Originally Posted by stlwater

Thoughts?:

I started a low-carb, ketogenic diet on Thursday 20th December. It involved eating a lot of beans and lentils, which I don't usually eat that much of.

That night I awoke with numbness down the sides of my hands involving my pinky and ring finger (bi-lateral). Moving them around cleared up the numbness. Thought it might be my pillow/neck. Threw off the pillow and went back to sleep.

The next night, same thing happened.

The night after that, same thing (12/22)

The night after that, same thing, but this time I also felt a strange sensation in my legs too. Felt heavy, weak. Wonky. My arms also felt this way. This time the feeling wasn't isolated to bed-time, it persisted throughout the day.

12/24 Stopped Diet. Felt fore arms and hands intermittently cold, numb, or tingling throughout the day. Legs felt heavy, thighs and hamstrings burning, muscle tremors (twitches), pins and needles after driving for extended period. Started to feel better after dinner. Cold sensations and numbness abated affected limbs felt warm and tingly (as if blood flow / nerve conduction had returned).

12/25 (Christmas) Day started out well mostly asymptomatic. Then around noon I started to feel parathesias in my face (nose, cheeks, scalp, neck) and on the top of my arms and back of hands.

--- Visited the Emergency Room (my concern was electrolyte imbalance).
Blood tests revealed no thyroid abnormality and no electrolyte imbalance or other imbalance that would suggest a cause. Magnesium levels were normal. I had hypertension (in large part due to stress). The clinical observational tests were normal (touching my finger to my nose, etc..).

I was referred to a Neurologist.

12/26 That morning I again felt great, like I was on-the-mend. After a lunch of a couple of eggs I started to feel the parathesias in my arms and hands. Then, after dinner, my leg tremors returned along with burning and aching. Awoke at 4am with hand numbness (same as before)

12/27 Started Zone Diet (30/30/40). Tingling in arm in the AM, otherwise mostly asymptomatic

12/28 Awoke with weak arms and legs, unsteady walking (legs felt wonky) cold feeling in legs.

12/29 Legs ached, burning, pin pricks in AM, later they felt weak (fatigued), at night same arm / leg weakness when I was laying still.

That's the evolution of the symptoms. To give a little background history. My mother has M.S.

I have had neurological symptoms similar to this before about 5 years ago. At that time I believed I had identified the cause of them to be an additive in food (Calcium Chloride). The reason I was able to identify this as the cause was because I recently started eating tofu and the symptoms coincided with it..

Calcium Chloride is also what they use around here for Road Salt... We just had a storm a 4-5 days before the onset of my symptoms, followed by torrential rain which likely washed it into the reservoir and thus into the drinking water (it is not filtered out). This is my first winter in this area of the country so I do not have a track record of experience from drinking this water... During the first four days of my symptoms I drank a LOT of water to counteract all the urinating I was doing...

I believed that it was Calcium Chloride because as long as I avoided it, the symptoms disappeared and did not return. If I ate something (usually beans) which contained Calcium Chloride I would get muscle twitches, burning, and pain in my thighs within a few hours.

In the past when I was younger I had a neurological issue where after I would eat I would get foggy headed, difficulty concentrating, and generally kind of out of it. It took a long time and a lot of dead ends diagnostically before I was able to identify the relationship with food. I read a book by Joseph Pizzorno which lead me to start taking Betain HCL with meals per his instructions. Miraculously all my symptoms DISAPPEARED after more than 3 years of living with them. Turns out I was not fully digesting my food and proteins were passing through the gut (leaky gut) into my blood stream, causing problems.

Finally.. I have been checking my blood sugar (fasting, pre/post prandial) and it is in the normal range.

I started out on the ketogenic diet but dropped it after four days of symptoms.

I ate "normally" for a couple of days around Christmas

I started eating a 30/30/40 diet (Zone Diet) after the 25th.

I am losing weight to reduce my risk of heart disease and diabetes as I most likely have Syndrome X or metabolic syndrome as it is called now.

The Zone diet 30/30/40 is also the diet I was on when I managed to heal myself from the cognitive issues I was having when I was younger.

I'm telling you all this because in all the cases I've dealt with thus far, there has been an identifiable external cause which was related to what I was ingesting. I'm hoping my story might resonate or trigger and ideas you may have from you own experiences which might help me (and you).