Anecdote: Lactose Messes Up Libido

Just a short anecdote: I recently ran an natural experiment. I wanted to see if removing all fructose from my diet (and therefore all sucrose as well) would have an (hopeful positive) impact on my health. As I need some sweetness in coffee, and as coffee with pure dextrose ("glucose") tastes like dish water, I used some artificial sweetener as well (in tablet form, that my mother had bought for herself).

After maybe a week or two of using this sweetener, with maybe some 6 to 8 tablets a day, I noticed an pathological increase of my libido, something I have not had since I reduced dairy in 2010. What was wrong? What was different? What the hell had I eaten? Of course the sweetener! Duh. Checking the little ingredient list on the bottle, written in that tiny tiny font, what did my eyes see? Lactose.

O.o

I have then exchanged the tablet sweetener (with lactose) for a similar one in liquid form (sans lactose, with a tab bit of fructose). And all is well again (at least considering THAT problem).

Anecdote: Dairy And Beef Causes Somnolence

One more personal anecdote: I was having problems with somnolence (excessive sleepiness during the day) – even caffeine tablets did not help. These problems got better once I reduced the consumption of milk and dairy (during my Atkins diet in November 2010).

But as I was thinking that ghee (clarified butter) was "pure" fat, that this would be a "safe" milk product, I increased the consumption of ghee. At the same time I ate a lot of beef, which I did think back then to be "good". During that time I got more somnolence again (Again and again and again: Always watch your symptoms and don't change too many things at a time!).

During my "10 days milk&dairy reintroduction" in March I again got more massive problems with somnolence again, which subsided again afterwards.

Now that I had removed beef (in December), reduced caffeine to 3-5 cups of coffee a day (and no tablets!) and finally in April replaced ghee with coconut fat * – both of which should have a roughly similar composition of fatty acids – did my somnolence retreat for good.

A lesson for me: After I found out that milk and some forms of dairy are clearly problematic for me, I should have become suspicious of all forms of dairy and suspicious of beef (and veal!), even if I did not see any obvious correlation to my remaining health problems.

In extension: If one thing from a nutrition group does cause clear problems (e.g. some cereal grains), better remove everything from that group (e.g. all cereal grains, even gluten-free) from the diet, to see if it helps. And then reintroduce them again to do a challenge.

So after I learned that clearly veal is a problem for me, that beef might be a problem for, I will try to remove all meat from my diet for at least a week and replace it with fish. I already reduced meat somewhat (and am currently on a rather high-carb and high-fat diet! and continue to loose weight, if only slowly) and then tried going vegetarian, but I got a "strange" hunger that made me feel somewhat "jittery", a hunger that subsided only after I ate some meat. I need animal protein, my body makes that much clear. We'll see what fish instead of meat does.

* I initially replace ghee with palm fat, which has an higher content of PUFAs (poly-unsaturated fatty acids). This increased my hunger for carbs, and sometimes gave me a slightly low blood sugar. Only after I switched to coconut oil – with a low content of PUFAs that is comparable to butter/ghee – did my hunger (or rather problem) decrease to a level I would consider "normal" or "adequate".

Atopic Dermatitis ("Neurodermitis") Caused By Dairy and Eggs?

Another chronic skin condition which is possibly caused by (pasteurized) milk and dairy: Atopic Dermatitis ("Neurodermitis").

The German weekly "Der Spiegel" had this to report in August 2011 (translation mine):

… After Nina Meier's odyssey through doctors offices and many treatments, the turn came with a few words: "Abstain from cow's milk and eggs," advised a general practitioner. "I said to myself, shit, I'll simply try it," says Meier. "It can't get any worse." For one week the symptoms got worse - but then came the turning point. "I could rub off my skin like scabs, underneath new skin came to light. After the old skin had gradually peeled off, it was fine."

Since then she has never been in treatment for their eczema again. With regards to dermatologists she is now skeptical. Nina Meier says she had trusted doctors too much and "ignored nutrition during the search for the cause, because the doctors said nutrition did not play a role". Meanwhile, she can tolerate even a little bit of cow's milk or egg. "And even if my body reacts, I won't get no stressed anymore. Because I now know the cause." …

http://www.spiegel.de/panorama/gesellschaft/jahrelange-fehltherapie-gefangen-in-der-eigenen-haut-a-780722.html

The entire article in "Der Spiegel" is a truly horror story of her various treatments by "evidence based" medical industry – at least it has an happy end for her. What about the countless others who are stuck in this ordeal?

So after Acne, Aphthous Ulcers, Behçet's and Psoriasis, I can add this to my growing list. Why is it the skin, that is the "target"? What is the common mechanism here? I'm sure it will be fascinating to read the mechanism, once medical science will find it out in a couple of decades… I sure hope I live that long.

