Thank you @Fangs. I was lucky in a way though as some very serious conditions were helped quickly and this provided the impetus to stick with it and tinker the fats.
Here is a bit more about my illnesses and journey @Flub.
When I started the regular keto diet I was very ill and had been for nearly a decade. I had migraines most days that frequently lasted for several days, I had intense undiagnosed abdominal pain which was so bad it frequently landed me in emergency, and I had trigeminal neuralgia which is the most painful chronic pain condition that exists in humans. Luckily this third condition was being controlled well with Gabapentin and Nortriptyline but prior to diagnosis I was seriously thinking I’d have to end my life, it was that bad. But the other two conditions were poorly controlled and I was taking a lot of opioid narcotics to control pain.
My life was awful. I did nothing because I was always in pain, and I shut everyone out because I felt miserable and boring (I had nothing to talk about except illness). I have the best husband in the world and I was even shutting him out towards the end. I was unable to do any of the things that I really enjoyed in life, which we’d always enjoyed together.
When I went keto I saw improvement and I was amazed. My migraines lessened in frequency substantially and my abdominal pain lessened as well. Nothing changed with the trigeminal neuralgia but this was not so bad to me since medication was working well on that condition.
I also had other benefits of keto. Weight loss was huge for me. I’m back to the size I was in my twenties. My mood lifted tremendously, my energy did to. I also had complete remission of two skin conditions that had plagued me since I was a teenager, seborrheic dermatitis and rosacea. I was extremely happy with the results, but I still had enough pain that it prevented a lot of the activities that I craved and continued to ruin a lot of my days.
I started to hear people saying that they achieved better results on autoimmune type issues on carnivore and I’ve long suspected that my conditions are all linked by being autoimmune. It started to niggle at my mind that maybe some of the healing that I’d experienced might be the reduction in plant matter rather than the ketogenic state itself.
But man, I loved my veggies. It took many, many months to work up to a proper trial of carnivore. However, in that time I started cutting back on the vegetables and I noticed improvements.
When I did finally go full carnivore the results were almost miraculous. With weeks my migraines disappeared completely, my abdominal pain subsided to an occasional whisper, but most interesting to me, since until then nothing had happened, my trigeminal neuralgia seemed better. As I said, it was well controlled on drugs so I wasn’t 100% sure at first as the residual breakthrough pain was always minor, but it seemed to go to zero. So I tapered off the Nortriptyline (which was the drug that I knew had the smaller impact of the two). I was far too frightened of the pain to give up Gabapentin. At first I felt more pain, but after another couple of weeks on carnivore that improved as well. I went to see my doctor and we worked out a plan to try tapering the Gabapentin. It took a few weeks. Every time the pain would increase temporarily and then subside. Soon all the drugs were entirely gone and now the only time I feel it is if I’ve eaten something carby in the previous two weeks or so. But it never gets very severe since the appearance of the symptom is enough to stop me before it ramps up.
Now my life is fully back to what it was more than 12 years ago when all of my problems began. I really never expected this. I go on long backcountry canoe/camping trips with my husband again, at 52! I thought that was all over for me. This year we did a 7 day and an 11 day trip full of exertion, 6 hour paddling days, and sleeping on the ground and I felt fantastic. Prior to that the longest I’d managed in ten years was a single two night trip. I have my life back completely.
But, I still have a couple of things that could be better yet and this is why I’m trying PKD. Mostly I just want to know if further dietary changes will make more difference still. I also have one skin condition, exfoliative cheilitis, that has been completely resistant to both keto and carnivore with dairy and coffee. I’d like to at least know if it’s dietary as well.
Anyhow, that’s my long form story to date.