Ooops, I deleted my above post about encopresis that eveheart referred to, and decided to PM it instead, as it's not a pleasant topic.

the same can be said about those peoples living in the northern part of the world for countless hundreds of generations, never eating bananas or durian,  and those living near the equator.   They didn't have any chance of adapting to bananas...  Any yet we don't say that if we have northern European blood lines, 'Don't eat a banana!'      It's so easy to mentally try to figure things out.

Really? Oh knoes! I ate TWO bananas today! I's gonna die from the carbos!    

Ask at a pharmacy. You could use a Fleet enema this once just to get things moving, and get a better treatment later. You won't find cassia fistula easily.

Been sleeping all day..my body is like telling me that I need repairing but because of this I'm very behind on my assignment and my exam. Well..good luck to me god knows how bad this is going to affect me.

Constipation all day couldn't get any BM even though I really feel like going.

Woke up, read all your replies and still couldn't get my head straight..I'm reading so much conflicting stuff..
Low carb? not low carb? high carb..? Avoid sugar or not avoid sugar? WTF..
Does it matter? Or does it not? Ketogenic to kill candida or multiple carb sources to encourage gut flora..?
I'm so confused....

Re: What has worked for me before.
1st Time through was cooked paleo and basically just doing that and a lot of Sun Tanning (I used to live on the country side of the city, not really a country side thou) , taking omega-3 + vitamin D3 ..Didn't really do much with colon cleansing or etc...I was pretty much winging the cooked paleo style, pretty much just cutting out gluten, and that's it..Got well in 6 months..

2nd Time, Rebound after 1 year of living in University student housing with provided food. Didn't adhere to any protocol and by the end of the 8 month period eczema start coming back and full blown out when I got back home..Took care of it by going strictly cooked paleo again, but it stayed with me with 50-70% gone throughout 2012-2013 School Year..Full blown again when I got back to HK in 2013 Summer and started another trend of party lifestyle. Said fuck it and went full RPD under budget. Ate a lot of mussels + raw lamb + other meat and stuff.
Supplementation of the time - Vitamin D3 + Christopher's LBB formula + Psyillium husk (barely used it) and zeolite (barely used it)

3rd time - 3rd year of University Life I had some fluctuation period but so far not much issue, remaining at fluctuations of 70-80% recovered with dry skin. Ate minimal gluten but still pretty much had a really bad health lifestyle. Went completely SAD eating during Christmas time of 2013 - Lost about 10-15 lbs at least. Ate a lot of SAD food such as Poutine ..Body didn't react as much though and remained relatively stable throughout the year..Fluctuating
2014 Summer I worked at a really stressful job at a Korean BBQ restaurant which gave me early signs of break out and I started contemplating quitting the job. I couldn't take the stress at one point and quit after working for less than a week. Then I went back to cooked paleo to resolve my eczema. Supplementation included nothing much other than Vitamin D3 (due to lack of sunlight) ..
Ironically I ate out a lot and didn't have the best food I can have (Preservative + MSG filled asian restaurants most of the time, and drinking + smoking)

Weirdly I was in the best shape this summer, coming in with almost the clearest I've had in a long time for my skin. I took a blurry photo and I had basically no eczema other than dry skin..which I was trying really hard to get resolved, but multiple goals got me distracted..

Then..Life threw me a lot of curveballs..So many I don't know where to start..And one thing led to another, I had some minor breakouts starting from Mid-november, Late november had even more to about 50% outbreak and now, almost 80-90% outbreak..

And now, that's why I'm here again..

Re Water
There's virtually nothing I can do now until I save up for a water system..Or add in buying water as budget..Is there more beneficial part of money I should be investing in, instead of water..? I'm also moving in half a year so I don't know if buying a water system would be worth anything..

Re Seafood
I'll try to add that in.

Re Supplementation
I'll reduce supplementation to zero first and see how I react once I start introducing them in again..

Re Coldness in room
This might contribute to my intense itching I guess..It was sort of aggravated by itching and how hot my body was burning...then that made me itch even more..i guess I'll turn down the heater and bring in more fresh air..that's going to be freezing cold in the morning though..oh wells lets do this..

Re Meditation
Yes, I do agree. I should have stayed with meditative practice since I've learnt it when I was 15-16. Would've helped me so much more in life by now. I do have to thank meditation for getting me out of depression several times..


