Urticaria

[Gaby]

As I looked at your images again, the rash looks more like a typical 'contact allergy'. Could it be that you use some substance when washing your clothes, or something else that you come in contact with?

Lilyalic, how about asking for some allergy tests. It might be a delayed hypersensitivity to something.

 

[lilyalic]

Hi Lilyalic, sorry to hear about your problems. Do you have any other symptoms besides the skin rash? Like fever, sore throat, muscle pain, bone pain/tenderness? It's possible that it could also be a bacterial infection, have they done any blood tests on you? Last year we had streptococcus pyogenes doing rounds in our family. The kids and my wife had a rash on various parts on the body, and it did look a bit similar.

The herbalist Harrod Buhner (I've just finished one of his books), highly recommends sanicle for any type of skin problems. It's antibacterial, too (and many other healing properties).

Last time the rash got "bad" or started coming up I wasn't suffering as many symptoms as now - mostly fatigue. This time (I'm not so sure it's related) I've got muscle pain, headaches, constipation, diarrhea, nausea, severe indigestion (everytime I've ate for the pass two days I'll suffer with this, even with digestive aids - HCL,oxbile,pancreatic) I threw up last night, and my stool this morning was painful and malabsorption looking (light, foul smelling). I'm really low on energy and my mood is at an all time low. I'm not sure if the rash and these symptoms are related. Maybe these are detox reactions from the coffee enema I did on the weekend.

I'm trying to get a doctors appointment today and will demand blood tests and allergy testing!

Thank you Aragorn and Gaby!

 

[lilyalic]

I went the doctors today and was told the rash is probably due to my "restricted diet" and that I should just always apply the Daktacort cream when it flares up. Apparently it's some sort of Dermatitis, lol, and that she didn't really know and they "never really know".

I asked for a blood test and that's been done, but wasn't allowed to go through with an allergen test. Doctors are ridiculous.

As I looked at your images again, the rash looks more like a typical 'contact allergy'. Could it be that you use some substance when washing your clothes, or something else that you come in contact with?

Lilyalic, how about asking for some allergy tests. It might be a delayed hypersensitivity to something.

I don't use anything harmful whilst washing clothes, for nearly 2 years I've used all natural soap nuts or castille soap.
The doctor wouldn't even talk to me about taking an allergy test, infact she never even listened to my recent symptoms of all I mentioned before.

 

[Gaby]

I would experiment having around 40 grams of carbs and would use the cream to see if it cuts the vicious cycle. I would add an anti-histaminic for a few days to help with that and then see how it goes. If it comes back, I would insist in some allergy tests or a referral to an allergologist.

My 2 cents!

 

[Eboard10]

Hi Lilyalic, I am sorry to hear you going through this experience, and the doctor's approach definitely isn't helping!

Like you said in the OP, it might be a fungal infection and Gaby also mentioned that Urticaria is common when on Keto, so there might be some truth to what the doctor said, though he probably has little clue as to why exactly it is happening.

The only thing I could find related to this was an interview posted by Shijing in the Autoimmune Diseased Caused by an Infection? thread, where Chris Kresser and Paul Jaminet discuss the effects of a Ketogenic diet on fungi and protozoa:

Chris: Right, so how can somebody, the second part of that question is how can someone distinguish between, what are the symptoms of infection first and then how can someone distinguish between the different types of infection fungal, bacterial, parasitic?

