Neuropathy and carbohydrates
 

Well I ate pizza last night and my PN is screaming today. So it's true for me I can't have a lot of carbs. I found a web site that deals with these subjects and many more dietary subjects that I find very useful www.paleohacks.com I thought I would share it with this forum. Anyway, I find it appalling that my Neuro would let me suffer all this time without telling me about how carbs can make PN worse. I need to do a lot of homework on what carbs that I can eat.

Same thing happened to me. Last night I ate Olive Garden and today my symptoms are showing up worse than what they have been.

Restaurant food is also high in MSG... this taste additive will
stimulate the NMDA pain receptors considerably. So it is not just the carbs... it could be MSG too.

Same for me. Sunday is my cheat day, and I feel the pain already. I just ate pizza and ice cream for lunch, not the pain is starting. I know it will happen but sometimes you just have to have a bite of the forbidden fruit. lol

Technically, it is the INSULIN release that causes most of the problems. A large meal even if low in carbs, will also spike insulin.

When insulin goes really high, there is a drop suddenly after an hour or two. This is when the lows come in and the peripheral areas suffer.

Chemically what happens is what is going on in the complex fatty acid synthesis path. Insulin spikes, and then triggers the formation of inflammatory cytokines in the PGE2 series, and these are what cause the pain IMO.
http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/106/16/2067.long

This is complex and hard to understand. It is explained by Dr. Sears PhD in his books about the Zone diet. Also this effect can be blunted by consuming adequate Omega-3s that we really need, and sometimes Fish oil or krill oil will also temper this response. By balancing carbs and protein at each meal, the uncomfortable effects are less. You can look up the Zone Diet online. The first book by Dr. Sears was Enter the Zone, and you can find that in libraries and on Amazon even in the used book section to save $$ if you want a copy. I think his first book was the most useful for me.

Yes, insulin is awful and the highs and lows. It is thankfully so easy to have YUMMY food now. Coconut flour, flax seed flour, almond flour, wonderful things to eat.

Eating this way improves everything including cholesterol, inflammation, etc.

We love cooking and learning more ways to substitute other flours for reg. flour. The almond flour and other taste a lot better also!

As I really want to understand all this, I ordered Sears' "The Inflamation Zone" yesterday (for my e-reader).

Although not an easy read - it could do with some editing - I already found very valuable information about fish oils. (and other supplements)

There's a Canadian website called http://www.ifosprogram.com/consumer-reports.aspx, where you can find tests of a lot of brands/batches. It's not a commercial organization, and they test on both quality of DHA/EPA and contaminants.

I was amazed at the high dose he recommends (to complement his diet), and will read a bit more before I commit to it. Still, all very interesting information.