, maybe someone can help me understand them.

I been intolerent to exercise and heat for almost 2 years, and now food for 2 months. I really hoped this diet would fix everything, but I guess not. Maybe things need to get worse before they get better?

#19

I know, I’ve been really pushing myself to exercise for the past 2 years. It feels good right after, but then the next day I get slammed with bad symptoms that can last a whole week. Now I can only take small walk.

#20

I have to strain very hard, i never thought you coud get that constipated lol
I’m taking some kind of ayurveic laxative (Nityam) everynight and that make me go next morning. But eventualy i need to get off of it.