Hi Rosanne this is a little off topic but I'm a big fan of The Schwarzbien Principle regarding diet. She has a website www.schwarzbeinprinciple.com and you can watch a video on there regarding diet. Thanks for this post.

I'm a big fan of the Bernstein Diet which is more restricted than the Schwarzbien (have her book, too.) I eat no more than 30 carbs a day ... 6 in the morning when the body is LEAST able to process them, no more than 12 at noon at 12 at dinner. I've been doing that for about two years now but have only KNOW I have CFIDS for about four months (although I've had it for six years.) No carb/low carb sure can't hurt anything!!!

Absolutely not. I eat carbs like mad. I don't do well on low-carb, low-fat, high protein, no sugar, or low-cholesterol diets, and never did.

I have done the no amylose diet as part of reducing inflammation (works), and an elimination diet to resolve food sensitivity issues caused by candida overgrowth. It was also supposed to help with the candida, but it took a prescription antifungal to get that under control. Fish oil rec'd by a brain clinic and a neurologist were good additions. The prescription increase in dopamine and norepinephrine caused the rest of the excess weight to drop right off.

Now I eat what I want, when I want, since I don't have the high leptin problem. Except peanuts. They're loaded with mold (aspergillus in particular), and I react to it immediately.

I add avocados sometimes because of extremely dry skin, and that works right away, though only temporarily.

I add salt sometimes, even though I don't crave it at all, because it has a good effect on the edema that goes with low ADH. (I assume this is because it increases blood volume and increases blood pressure - not unlike the IV saline some people have reported success with.)

One caution - after doing well for quite a while, I ate some Sunkist Almond Accents that you see in the produce section. Been horribly sick for 24 hours straight now. The stomach cramps kept me up groaning all night. I mean, bad!
That's the third time I've been burned by Sunkist's nut products - same thing, every time. I just didn't realize this was another Sunkist product. Their packaging is not good, their products are obviously not clean of fungal/bacterial growth, and they sure won't get another opportunity!

Serena,

Now that you mention the peanut thing. I had horrible problems when I bought a bag a few months ago. My head/face pain went through the roof!
I`ll never go near a peanut again.
Odd though because I can eat peanut butter. Hummm.....

Beats me, Roseanne. If I could predict reactions to peanut butter 100%, I'd chow down on a bag of Reese's instantly! Almond butter has become my alternative.

If you look at the agricultural research being done on behalf of the peanut industry, you'll find their bright idea was infecting the crops with a different fungus. So, uhhhhh...no. Some of the commercial antifungals tried were apparently not only ineffective, they made things worse, leading to class actions that paid settlements in the millions and left people just as ill as we are. So sorry, George Washington Carver. You were a true genius but now it's over, for me at least.

With peanuts, you don't get much relief from the problems. They aren't true nuts, and they are grown beneath the ground in climates that are basically giant mold factories anyway. Worse yet, aspergillus produces T-2 toxin, rated by the Dept. of Defense as a potential bioweapon. I'm afraid that whatever the FDA thinks is a tolerable amount of aspergillus in food crops is just not acceptable to me.

With real tree nuts, most of the problems seem connected to storage and packaging methods, like a lot of foods. I would NOT buy anything that comes in a plastic bag! It's the next best thing to a petri dish, and it hides the product from visual inspection and the sniff test. If they aren't buying huge quantitites of lower-grade products and failing to sort/inspect them, there's nothing to hide. Never had a problem with nuts from Whole Foods...you can buy what they package, or get your own from the bins, but you can see them, smell them, they're always fresh, and actually no more expensive than some of the junk these huge companies sell at the supermarkets. A lot cheaper, if you calc in the health costs from eating the junk brands. Now if I just had the energy to go to Whole Foods regularly...8P