Just a quick message for folks who might be on a Keto or Carnivore diet. Today I woke up with a screaming headache over my left temple and a nauseated stomach. I sat in my easy chair and began to remain calm while watching some sports on television. As the day progressed my symptoms never abated and the nausea remained constant. My wife got onto a Carnivore site and read an article about the Carnivore flu. Come to find out, a lowering of carbs in your diet can lead to headaches and upset stomach. Their solution was to increase carb intake. I said, hmmmm, "honey, can you go and get that Key Lime pie from the freezer and cut me off a slice?" She did and within 15 minutes my headache vanished and the nausea disappeared. About a year ago I was on the Keto diet and while shopping at a local hardware store I began experiencing the Keto flu, a overall crappy feeling that comes over you quickly. We headed to Sonic and I had a hamburger and a coke and the symptoms passed.
So, if your are on a Carivore or Keto diet and begin feeling like the precursor of vomiting is fixing to hit, your headache won't go away, and you cannot control your body temp. (hot-cold-hot-cold). Try adding a bit of sugar to get your body some needed carbs it might be yearning for. All it took for me was one thin slice of Key Lime Pie and it worked quickly. Remember that if your are in Ketosis on a Keto diet this might kick you out of Ketosis, but I say it's better to feel better rather than worrying about staying in Ketosis. Heck, you can always pick up the diet tomorrow and the damage from one slice of pie is not going to hurt your weight loss program.
For me, it was either do this or the possiblity of seeing a neurologist and having him try to fix the problem with medication. I'd rather chug down some sugar and have my symptoms go away than chugging mind altering prescription drugs which has the horrible side effects of suicidal thoughts. (been there, done that and it sucked!)
I'm not a doctor, just a regular Joe who has come across a possible solution and thought it might be helpful. If it does, GREAT, if you think it's way out in left field, no hard feeling on my part. Just trying to help folks who might be in the same boat.
God bless and have a great day!
Prolly full of lil buggers that are mad you stopped eating their food source so they are fucking with you.
This is obvious amognst this board but use Ivermectin to kill the parasites
From what I understand it is more so resistant starch that feeds gut bacteria than simple sugars, which get absorbed before reaching the colon.
Is starch not a sugar?
Starch is broken in sugar (glucose) in the gut. Simple starch, like a well cooked potato that you eat right away, will be small starch particles that are broken quickly and absorbed early in the small intestine. Complex starches, like the same potato eaten cold after it sits in the fridge for 2 days, or whole grains, are large molecules that gradually get broken down and a lot of them make it to the color, where bacteria can feed on it. I am experimenting with a strategy of only doing honey or fruit for carbs in the morning, so that my guy bacteria only get food for a portion of the day, but my body gets fuel all day.
But any time we eat carbs (sugar) it forces the body to make insulin which causes a lowering of blood sugar. I take care of someone who has type I diabetes every day and night so I see the insulin need for different forms of carbohydrates. A type I diabetic cannot make their own insulin so every time they eat carbs they have to inject a certain amount or their blood sugar will dangerously rise.
Complex carbs take longer to break down to glucose but they do break down eventually and cause that need for insulin. The more simple the sugar the faster it raises blood sugar to cause an insulin spike in the non-type I diabetic. The low carb diet theory seeks to break the over-dependence on carbs for energy in favor of fat and protein. Fat has twice the calories and causes no insulin spike therefore no blood sugar roller coaster. So fat is going to get you through the day with a lot more staying power.
Look for signs of not only bacteria but yeast, especially candida albicans. It wants sugar in any form I am pretty sure and it will change how you feel to try to make you eat it.
Starch is long chains of sugars
Correct
This is bad info. Keto flu is from your body flusing minerals out of your body. This diet is a natural diuretic and you lose fluids.
The "flu" is mearly a lack of electrolytes (sodium, potassium, magnesium). The quickest way to recover from the icky feeling symptoms is sodium. Broth is a common way to get lots of sodium quickly.
Look up a recipe for "ketoade", make a big batch and sip it all day.
The Keto "flu" happens most often while beginning the diet before becoming "fat adapted" which takes 6-8 weeks of consistent Keto. Once adapted, your body becomes efficient in using its own fat storage for energy purposes. This is when the pounds start melting off too along with amazing side effects like mental clarity, energy and rested sleep.
