Felt Weird, Went To ER.

[kringlecold]

After going out and standing in sunlight for about 30 mins. my temp rose to 97.6, though this was about two hours after eating.

At 10:30 I burnt my hand with steam and felt as though I was going to have a heart attack.

At 11:10 I checked my temp and pulse after having a meal of beef, coffee and gelatin, and salted and sweetened raw milk; also black grapes and cherries.
My temp was 98.4 and my pulse 99.
The pulse scares me but I like the temp. Still, my head feels a bit foggy, I'm also sneezing for some reason and have a stuffy nose.

 

[messtafarian]

Hi.

You sound worried. It also sounds like you're having an exacerbated adrenaline response to something. So the first thing I would do if I were you is check your blood *glucose*. If you have money go and get one of those deals at the drugstore that checks it -- you should be able to snag one for under twenty dollars. If not usually some drugstore in your area should have a "healthcheck" thingy where you can get a nurse to check you.

Hypoglycemia is a Thing. But generally, your heart rate -- as long as your blood *pressure* is stable -- is not an emergency. Adrenaline definitely responds to both high and low blood sugar so it helps to monitor this. I just went through something today where I felt dizzy, freaked out and weird; checked my blood sugar which was at 70 -- ate a single marshmallow and I was fine ten minutes later.

Sounds like you felt okay after your meal, while you checked your stats.

If you were being treated for dehydration then your electrolyte levels are off. There is more than one type of salt: calcium, magnesium and potassium are all in play too. I don't think it's potassium or your blood pressure would be high.

For nervous conditions it is usually magnesium that is depleted since we get all kinds of calcium in basically everything. Tomorrow try a long -- LONG -- epsom salt or dead sea salt bath; a bit of honey or some other simple sugar on the hour. If that helps, look at your sugar/protein fat ratios from now on. Also -- be careful with the gelatin. Its more of a drug than people realize.

 

[j.]

Also -- be careful with the gelatin. Its more of a drug than people realize.

Gelatin would be an important part of the diet if people ate the whole animal instead of just muscle meats, so I think it's more like a natural staple food than a drug. I don't think one should restrict its consumption unless one notices that it always triggers a problem, digestive discomfort for example.

 

[messtafarian]

Also -- be careful with the gelatin. Its more of a drug than people realize.

Gelatin would be an important part of the diet if people ate the whole animal instead of just muscle meats, so I think it's more like a natural staple food than a drug. I don't think one should restrict its consumption unless one notices that it always triggers a problem, digestive discomfort for example.

I see this as the same as the issue with supplementing certain B vitamins and not some others. Bodybuilders can effect all kinds of weird hormonal anomalies by tweaking their aminos; they look great but I'm not sure how healthy they really are. Just an observation that one should go slow and pay attention.

 

[j.]

I see this as the same as the issue with supplementing certain B vitamins and not some others. Bodybuilders can effect all kinds of weird hormonal anomalies by tweaking their aminos; they look great but I'm not sure how healthy they really are. Just an observation that one should go slow and pay attention.

But unless gelatin is one's only source of protein, it's not going to be like supplementing with some aminos and not others. People on this diet usually consume, dairy, eggs, meat (liver), sometimes potatoes, which have the other aminos.

 

[messtafarian]

People complain of side effects from some of these supplements. Coconut oil causes nausea due to the heavy load on the liver, thyroid supplementation causes heart symptoms, niacin causes vascular flushing, progesterone causes breast tenderness and menstrual cycle interruption, collagen causes GERD and watery stool - and some other cognitive/emotional effects.

I don't think this necessarily means that any of the above are dangerous. But they clearly effect human functioning, which means they are really potent legal drugs replete with side effects. If a person is experiencing strong anxiety I would especially urge caution with amino acids. Not avoidance -- just caution.

 

[Mittir]

I see this as the same as the issue with supplementing certain B vitamins and not some others. Bodybuilders can effect all kinds of weird hormonal anomalies by tweaking their aminos; they look great but I'm not sure how healthy they really are. Just an observation that one should go slow and pay attention.

