Advice On Going Paleo With Pots/ncs?

[Tuesday]

Hey guys! I am going to give the Paleo diet a try and see if it will help with any of my symptoms. I know one of the rules is to stay away from anything with lots of salt, but there's no way I can afford to give that up!

Have any of you done the Paleo diet before? Any advice you'd give for someone with dys trying to make a go of it? Anything you wish you'd known before you started? Finally, has it helped, or have you seen improvements?

Thanks!

[MightyMouse]

I have been fully paleo for almost 3 years now. It was easy for me to do b/c I was already eating gluten free, so most grains were off limits to me. Personally, I think it helped me stay healthier for longer stretches. If you are interested in the resources I used, I read through the free downloads available through Mark's Daily Apple. I also purchased his book "The Primal Blueprint" to help me with various questions that come up. The hardest thing for me was finding food when I eat out at restaurants, but it's much easier now.

My only "wish that I knew" item was to not beat myself up when I stray off the paleo path; Mark Sisson, says to be happy with yourself if you can keep yourself to about 80% on the plan--shoot for 100% but be pleased if you keep to 80%. So, I have a cookie or two or three, until I'm satisfied, and that way to don't drop off the plan altogether.

For me, I have to stay pretty low carb to feel good. I find that when I eat too many carbs, I feel sick, almost like I'm on the verge of getting a cold...

Best wishes on your journey! What's really funny to me at this point is that despite eating EVERYTHING that "common wisdom" says NOT to eat, like loads of bacon, cream, butter, eggs and meat, meat, and more meat, my cholesterol DROPPED.

Oh, also, some sites that claim to be 'paleo' may not be--for example, there are ones that have recipes for paleo breads are probably not for everyone b/c they use so much nut flours. Remembering that if one were a caveman, the likelihood you'd have a pound of almond flour/almond meal to eat or bake bread is unlikely. A caveman would probably only have a handfull of nuts a day at most. All that being said, when I crave bread, the almond meal bread is better for me than the grain based bread since I have celiac and repeated episodes with c-diff.

[Dizzysillyak]

Hi tuesday,

I'm mostly on the Wahls diet minus 6 cups of veggies. Imho, she has the best diet "plan" available but we all have different food intolerances and nutritional needs so keep yours in mind. Her info is on the web or you can buy her book.

I need this diet, appr 3 mg salt daily, mast cell meds and a few supplements to be upright longer and more functional but I'm still struggling. I'm 57 and I have a long list of diagnosises tho.

I wound up on the paleo diet in 2008, after realizing how bad grains and legumes made me feel after I'd been on the gfcfsfcf diet for 3 years. I felt healthy at rest without these but everytime I tried these I felt sluggish. Those gf processed foods always made me feel weird.

Fwiw, there are several people, salesmen maybe ; ), promoting their own loose goosey versions of the paleo / caveman diet that allow foods that imho are detrimental to our health. Dr. Cordain started this trend so I consider his opinion the gold standard. I'd pretty much figured out that I needed to eat only these foods before I heard about the paleo diet.

Tc .. D

[MightyMouse]

Like Dizz, I pretty much had self selected much of the diet before refining it with going caveman because certain foods made me feel terrible for days. Some of the things I eat that are not-so-paleo are dairy items, although I try to stay with femented/aged items b/c I need to be careful to keep my gut flora in check lest the C. diff. takes over again. I also eat things like saurkraut, kimchi, etc. because they have bacterial cultures good for my guts.

And I second Dizz's caution about watching out for hucksters out there making money on things like "paleo bread" and other so-called-paleo treats and snacks that are, as I said before, often laiden with things cavemen were unlikely to eat.

for those not sure with what paleo is/is not, it's essentially eating anything a caveman would eat, and keeping activity level on par with caveman practices as well...and is based on the idea that we should eat what we evolved eating in order to be healthier. Some of the things that are considered good to eat on this diet are counter intuitive to what moder medicine tells us to eat. Items good to eat on paleo include full fat things like bacon (even this is limited though to bacon that's been treated without things like sulfites), butter, ghee, coconut milk (which is very high in fats), etc., and all sorts of animal proteins, occasional nuts and fruits, plenty of seeds, and vegetables (but not things like potato, and other similarly starchy and cultivated/farmed items)