Et tu, Mutton?

So in addition to cow products (especially dairy and veal), it seems that lamb does at well cause Acne/Behçet's like symptoms for me.

Tough look.

Interesting was that veal caused much more problems than beef, and that lamb is on the same order as veal. Something is different in the meat from those young animals.

If other bovid animals are the same for me? Seems like the entire family of Bovidae might be bad for me – must be some shared protein or something…

Anecdote: Remove Dairy, Remove Brain Fog

Another one for the list:

I feel great. I actually feel as if there’s nothing wrong with me at this point in time. Nothing hurts, my brain is functioning adequately, my mood is euthymic, I’m never hungry, I have acceptable energy levels. Occasional mild anxiety/irritability but kava kava takes care of that (thank you Woo).

Was a stressful week at work. I was like “so what, let’s deal with this shit in a stepwise fashion” and handled it just fine.

This is a very unusual occurrence in the life of Sid, that nothing is hurting or broken. Is it possible I’ve been poisoning myself with dairy all these years? I haven’t felt this good since I first went VLC two years ago. In hindsight, I wasn’t eating that much dairy at the start because I wanted to lose weight as rapidly as possible and we all know cheese is stalling.

My brain works again. I don’t have horrible brain fog and the feeling that brain is functioning at 20% capacity.

(emphasis mine)

It's been only a week, so one will have to wait, I'll guess. But it looks promising.

Anecdote: Paleo helps for Fibromyalgia

Robb Wolf has the details.

Mucus !

And here I write about a "YUCK!" topic - be warned.

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I promise to make it short not with no intention to revisit it any time soon.


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So here we go, you have been warned.

Dairy and Somnolence

OK: I eat some dairy at 10am, drink some milk at 11am, and get drowsy some two to three hours later, at 1pm.

Could it be Behçet’s?

Interesting question: Do I have Behçet’s?

With my old diet I had all these following symptoms, (almost) enough to meet the diagnostic criteria for Behçet’s:

• Minor aphthous ulceration [every couple of months in the mouth]
• Pseudofolliculitis [maybe a very very slight, but my follicles were always red]
• Papulopustular lesions [sometimes some]
• Acneiform nodules [not sure, I thought it was acne]
• Extreme exhaustion [Wouldn't call it "extreme", but yes I am quite fatigued]
• Nervous system symptoms [do muscle twitches and migraines count?]

(I am not sure if I might have had a very slight iritis, an inflammation of the iris. My eyecolor changed from green-brown – with brown "patches" – to a more uniform green with slight brown. And the blood veins in the white of my eye got less visible.)

These are the symptoms I had on my old diet, some of which I still have. And some of the symptoms return when I leave the path of the Paleo Diet and venture into my old diet (mainly when I eat pasteurized milk products or when I eat eggs).

And every symptom counts. I really paid not much attention to the aphthous ulcers in my mouth. They came and went again, I could live with them and they were the least of my problems – and why concern myself or even a doctor with such a small thing?

I fear I need go again on my old diet to provoke these symptoms. But not at the moment.

At the moment I am too tired to write more – but is interesting the things one finds.

WTF? Beef and Somnolence?

The things you learn with an elimination diet, and then re-challenging with that food. My somnolence seems to have been caused by beef. Hmm.

I need more data to confirm or refute that. Hmpf.

More SNAFU – Coconut Milk gives me The Runs

So I tried out coconut milk (over some time now), and every time I ate it, I got "The Runs" (aka diarrhea).

Don't know what causes this (and don't particularly care at the moment), but according to the information I have, per 100 gram coconut (except coconut oil) there are several grams of "Pentosans" and "Hexosans", which are pentose/hexose-sugar-polymers (aka carbohydrates) and AFAIK can be classified as "fibers". And in addition coconuts contains a couple of of hundred milligrams of "poly uronic acids" per 100 gram.

Both pentosans/hexosans and poly uronic acids, so I would speculate, have the potential to interfere with the normal state of gastro-internal affairs – but nothing concrete is known, I'm afraid.

So more SNAFU, and one more food that I know does not agree with me… Oh well.

A pity, as it makes cooking more varied. But then again I never was a big fan of coconuts…

Eggs – The Other Cause Of Acne?

While I am pretty certain that my acne was caused by dairy (from pasteurized milk), I had some small acne flares from time to time despite not eating any dairy – now I think I narrowed the other cause of acne down to eggs.

And it would make sense, as both milk and eggs contain immunoglobulins. And both pasteurized milk and eggs are heat treated.

