Grain DT's? page

[jfilbin]

I quit eating wheat and grains and sugar on Monday. Yesterday and today, I've had the shakes and feel like I'm borderline faint. I'm I going through some kind of detox fit? It's freaking me out and it doesn't seem to help if I eat. It could just be that I'm a basket case. If you think that, just tell me so, I can take it!

[Piscator]

This sounds like a pretty normal reaction. It's not really a detox, but rather your body telling you to give it what it's used to having. It lasted just a few days for me - you could help ease it by eating some fruit (try an apple)- it gives a little sugar/carb boost - or you could just try riding it out.

Don't take this to mean that I'm giving a pass on your mental status. You may very well be a basket case! But the symptoms sound more physical.

Good luck!

[jfilbin]

LOL Piscator, thanks for the moral support. I'm trying to blame the mental problems on the current full moon situation, I can ride that for a couple of days!

[kennelmom]

Pretty normal. Grin and bear it, it gets better.

[Grizz]

JFilbin,

We are discussing this very subject in this thread:
http://www.marksdailyapple.com/forum...709#post218709

You could be experiencing Candida or "Low Carb Flu." How much did you weigh starting out on primal?
Here is Marks article on the "Low Carb Flu" that I just found.
http://www.marksdailyapple.com/low-carb-flu/
http://www.marksdailyapple.com/common-stumbling-blocks/

I suggest boosting your fat intake. Eat more bacon, & meats, add some Coconut milk to your diet. Pour the olive oil into your salads. If your body is no longer getting energy from High Carbs, you must get it from protein & healthy fats in meat, nuts, fruits & veggies.
Add some Avocados to your diet. Eat more nuts, fry your eggs & simmer your greens in bacon grease. Also add some fruits to your diet when you are feeling down.

Best to you,
Grizz

[Lewis]

I quit eating wheat and grains and sugar on Monday. Yesterday and today, I've had the shakes and feel like I'm borderline faint. I'm I going through some kind of detox fit? It's freaking me out and it doesn't seem to help if I eat. It could just be that I'm a basket case. If you think that, just tell me so, I can take it!

It's probably just that you're used to running off sugar and are not yet adapted to run more off fat.

If that is it, I really don't know whether it's best to just wait - because you will adapt - or to eat a few more carbs - but "primal carbs" - in the meantime. Possibly, the latter - if you're likely to faint. Don't want you falling down and cracking your head! Sweet potatoes, yams, and other root vegetables don't have the problems sugary foods and grains can have. Maybe have a banana.

I have wondered if this situation is partly one's gut flora adapting. Stefansson in The Fat of the Land - and old but very interesting, well-informed, and insightful book from a top-rate anthropologist and explorer - says some interesting things about how willing people working for him were to adopt an Eskimo diet while living in the North. He came to the view that it was not just mental attitude but that their gut flora needed to adapt. This was an all-meat diet - as in normal in very high latitudes for much, if not all, the year:

It is the Bellevue confirmation of the character of these changes, and my having noticed in the North that they take place in about the length of time needed by the novice to attain full appetite, which makes me recede from the earlier view that the difficulty in shifting from a mixed to a meat diet (or the opposite shift in the case of a meat eater) is wholly psychological, one of conservatism. I now feel that a part of the trouble is connected in some way with the change in intestinal flora which follows a shift from a mixed diet to meat or from a meat diet to mixed.* And then there are the current views about enzyme adjustment.

You're not going on an all-meat diet, but what you're now eating may be so different from what you were eating that which flora predominate in your gut needs to change.

[jfilbin]

I go to a wellness Doc and one of the things he looks for is Candida, I've been going to him for a year and he's never mentioned it to me, I think he would have caught that. My quest over the last year started w/ really bad migraines. Went to a neurologist, she was terrible. Went to the wellness Doc, went on a restricted diet, found out I have Gluten Intolerance and that was causing the migraines. Also had low thyroid and low progesterone, treating that w/ natural thyroid and bio-identical progesterone cream. I lost 15 pounds from that. I didn't get that I was supposed to go off Wheat completely, so was still eating "some". I've done two courses of HCG hormone for weight loss in the last 5 months, just finished w/ the second course and lost 55lbs. So I'm down to 175 from 230. For the last 30 or so days, my only source of sugar has been fruit, no dairy, very minimal carb intake. Went to my Doc Monday for a follow up, he put me on a "controlled carb diet". No grains, no sugar, no fruit, so it's somewhat Primal, which is where I was headed. The shakes, light headedness started yesterday, I quit grains Monday. So I'm hoping it will work itself out. Thanks for the info!