Dizzy/lightheaded/weak - not sure what I did wrong

ilovethesea

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Okay so today was my first day trying to fully embrace the Peat style eating, except midway through it went horribly wrong!

I started the day with coffee which I never drink. Added tons of cream, a big spoonful of honey and a spoonful of Knox plain gelatin. I was feeling really good. Then I ate several big slices of cheese which I continued snacking on right up until I started making lunch. (I had a late breakfast and early lunch so it was not even 2 hours between them.)

So then I start my lunch with a glass of freshly squeezed oj, lightly salted. Again something I never drink. As I was drinking it I had some more cheese... didn't feel that hungry or anything but thought I better have some more food so I made some white rice. Added salt and lots of butter.

I was going to make more food but then as I started eating the rice and continued drinking the oj, all of a sudden I felt hot, started to sweat, and then got really lightheaded and dizzy and weak.

I was talking on the phone to a friend and had to get off and lie down. I was totally clumsy and couldn't think straight. The feeling didn't go away so after 10 mins or so I got up and fried some eggs in butter. Thought maybe I needed more protein than the cheese was giving me. Ate one but I could barely get it down and still felt weird anyway. Lied down again.

By this time I'm suddenly ravenous. I got up again and had some raw carrots. No change. Then wondered do I need more sugar? So I had some spoonfuls of vanilla Haagen Daz. Then I tried to nap it off for 30 mins and it sort of worked, but when I got up I was still feeling weird. So as a last resort I had some PUFA rice crackers that were lying around the house and some homemade chocolate graham cracker squares. Didn't really help though.

And now here I am. Still feel weird and weak - and hungry yet no food seems appealing. What the hell did I do?? :oops:
 

kiran

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For starters, I'd avoid cream, It can increase endotoxin absorption. Drink your coffee with milk instead.

Be wary of cheese, I have noticed that not all cheeses agree with me.

With that much butter/cream/ice cream, you may have pushed your body into fat burning mode. Might want to stick to sugar burning mode until you know how much fat you can tolerate.
 
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ilovethesea

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Okay so what causes the endotoxins to be released in the first place? Can that be prevented? And I take it you're saying it's the fat in the cream increases their absorption?

I really dislike milk so that's why I wanted to ease in with cream mixed into other things instead of having to drink it straight.

Same with cheese. I much prefer to eat cheese than drink milk. I've actually been a pretty big cheese eater long before this and it's never given me problems. Although, I've usually eaten it with wheat instead of rice like I had today.

I've also been pretty "fatty" in the past when following Weston Price stuff -- so eating tons of butter, coconut oil and ice cream isn't new to me at all. The only time I've had issues is when I've made this Weston Price muffin recipe that has tons of butter, coconut oil and eggs - that gives me stomach cramps if I eat too many of them in one sitting.

But I don't have stomach cramps today so I feel like this doesn't have to do with fat. It's now been 4 hours since this started and I STILL feel strange and weak. Is it the sugars? Too much? Too little? I don't know what on earth to eat now.

Just took an aspirin as I feel like I totally stressed out my body somehow. Hopefully that doesn't mess me up even more...
 

Dean

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I don't like milk either, but if you add enough sugar it tastes like melted ice cream.

You didn't bloom the gelatin? I guess if that was the problem though you would have felt it in the stomach. Maybe it was just too much of everything right out of the gate?
 
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ilovethesea

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Oh are we supposed to let the gelatin go all congealed? I'm not into Jello either so I thought if I just melted it into hot coffee I'd get the nutrients without the texture.
Is that wrong??

The aspirin is making me feel somewhat better now but still confused about what the hell happened today. Maybe I'm so unused to so much sugar, salt, fat and caffeine at once that my body couldn't take it? Or at least not without a whole bunch of wheat to soak it up? I realized today how carb-heavy my diet was... I miss the bread and pasta already - sob!! :(
 

charlie

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ilovethesea, Ray Peat has said that making all these changes, can be extremely stressful on the body. So I think it might be best to take it slow, and ease into it.
 

