Fighting Inflammation in the Body

The authors of "The Modern Nutritional Diseases," Alice and Fred Ottoboni write; "The broad underlying cause of all noninfectious diseases that are now epidemic (in modern communities) is chronic inflammation. All of these diseases have the same underlying cause; long term, low-level inflammation, brought about primarily by unhelpful diet."

Hives over my back. Itchy skin.
This problem lasted a year, 2014-2015. I'm sure it was caused by my "healthy diet," in this case eating far too much fruit. It took me a long time to "discover" that.

Three years ago I got quite sick, with a rash all over my body. I couldn't sleep in a warm bed. I couldn't resist scratching, until the skin started to bleed. The rash that the doctor called hives, occurred all over the body. It was worse at night, one factor that made me think it was related to my diet.

Sometimes it was so bad I didn't want to leave the house. In public resisting scratching was a burden.

My doctor said it was caused by an over-reactive immune system. That I'd never find out what caused it. One day it would go away as strangely as it came about. In one sense he was right about that, although it was about a year, before that happened. This was the first time I became aware of what generalised inflammation could be like.

Elimination to "discover" a Healthy Diet

I was convinced that my diet was causing the problem. There's a list of foods people are often allergic too, and I tried to eliminate those foods from my diet. With no effect. Many months later, when I tried gluten free (an idea I rejected for a long time), there was some improvement. By now my diet was quite restricted, and I tripped over the Banting Diet idea. Low-carbohydrate. I was almost there. "Cut out all grains and potatoes and eat less fruit." I could do that.

The result was a surprise. The rash went away and I began to lose weight quite quickly. I now think that the fruit I was eating, fruit I thought was "healthy," was the main dietary cause of my rash.

But I struggled with the new diet. Low-carbohydrate, is half of the story. For energy, on a low-carbohydrate diet you MUST eat a lot of fat. It took some months for me to learn that lesson. I experimented with coconut oil and olive oil. I ate quite of lot of coconut flesh. But in the end the best answer is the natural fat on the meat and lots of delicious butter.

John Stephen Veitch