A Health Mystery Solved

TLDR: cutting carbs in general and sugar in particular from my diet cured a health problem I had been fighting for the last decade.

I write this on the chance that it will help someone else. If I had heard a similar story it might have saved me a lot of frustration, suffering, and days lost to illness.

Where to start? Let’s go back about a decade: I was into competitive cycling, and while I was having fun and doing well in XC MTB and Cyclocross, I kept getting sick. Any time I would train as hard as my body wanted to train, I would feel a sore throat coming on, and often have to spend a few days in bed.

This went on for years. I made do with less training than my competitors, got sick a lot, and grudgingly accepted that this was just a limitation of my body.

I eventually stopped racing and took up kayak fishing. Because the kayaking was lower intensity I did not get sick as often, but it was still a recurring issue.

I visited several doctors, none of whom were able to help me. In a way I don’t blame them. The only specific symptom I had was a sore throat, and if someone says: “I get sick when I push myself hard”, it’s reasonable for a doctor to say “maybe don’t push so hard”.

Things finally came to a head at the beginning of August 2020. A busy week at work followed by five consecutive days of kayak fishing triggered the predictable sore throat and fatigue. Except this time it didn’t get better. Aside from trying to keep up with work and help care for the kids I spent the rest of my time in bed feeling tired and sick. At first I was unhappy yet resigned, since I’d experienced identical symptoms many times before. But by the time a full month of this had passed I was becoming desperate and searching for explanations again. Added to the mix was now acid reflux, which made it hard to sleep. Again a visit to the doctor didn’t help.

Physical and mental stress would cause an onset of my symptoms, but I had also noticed that consuming sugar could bring on the sore throat or make it worse. Sugar would also make me feel generally unwell, so for a long time I had avoided eating much of it.

I finally connected the sugar clue with the possibility of a Candida (yeast) overgrowth, and decided to try the “candida diet”, which basically eliminates carbs. The results were spectacular: I recovered immediately and was able to put in a full week at work. The next weekend was Labor Day and I decided to put my newfound health to the test: I spent two days doing hard physical labor tearing the roofing off our porch, then immediately followed that with an exhausting all-day kayak fishing trip, where I caught a limit of salmon and then a limit of halibut. In the past this would have been almost guaranteed to make me sick, but I felt fine. After 10 days on the diet my acid reflux, which had not responded to medication, went away.

Since then I’ve continued to do things that would have made me sick before. I push hard, I get exhausted, I recover, and I don’t get sick.

You might reasonably be thinking “you tried some fad diet and claim everything got better, but how do you know?”. I don’t know for sure. Candida is a normal part of the biota that lives in and on us, and I’m not even sure mainstream medicine has an accepted diagnostic test to distinguish between a normal and problematic amount of yeast in your throat and gut.  But I do know that the puzzle pieces fit: carbs in general and sugar in particular would reliably make my symptoms worse, and eliminating them has made the problem go away in a complete and dramatic way. I had tried eliminating added sugar in the past, and while this helped, I was presumably still eating enough carbs and high-sugar fruits to cause problems.

What else has changed: I lost weight without restricting my calorie intake. When exercising I don’t feel peppy, but my long-term endurance feels better. At times when I would have felt desperate for a blood sugar boost my body can now keep chugging away, presumably burning fat.

One word of warning: if you experiment with low-carb diets, you may need to make a conscious effort to drink enough water (keep your urine light-colored). The diet suppresses your appetite, and it also suppresses your thirst. I was not drinking enough and started to have symptoms of kidney stones. Drinking enough cleared it up.

I held to the strict candida diet for two months, and since then I have changed to a plan where I allow myself to eat moderate carbs 2 days a week. This way I get to share some normal meals with my family. This seems to be working well. Sticking to the diet is usually easy: an omelette with spinach, cheese, mushrooms and plenty of butter appeals to me more than a bowl of breakfast cereal, and a green salad with salmon, sesame seeds and a rich oily dressing sounds better than a plate of pasta. It has been a year and a half now, and the dreaded sore throat and fatigue has not reoccurred.

On a related note, I'm overdue for a checkup and am looking for a new doctor, hopefully one with experience with microbiome-related health issues. Any recommendations?