I agree with everything you've stated. I began my Carnivore diet on Jan. 1 so I'm about five weeks in. I should be getting adapted by now, but I haven't had any electrolytes in a week, thus I think this is the cause of my symptoms today. When I ate the pie I also had a bottle of LMNT citrus mix and for the past couple of hours I've felt fine. Yep, probably let my salt reserves go too far down. Thanks for adding to this post, LRAD. The more knowledge out there is better for the whole community. I just wanted to give folks an idea of what they might experience while on Keto and Carnivore. Hopefully this thread can do some good for folks.
Thanks Fren! LMNT is awesome BTW! Watermelon is my favorite.
FYI, the watermelon flavor tastes like the white rind to me. Aweful and without a purpose except to piss folks off thinking it would taste like the sweet heartfruit a watermelon is known to have. I think the LMNT citrus is the bomb. Thanks again for your input. I appreciate all the responses in this thread.
Keto flu is usually associated with high insulin that’s why you feel better when you eat carbs. You may never get fat adapted if you do not address having high insulin. Berberine supplement is useful for this or get metformin from your doctor. Also make absolutely sure to not have a single gram of fibre from any source. People who are vulnerable to keto flu have a much higher chance of developing autoimmune disorders on a regular diet with carbs. Get your insulin checked, not just your blood sugar, you must look at insulin.
I think that what you are describing is scurvy, the body can't manufacture vitamin C so it has to come from somewhere. This is why the Royal Navy started to issue lime juice and why they are called Limeys
^^^ I concur.
This, I did keto and fasting for quite some time, never experienced the keto flu using electrolytes
There's not much that a piece of good pie can't cure. ;)
Pickle-juice.
Vinegar and salt, mixed with a little water. A few sips will level things out. Some people do it whenever they fast. Otherwise, try taking a nap. If you are out and about, the emergency carbs can work, but if that becomes a habit, then one is no longer 'doing keto'.
ACV in water sipped does the same thing....Taking a few easy whiffs of rubbing alcohol works as well.
Can attest to that tactic. My grandmother used eau de Cologne and rubbed it on her hairpartings and put it on a wad of cotton wool to sniff, if she felt off.
Current 'quick' citrus-based scents that are cheap men's EDT are good for that.
My guess is that the sudden press for carnivore, which seems to almost all be from doctors, is organized and inorganic.
Plant based failed to get popularity, so they will push another unhealthy, extreme, diet.
The blog is saw it referenced on is down right now, but I remember seeing a study (don't remember if it was mice or humans), where the best diet for some biomarker for aging was average protein, average fat and above average carbs (which probably means sugar, since sugar is easy to up calorie intake with).
Georgi Dinkov and Ray Peat make some pretty compelling cases for sugar intake on youtube and in blogs. I am leaning pretty hard into raw honey right now myself.
It really does seem like the same thing in reverse. I grew up on a meat heavy diet but I've consistently done better on a vegan diet than I ever did eating normally. The idea that either extreme is necessary is nonsense. While I would strongly argue a diet without meat and dairy can be as if not more nutritious, I would agree that a plant based diet that simply cuts out meat and dairy without replacing them properly would be as short sighted as going full carnivore and wondering why you're getting new deficiencies and issues.
Meat eaters out live vegans. Vegans have a much higher risk for heart disease and die earlier at an average age of 68 much below the average meat/dairy consumer. The vitamins and minerals in vegetables are only being converted to useable form at a rate of about 10% so wasteful compared to meat where it’s as high as 99%. Most people get sick on a vegan diet, so few actually improve their health where as almost every person who eats carnivore goes from a place of un wellness to a place of wellness. Also carnivore cures farts, vegans stink and fart ALL the time. Farts are a sign of un wellness. You’re probably farting right now. Guaranteed that your bio/blood markers will improve on carnivore over the vegan diet. If you’re vegan you are guaranteed to have unnecessary health problems, make the switch to carnivore today! In 1919 seventh day Adventists, a vegetarian cult, wrote the nutritional guidelines that would be accepted by the Flexner report that would go on to be modern day nutritional science, which was based on propaganda from the 1900s. Before this report was published, it was widely known that an all beef diet would cure diabetes and all beef diets cure diabetes to this day but the propaganda remains so you wouldn’t know that. It takes 6 billion pounds of pesticides a year to provide vegetables to the world, these pesticides are more harmful than anything in the cattle industry. Vegans are bad for the environment, vegans are an unnecessary strain on our medical industry.