One of the core of Ray Peat's recommendation is to follow a low tryptophan diet.
You can not do that without adding some gelatin to it. Lowering tryptophan helps
mainly by lowering serotonin and increasing thyroid function. He has written a whole article on gelatin.
http://raypeat.com/articles/articles/gelatin.shtml
For some people gelatin can be difficult to digest .

 

[j.]

People complain of side effects from some of these supplements.

Sure, a lot of people are sick and can't process natural substances well. When I was starting I couldn't even have strained OJ. That doesn't mean orange juice is a drug. It's a perfectly natural substance, with components that are necessary to optimal health, just like gelatin.

 

[messtafarian]

I don't think gelatin is a "natural substance" in the way you are characterizing it. It comes from a natural source but so does aspirin. It is rendered, cooked down, powdered from a specific part, not the whole -- of an animal. Most importantly though it contains specific amino acids and not others.

I used the analogy before of vitamin b12. B12 is more effective in B Complex than by itself in most instances, because it's assimilated then as whole food. Not too much can happen if you take too much b12 except possibly your body starts to experience something like a deficiency in other b vitamins. But with amino acids -- which have specific actions on the brain that can work exactly like psychotropics -- there is a need for some caution. And I say this based on what you see on the internet - L-Tyrosine for anxiety, L-Glutamine for alcoholism, and L-Glycine for insomnia, L-Tryptophan for depression. Etc. Gelatin has a specific enough amino acid picture to be considered very similar to this in my opinion.

 

[j.]

Gelatin has a specific enough amino acid picture to be considered very similar to this in my opinion.

Doesn't every source of protein have a specific amino acid picture? Doesn't milk have a specific amino acid picture (high in tryptophan for example)? Don't potatoes have a specific amino acid picture (low in tryptophan, for example)?

 

[messtafarian]

Sure. In fact everything has a specific amino acid, picture, lol. The difference is you can't get that amount of glycine *anywhere else*.

 

[j.]

Sure. In fact everything has a specific amino acid, picture, lol. The difference is you can't get that amount of glycine *anywhere else*.

Couldn't you get about the same amount of gelatin from bone broth?

Also, the glycine is not isolated. When you eat 15 grams of gelatin, you're eating 12 grams of things that aren't glycine and just 3 grams of glycine. Moreover, people consume gelatin with other things, for example milk, which makes the concentration of glycine even lower.

 

[messtafarian]

Yeah, so there are eight "essential" amino acids -- these are the acids the body can not make on its own. Private Tim Hall, is is name:

Phenylalanine
Valine
Tryptophan
Threonine
Isoleucine
Methionine
Histidine
Arginine
Leucine
Lysine

If you are looking for what is considered a "complete" protein, you'd want to make sure you got the basic eight because these are amino acids that one cannot create on one's own. In other words, the human body does not make it.

Here is the amino composition of some bulgarian cows:

It was established that in the proteins of the muscle investigated are contained the following aminoacids, expressed in g/16 g N: lysine--7.77; treonine--4.09, valine--5.12, methyonine--2.50, isoleucine--4.67, leucine--8.42, phenylalanine--4.34, triptophane--1.40, histidine--3.37, arginine--6.17, aspartic acid--7.92, serine--3.31, glutamine acid--13.30, proline--3.73, glycine--4.79, alanine--4.99, tirosine--3.84 and hydroxyproline--0.59.

Here is the amino acid composition of gelatin/collagen.

Alanine
8.9%
Arginine
7.8%
Asperic acid
6.0%
Glutamic acid
10.0%
Glycine
21.4%
Histidine 0.8%
Hydroxylysine 1.0%
Hydroxyproline 11.9%
Isoleucine 1.5%
Leucine 3.3%
Lycine 3.5%
Methionine 0.7%
Phenylanine 2.4%
Proline 12.4%
Serine 3.6%
Theronine 2.1%
Tyrosine 0.5%
Valine 2.2%

Now here is the kind of thing I'm talking about. recently -- say over the past ten years -- health food marketers have been isolating aminos ( and who knows how they do this) and marketing them as drugs. For bodybuilders there is always some angle they are trying to sell to; big gains, cut fat, etc. But they are also being marketed to people as mood enhancers -- tryptophan for relaxation for example.

