Brain-Gut Circuit Lets Microbiota Directly Affect the Sympathetic Nervous System

You read it correctly; thank you for stating it more clearly than I did.

I had those same issues with first numbness, then progressing to sore joints, in the fingers and toes. Then it progressed to sore joints around the body.

It seems that the flare-ups heighten pain sensitivity in the peripheral nerves in addition to the gut problems. My whole body feels 'raw' when it happens.

I have no idea on what the pathology is, but I expect it has a genetic component. It seems that my gut has issues with the self-regulation of certain neurotransmitters.

Over the past decade or more, I've tried nearly all of the other treatments for IBS and none of them work. The peppermint oil capsules were the worse. It was a complete waste of time and you walk around with the smell of toothpaste, at least that's how it felt to me.

You can refer back to some credible information for patients like this here from the NHS -

https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/irritable-bowel-syndrome-ibs/f...

Amitriptyline is clearly a treatment option for IBS there. Insist on it and your doctor should have no reason to deny it to you unless you have a contraindication.

If you're not in the UK, then there are other sources like this -

https://www.mayoclinic.org/medical-professionals/digestive-d...

Key takeaway from that article -

>In one trial, nearly 70 percent of patients receiving 10 mg of amitriptyline experienced a complete loss of IBS symptoms compared with 28 percent of those on placebo.

I guess I'm lucky and in that 70%. I hope you are as well. It's such a big effect on my health, I wish I knew how to deal with it sooner.

It's surely one factor. Maybe going subtle and only making a system for 'complex cases' so they don't feel useless.

Yes she reckons the enzyme works both for FOS and GOS. Things like onions and garlic were an absolute no-go before she found the enzyme. Now she can eat them

She has to take an enzyme pill before each meal that includes this group though. It's fairly harmless so she doesn't mind, it's just a bit of additional cost on our food.

If you're motivated, you can follow a protocol ("food challenges") to know which group(s) you're sensitive to. The idea is that you have a zero fodmap diet for a few weeks and then slowly reintroduce small amounts from each group and see how you react. It is not an easy task to figure out meals this way and to keep motivation so I'd recommend being helped by a dietician.

To the best of my gf's knowledge, there is no such enzyme for fructose intolerance unfortunately.

Also, if you want to know more about each group and which food is the most problematic in each of them, Monash has a great app for that. You've probably come across it already, otherwise search "Monash fodmap" on your app store. It's great to know if you can have a little bit of something or nothing at all and to educate yourself

Yup!

The key to a good diet is balance. Too much red meat has equally severe health implications, leading to a higher risk for heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and premature death.[1][2]

[1] https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/whats-the-bee...

[2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26780279/

Being in a ketogenic state allows your body to have constant access to your fat reserves, so that's where you can get the constant, stable energy from - and any excess calories, say from meat or the other keto foods you're eating will of course store as fat for later use. There's an One Meal A Day (OMAD) movement that's starting, where people are doing intermittent fasting but instead of a 6:18 ratio - 6 hours where people eat, 18 hours not eating - they'll do a 1:23, where they eat all they need in an hour or so.

Try Korean/Asian markets. I worked with a few Koreans and they thought treats sold in the USA were way too sweet. They had sweet bean curd things that tasted great when I was doing Keto and while it wouldn’t be good to eat every day they were a nice snack sometimes.

Make it yourself. Make all of your food yourself. My regular gym routine, which was part of my life for years until a few months ago when I was forced to stop, involved lifting heavy weights followed shortly afterwards by a bowl of porridge. It's a big bowl of porridge and I would put about 2 tsp of sugar in it to sweeten it. I considered this sweet because it was, in fact, the only sugar I was consuming. Now since lockdown I've had to stop my porridge because my muscle was becoming replaced with fat. I've had to lose weight to stay lean. But I've replaced that small amount of sugar I had regularly with other sweet things and noticed that I'm consuming far more sugar now. I've decided to stop completely now. If you consume ready-made things with sugar, it very quickly becomes an addiction.

You might try the keto diet for a while and see how you like it. There are two ways in which it might help you.

1. Very low carb means your blood sugar never rises sharply, and then your body doesn't over-correct which can lead to that hypoglycemic feeling.

2. Adapting to utilize primarily fat means that blood sugar largely doesn't enter into the equation and urgent eating to raise blood sugar can go away. It usually takes people days to weeks to get adapted and feel back to normal.