Well that's a lovely list of talking points but none of it holds up to scrutiny. Hundreds of studies show the opposite of what you're claiming yet you'll just dismiss them as fake because they don't say what you've decided is fact. And ultimately you're the one with a billion dollar globalist infested industry on your side pushing for the results they want. They don't want you eating vegan they want the people who do as they're told to stay healthy and alive. Everyone else they want dead (you) they'll tell to keep going to McDonalds or buying meat at the supermarket until they can replace it with cheap processed plants or bugs. It's never been about the diet, they want you sick either from mass produced meat or even cheaper options. Obviously they don't want you hunting but they also know the world can't be fed by hunting alone.
You're not going to convince people who know they're not getting sick and nobody they know is getting sick that their diet is unhealthy and guarantees negative side effects. Most people who eat this way do so because they feel much better than before and have less health problems. You sit here citing studies from the trillion dollar globalist food conglomerates and the same medical industry that pushed the jabs and expect me to believe that over lived experience and the testimony of those I've known over the years.
I can tell you're just repeating talking points because if you really thought about what you're saying you'd see how little sense it makes. You claim that eating a plant based diet is bad because of pesticides. Do you actually believe that the grain being fed to animals in farms is organic and not sprayed with pesticides? Do you really think grass fed meat can sustain this population with meat any more than on occasion? Instead of growing plant foods one time and eating them, your alternative involves countless millions MORE acres and countless millions of gallons MORE in pesticide just to grow the feed for the animals, plus on top of that all the shitty environmental effects of large scale farming (no, not CO2 I mean real problems like ground and water contamination) AND on top of all that, causing unnecessary suffering to an animal. It's no different morally than someone killing a dog because it gets them off. Purely a selfish choice, which is why you try SO damn hard and have to reach so far to justify it and make yourself feel like it's necessary.
Keto is the ONLY diet supported by actual science. Canrnivore, while more extreme, is in no way unhealthy. Carnivore diet followers have been observed having their bone marrow turn back to red, which is the way it starts off.
Heh, most people just need a balanced all-natural diet of food intake w/plenty of water that has minerals in it. I never approve of extreme this or that. If you eat all veggie or all meat or all fruit or all carb, seems you are 100% pumping up one set of nutrients and not getting any of others. Not against short-term fasting for most though, short term and reg eating otherwise. lol. With any "diet" the first 7-10ish pounds are real quick for many, mostly water or bloat (some have lots of bloat from a build up of toxins that body is in overdrive to get rid of). Not sure if that pie was the key or not but, tasty and no more headache so cant complain on it. !
Eat some fruit and also increase your salt intake
Q-these people are sick. Kinda relates.
I’m on a low carb 30grams or less. Did carnivore 30 days with no noticeable change.
They suggest you lower carbs incrementally.
The good news is I can see my abs again.
Kinda curious, how much weight have you lost? I've lost about 12 pounds in a month. Yea, it sucks but I'm trying to stay the course.
WTF? Men suck. You are not happy with 12 lbs in a month? I’m 3 weeks in, eating strict and I’m less than half of that. Geezus.12 lbs is killing it.
I might be killing it, but for the last week the scale has read 201.6. I want more but my body isn't quite ready to give that too me. My ultimate goal is 180. But the real goal is to loose the kegger that's hanging on me like a bad memory. I want it gone and I am gonna to get it slimmer. My stupid "smart weight scale" keeps telling me I only have 19 weeks left to reach my goal. I'm gonna beat that piece of trash once I get to my goal weight. grrrrrr. 19 weeks seems like an eternity.
A lot of that 12 pounds was probably water. The weight loss is not as dramatic after the initial loss but should still be going in the right direction if you're sticking to the program not cheating.
I lost 30 lbs in two months. Just fasting on and off 2-3 day stints. Walking, jogging or biking almost everyday to the point of sweating. Eating only dinner on off days.
I only had about ten pounds to lose. I can see my abs again! First time since never.
Omg I would have faked those symptoms to get a slice of Key lime pie!!! 😊Thanks for the information. I hadn’t heard of that.
It is clearly just withdrawal symptoms, just like if you were to stop using drugs, alcohol or quit smoking. The solution isn't to give your body more of what it craves, the solution is to stick it out until the addiction is broken.
Would you recommend to an alcoholic to just take another drink to stop feeling lousy?
