Lion Diet to heal, 4 months in, poor restults. Anyone can help?

[Alecmcq]

My theory is more Covid related.

[PaulL]

Ah. Then you are wise not to share it. Let’s skip the inevitable fight and hurt feelings, then, shall we?

[Alecmcq]

Then you are wise not to share it.

100%

[eriodadarrio]

I had a similar experience when I tried a very strict diet a while back. I was on a low-carb, high-protein regimen and felt amazing at first, but then hit some rough patches.
I once read about people using supplements for extra energy and found some helpful info on where to buy steroids online that fit well with my needs. Hope this helps.
About the cravings and energy dips—I’ve been there too. I once experimented with a very high-protein diet and noticed my energy dropped after a while. I found that incorporating a bit more variety and adjusting my macros helped a lot.

[ctviggen]

I don’t know what your theory is, but I have come to the conclusion that practically every non-infectious disease we suffer from these days is either caused or greatly exacerbated by our high-carbohydrate diet.

And I’m talking about everything, from the well-known physical consequences, to cancer, autoimmune conditions, motor-neuron diseases, to Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia, to mental problems such as schizophrenia, dyslexia, anorexia nervosa, bulimia, gender dysphoria, and the general level of inexplicable craziness in current society. Most of these would go away as soon as we could switch the populace to a whole-foods diet containing a small percentage of carbohydrate.

You may be right, though I wonder. We think our daughter has PANDAS (Pediatric autoimmune neuropsychiatric disorders associated with streptococcal infection), which is in part or completely an inflammation of the basal ganglia caused by strep:

Antibodies From Children With PANDAS Bind Specifically to Striatal...

One doctor on a podcast said that it’s basically a lock and key. If the strep you get happens to have the “key” that fits into the “lock” that’s in your brain, you get PANDAS. It’s at least partially genetic.

While I listen to the amazing things that are being cured or helped (bipolar, anorexia, depression) by keto, I also listen to carnivore advocates (for instance) that I think go too far. Carnivore and keto can help when you get an infection, but I don’t think they make you bullet proof. If you have the “wrong” genetics, you have the wrong genetics for some of these diseases.

Consider that kids with PANDAS have higher levels of IL-17, which is an autoimmune problem. Assuming that all kids are eating high carb these days (not a bad assumption), then why do only some of them get high IL-17 and develop PANDAS, while others don’t? I’m not sure diet explains that.

I also wonder about anorexia. If you’re eating so little, wouldn’t you be basically keto or least producing ketones? Why does eating a keto diet then help – and in some instances cure – anorexia?

[PaulL]

You may be right, though I wonder. We think our daughter has PANDAS (Pediatric autoimmune neuropsychiatric disorders associated with streptococcal infection), which is in part or completely an inflammation of the basal ganglia caused by strep:

Well, surely not everything is diet-related, and I hope my comment didn’t imply that. There are infectious diseases, after all. However, a poor diet must surely not be helpful, even where communicable diseases and injuries are concerned.

For example, I know a woman who had a severe concussion who was still experiencing symptoms a year after her injury. She started a keto diet because of what she read about the benefits of keto for TBI patients. Lowering her glucose intake is not the whole explanation for her recovery (she had lots of rest and therapy), but she certainly found it very helpful.

Consider that kids with PANDAS have higher levels of IL-17, which is an autoimmune problem. Assuming that all kids are eating high carb these days (not a bad assumption), then why do only some of them get high IL-17 and develop PANDAS, while others don’t? I’m not sure diet explains that.

I also wonder about anorexia. If you’re eating so little, wouldn’t you be basically keto or least producing ketones? Why does eating a keto diet then help – and in some instances cure – anorexia?

I bought a dummies’ book on genetics, in order to understand certain characteristics of my rats better, and the book made a very strong distinction between genotype and phenotype. That is, your genes control a lot, but there are also factors that influence which genes get expressed and how. Environment and diet are not the only influences, but they do affect phenotype.

For example, it is now known that obese mothers do give birth to children with a propensity towards obesity, and the effect persists, apparently, for several generations. So the distinction between Mendelian genetics and Lamarckian inheritance (if that’s the right term for it) is a lot less clear nowadays, than it was assumed to be, fifty or sixty years ago.

If you posit that anorexia nervosa is a disease of poor mitochondrial health, it is possible that the ketones produced during starvation aren’t abundant enough to allow the brain to heal. The brain doesn’t make ketones, it depends on getting them across the blood-brain barrier from the rest of the body. So a ketogenic diet providing enough calories to provide for abundant ketones could well be helpful.

To be clear, these are just my guesses, not elucidated science, but do bear in mind that Keys’s Minnesota Starvation Study showed that even on a 1500-calorie high-carbohydrate diet, the subjects developed mental problems around food and hunger. One young man even chopped off some fingers, to try to get out of the study. So mental problems such as anorexia nervosa could easily fall into the same category.