Initial Results

As a first entry, I thought that it would be appropriate to dive into my most recent excursion into the land of chronic fatigue. After a battery of blood draws over the past year, and a few supplements along the way, my doctor has determined that all of the normal vitamin / mineral deficiencies that would be most likely to contribute to fatigue are looking great…. but… I am still tired..
ALL..
THE..
TIME…

So, where do we look next? Maybe food sensitivities? However, if we are going to talk about this topic, we first need to talk about what the difference between an allergy and a sensitivity is. When talking about food, an allergy is the type of reaction that people most commonly associate with peanut allergies. A swift, extremely noticeable, reaction to a food that can produce reactions up to and including death if not treated. A sensitivity is a bit more muted (and handled by a different part of our immune system it seems), and can appear over multiple days, and may be distanced enough by time to make it difficult to determine what food was the original culprit!

Here is where the MRT test comes in. After 4 little vials of blood and a few day wait for the lab results, I was provided a list of all of the foods that I am likely “severely” reactive to, “moderately” reactive to, and “mildly” reactive to. Everyone’s results will of course vary, but my 3 in the “severe” category were:
dun…
dun…
dun…
Cane Sugar, Lemons, and Wheat

Lemon was a bit of a surprise, but I am not really a big lemon eater, so that will be super easy to avoid (even factoring in for it used a preservative, should be pretty manageable). Wheat was not too much of a surprise, I sort of suspected it and had been pretty severely limiting any wheat as part of food, but I had not been avoiding it as part of beer, so barley beers it is! Cane sugar is an entirely different story however. I have never really had a huge sweet tooth, don’t get me wrong, an occasional donut is GREAT, but I am not going to keel over if I don’t get a sweet treat every day. But, here is the kicker: I eat mostly organic, and if you read the ingredient list of pretty much ANYTHING that has been sweetened at all that is organic, that sweetening likely used cane sugar. This takes most protein bars, snack bars, easily packaged hiking food, and many drinks (including my beloved kombucha!) off of the list.

Now, into the “moderately” reactive category. Bonus picture of the helpful wallet card they sent - this list had quite a few more entries (alphabetized, not in order of reactivity):

Acetaminophen (thats right.. Tylenol)
Apple
Beef
Black Pepper
Caffeine
Carob
Carrot
Cashew
Cow's Milk
Crab
FD&C Red #40
Mango

Maple
Olive
Pork
Potassium Nitrite
Rice
Saccharin
Scallop
Soybean
Sweet Potato
Tea
Tilapia
Tyramine
Whey

That is a pretty big list (as least compared to most others results I have been able to track down online), and does take away a few favorites for me, such as crab and sweet potato. But, I do want to take a second to talk about the caffeine result. As they note in their materials, testing a substance, such as caffeine, FD&C Red #40, or whey in a standalone test can lead to results that are not quite intuitive. No one is ever going to drink PURE caffeine, FD&C Red #40, or Potassium Nitrite. How this can be interpreted in “real life” seems to be that I am reactive to caffeine, but not so much that coffee showed up as reactive. Actually, despite being reactive to caffeine, whey, and cow’s milk, I was the LEAST reactive to coffee and yogurt, of all of the things tested due to differences in concentration, and chemical processes that occur during fermentation, respectively. Anyway, now that I have all of this data, what do I do with it?

Oxford Biomedical Technologies (the providers of the MRT test), supplies an individualized diet plan, called the LEAP diet, to follow for the next 3 - 6 months! It starts with a weeklong phase 1, which restricts your diet to ONLY 3 to 4 items of each of their designated categories (protein, starch, veggie, fruit, dairy/misc, nuts/seeds/oils, and flavor enhancers). Salt and water are the only freebies, otherwise, if its not on the list, I can’t eat it. For me, this made my list of edible food, for 7 days:

Protein: Pinto Beans, Sole, Egg
Starch: Barley, Millet, Amaranth
Veggies: Cucumber, Cabbage, Asparagus, Cauliflower
Fruits: Cantaloupe, Avocado, Honeydew Melon, Grape
Dairy/Misc: Coffee, Yogurt
Nuts/Seeds/Oils: Almond, Pistachio
Flavor Enhancers: Vanilla, Paprika, Garlic, Basil

Now that I am on day 7 of this phase, I wanted to share my experience so far. First off, thank goodness for coffee being on my allowed list. I drank tons of water, made some cucumber water, and drank coffee for the entire week. The coffee was a really nice way to spice things up, and not also suffer a caffeine withdrawal in the process. The first day I had not planned well, so lunch and dinner consisted of pinto beans flavored with garlic over cabbage, and snacks were cucumbers, cauliflower, grapes and almonds. As the week went on, my husband and I got a bit more creative, and created a couple of recipes which I will link in the future. I also added raisins and pistachios to my snack list.

So, finding food was tolerable, and the first couple of days were fine, but day three I started to feel pretty icky, a bit shaky, and really tired. (I should note that I dropped out my three “severe” reactivity foods for three days before I really got on the diet plan so this may or may not have affected this process.) I had a lucky enough schedule to let me swing by my house over lunch for a quick nap, and was fine lasting the rest of the day at work, but remained even more tired than usual. Day four was miserable, I made it half the day at work, then felt SUPER tired, really shaky, and unable to concentrate on anything at all. I ended up taking the second half of the day a sick day and slept for four more hours. Luckily I did not have work scheduled on day five, as I still felt pretty gross, but better than day four. From a bit of internet research, it is likely that this icky feeling was caused by one of four things:

1) Some sort of withdrawal reaction (not getting any more sugar/wheat/dairy/etc)
2) Some sort of detox reaction (purging some sort of ick)
3) Some combination of both of the above
4) Being sick unrelated to the diet

I am leaning toward number 1 as the likely culprit, but by days six and seven I am feeling much better, and even strapped on a 35lb pack and went on a short hike!

The only other anomaly I have noticed while following this program so far is that I had trouble getting to sleep on day 6, which is REALLY unusual for me, especially since I have been so fatigued for the past couple of years. I was eventually able to get to sleep, slept around 6 hours, but still woke up feeling better than I usually do. Historically, I have been sleeping 8 to 10 hours a night and still waking very fatigued; so while being unable to get to sleep is not great, I currently care more about waking as a functional human, and hope that it is a sign of good things to come!

I will update again once I reach the end of Phase 2 of the diet, for which I plan to add lamb, cumin, green peppers, american cheese, and honey back into my diet (but only ONE new food per day for this phase through phase 5). More to come…