Day 5 and a skin issue...

[Cinemagirl]

Hi all,

I'm very new to this whole thing and I am doing pretty well so far. I've had headaches and did the total crabby weepy thing on day 4, but otherwise detox not too bad. BUT starting yesterday and worse today on day 5...The skin on my face is cracked and hurts!! The edges of my mouth have totally cracked and sting. This has never happened to me. Ever. Not even in the dead of winter. I'm hoping you'll all laugh and tell me this is a normal result of excluding something from my diet. Right??

 

I'm a cancer survivor with auto-immune disease and have been vegan and dairy-free before. Never had this!

 

Any thoughts?

Thanks!

Alex

[Tom Denham]

Sorry. There is nothing normal about what you are describing. It MIGHT have something to do with your diet, but cracking skin is nothing I've heard of before. However, post a report of several days of what you have been eating and drinking so we can see if we notice anything.

 

Are you eating anything that is new to your diet? Or eating a lot more of something that you rarely ate before? Cracking skin is not a typical allergic response I am familiar with, but that is something to consider/

[Cinemagirl]

Ok thanks...

 

My food yesterday:

Breakfast, 2 hard boiled eggs, organic kraut and 1/4 avocado

Lunch: steamed broccoli and mushrooms with turkey breast (i roasted with olive oil, salt, pepper, oregano). Put a little olive oil and salt on the veg when they were warm.

Snack: 1/4 cup of cashews and 5 strawberries

Dinner: Chicken breast with basil and tomatoes (all organic from the farmers market. Not new to me) with baked sweet potato and asparagus

After dinner snack: about 1 cup of strawberries.

 

None of these foods are new to me. I'm a big grain eater, so without quinoa or polenta or brown rice this is a challenge. And I also eat a lot of beans, so none of those. No hummus.

 

The other days have been similar. Substitute type of veg, or sub tuna for chicken, etc.

 

Not quite sure what's going on, but will keep an eye out.

[Carlaccini]

I used to get cracked corners of my mouth, and under my ear lobes.  They feel like paper cuts.  Kind of painful.

 

Most I can figure them out to be is related to eczema, or some sort of auto-immune thing.  So if you are eating more nuts, tomatoes and peppers (especially raw) than normal, this could be your bodies way of reacting to it.  When your body is healing, things do have a tendency to get worse before they get better.  So that could be happening here. 

 

Does it mean that you need to do an AIP version - That is up to you.  I never did.  I had several auto-immune issues going on, all skin disorders, but one was always worse than the next.  I figured things out by cutting them out for a bit then bringing them back in. 

 

If I were you I would do a regular whole 30 but play around with eliminating certain foods for a few days (maybe a week at most) and then re-intro them back in later.  If that doesn't work within the whole 30 time frame then I would consider doing a complete AIP version.

[Cinemagirl]

good to know!

(going to look up AIP now)

[Cinemagirl]

HOLY COW: Update.

 

I just ate a few more cashews and my entire mouth just went bright red and itchy.

NO WAY.

 

I eat cashews ALL THE TIME and I've never had an allergic reaction before. When you start doing Whole30, do people find they are allergic to things they never have before?

 

Wow.

[Carlaccini]

I haven't really heard many story about gaining sensitivities while on the whole 30 but when you think about it it makes some sense. You are healing your gut.  If there is food that you are still ingesting that disrupts your gut, I'm sure you body is going to let you know. This is it's way of letting you know.  Whether you discover this sensitivity now or during reintroductions, you would have still discovered this sensitivity.  Some people fall off the wagon at day 10 with ice cream or cheese and they are surprised that they have reactions the next day. Particularly when they have been eating dairy their entire life and never had a reaction, but now they do.

 

One of our other moderators, Bethany explains this as such - Say I've been poking your arm in the same place everyday continously for years.  You haven't noticed me doing this for years as you are so used to this happening.  One day I decide to stop. I continue stopping.  The bruise that was there heals.  Then after 30 days I start up again.  You're going to feel it right and run to me and say Ouch?  Why are you doing that?

 

So it has now become more obvious as your gut is healing that cashews cause you problems.  I discovered too during one of my whole 30's  that I have issues with nuts - I can't sleep if I have any, and some particular ones give me bathroom issues.  It's not that I did a re-intro on them or anything I just found out by fluke.  I didn't eat them I didn't have problems.  I ate them I had problems. 

 

So your body is letting you there is a problem.  The fact that you are doing a whole 30 is just magnifying the problem and making it more obvious to you.

[Cinemagirl]

thanks for that....makes a lot of sense.

This stuff is fascinating.

 

Today was the first day I really REALLY was starving most of the day. And all I wanted to do was eat bread or pizza. I gave myself the 'do i want steamed chicken and broccoli' test to see if I was really hungry and I desperately wanted steamed chicken and broccoil...lol.

 

I allowed myself some fruit tonight but stuck on plan. Feeling good!

[jeannebean]

I did my first Whole30 in February.  One of the first things I reintroduced was dairy - I'd really missed milk in my coffee.  Within a few hours, my eyes got so gummy and sticky that I had to remove my contacts and rinse them off.  Since I'd eaten dairy all my life and hadn't had this kind of reaction to anything before, I didn't put two and two together for a couple of days.  I laid off dairy for a few days and bingo!  No goopy eyes.

 

After experimenting with this a few more times -  for science! - the results really couldn't be more clear.  Any quantity of dairy + a few hours = eyes gummed nearly shut.  I've been 99% dairy-free since then.

 

While I wouldn't call this an allergy, it's certainly an adverse reaction.  It's as though the Whole30 reset my system.  I can just imagine my poor digestion yelling at me, "Why are you still doing this?!  We fixed this back in February!"