One small observation (which I need to confirm yet) is that the acne from eggs is slightly different:

• Eggs seem to cause mainly pustules ("pimples") with round white purulent material, and mainly at what seems to be follicles (e.g. at the arms)
• Dairy from pasteurized milk on the other hand seems to cause mainly inflamed papules/nodules at what seems to be (sweat? sebaceous?) glands (e.g. around the nose)

But same as with acne from milk, it is a "winner takes it all" situtation, with two to three spots and the rest of the skin looking fine.

Situation Normal, All Fucked Up – I guess.

Anecdotes: Paleo helps for Rosacea and Restless Leg Syndrome

Paul Jaminet has the details (and more on other health issues).

Skin, Nails, Tongue – Health Surrogate Markers

So I noticed today that the appearance of my tongue has improved. My tongue used to be covered with some (very slight) white patches, and it looked a bit like it would rot away and fall apart in some time – gross, I know, so I did look to often at my tongue… :-) But now my tongue looks pale red and uniformly so, with a little bit more white in the back.

Hmm, it is only a optical improvement, yet I take that as a positive health thing.

Again, I blame it on my paleo diet.

While we are at the topic of "skin" in the mouth, what has gone for good are aphthous ulcers / canker sores in the mouth (which I had from time to time).

And this in addition that my skin no longer suffers acne. From the various skin improvements, acne is the only one I have clearly linked to (pasteurized) milk and dairy as a cause.

And two years ago I noticed for the first time something my skin doctor called "hemangiomas" (might as well be "vascular lesions"), very small, about 1 to 2 mm, give or take (about 1/20 to 1/10 of an inch), red dots on the skin, from blood vessels. She said they would get slowly worse over the years, but they improved a tad bit over the last two years – but it is too early to call.

And the skin around the "front corners" of fingernails used to peel off easily, so the top layers of skin around my finger nails had a tendency to be missing in action – and that has improved much as well with a paleo diet.

And while we are at nails, the appearance of my nails has improved a little bit over the last two years – almost no more "mountain ridges" across from side to side (beau's lines?) – but the grooves on the length of the nail plates (in growth direction) are still here, but maybe a tad bit weaker. And the problems with hangnails have improved much as well. Cuticles and white spots are no longer noticable, but were not a huge problem in the first place.

Then, I had about once or twice a year an armpit rush, which seems to have gone by eliminating dairy and eggs from my nutrition.

So related to only skin there are more than half a dozen surrogate health markers for me, some moving slowly (e.g. hemangiomas), some moving fast (mainly acne), some were seldom (e.g. canker sores), some a constant bane (again mainly acne).

While I traced down only one skin problem clearly to an identified cause (with acne and dairy), I suspect that the other skin problems might have been caused by dairy too (maybe with cereal grains being a problem in one or the other instead of dairy, or maybe in addition to dairy).

So if you have health problems and want to start a paleo diet, you should make an inventory of your little health problems, and then you can see if they improve – things like improvement in areas such as mood are important to notice too, but acne and canker sores are so much more objective. Then you can do a challenge with dairy, or with cereal grains, or whatever you removed from your diet, to see if the things get worse again.

Anecdote: Successful treat CFS with Paleo/Primal

Mark's Daily Apple: How the Primal Blueprint Helped Me End My Struggle with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

(I have no doubt that Paleo/Primal helped her, but I call BS on the "inflammation weight" explanation of her doctor and pretty much everything else her quackish doctor said – and furthermore I would not be surprised if the doctor with the "detailed supplement plan" would have some more than passing resemblance if not identity with my good Milady Myhill. I would venture that the the two good things Myhill does is recommending the "Cavemen Diet" or "Stone-Age Diet", and discontinuing no longer needed medication after the change of diet – everything else she recommends seems like complete bunk to me.)

No dairy? "But you NEEEEED the calcium!"

An interesting encounter today at the medical specialist, when I mentioned that I avoid dairy as dairy gives me acne and I was getting worse until I stopped eating dairy and grains:

If you don't eat dairy, then you must take calcium supplements. Otherwise you don't get enough calcium from nutrition.

Yeah, right.

Somehow the information that I tried to convey to her, that "Milk makes me ill", somehow that did not register for her. I know, it's only an anecdote to her, but still.

"If I eat this it makes me ill, if I stop eating it I get better" should be an easy to understand concept.

But I guess I am some sort of freak of nature and the only person in the world that has adverse health effects by dairy? And after all, don't all adult animals need calcium, well, because.

Yeah, right.

Maybe in 10 or 20 years we know much more about the adverse health effects of (pasteurized) dairy, and then she'll look back on what she told me about milk – or maybe not.

I wasn't in the mood to argue, so I just said "I am trying raw-milk dairy and it does not give me acne so far."

I guess she hears all kind of BS, so she'll file it under "Another Nutter", oh well. Whatever happened to being your own experiment, of being your own n-1?