As others have noted, you definitely need to take a lot of electrolytes to give your body the minerals it needs.
I hear what you are saying. No problem with your advise at all. But I had a splitting headache and felt like tossing my cookies all day long, thus I figured a little bit of sugar would ease the symptoms, and voile', it did. Very quickly I might add. To me it wasn't tossing my diet into the dumpster, it was a practical useage of a small amount of sugar to get me over the hump and begin to feel better. Yea, I probably could have "toughed it out" but I just didn't want to fall into another type of ailment I've had for a while. This was the best and quickest option I had to feel better and I took it. Now it's back onto the diet and let the weight drop off!
I also need to add some electrolytes to the mix. I drank a bottle of water with LMNT mixed in and I think that helped my sodium uptake. Maybe too much protein and not enough added sodium.
I gave up on keto cause it seems like I was sick every time I stuck to the diet more then a day.
You provided the answer for your failure....Too short a time frame. You never adjusted properly.
Yeah, I had a coach at the time who said that. I definitely will not be "pushing through" the adjustment. Taking a week off work to be in bed "getting healthy" is completely ridiculous.
Balanced diet and exercise is the best way to lose weight. Fad diets do more harm than good.
I haven't eaten meat in (genuinely) 17 years and I'm healthier than ever. Obviously I'm biased but I'm on team "your diet is too extreme in the other direction and missing the mark in other ways." It seems to me that Conservative Inc has been shoving meat heavy diets down our throats and implying that is the only way to push back against the people who want you eating processed plants and bugs is to eat another less than ideal diet that will help get rid of us for them.
Where do you purchase your veggies? Do you grow them yourself?
During warm months I grow some. Otherwise I buy organic and local as best I can. If you're going to get into the fact that animals die in farming, that doesn't really make the alternative of killing even more of them any more appealing.
I’ve done this before. The loss certainly isn’t as linear as we all would hope. Just keep going. You’ll be there in a few months. The alternative is you quit because of the damn scale and you never get there. You got this. It’s a lifestyle change not a diet anyway. Just keep going!
I think Dr Ken Berry has a YT vid saying T levels increase on a carnivore diet while a vegan diet increases estrogen levels in men. Yes males have a small amount of estrogen, that's why soyboys have femmy attributes, IMHO.
But would you disagree with the idea that not getting a source of something to regulate or keep in check estrogen levels could lead to them surpassing the testosterone, and no matter the amount of testosterone if the ratio is skewed and there’s more free estrogen than testosterone it could develop into a soy boy hormone imbalance? I’ve considered the carnivore diet, actually did the paleo diet a long time ago but I guess I’m just really curious how that all would work, and as I search I find conflicting information from nutritional/fitness websites saying it raises T, and personal testimonies that their T has decreased on the diet, granted those posts I found were from reddit and there’s probably an argument to be made they had low T anyways LOL, just seeing what people think as far as keeping the other important hormone in check
Also I understand this is mostly irrelevant to your post so sorry for being somewhat off topic
I did find a few videos discussing the topic if anyone is interested, it seems it is something to keep an eye on, but it doesn’t appear to be as bad as I was thinking. If anyone is interested here are the two short videos I found.
https://youtu.be/ICMzWMhRpuE?si=OnettdAD3w2OV4G0
https://youtu.be/CN2A1t6ieUs?si=h9pdRx-CVzdOme9E
What happened to you was that your blood pressure dropped due to lack of sodium.
Keep your sodium levels stable.
high levels of sodium your blood pressure goes up, low sodium levels your blood pressure goes down.
Get some magnesium, potassium and sodium in you
This.
So I’ve been thinking about this diet recently, and I see a lot of people concerned with testosterone levels hoping to raise them, and what I think is kind of ironic is that an important compound found in veggies like broccoli, brussel sprouts, and cauliflower called DIM or diindolylmethane which in men helps regulate estrogen levels to make most of what testosterone you do have, now I have a pretty certain gut feeling that whatever benefit from the high fat carnivore type diets don’t do much of anything to regulate hormones, but I’m not a nutritionist or a doctor so I don’t know, but curious of other people’s thoughts, is DIM a blind spot in the carnivore diet?
A great way to naturally raise your Testosterone level, is by cutting out plants that contain high levels of phytoestrogen, like flax and soy.
