Carb slip: Is this a herx? Why the flair up?

Hello, All.

A little background. I have been doing really, really well. I see Dr. P in Wilton, CT. In Nov, he added Bactrim to my Tetra because of suspected Bart. I had a real hard time with it. A lot of flaring of all types of symptoms. I even stopped a day or two here and there. Then things evened out and I felt great. I think the best I had since I started treatment in Aug 2016. Then he added Rifampin to the Bactrim and Tetra. All hell broke loose! Worst I'd felt in a long time. Aches, pains, horrible tinnitus, insomnia, painful burning feet, headaches, fluish--all the symptoms I had before. But, that too got better, and THAT was the best I'd ever felt. Real progress.

Now my question: I started a keto diet about 10 days ago. 33 grams or less of carbs a day. (Lost 11 pounds!) Days 4 - 7 were pure hell. A lot of nerve pain--my biggest Lyme and Bart symptom. Plus a bunch of other stuff. I started to see improvement on day 8, even more improvement on day 9. I was stoked. Dr. P said that there can be a lot of die-off as glucose is eliminated from your body after 2 days of strict keto. Fine. Makes sense.

Today, day 10, we were shooting a video (I'm a food writer), and I had to eat a cinnamon roll on camera that our guest made. I noticed about 2 hours later I had a lot of nerve pain. I thought those little spirochete suckers would have been happy that they got sugar and wouldn't have died off to cause the pain.

So I'm confused. WAS that die-off days 4 - 7? And what was the flair today? A buffet? I've hesard of people who stopped the flair by eating carbs.

Thanks in advance.

Post Edited (Smeadley) : 4/14/2019 6:40:16 PM (GMT-6)

Smeadley, hey. It never ceases to amaze me how much diet controls symptoms, yes ketogenic, low carb, intermittent fasting seems to do the trick almost every time.

But just when I'm feeling symptom-free, I'll go over the 33-g or so carbs of the day, sometimes quite a lot over it, and well that's an understatement, because 1 or 2 days a week I like to think I can still have an anything-eat day but, I pay for it in aches, pains, tinnitus, sharp light sensitivity, and all the other symptoms, and I believe it is directly related to that poor diet beforehand.

A 12 oz soda, a gluten-laden hoagie sandwich, and that's a flare up for me. Irritability, psych symptoms, worsened depression, anxiety, from...food, just food, the wrong food.

Switch that up to sulforaphane rich foods, broccoli, kale and some fatty meats during the day and I'm good to go, sometimes excellent. And this can happens within hours, like night and day, and being spaced out is part of this ride anyway. But the mood changes are manic to say the least.

Take yesterday, I ate my fill of plentiful meats, about 4 hardboiled eggs and some raw cabbage, and carrots, that was mostly it, and I felt great, got a bunch of things done. It seems that I can eat that way, and have an 80% symptom-free day, and go up to 90%, have some energy to do things, especially if I take a bunch of supplement for energy and so on, racetams, siberian ginseng, ashwaganda, and caffeine being the easy though ill-advised go to.

So then, an intermittent fast, and still eating a high fat meal is nice during it too. As long as the carbs stay under that 30g or so limit. Hard boiled eggs are a super easy and affordable way to stay keto, I make ground turkey, chicken legs too, and the occasional rib eye or flap steak.

But I don't believe in any mono-diet, a variety of foods is best I think, and I've even trained myself to occasionally "tolerate" (delicious but not healthy) junk or carb-y foods, but yeah I notice a flare up usually.

The exercise (from the chores I did or what have you) can make a difference, and nutrition, for sure.

And I should say, I'm not treating currently (in the bactericidal sense, except for whatever fasting/autophagy occurs with my suppressed immune system), I'm "off-treatment" so I hope when I start heavy abx/ herbals again like you , I won't have too bad of a herx.

TL;DR Diet can help or hinder treatment. Yes it's a herx. Those spirochetes are hungry, and this bacteria is resilient and persistent to survive one way or another. I know, it hurts.

