roonitune

Celticphoenix,

Thanks again for a very thorough response. I would love to have your brain.

All three of these reasons for puffy eyse make so much sense to me as I first noticed them right after training for and running a marathon. I am guessing that I basically greatly lowered my metabolism during the training/marathon process and that of course caused the cascade of effects that we know to result in impaired digestion, increased endotoxin so on and so on. To make matters worse several years later I hiked for 5+ months straight (on the PCT) and took antihistamines much of the time I was out hiking. So not only was I damaging my metabolism because there was no way in hell I could keep up with my daily caloric demand while hiking, but I was exaggerating the effects of a lowered metabolism on digestion by taking antihistamines! Damn! I have had this hunch for a while now and you just helped me connect the dots. Thank you!

Funny enough when I first returned from my hike I eliminated gluten in a desperate attempt to figure out the mental/physical hell I suddenly found myself in. The past 2.5 years I have been convinced that gluten makes me a crazy woman. Then I got to my fukitol stage very recently and decided to give it a go. It hasn’t made me crazy emotional like it seemed to in the past. In fact, my mood has been more steady and even than it has been in a long while. Gee that seems to coincide with a bump in metabolism. Anyway, I still agree with you, it’s better to be safe than suffer the negative impacts of endotoxin. I am going to back off of the gluten and play around with dairy and see. Dairy never seemed to affect me as badly as gluten so I may be better able to handle it.

Thanks again for all your helpful information!

I want to thank you guys as this was a very educational thread to follow. I too started eating dairy and gluten after a fairly solid, though not entirely strict (2.5 years) absence from them. I have noticed some benefits namely a bump in temps by a degree or two and my hands and feet are definitely more consistently warm. I also have been playing around with more salt and less liquid, so it is hard to say exactly which is causing the shift, likely the combo. I haven’t noticed big issues with the dairy and gluten in terms of how I feel but I do think that my body reacts in an allergic manner. I say this because I have noticed that those lovely water bags under my eyes are worse with increased dairy/gluten consumption. I actually feel better as a whole, better energy, no horrible digestive challenges, but look kind of hellish. So this tells me my body is not quite there with using these two foods as often as I am and that I should maybe slow it down or trying again later.

Or is it a water balance thing? That is what I am trying to decipher. I started doing the less liquid more salt quite a while before I reintroduced dairy/gluten and didn’t see increased bags under my eyes until dairy/gluten came into the equation. Any thoughts, ideas or opinions on this would be appreciated. Also, what do you think about anit-histamines and their impact on water balance. Is it correct that histamine plays a role in water balance in the body and if so, what would taking antihistamines do to that balance?