How much water weight can the body store?

Regrettably, I don't have any good answers to your questions. But, I wondered about your sodium intake. From what (I think) I recall, your diet was pretty limited, due to your digestive issues. However, I don't recall the details.

Do you consume foods with a lot of salt (e.g. canned soups or other packaged foods)? Or, perhaps use a lot of salt in your cooking or on your food?

For whatever reason, I've always craved salt and I still salt everything to death.

I figured it was a longshot, because you've probably put the Google servers through their paces, with your many searches. I used to do the same. Don't give up. There is an answer...you just have to find the person who knows it. Every person who can't help is bringing you one step closer to someone who can. Corny, perhaps, but true.

I can't really answer that question. One of the causes of water retention is heart problems.

But, water weights 8.34 lbs per gal. So, when I go on my low carb diet, I tend to lose the first 12-15 lbs in water weight.

An example of my day. Breakfast will be a salad and omelet.
Lunch might be a Hamburger from Carl's (lettuce wrap, with extra jalapenos)

Supper might be steak and salad, or a taco salad without the chips. Gotta keep getting the roughage from the salads, or or other problems can take hold.

This might be somewhat tangential, but my POTS specialist prescribed 1.5 teaspoons of salt per day, ideally consumed in the morning, to help my body hold onto water enough to maintain blood volume. So it's interesting to me that you you have issues with water retention, but still have POTS. Not sure what to make of that.

I totally hear you about not being confident that medical professionals can help you, as 19/20 medical appointment I have are an utter waste of time, money, and energy. That said, I suppose there's a chance that gaining pounds of fluid so quickly, all in your abdomen, could indicate that an organ is swelling or infected. Any pain in your abdomen at all? Issues with digestion, in addition to the constipation? Any chance of SIBO, parasites, dysbiosis in your large intestine, or candida? First, though, I would hope that addressing the constipation could alleviate the issue. Does constipation happen to you a lot?

I'm listening to the chronic Lyme summit presentation about CIRS by Jill Carnahan at overcomechroniclyme.com, and this passage stuck out to me as maybe related to your experience:

"...Patients can have massive weight gain. They can gain 3-50 pounds in a few months because of the leptin resistance." Diuretic hormones (ADH) get messed up by mold illness and can cause this sort of issue, and the related lab tests are simple LabCorp tests covered by insurance.

Just thought I'd pass this along in case it resonates!

Do you have bart? It caused a lot of stomach pains when I herxed.

What you describe seems like bartonella. The bacteria cannot metabolize sugar and eat protein instead. I was starving all the time from the lack of protein, and overate and gained a lot of weight. Also the lack of protein leads to insufficient albumin, and my abdomen would get swollen and full of fluid. So I not only gained fat, but also water.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmc348914/

Somebody said...
we observed that B. henselae did not derive carbon and energy from the catabolism of glucose, which is consistent with genome nucleotide sequence data suggesting an incomplete glycolytic pathway. Of interest, B. henselae depleted amino acids from the culture medium and accumulated ammonia in the medium, an indicator of amino acid catabolism.

As for the MCAS, killing borrelia burgdorferi with abx got rid of it for me.

jb1994 said...
Quin, it's not really an issue of overeating for me. I eat a very reasonable amount, actually less than I was when I didn't gain all this weight. So I don't understand how it could be fat... especially when it comes on so quickly. And all seems to be localized in my abdomen. I have tried cutting out protein and it still results in weight gain in spite of decreased calorie intake, so it seems to happen regardless of macronutrient ratio. I believe my albumin is fine, but other kidney tests like BUN/creatinine and protein are over/under/borderline normal.

Yep. The edema was mostly in my abdomen, but sometimes in my ankles. And my body was in total starvation mode, anything I ate got stored as fat. Even when I cut down on food, I still gained weight. I suspect I didn't eat as little as I thought I did, I just felt like I was starving all the time, so it seemed like I was eating so little.

A few months of minocycline killed most of the bartonella, and now I'm losing weight.

jb1994 said...
Actually I've noticed I drink more than I pee, which also makes me think it is water, but no one explains why this is happening or where the water is going since my bladder ultrasounds are normal. Sigh.

Most of the water evaporates.

I herxed pretty bad from minocycline killing bart. Three weeks and no results?

Also bart seems to hide in the biofilms that borrelia creates. You need to get rid of the lyme disease or the bart will just come back.

That's strange. My insomnia seemed to correlate with weight loss. I assumed some fat-soluble toxins were being released.

Well if Bartonella can't digest sugar maybe I should go on an all carb diet instead of keto! Lol. I'm reading about rice fasting at the moment, says it's supposed to be very good for the digestive system. I tried it one day and it was pretty filling but rice got old pretty quick.