----------------

Probably going to order probiotics with my prebiotics that I've ordered already..Let's gamble..let's try this gut flora strategy..
I'm stuck against the wall anyways. Why the hell not.

Meanwhile I'll try my best to adhere to a raw paleo diet with optional cooked sweet potato/ cooked mussels

--------------

Today's food
1lb of cooked ground beef + 2 onions + 2 clove of garlic fried in medium heat..( I was feeling so stressed I couldn't even bring myself to eat..this is a coping mechanism I guess..)
1 Sweet Potato + 1 Pear
Magnesium drink 1 cup
No supplements
2 Cup of apple juice (Weird sign of carb craving? maybe..)

A lot of bloating + constipation today..No BM even though I tried..Brain Fog + Lack of concentration due to scratching

It sounds like the past successful protocols involved sunlight, lower stress, more diverse foods and not trying to be chronically ketogenic/VLC, and probably eating more calories, yes?

I found bitter melon (and even durian) at a local Thai market, yay! I ate it raw, like GS showed us. The seeds were rather bitter, but the rest was only mildly bitter. No big deal to eat it, so I can understand how GS was able to eat it so easily, whereas other Youtubers screw up their faces.  I wonder if eating raw Paleo makes such foods taste less bitter? Does bitter melon taste super-bitter to anyone here besides RawZi? It's interesting that she mentioned celery, because the flavor is like a cross between celery and green grass, to me, currently. Looking forward to the taste improving over time, thanks to GS's tips.

Thanks for the video, GS.

I also found the best, freshest tamarind fruit at another market that I've yet found (of course, these fruits don't compare to the tree-ripened fruits in GS's country, but I'm not complaining). Quite a bit of luck lately.

But I do like eat as much fat that appeals to you, eat moderate amounts of protein,  and nibble on prebiotics throughout the day,,   a lot better.

This appears to actually fit with Jeff Leach's approach. Agreement is not required, but it's interesting and welcome when it occurs.

Quite honestly I don't even think carb content matter as much as the type of carb
Genetics is probably the biggest factor here - How strong is the digestive system for that person? How good is he tolerated with various pathogens and gut bacteria? How fast can he eliminate those pathogens and LPS within the system..?

Yes, you made some good points, such as these, if I may paraphrase them to summarize:

1) There are "good" carbs as well as "bad" carbs (more precisely, there are good carby foods as well as bad ones), just as you and Gary Taubes suggested that there are "good" fats as well as "bad" fats (and this is partly dependent on the overall balances).   
2) How badly carbs impact you depends in part on how robust/antifragile you are to shocks from stressors like too much bad carbs at one blow (due to how strong the digestive, microbial, mitochondrial and other systems are).
3) (A corrolary to #2) It's not just important how many toxins you consume, but also how well your sytem works to detoxify them. So we should look at the whole systemic picture, not just toxin avoidance.

While genetics is a factor, the 90% of the genes in your body that are in microbes may be more important than the 10% that are in your cells. Plus, changeable epigenetics and horizontal gene transfer may be more important than fixed genetics.

Again, sort of how people have been using it anyways. Some people use ZC to get rid of cancer (went on mainstream with the Ketogenic diet of bacon, butter, eggs etc), some people use mod-high carb to deal with temperature issues.

Ketogenic diets are not a slam-dunk treatment for all cancers. It came out that some cancer cells may also feed on ketones, and thus ketogenic diets are not recommended for certain forms of cancer. You won't often see this disclosed by LC advocates, though Dr. Eugene Fine, cancer researcher at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and LC diet advocate who uses a ketogenic diet as a therapy, did candidly acknowledge the issue:

"Some cancers may indeed depend on ketone bodies. Our hypothesis, in fact states that some cancers may be adapted to the effects of carb restriction, including ketosis (i.e. may continue to grow), and others may be vulnerable to ketosis." http://livinlavidalowcarb.com/blog/do-ketones-fuel-cancer-the-low-carb-experts-respond/10124

Recent research has been investigating this issue:

Ketone body utilization by breast and prostate tumors
Simon Authier1, Sebastien Tremblay1, Veronique Dumulon1, Celena Dubuc1, Rene Ouellet1, Roger Lecomte1, Stephen Cunnane2 and Francois Benard1
J Nucl Med. 2007; 48 (Supplement 2):340P
http://tinyurl.com/p5js8xh