Dairy and that Sore Mouth Feeling

So, having not eating dairy for quite some time now, I recently started trying out cheese again. And trying only cheeses made from raw-milk. My focus was if I get ill health effects, especially acne. And what can I say, raw-milk cheese does not cause acne for me – unlike cheese from pasteurized milk, which does cause acne for me. (And just for the record: I had no repeat of an hypoglycemia episode.)

But now I noticed another effect of dairy: An slightly sore mouth immediately while I eat cheese, and especially in the palate. And I remember I had this feeling many time before, while I was eating certain cheeses. But I never really took much notice of it.

(And furthermore, now some eight hours later, I feel even one "canker sore" or "aphthous ulcer" appear, something I had in my pre-Paleo days)

I wouldn't go so far and describe my mouth sensation as a "burning" (so I guess it is not "burning mouth syndrome" or Glossodynia), but it sure does feel a slight bit "scalded".

Wikipedia (as an reflection of what is "known" in medical sciences) is funny:

Possible causes include nutritional deficiencies, chronic anxiety or depression, type 2 diabetes, menopause, oral disorders such as thrush or dry mouth, or damaged nerves (specifically, cranial nerves associated with taste).

So there seems to be a correlation between glossodynia and chronic anxiety, and between glossodynia  and depression. I would say: Is it possible that all three are caused by an as of now undetermined third factor? I would throw in milk as an educated guess. But wikipedia instead suggests that there is a causative relationship. What bollocks, IMHO, to think that depression could cause glossodynia. Oh well.

By now, if I read such a hodgepodge of associations and no clear etiology, I would always suggest trying out an Paleo style elimination diet (no cereal grains, no dairy, no vegetable oil, no "crap in a box" and no soy), to see if the condition improves. Then, if one can't live without the crap, one can reintroduce it slowly, one by one, to see who is the culprit. Or one could simply stay on a Paleo diet.

Raw milk, acne and blood sugar – An update

As I wrote before, my acne is caused by milk. While I sometimes get very very very small furuncles (which i haven't been able to track down to a cause yet), I just need to east a bit of dairy to get several nasty furuncles and sometimes even nasty pimples. No doubt, milk caused my acne, which I can say with certainty after being dairy-free for quite some time now.

Now I wanted to see if raw dairy (from non-pasteurized milk) makes a difference, as I read something to that effect. I got some really nice raw-milk "Bergkäse" cheese, and ate a nice piece of it.

And what can I say about raw-milk dairy, after a sample size of 1?

The good: 
No acne. None whatsoever. And the Bergkäse was really nice.

The bad and ugly:
I ate the cheese at 10 in the morning and about half an hour later I got a rather low blood sugar: All the symptoms like "that jittery feeling", and the confirmation by several measurements of blood sugar (blood glucose) during the day. Eating some glucose, and then some more didn't help much. And then some potatoes, and then some more. I was jittery to some degree all day. And had (slighter) problems with blood sugar for some days.

Hmmm.

I need to try this experiment again, in some weeks, to see if this is not some random fluke.

At least for now, and for me, it seems that (pasteurized) milk is able to provoke an immune reaction (in the form of acne) in my body – this could provide an plausible mechanism for some autoimmune conditions.

And it seems possible (for now) that milk fucks up the insulin/blood sugar regulation of my body – something I need to confirm† or rule out‡. Next time

Update: Just one short update, a second try with raw-milk cheese, and I did not get any noticeable bad health results. Let's see.

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† Confirmation that milk fucks up insulin/glucose regulation would be really really cool, as it would provide an mechanism for some of the diseases we see – say: obesity, "metabolic syndrome", T1DM and T2DM (type 1/2 diabetes mellitus)

‡ Ruling out negative health effects (for me) of raw milk would be really really cool, as I could eat cheese again, in the form of raw milk cheese.

My Acne is caused by Milk and Dairy

I can now say, with rather high confidence, that my acne was caused by the consumption of (cow-)milk. I used to drink a lot of milk – and had a lot of acne. One and a half years ago I massively reduced my consumption of milk and milk-products, and my acne almost went away. I ceased to eat dairy and my acne went completely away. I reintroduced dairy, and my acne came back, pimples within 6 to 12 hours. It does not rise to the level to be considered proof, but for me, in my case, it is pretty clear.

Over the next months I will try Ghee ("clarified butter", which is almost free of both cow proteins and lactose, and contains almost only fatty acids) to see if this still contributes to my acne or not.

ME/CFS and Depression can be co-morbid

Purely on a anecdotal level:

I used to have depressions. I got rid of the depression over a year ago – I think my depression was caused by grain-products.

When ever I did something, I felt emotionally better, but bodily worse. When you have "just" depression, you feel not worse after doing something.

So I think depression and ME/CFS can be co-morbid. Having one does not rule out the other.