It may sound funny or weird whatever, but I was just wondering if anyone has stuck to like the same 1-3 foods during treatment and eat nothing else out of fear of herxing more lol? Like for example , I've done excellent on dark leafy greens, lean chicken , salmon and turkey. Anyone else consistent with just a few foods that are the same every single day? Might sound weird but it helps me herx loads less and helped tremendously. I'm guessing from no sugar and processed foods much ? I'm terrified to go back to a regular American diet knowing that it may screw everything up because I've come a long way you know?

Yes, I definitely did. Mostly because I was getting a lot of diarrhea so I didn't want to experiment much. Also I needed a high-protein diet because I was getting protein deficiency from bartonella. I also developed the vitamin D problem and needed to be careful not to eat foods too high in vitamin D. So I found a few things that were okay to eat and stuck with it.

I did get sibo due to gastric motility issues caused by HPA axis stress. Taking hydrocortisone and naltrexone solved it.

I ate the Standard American Diet all my life up until I got sick. It wasn't anything I ever put thought into. That was just what I was exposed to growing up. After I got sick and started educating myself I knew I had to change if I wanted to give myself the best possible shot at healing. I made a complete 180 in regards to diet. Unfortunately, even healthy foods give me IBS type symptoms. I really ought to do an elimination diet. I have a hard time sticking to that type of diet.

Even if I was to magically cure myself in the next month and could tolerate any type of eating habits that I wanted I would not change from my current lifestyle. With all the knowledge I've gained over this time of being sick I realized people in modernized Western countries are killing and debilitating themselves due to their lifestyle choices. The old cliche saying rings true for me regarding health; "you don't know what you have until you lose it". I quite enjoy being a healthy active person. If I was ever able to significantly regain my health I don't plan on taking that granted. I'd like to enjoy it for as long as possible.

I keep reading about Garzie's success but keep coming up with ad hoc reasons not to try a more keto diet. I've never been able to make that jump for some reason.

Post Edited (Lymie24) : 12/21/2022 7:31:13 PM (GMT-8)

What’s interesting - is most of my life I had diarrhea every time I ate a meal. Would usually be within a half hour of eating.
Earliest I remember is about 4 or 5 years old.

And then it just stopped.
This was around the time I got Lyme/Bart and started treatment.
I now wonder if I had Bart as a child - and that was causing the diarrhea.
I don’t get the diarrhea after I eat anymore.

The Dude Abides said...
However, I now have concerns about high-fat diets. This is a new development for me, after several years of eating a high-fat (not ketogenic) diet.

i had concerns about high fat diets also

we have been inundated with information about fat and heart disease risk for decades - so much so that its ingrained in the western culture

and there are real studies in rodents correlating poor health outcomes with fat intake

it took me some time to figure out that there are fats - and then there are fats

feeding mice high fat chow with added industrially produced seed oils - is not the same as increasing the fat content in a human diet with unprocessed fats like animal fat, olive oil, coconut oil, nuts etc - ie things we would have eaten before the industrialised age

in fact no one has shown a link between high fat diets using these type of fats and things like heart disease - in fact ketogenic diets have been shown to reverse metabolic syndrome and other health conditions that lead to cardiovascular disease

it turns out that most of messaging that health policy makers have been churning out over the last 30 years has been built on poor science, and people trying to make a name for themselves etc etc

i would like to be able to expand my fibre intake to diversify my plant based intake for the benefits to my overall health via the diversity it creates in the microbiome - but thats just not an option for me while my gut is inflamed and disturbed by infection - so that will have to wait a while.

my ex had worse gut issues than me - and it helped her dramatically - so i wonder if that a predictor of who will benefit the most.
for me - i had gut issues - but fatigue was the biggest issue - it helped that improve by i think around 30-40% in just a few weeks.

for what its worth - i think of it as basically taking a load off the immune system - as the immune system is no longer fighting all the inflammation caused by an inflamed upset gut - 60% of our immune system resides in the gut lining and all the lymph nodes that surround it - so this makes a lot of sense to me - and it helps mitochondria work better also

there is no getting away from the fact that it takes effort - so it is absolutely natural for your brain to come up with reasons for not doing it - mine did.

i would say - just make a commitment to do it for 1 month - and not second guess that till the month is up - then decide if you feel better for it