Also, part of this means acting like a caveman too...so lots of slow movement, occasionally sprints (so you don't become some predator's meal), along with periods of rest, and occasional low food intake periods (when food sources were scarce). Things that are decided not caveman foods are pretty much anything that's been cultivated and/or farmed: grains/grasses, corn, beans, tubers, yada yada, and things that contain non-natural items like preservatives, stabilizers, etc. Also, eating meat, eggs, and dairy that have been fed on what they've evolved to eat (grass fed and in open pastures, not factory farmed), non-farmed and organinc fish free, all items of drugs, and where the land/sea is dealt with in an organic fashion are preferred.

I'm fortunate to have a local shop that carries organic cage free eggs and raw milk. Finding meats that fit the above wish list are harder to come by unless you order online. There are a few really good places online, but can be very expensive when compared with traditionally farmed items; this can put the healthier meats/fish out of range for me most of the time. Keeping $$ in mind, I do my best to at least meat some of the wish list. Certified organic is better to me than not organic.

As a general rule of thumb, I try not to eat things that have loads of ingredients listed with the exception of spices. It's now suspected that I may have MCAD or MCAS; I'm unable to survive without my zyrtec, singulair and benedryl...every day.

[POTLUCK]

I eat low carb for my diabetes. Basicaly Jenny Ruhl "Diabetes 101" diet to keep the BS below 100 fast, 140 1 hour after meals, 120 2 hours after meal. I am not sure that it helps or makes my POTS worse, sometimes I think some insulin might help get the sugars into the cell and this might help the POTS. ( but I have been told by biopsy of fibroblasts that I have a mito disorder: ETC complex 3 so I may be very different.)

Regarding almond flour, it is lower in carbs also, and thus many recipes call for it. There are many recipes on Jennys web site. I eat a lot of beef but I like the low carb pizza for example.

[Tuesday]

Thanks for all of the advice! I'm still doing a lot of research, but I think it's making more sense to me now.

[Rachel Cox]

interesting... i was advised to go gluten free by my nutritionist, which I have done... but for some time I have been avoiding carbs of all kinds because they just simply make me feel horrid. I have never heard of 'paleo' before but I think I will do some more research. For the most part I eat only protein with veggies. Oh, except for the lollies that sneak in (you guys call it candy!)... I wonder if I am instinctively self-assisting! The human body/mind connection is a truly exceptional thing, don't you think?

[Tuesday]

I'm a few days in and so far I am noticing a difference ... I'm just not sure if it's real or imagined though

One thing I am not imagining is being hungry all the time! I hope my body adjusts soon, or I am going to go broke feeding myself!

[Dizzysillyak]

Cool. Good to hear you're responding.

I felt better by the end of my first day off wheat, etc. It took me years to figure out that I needed

to be on the paleo diet to feel my best. I still get sucked into eating those gf cookies if

they're offered tho. Lol.

Meat, raw nuts, raw seeds, oils (salad dressing mainly) and avocados help me feel fuller.

Fwiw, you may or may not want to limit the amount of raw nuts and seeds because they're really high in oxalates.

Oxalates are thought to be a factor in kidney stones. Research on what other problems these may cause is ongoing.

Fyi, high oxalate foods are being blamed for pelvic and bladder pain but

but it appears that mast cells are involved. My symptoms have responded to allergy meds. : )

I wasted 4 years being in pain from eating a few of my trigger foods thinking it was just from the oxalates in these foods. Duh ! Now I can eat more of these trigger foods without being in pain.

Boiling high ox foods like raw carrots, beets, rhubarb, spinach, chard and kale reduces their ox values tho. If you're interested, there are high ox lists on the web.

I posted on another thread here recently raw carrots and beets caused me to get throat pain after awhile.

It's happening to some others too. It's in the web under beets (or carrots) throat pain. I first noticed

the pain when I was juicing these. Now I get it everytime I try to eat these. I'll never try

that again.

I hope this info on oxalates doesn't overwhelm you. I was just trying to give you a heads up just in case.

Tc .. D