I don't think "Carbs" are bad, if they're whole-food carbs. Pancakes are not the same as broccoli and carrots. This is constantly conflated. I doubt humans would have ever maintained a never-ending state of ketosis. Then again, I think looking back to what some people might or might not have allegedly done is misguided. Personally, I don't want to sleep on a rock or live without heating and air conditioning. It's funny how current diet trends push people to go as long as possible without eating. That's totally against how humans are wired. Can we do it? Yes, of course. But, I worry about all the intellectual interference. Just my opinion. Do what you like.

I'm not saying a ketogenic diet can't help some conditions. But, neither my parents nor my grandparents "ate keto," so, from that standpoint, I see it as a fad. If you don't, that's fine. It's not my intent to change your mind.

I've seen a lot of trends come and go over the last several decades. My point, as previously stated, was that pancakes and broccoli aren't the same. In other threads, there have been discussions about the negative effects of high-fat diets. Valter Longo is one of the people that have commented on this matter. No doubt you're aware of him, due to his Fasting Mimicking Diet.

I'm not trying to cause any acrimony, just so you know. But, I do think some people tend to take "diet" a bit far. I've come through the Paleo, Primal, Low-Carb, Weston. A Price, etc., circles, too. I know much of the lingo, ideas, and arguments. There's Pros and Cons in most things.

All that said, if "Keto" is working for you, you're feeling good, and all your health markers are on-track, then I'm truly happy for you. I hope it stays that way over the coming decades.

I mean, limiting one's self to 30 grams of carbohydrates per day is, probably too strict. I'm talking about the starchy stuff and the straight up sugar that the body doesn't immediately burn as fuel and doesn't know what to do with, so it goes into the fat pile.

Dude makes a good point that broccoli has carbs too. I don't subscribe to absolutes like carbs=bad, fats=bad, sugar=bad because the mind needs glucose to think, fats are important for signaling hormones, and carb-loading is a thing if you have to run a marathon the next day, I guess an athlete can burn this off naturally.

Like right now I'm crashing because I had tortilla chips, a bunch of them, and salsa, which is sorta bad because tomatoes, being a nightshade and all and though I used to love eggplant parmesan, I think twice about nightshades now, and cheese and dairy, yeah everything in moderation, I just overdid it on taco chips today lol. And my exercise has been very limited.

One thing I can say is that these diets made me think differently about how food affects my health, whether it's fats as an important signaling hormone (or is that cholesterol?... anyway things that have gotten a bad rap in the past) or salt as a mineral. I still adhere to a low-glycemic with micronutrients diet when I can stick to it.

I say this as someone whose body isn't exactly a temple, more like a reasonably used temple with critters in it.

Post Edited (borrelioburgdorferii) : 4/15/2019 9:26:05 PM (GMT-6)

I think the difference is the rise in blood sugar rather than the *type* of carb. The fiber (plus the extremely low carb content of broccoli) pretty much mitigates any effect it would have on blood sugar/insulin/cortisol/etc. Pancakes of course are full of fast burning carbs and if you're sensitive/hypoglycemic that will mess you up.

31 pounds in 10 days is unbelievable! I've lost over a pound in two days which is amazing to me already lol. Now if my stomach would stop being bloated I'd be ecstatic.

Oh okay, you said you started ten days ago so I thought it was keto. Now I see it says 11 pounds in 10 days. And this thread isn't brand new. Whoops. Hah.

As for the symptoms, that's strange. Mine don't really change unless I add something new in.

Anyway, congrats on the 30lbs lost! I'd love to lose a few kilos more and then I'd be set. But I think I do have to give up gluten forever. I lost weight immediately after I stopped eating crackers. White rice doesn't seem to affect me as badly. Ii can't believe I'm LOSING weight on the same amount of calories I was slowly gaining on though. It's actually quite a bit for my size and activity level though I suppose I have youth on my side.

That makes sense. I suppose it works the other way around too. At my worst I ballooned in size and that made every symptom worse.