That makes sense, from what I’ve been reading the past hour it seems like low carbs+high cholesterol= higher testosterone, but initially I was bugging out at the idea that without regulation estrogen would get imbalanced, I did see some people recommend DIM, as well as Boron so maybe I am on to something 🤷🏼♂️ But I do like to put on my tinfoil hat and approach new things as the devils advocate, would (((they))) trick men into eating an imbalanced diet under the banner of machismo in order to diminish vitality? takes tinfoil hat off Another thing that bugs me is Teeth, look inside a Carnivores mouth(Wolf), a Herbivores mouth(Cow), and an Omnivores mouth(Humans). How can we say that we should be eating only one thing or the other when we are literally made by god to eat both? It is very hard for me to understand the thought process and I only ever have more questions than answers when I study these diets, maybe I’m too skeptical but I’m not sold yet
I look at the Garden of Eden as to how we should eat. God didn't put a plate of food in front of Adam and Eve every single day, He told them you can eat anything in this Garden except one. So that tells me they had to pluck the fruit off the trees, harvest the potatos and toss them into a fire to cook them and even somehow get a deer to munch on....God probably snagged one into a tree so Adam could harvest it. Thus a God diet would be one that NO PROCESSED FOOD is on the dinner plate. If you go and grow your own food then that is the closest we can get to a God diet. Sure, it won't taste the same as a store bought fruit of veggie, but it won't have the chemical spray residue on it nor will it be genetically altered in a laboratory. Our forefathers two hundred years ago didn't have a big box store to shop in, they generally had a garden to grow veggies in and a forest to hunt animals in. They "made" their own food, very God-like. Our overlords want us sick, thus they pack in a lot of carbs into our food to keep us sick, thus going to the doctor to pay high prices for medicines that should "cure" us be we keep on eating the crappy carb cereal. Go figure. All I'm trying to do is cut the cord to processed food and somehow it bit me in the butt yesterday. So I take this as a lesson learned and now I can go on with a healthier lifestyle. This morning I feel great! What a difference a day makes.
First and foremost I’m glad you feel better, those type of headaches are no joke, and I can agree with cutting out processed food, that stuff IS poison! I just had to air out my concern and see if it was even legitimate
You could probably take a couple tablespoons of honey as well. That’s a great option, and more healthy.
Glucose tabs
Sounds like you aren't eating enough electrolytes.the biggest mistake new people make is not eating enough salt. You don't hold water the same as when you ate fiber. You pee a lot more. You need to replace that water and that salt.
Thanks for the advise. I was drinking a couple of bottles of Dr. Berg's drink mix but cut that back to none foe a week. Thought I was getting too much salt and K. So now I'm gonna do one bottle per day and hope all goes well.
Yeah no prob shoot me a message anytime I have been carnivore for over a year now
I'm curious, did you begin carnivore to loose weight or get away from processed food? I want to loose weight and THEN get away from the processed food. Sugar has been a huge bane in my life and I now can see how it hurts ones body....natural inflammatory. Since I've been off sugar my knees no longer hurt which is a blessing. If you are loosing weight, how much has come off? Thanks.
A gained weight and was roughly 222lbs I then experienced highblood pressure, started snoring. When i tried going to bed it felt like i was laying upside down, since the pressure in my head was so great. Went to the doc and they put me on blood pressure meds. They didn't help, so they upped the dose. They were going to add another med but instead I went to a metabolic doctor. He put me on carnivore and we had weekly checkups. After only 2 weeks I lost 15lbs, stopped snoring and my blood pressure returned to normal. 16 weeks later I lost 52lbs and seemed to gain muscle despite never working out. Stayed on it since.
I don't know if it is enough salt or not but when I was doing a low-carb diet I ate a lot of hard-boiled eggs as snacks. I salted them as I ate them. I never had those symptoms and would try for less than 20 carbs per day - ideally lower than 15.
Thanks for the information. I can tell when my sugar gets low as I start getting shaky. It doesn't happen often. I'm not on any particular diet. I do intermittent fasting instead.
A bit of carbs to fix this problem is somewhat akin to advising 'just a little bit of heroin' to a junkie going through withdrawal.
For some people adaptation is rough and aspirin is good alternative to over the counter painkillers that might literally kill you, until your body adapts and figures out how to regulate blood-sugar without carbs headache can be one of the symptoms.
Your extreme symptoms does however make me ask you if you have ever been tested for diabetes.........