3 ms·

Did you follow an elimination diet to find out what you were sensitive to, or was it obvious? I'm considering an elimination diet but everything I read about a

Did you follow an elimination diet to find out what you were sensitive to, or was it obvious? I'm considering an elimination diet but everything I read about a diet plan are different.

TACIXAT 7y ago
Initially, yes. You're supposed to eat only chicken and rice for a month or two, see how you feel, then add things back in. I was a broke college student at the time, so I did a deli meat and rice diet. I felt a lot better. In hindsight it was kind of stupid since deli meats have sodium nitrites which is a trigger for me, but I still felt scores better. It took me about 5 years, from 23 to 28 to identify everything. It was a lot of "I got a headache, what did I eat, what were the ingredients", then correlating that over a long period, then testing what ingredient I isolated. For sugar and caffeine it was also a conscious choice to try cutting them out, I think those were more withdrawal situations than the other ones. An example, I was eating at a gluten free restaurant regularly. No gluten means I'm good, yea? Still getting sinus headaches though. Maybe I'm going crazy, so I ask them what they think. He points out the sodium nitrite in the pepperoni. Correlated that with bacon, other deli meats, "uncured" things that have celery powder instead (contains sodium nitrite!). Then there is the sauce, tomato has glutamate, also tomato sauce often has sugar, these were a different time scale of headache though. Cutting out sugar was by far the hardest. I went back and forth on it many times. I eventually got sick of the full withdrawal when cutting it out fully and decided to not start again. Most people asking about this have digestion issues. These are usually caused by FODMAPs [1]. I had digestion issues with gluten and high fructose foods (fructose malabsorption). My brother is lactose intolerant. If that's what you're looking to isolate I would start with those. Good luck! I highly recommend giving it a shot. Changing my diet changed my life. It's not true for everyone but all of my health issues were coming from what I was eating. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FODMAP#Sources_in_the_diet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FODMAP#Sources_in_the_diet
- davej 7y ago
  Issues with deli meats could also point to histamine issues and mast cell activation syndrome. I'm not saying it applied to your case but perhaps it's something for others to be aware of.

Did you follow an elimination diet to find out what you were sensitive to, or was it obvious? I'm considering an elimination diet but everything I read about a diet plan are different.

TACIXAT 7y ago

Initially, yes. You're supposed to eat only chicken and rice for a month or two, see how you feel, then add things back in. I was a broke college student at the time, so I did a deli meat and rice diet. I felt a lot better. In hindsight it was kind of stupid since deli meats have sodium nitrites which is a trigger for me, but I still felt scores better. It took me about 5 years, from 23 to 28 to identify everything. It was a lot of "I got a headache, what did I eat, what were the ingredients", then correlating that over a long period, then testing what ingredient I isolated. For sugar and caffeine it was also a conscious choice to try cutting them out, I think those were more withdrawal situations than the other ones. An example, I was eating at a gluten free restaurant regularly. No gluten means I'm good, yea? Still getting sinus headaches though. Maybe I'm going crazy, so I ask them what they think. He points out the sodium nitrite in the pepperoni. Correlated that with bacon, other deli meats, "uncured" things that have celery powder instead (contains sodium nitrite!). Then there is the sauce, tomato has glutamate, also tomato sauce often has sugar, these were a different time scale of headache though. Cutting out sugar was by far the hardest. I went back and forth on it many times. I eventually got sick of the full withdrawal when cutting it out fully and decided to not start again. Most people asking about this have digestion issues. These are usually caused by FODMAPs [1]. I had digestion issues with gluten and high fructose foods (fructose malabsorption). My brother is lactose intolerant. If that's what you're looking to isolate I would start with those. Good luck! I highly recommend giving it a shot. Changing my diet changed my life. It's not true for everyone but all of my health issues were coming from what I was eating. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FODMAP#Sources_in_the_diet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FODMAP#Sources_in_the_diet

davej 7y ago
Issues with deli meats could also point to histamine issues and mast cell activation syndrome. I'm not saying it applied to your case but perhaps it's something for others to be aware of.