Ketones and lactate "fuel" tumor growth and metastasis: Evidence that epithelial cancer cells use oxidative mitochondrial metabolism.
Bonuccelli G1, Tsirigos A, Whitaker-Menezes D, Pavlides S, Pestell RG, Chiavarina B, Frank PG, Flomenberg N, Howell A, Martinez-Outschoorn UE, Sotgia F, Lisanti MP.
Cell Cycle. 2010 Sep 1;9(17):3506-14. Epub 2010 Sep 21.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20818174

New studies explain how cancer cells 'eat us alive'
Sep 01, 2010
http://www.physorg.com/news202553643.html
"Four key studies now propose a new theory about how cancer cells grow and survive, allowing researchers to design better diagnostics and therapies to target high-risk cancer patients. These studies were conducted by a large team of researchers at Thomas Jefferson University’s Kimmel Cancer Center."

A lactate shuttle system between tumour and stromal cells is associated with poor prognosis in prostate cancer.
Pértega-Gomes N, Vizcaíno JR, Attig J, Jurmeister S, Lopes C, Baltazar F1.
BMC Cancer. 2014 May 21;14:352. doi: 10.1186/1471-2407-14-352.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24886074

The reverse warburg effect in osteosarcoma.
Oncotarget. 2014 Sep 30;5(18):7982-3.
Sotgia F1, Martinez-Outschoorn UE, Lisanti MP1.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25327555

A reverse Warburg metabolism in oral squamous cell carcinoma is not dependent upon myofibroblasts.
Jensen DH1, Therkildsen MH, Dabelsteen E.
J Oral Pathol Med. 2014 Nov 25. doi: 10.1111/jop.12297.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25420473

I agree, and,  I also say for those who want to know what carbs or sugar is doing to their insulin or blood sugar levels, and what effect that may have long term on health, there is plenty of information to discover and ponder, if not test for one self.  But one has to be able to allow for change.   I for one, for many years bought up the notion if it's fruit, or if it's raw, the sugar or carbs won't hurt you.

And I would add one of Iguana's favorite heuristic's--Claude Bernard's "the terrain is everything." It's a bit of an exaggeration, but how harmful or beneficial the fruit or sugar is depends in great measure on how well equipped the terrain/milieu/environment/habitat (pH of the intestines, GI microbiome, mitochondria, cell fitness, genetics, epigenetics, and so on) is to handle it. The hypothesis is that if you can find a way to improve that terrain, then fewer carby foods will be harmful for you and those that are still harmful will be less so.

Van, Your sentiments largely fit with what I mentioned above and what I have mentioned before--that there's still much to learn and no guarantee that the particular things that Leach is doing are best for everyone and that he embraces fatty foods. I recall him saying his diet was both high in fat and fermentable fiber (though he didn't specify fat grams or %, and I doubt he has calculated it, so his sense of it could be off). Also, my mention of this or that person or their research isn't intended to suggest guru worship or prescribe for others (as I explained with Ray Peat), just spark curiosity and discussion.

I already provided the results of LC Paleoists Brent Pottenger and Laura Schoenfeld vs ex-VLC Paleoist Tatertot Tim Steele, as well as Jeff Leach's data on LCers and his own high-fiber vs low-fiber results:

http://www.rawpaleodietforum.com/instinctoanopsology/gcb-eating-meat-is-harmful/msg119969/#msg119969

http://www.rawpaleodietforum.com/instinctoanopsology/gcb-eating-meat-is-harmful/msg120277/#msg120277

I also don't know if the reverse holds true--if someone who's eating a diet high in diverse plant foods would be better off receiving their lipids from ingesting animal fat and avoiding many plant foods. Jeff Leach actually tested it out to a certain degree by necessity and you can interpret the results for yourself:

Jeff Leach's New Orleans to Desert (High fiber vs Low fiber) GI microbiome results
http://humanfoodproject.com/going-feral-one-year-journey-acquire-healthiest-gut-microbiome-world-heard

He also raised concerns about it:

Can a high fat Paleo Diet cause obesity and diabetes? Maybe, unless
Posted by Jeff Leach on 24 Jun 2012
http://humanfoodproject.com/can-a-high-fat-paleo-diet-cause-obesity-and-diabetes

Sorry low carbers, your microbiome is just not that into you
Posted by Jeff Leach on 26 Jun 2013 in Human Food Project | 18 comments
http://humanfoodproject.com/sorry-low-carbers-your-microbiome-is-just-not-that-into-you

This is not about proving anything, it's about asking questions, keeping an open mind, considering other possibilities beyond VLC/keto doctrine, and checking a variety of sources.