Paul: Yeah well this is one place I think diet can really help, is in diagnosis. Medicine is still in a primitive state it’s not very good for diagnosing these infections much less treating them. But a lot of these pathogens respond very differently to different diets. So one of the key differences is in how they respond to a ketogenic diet for instance. So pathogens that have mitochondria like fungi and protozoa can metabolize ketones for energy. Bacteria and viruses can’t, and so if you go on a ketogenic diet you’ll starve bacteria and viruses but you’ll feed fungi and protozoa. And so a simple thing to do is go on a ketogenic diet for a while, do your symptoms get worse or better. And that can tell you which class of pathogen you have, one with mitochondria or one that doesn’t have mitochondria. And those kinds of tests can be a big help, and I think part of the reason medicine doesn’t succeed against all these diseases is that nobody varies their diet, they’re always eating the same diet. It’s always 50% carbs with lots of wheat and sugar, plenty of vegetable oils, if you tell people to change their diet and eat healthy they look around and find other sources of the same nutrients, certainly never sample a ketogenic diet. So our basic diet, the perfect health diet, aims to be pretty much balanced, it aims to supply in food the amounts of nutrients that your body needs. And we tweak it in various ways so we tend to be very slightly low carb, but for therapeutic purposes and certain diseases we might go to more extreme diets like a ketogenic diet that’s more low carb or there’s a few diseases that may benefit from going higher carb. But also even apart from treatment the diet is a good diagnostic tool. And it’s also helpful for gut infections to vary the types of food you eat, different foods get digested in different places in the digestive tract. Different things are accessible to different kinds of pathogens, the time scales in which things happen have diagnostic value. So fungi tend to do everything slower than bacteria, they multiply a lot slower, so fungal infections tend to be relatively stable whereas bacterial infections can be much more variable. There’s a lot of ways you can manipulate diet and help understand your own disease and that can guide you to good treatments.

Chris: What’s interesting is, as you’re probably aware in the alternative health world there’s a lot of different perceptions about how to deal with fungal infections and the word candida is thrown around a lot, which I think obviously that candida infection is real but I also, in my experience see it kind of slapped on as a diagnosis of exclusion, meaning we can’t figure out what else it is so we’ll just call it candida. But I’m really interested in what you were saying, I read your article when you talked about how fungi can utilize ketones and tend to progress on ketogenic diets because one of the interesting things about how the candida diet is typically administered is people remove fruit, they remove carbohydrates, starchy tubers and grains and I think they end up being on a very low carbohydrate diet in a lot of cases and perhaps not completely ketogenic or not strongly ketogenic but maybe mildly ketogenic and I see a lot of patients who just get worse and worse on those diets so I wonder if it has something to do with this mechanism that you’re talking about.

Paul: Yeah I think it’s very likely. It’s not bad to go low carb by standard American diet standards, I think probably optimal for candida might be 600-800 carb calories a day, the average American gets maybe 1700 so cutting carbs in half for the average American is a good move. But going too low carb definitely risks systemic invasion so the very low carb approach, it’s not bad for a fungal gut infection but it’s not that good either. It doesn’t do that much to promote good bacteria taking over the gut. A lot of plant foods can really help suppress fungi in the gut and promote bacteria. So they can help give you a better gut flora and I think a lot of people who go extremely low carb can end up with a gut dysbiosis of some kind after years on these extreme low carb diets.

Could be that restricting carbs too much might be the cause of your Urticaria so I would second what Gaby said and try to introduce some carbs for a period of time and see how your body reacts. And you should definitely consider the allergy option too. I have had similar, but much smaller reactions to certain spices when going Keto.

 

[Foxx]

Last time the rash got "bad" or started coming up I wasn't suffering as many symptoms as now - mostly fatigue. This time (I'm not so sure it's related) I've got muscle pain, headaches, constipation, diarrhea, nausea, severe indigestion (everytime I've ate for the pass two days I'll suffer with this, even with digestive aids - HCL,oxbile,pancreatic) I threw up last night, and my stool this morning was painful and malabsorption looking (light, foul smelling). I'm really low on energy and my mood is at an all time low. I'm not sure if the rash and these symptoms are related. Maybe these are detox reactions from the coffee enema I did on the weekend.

I personally think you probably have multiple things going on--liver toxicity, one or more types of pathogen infection, possibly an allergy/intolerance, and might be overworking your digestion. I personally would probably go easy on the fat (scaling down to whatever you can digest) and eat things that are really easy to digest, even if they're just carbs--whatever works to get your digestion stabilized, in order to be able to do more. I wouldn't worry about being ketogenic right now with what you're experiencing. I think I recall you mentioning that you were taking oregano oil--it might be worth temporarily discontinuing that or lowering the dose. In my experience at least, oregano oil is quite powerful and I think it can disturb good gut bacteria. Have you looked into neem for mold issues? I've used both it and oregano oil and generally found it to be better and easier on the gut.

It sounds like your body's saying that whatever you're doing isn't working, so try some new things and see what works--I'd be listening to my gut in this case, as it might give you an idea of things to eat or not eat that'll make you feel better, even if it means just eating nothing for a little while.

I hope you start to feel better soon!