Dean

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ilovethesea said:
Oh are we supposed to let the gelatin go all congealed? I'm not into Jello either so I thought if I just melted it into hot coffee I'd get the nutrients without the texture.
Is that wrong??

:(


Well I'm no expert, but I think if you are going to use something non-hydrolyzed like the Knox...You'd be better off sprinkling it into a little water and letting it bloom. It will congeal real quick in a little water. Then, you could scoop some out into your coffee and dissolve it in. I think that would be better, but I could be wrong.
 
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ilovethesea

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I found where I read the gelatin melted in coffee thing. It was on this thread: viewtopic.php?p=30

"Although the prepared powdered gelatin doesn't require any cooking, dissolving it in hot water makes it digest a little more quickly. "

Did I misinterpret that?
 

Dean

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I'm sure there are some people who can pound down the gelatin powder, hydrolyzed or not. I think most who don't gel their gelatin though use the hydrolyzed. I could be wrong. Everyone's digestion and digestive capabilities are different.

I do think though that if you are going to use the non-hydrolyzed gelatin powder, but don't want to consume it gelled, it would be advisable to bloom it in a little water or cool liquid first. It will congeal in just a few minutes. Then, you could scoop the gel or some of it into your coffee or other hot beverage and dissolve it in. JMO, though.
 

Lucy

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kiran said:
For starters, I'd avoid cream, It can increase endotoxin absorption. Drink your coffee with milk instead.

Huh, why should we be avoiding cream? Please explain how it increases endotoxin absorption... I thought milk/sat fat is beneficial, unless you are trying to lose weight.
 

Shrimp

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...all of a sudden I felt hot, started to sweat, and then got really lightheaded and dizzy and weak

This is how I felt when I went hyperthyroid. Did you notice if your heart rate went up at all? Are you on thyroid medication?

Maybe try avoiding the coffee for now; it might be pushing your metabolism too much on top of everything else. Easing into things is good, as others have said.
 

kiran

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Lucy said:
kiran said:
For starters, I'd avoid cream, It can increase endotoxin absorption. Drink your coffee with milk instead.

Huh, why should we be avoiding cream? Please explain how it increases endotoxin absorption... I thought milk/sat fat is beneficial, unless you are trying to lose weight.

Well, here's a study that says that the consumption of cream increases the plasma lipopolysaccharides (aka endotoxin).
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2858203/

Here's another study that suggests that endotoxin is positively correlated with fat intake.
"In humans, no significant relation was observed between cardiovascular disease risk factors, carbohydrate and protein intakes, and plasma LPS concentration. Conversely, positive correlations were observed with fat and energy intakes. In a multivariate analysis, endotoxemia was independently associated with energy intake. Compared with the control mice, mice fed a high-energy diet showed an increase in plasma LPS. However, in mice fed a high-carbohydrate diet, the increase in plasma LPS was blunted compared with mice fed a high-fat diet."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18469242

Here's a blog post about the subject:
http://high-fat-nutrition.blogspot.com/ ... toxin.html

I think I wouldn't necessarily agree with Peter's conclusions though.

So atleast in the short run, cream might be a problem.
 

Lucy

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Thanks, that's interesting, how did you come across this? Do you know Peat's opinion on these studies? I don't remember him ever talking about this...
 

kiran

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This study was actually some news in the Paleo-sphere a while ago. I haven't read anything from Ray on this topic either.

I agree with Andrew's blog post too.

I think the moral of the story is to be wary of large amounts of cream or other saturated fat (all fat in general perhaps!), especially if you have gut issues.
 

jyb

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Dean said:
I'm sure there are some people who can pound down the gelatin powder, hydrolyzed or not. I think most who don't gel their gelatin though use the hydrolyzed. I could be wrong. Everyone's digestion and digestive capabilities are different.

I do think though that if you are going to use the non-hydrolyzed gelatin powder, but don't want to consume it gelled, it would be advisable to bloom it in a little water or cool liquid first. It will congeal in just a few minutes. Then, you could scoop the gel or some of it into your coffee or other hot beverage and dissolve it in. JMO, though.