SIBO breath test will tell you if there is a problem.  A course of Rifaximin followed by several months of an extremely high potency probiotic (I use visibiome) will solve the problem for a while, until it comes back (usually after a course of antibiotics), then rinse and repeat.

Diet only treats the symptoms, it doesn't do much to correct the microbiotic makeup of your gut and can in fact make it worse, because by starving yourself of carbs you are starving out your gut bacteria that need sugars to thrive and in turn make you feel like shit.  You'll definitely feel better on the low carb diet  - it just doesn't fix the problem.

If you want to know what bacteria is screwing up your gut you need to have a stool sample tested.  My normal culprit is klebsiella pneumonia.  Low carb diet treats it the same as candida though.

As far as physicians, my PCP just takes care of it.  I'd imagine most would be able to nowadays especially if you present with SIBO.  Nuke the microbiota and start over.

Actually went back to find some of the useful articles I'd bookmarked and this one

https://drhaiden.com/ibs-sibo-and-candida-gut-problems-and-how-to-treat-them/

Is a doctor in your area.  I'd call and make an appointment with her.

Some good books on what’s happening in the legit research world on microbiome

The Good Gut

An Epidemic of Absence

There’s another one I saw recently that looked good and maybe a little more up to date since there’s so much research going on but per a friend can barely keep up with what science and technology are revealing

Some of it is changing radically how the medical world views the dietary side of things

That was an interesting read and I'm glad your new diet is working for you.  Sometimes, you may not find that right answer on what is a fix for you, but whatever is working for you, just keep at it and see where it goes.  Some doctors will say this, some will say that, and then its all a crapshoot.  Hope you do find the answers you're looking for though! 

Encouraging to read this KPD...as hard as it is to stay away from carbs/sugar, better health should be a reason to cut it down. I've been experiencing issues with headaches and fatigue for a while now and thought it was attributed to aging. But I might give this candida diet a try and see what happens. You really are what you eat.

Interesting! Thanks for sharing and I’m glad you feel good. I like the idea of experimenting with diet as means to address chronic issues.
Thankfully I have none. And we buy so much pasta from Target, I’m sure if we stop, their stock would crash

There are two other approaches to diet that I’ve read about before:
- eating based on your blood type (for example, dairy works well for type B)
- eating based on your mom’s/ethnicity diet (see https://www.livescience.com/45221-mother-diet-affects-baby-dna.html)

I would note though that I had a Japanese roommate who was allergic to fish. That was strange. He filled the freezer with ice cream and was thin as a noodle

It is always inspiring to hear stories like this. I'm glad you finally found something that works for you.  My wife has been battling celiac/microscopic colitis issues for years, so i feel your pain and frustration.

The biggest lesson i've learned is that you have to be your own advocate and never stop trying new things if the last one didn't work.

Thanks for the support and suggestions, everyone!    You've given me lots to think about.

SIBO breath test will tell you if there is a problem.  A course of Rifaximin followed by several months of an extremely high potency probiotic (I use visibiome) will solve the problem for a while, until it comes back (usually after a course of antibiotics), then rinse and repeat.

Super interesting! I never had the classic symptoms of SIBO (bloating, cramping, constipation or diarrhea), but that might have been what was going on.

Nuke the microbiota and start over.

No strange diets, herbal remedies or fecal transplants? What's the fun in that? I'm definitely willing to try the nuke-and-start over approach. Some of the candida diet articles recommended taking a potent antifungal after being on the diet for a while.

https://drhaiden.com/ibs-sibo-and-candida-gut-problems-and-how-to-treat-them/

Is a doctor in your area.  I'd call and make an appointment with her.

Thanks! I will check her out.

Some good books on what’s happening in the legit research world on microbiome

The Good Gut

An Epidemic of Absence

There’s another one I saw recently that looked good and maybe a little more up to date since there’s so much research going on but per a friend can barely keep up with what science and technology are revealing

Some of it is changing radically how the medical world views the dietary side of things

Thanks for the recommendations - the degree to which we exist not as independent organisms but as part of an uneasy symbiosis with our microbiome is kind of disturbing.