 

[aragorn]

Just a thought, but there seems to be a skin cream by Vogel that contains Sanicle, and also 6 other herbs. Got nice reviews too, and can probably be found in your local drug store.

http://avogel.co.za/products/body-care/7-herb-cream/

Bioforce 7 Herb Cream is an herbal skin cream containing fresh, certified organically grown extracts of St. John’s Wort, Chamomile, Calendula, Sanicle, Sage, Arnica and Paracress.

 

[lilyalic]

I would experiment having around 40 grams of carbs and would use the cream to see if it cuts the vicious cycle. I would add an anti-histaminic for a few days to help with that and then see how it goes. If it comes back, I would insist in some allergy tests or a referral to an allergologist.

My 2 cents!

I purchased some benadryl, and ordered some pure neem cream

I personally think you probably have multiple things going on--liver toxicity, one or more types of pathogen infection, possibly an allergy/intolerance, and might be overworking your digestion. I personally would probably go easy on the fat (scaling down to whatever you can digest) and eat things that are really easy to digest, even if they're just carbs--whatever works to get your digestion stabilized, in order to be able to do more. I wouldn't worry about being ketogenic right now with what you're experiencing. I think I recall you mentioning that you were taking oregano oil--it might be worth temporarily discontinuing that or lowering the dose. In my experience at least, oregano oil is quite powerful and I think it can disturb good gut bacteria. Have you looked into neem for mold issues? I've used both it and oregano oil and generally found it to be better and easier on the gut.

It sounds like your body's saying that whatever you're doing isn't working, so try some new things and see what works--I'd be listening to my gut in this case, as it might give you an idea of things to eat or not eat that'll make you feel better, even if it means just eating nothing for a little while.

I hope you start to feel better soon!

I upped the carb content today and had very little fat and food - but still cannot keep anything in my stomach. I had to keep everything in whilst in work this morning but this afternoon has been awful. I'm starving! I'm not absorbing anything but this has all just come from nowhere. I literally had 4 pieces of bacon, green beans and cabbage around 10, then had sweet potatoes with a tiny amount of butter, a little turkey and green beans around 6.

I did the 10-day gut healing protocol with oregano oil and different herbs, repopulating with probiotics and doing "mono-meals" (carb, fat, meat) at separate intervals. But this was around 3 weeks ago and nothing occurred after that, in fact I was feeling much better and going the toilet much easier. Even months before this, I did a whole week of specific liver detoxing; glutamine, milk thistle etcetc. I'd see why this was happening if I'd changed anything about my diet or was taking anything differently but I'm not. The only thing I can attribute all this to is the coffee enema I did, maybe stress as well. I really am confused as to why this is happening, I'm close to blaming the aliens lol! I thought I was closer to healing the gut, not further away! :( I've took some activated charcoal to see if this helps drag anything out, hopefully this spell of sickness leaves.

Many thanks for the advice given. :)

 

[Gaby]

Here is an Histamine Intolerance update. Well, it was written in 2013, but it is pretty neatly synthesized:

Is histamine intolerance the cause of your problems?
http://www.sott.net/article/300710-Is-histamine-intolerance-the-cause-of-your-problems

Sometimes adding more carbs is enough to feed good bacteria, which will then help prevent histamine over production.

Notice how certain strains of lactobacillus increases histamine production. Lactobacillus rhamnosus is safe though.

 

[lilyalic]

Here is an Histamine Intolerance update. Well, it was written in 2013, but it is pretty neatly synthesized:

Is histamine intolerance the cause of your problems?
http://www.sott.net/article/300710-Is-histamine-intolerance-the-cause-of-your-problems

Sometimes adding more carbs is enough to feed good bacteria, which will then help prevent histamine over production.

Notice how certain strains of lactobacillus increases histamine production. Lactobacillus rhamnosus is safe though.

Thanks for the article Gaby, I can see how it'd be assumed this was all due to Histamine production.
I've ordered some Histame/DAO enzymes to help with the breakdown of histamines. It's funny that it may relate to MTHFR as I've been doing reading on this recently and sent off a spit sample for 23andme to see any underlying health issues.

I had to ring in work sick today, and cannot work for the next 3 days (food health reasons) - so now that it is losing me money, I'm considering eating some rice (wild preferably) or making something with tapioca flour in to soak whatever up.