I use the non-hydro version. I dissolve it in warm water. It's not very nice texture to drink, but its quick. Do you know why its better to let it bloom?

By bloom I assume you mean to let it gellify a bit, but not wait so long until it becomes chewy like gummy bears.
 

jyb

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kiran said:
This study was actually some news in the Paleo-sphere a while ago. I haven't read anything from Ray on this topic either.

I agree with Andrew's blog post too.

I think the moral of the story is to be wary of large amounts of cream or other saturated fat (all fat in general perhaps!), especially if you have gut issues.

I recall reading somewhere RP saying he could eat a quart of ice cream a day, which seems like a lot of cream. So, it would be interesting to get his opinion on this.
 

Bryan

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I would look at supplemental thyroid and caffeine intake as probably the main issues. Gelatin can be a problem for some peoples digestion depending on the kind and how it was processed. Sugar might be a new thing for you too? Starch, if you ate a lot in the past and tolerated it, might effect your blood sugar somehow. It might be an interesting experiment to see if the starch helps keep blood sugar higher or something. Peat used to recommend salty starch / carbohydrate for insomnia I think.
 

Lucy

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jyb said:
kiran said:
This study was actually some news in the Paleo-sphere a while ago. I haven't read anything from Ray on this topic either.

I agree with Andrew's blog post too.

I think the moral of the story is to be wary of large amounts of cream or other saturated fat (all fat in general perhaps!), especially if you have gut issues.

I recall reading somewhere RP saying he could eat a quart of ice cream a day, which seems like a lot of cream. So, it would be interesting to get his opinion on this.

I agree, someone should ask him. My opinion was always that he doesn't think sat. fat is a problem, but I may be wrong. Maybe that's the reason I don't get well with only diet - I love ice cream and other whole milk products :)
 

John Eels

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@ilovethesea

You have felt fine with fat and cheese so far and you say you never drank OJ and coffee. I don't think the coffee is causing the problems you experience and neither does the gelatin which most people experience as helpful in alleviating digestive issues (the one that Peat recommends is by Great Lakes, see www.greatlakesgelatin.com, the green bottle on which it says Collagen Hydrolysate is the one that dissolves well in cold water. It's pricey but worth the investment. I have tried other ones and they tasted funky).

I don't think your hyperthyroid either, rather you are hypothyroid. You ate lots of fat in the past; I suspect you were on a low carb/high fat diet. It's likely that you have small intestinal bacterial overgrowth (SIBO) which feeds on the fructose in the OJ (see for more information on the connection between hypothyroidism and SIBO see this study). Bad breath after high sugar consumption is indicative of sugar being fermented by bacteria. I suspect the sugar load is too heavy for you right now. You don't need more sugar you need less. Try to stay clear from fructose, lactose and sucrose for a while. Introduce those sugars back into your diet gradually and each by themselves to see how you react to them. Grape sugar (glucose) is the easiest to digest and feeds very little bacteria b/c it's absorbed quickly; that could be your staple for a while. Pregnenolone (and if you're a woman progesterone) help you raise your metabolism and reduce the hormones of stress.

It might not be SIBO and the culprit is H. pylori. SIBO and H. pylori share common symptoms and both are related to digestive issues (I link you to two articles by Stephan Guyenet: Sugar, Hydrogen, Bacteria and Maldigestion, and More Thoughts on Hydrogen Gas and Bacterial Overgrowth).

You felt hot and weird. My hypothesis is that you experienced a sudden raise in serotonin. Danny Roddy writes about the digestive system in this article. Roddy writes:
One system that is greatly affected by the reduced blood supply is the intestine, which produces around 95% of serotonin in the body (Constance R. Martin). Dr. Peat has described serotonin as a primitive "protective" hormone responsible for producing contractions, diarrhea, and vomiting in the event that something noxious is consumed.
Serotonin is also involved in heat production (hyperthermia is a symptom in serotonin syndrome). Whatever irritates the intestine increases serotonin. So sugar can add stress when it feeds bacteria which irritate the intestine. In response the irritation the body releases serotonin.
 

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