Background

It has been a while since the last post, so I wanted to give a little background before we dive into the details.

Back in August I gave the MRT test (link) a try in an attempt to address consistent fatigue. This tests for food sensitivities, and starts a schedule of adding in one food at a time to test your reaction to it. As noted in that first post, during the first week I thought I was having some success (after a couple of days of feeling terrible). However, as time went on, and I added in more and more foods, I was feeling just the same as before I started, but without any specific food item to place the blame on. I continued on, just to see if any specific foods would cause me trouble, and to the tests credit, I have found at least two so far: unfermented dairy, and beef. I might have suspected unfermented dairy, but I would have never considered removing beef from my diet long enough to determine if it was an issue for me. At the risk of too much detail, it became easily apparent that eating beef made all the things in my system..... exit said system in rapid order. Unfermented dairy (milk, cream, etc), was a bit more subtle, and resulted in general stomach crankiness. I was so desperate to want beef back in my life that I did the "beef test" three weeks in a row... so, I can say with certainty, beef is OUT. Luckily, other forms of red meat appear to still be in, such as deer. I have yet to test bison or elk. Pork is safe for me though, which means bacon is still on the table. I have also not yet tested wheat, lemons, or cane sugar, which were my three highest scoring aggravating foods. I still have a couple more weeks to go before I can try those ingredients.

New Results

I also got to do some reading - a bit about the health effects of fasting, which led me into reading about the health affects of a ketonogenic diet. As a segue into my current experiment, let me do a quick refresher of fasting and keto. Fasting is pretty simple - don't eat. There are a ton of different fasting protocols out there, short fasts (overnight), longer fasts (24-48 hours), and LONG fasts, of up to 3 weeks for some individuals. There is even a record of an extremely obese patient undergoing a year long fast with only minimal supplementation of vitamins/minerals, allowing the body to being to work off of the stores of fat available (journal paper). There are also dry fasts (no water, I really don't recommend this), water fasts (only drink water), and what I am going to call sane fasts where you stick with water and broth - the broth provides salt, electrolytes, and gives a means to stave off the "OMG I'M GOING TO EAT EVERYTHING" feeling while your body adapts. Which brings us to the next topic - keto. When your body "adapts" during the fast, one of the things it is doing is adapting to a different energy source. Normally, we feed ourselves enough sugar and carbs for our body to only rely on the resulting sugars for energy. However, when we take away that food, our body has to come up with an alternative strategy. Since we ALL have a little fat here and there (really, if your body fat % is 0, it means you are dead), the body can turn to using fat to produce an energy form called "ketones". Ketones - keto - get it? There is also another thing that starts happening in your body when you fast - autophagy. Autophagy is a process by which the body turns inward to some degree, and starts breaking down parts that are not in the best shape - old cells, kinda broken cells, etc. This process continues until you eat again, which prompts the body to start making new shiny cells once again . There is some interesting research in this area, and how it ties into the belief that high-sugar (e.g carb) diets contribute to cancer prevalence, and hamper treatment. As such, the keto diet recommends eating high fat, moderate protein, and super-low carb. Note - there is some disagreement in the community where the line is for protein, and if it is a target, or a limit.