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Tangent from the article, but when I read the headline I thought I'd at least share in case it helps anyone who might have chronic pain like I've dealt with lately.

For years now I've been suffering from tons of weird shit. I've had this persistent painful skin rash that pops up all over my body. Steroids would kill it for awhile but it would always come back. Folks would ask me if I had burned myself when they'd see places on my skin. Just chalked up to an allergy from my doctors (to what? many things they guessed).

To top that fun off, my knees and one shoulder have been killing me. Had trouble walking up stairs. Couldn't do pull-ups anymore without extreme pain. I'd wake up in pain. Just constant pain. People just chalk that up to me getting older. Arthritis I guess.

But then my wife felt like trying to do some Whole 30 kind of thing. I hate this stuff. But whatever. She needed support so I went along with it. Cut out gluten, dairy, alcohol, sugar. Low-carb. High protein.

And after a week: I could move my arm above my head again. Walking up stairs became normal. Huh! Cool!

I thought, maybe my body just needed a reset and gave that diet up.

All this stuff came back.

Now realize how important it is for me to stay on a low-carb diet. It doesn't seem to be gluten or dairy getting me. But sugar, alcohol and carbs. And I wouldn't say I was that bad at eating those before. But clearly I'm super sensitive to them.

Today, I stay on a low-carb diet. I cheat on Saturdays. Allow myself to eat the nominal sugary treat and have a couple alcoholic drinks. But I barely want to since my life is just like a billion times better.

All that joint pain is gone. My skin has cleared up. I'm doing pull ups again. Running a ton. Just did 8.5 miles today.

So, all I know, is if you feel like shit constantly, it might be worth throwing sugar and alcohol away. Might be worth trying an elimination diet. I can't believe how long I laughed this stuff off when clearly it's so incredibly important and has transformed my life.

Edit: I forgot to mention the brain fog I was living with too. There was a fluid in my ears screwing with my balance. Felt like I had a head cold. Also has cleared up.

4 comments

As a comment below guessed you may suffer from collagen vascular disease. I’d like to suggest checking Autoimmune Paleo diet

https://www.amazon.de/Paleo-Approach-Reverse-Autoimmune-Dise...

It helped many people with diagnosed and undiagnosed autoimmune diseases and conditions.

Sounds like your body was having trouble making collagen

Oh! That's interesting. Sure does sound like that. Thanks for the heads up! Huh. Glad I posted this.

Wow, great comment Nate that was rewarded with some equally eye opening advice for you to look into. I’d like to echo your message of some type of elimination diet being a valuable experience for anyone. I did the Whole 30 as well and it truly is amazing to discover how what you eat can have such a profound effect on how you feel. As I write that it seems so silly and obvious but until you really get a “reset” it’s easy to get used to feeling pretty average to lousy.

Whats your daily mealplan look like? I tried the Tim Ferriss slow carb diet and had success losing weight. And loved the cheat day. But didn't feel different, per se. I too have weird one shoulder push-up pain, though. So you have my attention!

Here's my some basic rules as best as I can describe it. It's not super scientific and fairly Slow-carb like. I'm still experimenting as it's really hard to dial in the specifics.

Breakfast: Spinach+carrot+blueberry+strawberry+banana+flax+protein powder smoothing. We're careful with how much fruit we put in this. Can definitely make this even lower carb if we wanted to.

Lunch and dinner: eat pretty normally, but I keep it as low carb as possible. I also keep it fairly light in gluten and dairy. I worry I might be sensitive to gluten. It seems like that's causing my wife migraines too.

For example: Had burgers last night but no bread, no potatoes, no cheese. Just meat and veggies. Desert is usually just rice cakes with peanut butter (just nuts and salt, no added sugar) and cinnamon.

Also, no snacking. Just those meals. I'm done eating by 7pm at night. Here's the original ebook that kicked off how I eat now: https://drive.google.com/file/d/166FSLdptgLAiL96Hl29a_qss8HP...

Really just followed that for 5 days and its recipes.

I've also started fooling with not eating breakfast until 10am or later. This has helped with getting a ton of exercise done in the morning because now I don't feel so heavy doing something like running for an hour and a half.

EDIT: Also been enjoying Freshly and their microwavable meals. It's all gluten free and easy to sort their meals by carb intake.

I've been losing weight using a keto diet, which is very low-carb:

- No more than 20g of NET carbs per day. (Carb grams minus soluble fiber grams in the US; food labels in other countries may already show Carb grams with the fiber subtracted out.)

- Protein depends on your lean body mass, age, sex, and activity level. See https://keto-calculator.ankerl.com/

- Fat depends on your goals and hunger. If you're trying to maintain your current weight, eat enough fat to satisfy your hunger after the carbs and protein. If you're trying to lose weight, eat less fat than that. And if you're trying to gain weight, eat more.

The limit on NET carbs guides you towards high-fiber plants, and away from sugar, most flours and other refined carbs, and starchy plants like potatoes and rice. It also limits the amount of fruit you can have, because of their high sugar content. (Occasional berries is your best option.) You'll also end up gluten free, because anything with gluten is going to be too many carbs.

It takes a week or two for most people to get past the carb-addiction cravings when starting this, and you'll feel like an addict in withdrawal. Electrolytes help. Pickle juice is great. After a month or so, you start feeling a lot better.

A helpful welcoming community can be found at /r/keto

I tried that one, too. Felt like my food costs went way up, but it was easy to stick to otherwise. So, what did you eat today??

Every symptom there suggests you have an autoimmune condition with a dietary trigger.