When someone mentions problems with various versions of allegedly "Paleo" diets, a common refrain at this forum and others where there is some degree of LC leaning is to recommend "eat more fat" to anyone and for just about any problem. A Global Moderator at Cavemanforum.com used to have a forum signature that said: "The answer to your question is eat more fat." More and more people are starting to question that blanket prescription.
 
You're right about feed lots. If Leach is right about diet biodiversity being generally beneficial, then that would also fit nicely with ecological biodiversity.

Yes, under-consumption of calories can be very stressful, especially if there isn't plenty of body fat and glycogen reserves, or metabolism of fat or carbs is poor, and it also makes one even lower-carb on a daily grams intake basis.

People with alcohol cravings tend to have deficiencies in some key nutrients, like zinc and B vitamins (such as B6), and I suspect that inadequate levels of the microbes that help produce, metabolize or absorb these nutrients is a likely key factor in this.

Jeff Leach has reported that one of the key things his GI microbiome research reveals as supporting a healthy microbiome is eating a wide variety of plant species. He aims for eating 30-40 different plant species each week!!!  Sweet potatoes + apples + pears = 3 species, which is nowhere near Leach's intakes. He reported that LC Paleoists who do his GI microbiome test have been showing subpar microbiomes little or no better than those of SADers, IIRC.

“Waking up to a hell of a skin itch and rash ain't no fun. Combined with cold hands and feet. Health is taking a down turn”
“I'm lactose intolerant now”
“Low libido seems to be connected with low testosterone..It make sense that I have low T because I've been training hard to couple years in weight lifting (despite on and off) but my muscle growth seems to not even compare with newbies who started for 1 year on bad diet.”
“Scalp issue is causing more hair loss, it is possibly a combination of eczema + candida, or just scalp eczema.”
“funny ball shape poop” ( = #1 on the Bristol Stool Scale)
“I'm at the constipation stage right now again, my digestion system is weak as hell.”
“Got a humidifier to decrease stress on dry skin, don't know if it works well yet though.
Drinking hot magnesium supplement that I got in the morning to warm up body
Pre-thawing meal the day before”

If you search around this forum and the Internet, you’ll find that all of the above is commonly associated with this sort of VLC/HF approach (though at least you are avoiding ZC by eating some sweet potato):

“Current mode of operation:
Increase raw fat by eating a lot of marrow bones
…
Taking in carb from Sweet potato only”

Several ex-VLCers in this forum (such as Danny Roddy, Yuri, Yuli, Miles, Brady, Stas86, Klowcarb, and Lowenherz, IIRC) reported faring poorly on VLC in the longer run and some of them were harassed for sharing that (admittedly in part due to some venting on the part of some of them). Some of them were understandably angry that so much of the LC/HF hype turned out to be wrong in the long term. It seemed like they were exaggerating until I looked further into it myself. If you look into the backgrounds of prominent critics of VLC on the Internet, you'll find that many of them previously tried LC diets themselves, with quite a few even having touted them. Stick around at any diet forum that has a significant number of VLCers and you’ll eventually see some of them report it didn’t work out in the longer run.

Is it just coincidence that foods rich in carbs (including Microbiota-Accessible Carbohydrates aka fermentable fiber aka prebiotics) like sweet fruits and starchy tubers, legumes and nuts have been reported by more and more people to reverse many of the symptoms you have reported?

Check this out:

High iodine content found in starchy staple foods like tubers and legumes:

http://www.ajol.info/index.php/ajb/article/view/59582/47873
"Some selected staple foods: tubers, cereals, and legumes, grown, sold and consumed in Ijebu-North Local Government area, Nigeria were evaluated for their iodine content using standard methods. Among the tubers, Ipomea batata (sweet potatoe [sic], red species) was observed to have the highest iodine content (311.33±8.52 mgI) while the least iodine value of 88.97±1.31 mgI was recorded in Discovea avenmensis (cocoyam). Among the cereals, maize was observed to have the highest iodine content (100.96±3.50 mgI). When the iodine content of the legumes was compared, the highest was observed in Glycine soja (soybean; 179.56±4.66 mgI) while the least was in Cucus melo (mellon; 29.84±1.21 mgI). Result from our findings indicated that most of the staple foods contain [a] high level of iodine."