And tryptophan, they would say, is a perfectly natural substance. Put it in a pill with some valerian and melatonin and licorice root or something and you've got a perfectly natural substance that solves anxiety and calms your stomach, yeah?

Only tryptophan sucks. And you wouldn't want to ingest any more of it than you had to ever .

Now note something up there -- beef actually does not have an awful lot of tryptophan. It's got some, but not a lot. Milk has quite a bit more. Both collagen and beef muscle do have one thing in common though -- lots and lots of glutamine. Glutamin is the most common amino acid in muscle meat. It is also one of those amino acids that are marketed as a "natural upper", mood improver and killer of cravings for both sugar and alcohol.

So here are the "side effects" warning for Glutamine on WebMD:

Glutamine is POSSIBLY SAFE for most adults and children when taken by mouth, but the potential side effects of glutamine are not known.

Adults should avoid using more than 40 grams of glutamine daily. Children, age 3 to 18, should not be given doses that are larger than 0.65 grams per kg of weight per day. Not enough is known about the safety of higher doses in children.
Special Precautions & Warnings:
Pregnancy and breast-feeding: Not enough is known about the use of glutamine during pregnancy and breast-feeding. Stay on the safe side and avoid use.

Severe liver disease with difficulty thinking or confusion (hepatic encephalopathy): Glutamine could make this condition worse. Don’t use it.

Monosodium glutamate (MSG) sensitivity (also known as "Chinese restaurant syndrome"): If you are sensitive to MSG, you might also be sensitive to glutamine, because the body converts glutamine to glutamate.

Mania, a mental disorder: Glutamine might cause some mental changes in people with mania. Avoid use.

Seizures: There is some concern that glutamine might increase the likelihood of seizures in some people. Avoid use.

So given that glutamine is one of the most common amino acids in the world of proteins, yet it can exacerbate seizures taken on its own in some people...what would one conclude? I personally would conclude that beef does not exacerbate seizures, but glutamine on its own can.

So given that that -- in the case of beef -- it *might be* a good thing that the tryptophan is there in the beef with the small amount of glycine to challenge the excitatory function of the glutamine. It could be that the massive amount of glutamine in collagen is offset by the glycine. But the point is that pushing and pulling these amino acid values around can and do create real and measurable effects and a lot of them have to do with brain function.

If health food stores are selling this:
http://www.amazon.com/AminoGH-Extreme-A ... ds=glycine

I would call gelatin a "safe drug". More of a drug than people realize, which is what I said a page ago.

 

[j.]

I would call gelatin a "safe drug". More of a drug than people realize, which is what I said a page ago.

That's fine, I just want to mention to the OP the other point of view, that it is more like a natural food than a drug because it has a similar amino-acid composition to bone broth.

The stuff about not having all the essential amino acids isn't anything new, or relevant, as people get the remaining amino acids from dairy, meats, or eggs, things people typically eat.

The warnings about isolated amino acids also aren't relevant, as the glycine in gelatin is accompanied by other amino acids and it is only 20% of the weight of a gram of gelatin.

I guess I can agree that it is like a drug in the same sense that table salt and table sugar are drugs.

 

[messtafarian]

The warnings about isolated amino acids also aren't relevant, as the glycine in gelatin is accompanied by other amino acids and it is only 20% of the weight of a gram of gelatin.

I guess I can agree that it is like a drug in the same sense that table salt and table sugar are drugs.

All the same there is a reason people have reactions to chinese food after, say, a big serving of mongolian beef. Or to tryptophan on top of a high-dairy diet.

You could make the same argument about table salt, I suppose. Sodium to potassium ratios are what I am struggling with lately because I have been diagnosed with hypertension. I've been prescribed a "calcium channel blocker." According to Dr. Peat the original calcium channel blocker is a different salt -- magnesium. On the other hand, salt is generally not a bad thing for you at all -- unless there is too much with nothing to challenge it.

 

[kringlecold]

Have been feeling a bit better. Took more salt than normal with OJ, eggs,and milk and felt dehydrated. Otherwise I'm keeping on the pro-thyroid diet now for maybe two weeks My tem.p isn't gong up much and my pulse stays consistent around 75 or so.

 

[Peata]

Did you ever get this sorted out?