Substitution of red meat with legumes in the therapeutic lifestyle change diet based on dietary advice improves cardiometabolic risk factors in overweight type 2 diabetes patients: a cross-over randomized clinical trial http://www.nature.com/ejcn/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ejcn2014228a.html

Good luck badboy9311

I merely cited cassava as it was the most toxic cited...

Of course.

I doubt that cooked tubers were the culprit behind diminished brain and body size. Grains are more likely.

The dose is the poison. Since sweet potatoes and cassava aren't normally consumed raw and raw consumption of them hasn't been thoroughly studied, one is taking an unknown risk by eating them raw more than on rare occasion. I don't eat much in the way of raw sweet potatoes, though I have tried it a few times. If I ate more, I would try to keep the particle size and toxin level down by eating the youngest, smallest, tastiest ones I could find and soak them first.

I do eat a completely raw young, small starchy potato now and then without soaking, which is something my grandfather and other Irish people used to do, and it is more palatable to me without soaking than sweet potatoes (though maybe that's because I haven't tried a small sweet potato yet). I haven't tried cassava raw. Cassava is reportedly much more toxic than those and other tubers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassava#Food_use_processing_and_toxicity), which is probably why Tyler likes to use it as an example of a tuber.   

Unfortunately, I don't have as easy, cheap and plentiful access to high quality ancestral starchy foods that are edible raw, such as tiger nuts, water chestnuts and water caltrops, as my ancient ancestors did. The starchy foods that require cooking or other processing are replacements for the ancestral starchy foods that are less available outside of ancient human habitats. I wouldn't assume that the later starchy foods can simply be eaten completely raw like the early ones with the same results, and I also wouldn't assume that just avoiding all starchy foods completely will produce the same results as a more ancestral diverse diet. Humans have been working out various compromises for thousands of years to try to fill the needs that ancestral foods provided. A good GI microbiome can help with this.

Thanks, Eric, at least you get it.

And as I noted before, it's possible for both meat/fat and tubers to contribute to brain growth. It doesn't have to be an either-or. Humans tend to see things in terms of simple, absolute, binary possibilities ("Should I take the left fork of the trail, or the right?"). Nature is often more complex and subtle than that.

Another complexity re: tubers is that traditional peoples often cook just the outside of certain tubers, leaving the core raw, or nearly so. So this is another area where  it's not a question of simple binary alternatives--there is a continuum of cooking, from thoroughy cooked, to partially cooked, to raw.

It's also not just a matter of the plant toxins that Paleoists tend to obsess over. The outer part of tubers (and other plants) tends to have larger particles that are reportedly less beneficial when persorbed (absorbed into the circulatory and lymphatic systems), with the best small particles being in the core. Studies have found that large starch particles can become problematic over time if they are not broken down before eating and consumed in excess (they can lodge in and embolise arterioles and capillaries if not broken down soon enough by the amylase in serum and other fluids). Cooking (and probably other forms of processing) breaks down the large particles. (For a summary on the topic, see Persorption of Resistant Starch Granules: Should We Be Worried? by Shmuel HaShual, Monday, March 17, 2014, http://glutinousthoughts.blogspot.com/2014/03/persorption-of-resistant-starch.html).

While later research (K.J. Steffens, Persorption--Criticism and Agreement as Based upon In Vitro and In Vivo Studies on Mammals, 1995, http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-642-79511-4_2#page-1) found the persorption effect to not be as pronounced as early research by Gerhard Volkheimer (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1475370, 1974) had suggested, it's existence was confirmed.

Interestingly, the starch particles in tiger nuts are much smaller than the largest particles in large, mature cooking tubers that are more common in supermarkets. Thus, it's plausible that humans would be better adapted to the small starch particles in ancestral tubers like tiger nuts, and it's not surprising that tiger nuts are quite edible and nutritious raw and fresh, whereas those with larger particles and more toxins tend to be cooked, especially the outer layers that contain more of both the larger particles and plant defense toxins.