Jess. You may be onto something there. I have PCOS. So for years I had huge issues trying to conceive. 5 miscarriages as well. I was them out in meforim Tablet for diabetics as it helps with pcos (ovaries ) and veryvlow dose I started ovulating. I had 3 babies then ! I followed a low Go quiet during that time. Now I stopped the drug as I felt miserable on it. Nausea was disgusting 24/7 but I used it while I was trying to conceive. So the diet I need to follow is for dietibics ?
I will try anything from tomorrow I will do my best to follow this and log it all ! I want my life back. I cannot live a “sick “ life anymore.
Thank you Sabrina. You are very kind to reply to me. I have screen shot some tips you gave me to investigate. I tried LDN and the nausea was hell I stopped. This is my biggest issue with all drugs nausea. I had a few infusion. Ketamine. But very low. Like 4 hours of 50mg one day. Then a week later another one. I didn that for 3 weeks to helped face pain a lot. But it takes a lot out of me. Getting to hosp. Being there all day. Recovering for 3 days and then starting again. I am taking a break now for a month see how I Gp. This week only taking paracetamol and using 3 warm baths a day with Epsom salt for pain. I really want to get more active and hope that can lift deprssion and help weight loss. I am going to try low gi diet too. I am kind of positive but feel deprsssed. How is that possible lol.
Well, if you suffer from PCOS then that further backs up that you could have a blood sugar issue, as that is a conditions which correlates with diabetes. William Davies book Wheat Belly is a book you should invest in....and has tons of information on the damage done by high blood sugars. I cut out grains approx a year ago, but still continues to eat lot's of vegetables and fruits..well, they are 'healthy' aren't they? It turns out , no they are NOT if you happen to be diabetic or pre-diabetic! Another person you should research (he has many videos on YouTube where he explains things very clearly) is Richard Bernstein (he is 86 yrs old and been Diabetic all his life). He was the first person to use a 'home' glucose meter decades ago. The damage that high blood sugar causes affects every cell in the body, and can cause many many symptoms that you may think are unrelated (PCOS, depression, anxiety, neuropathy, blurred vision, fatigue, fertility problems, joint/muscle pain etc). If you can afford a meter it would be a good investment, but if not just cut out all carbs and see how you feel after a week or so. I hope you will let us know if you try this 'experiment' and let us know if any improvement. I am doing this experiment for the last couple of weeks and seeing good improvement...but being very very strict.
Lisa. I think ketamine should be tried again. I am researching a lot and sometimes the dose can actually be too high ! I had one at 60mg over 3 hours very low compared to most. I was in bits after very sick and took days to get over. Next time did 50mg over 3 and got good pain relief
Jess I am excited about your discovery and information. I am going to go food shopping. tomorrow and really be very strict. I will certainly invest in a monitor as well. I am really good af putting my mind to something. I will buy that book. I always have a big belly bloated belly no matter how much weight I loose ! I could be so thin everywhere but my belly is always bloated and fatter.
I may be somewhat biased because Ketamine IV's work well for me, though it's certainly the case that some of my treatments were more pleasant than others... Even when the dose per hour was the same. My last 4 treatments were infused at 60mg Ketamine per hour, for 4 hours. Prior to that, Dr. Joshi started me on 40mg per hour, and then the next treatment was 50 mg/hour, also 4 hours (That's standard protocol for his surgicenter).
This is probably the long way around of saying: Everybody's different, and so the dose and the protocol that work for one person may not be optimal, or even effective at all, for the next person. Dr. J. says it's a lot like a first date: You don't know that much about the person until you've spent some one-on-one time observing them. I disagree with your doctor who said if it didn't help the first time, that Ketamine won't help ever; what was the dose?? For how long did you get it? What other meds were you on at the time? Too many variables to make that determination after only one infusion, I think. Incidentally, I'm red-headed, and whereas Dr. J. has patients that essentially can barely speak or move on 60 mg Ketamine per hour, I can reposition myself and do math, chatty as all get-out, asking questions, singing to myself, and just generally being a pest. Yet if anything, it works as well or better for me than for other patients. I've read about people who actually need 120mg/hr or more to begin to dissociate, to help your brain "reboot", which is the therapeutic goal of Ketamine in the first place. So once again, too many variables to say for sure that it would never work for you. If I was on one of those 5-day infusion protocols as a hospital inpatient, and they were running the IV at 10-30 mg/hr., I imagine I wouldn't feel much, if anything; it would be a lot like they were just running straight Ringer's lactate. Ketamine doesn't hang around in your system for that long, so what you start infusing doesn't really accumulate in your bloodstream hour by hour as much as most analgesic drugs do.
There can be a lot of reasons for this huge variance in protocol: One of the main ones is that there is really no gold standard for how to do Ketamine infusions. You typically see in the literature that a good way to start treatment is to take the patient's weight in kilos, and infuse 0.5mg/kg. But there are providers out there who give more or less than that, for an hour or two only, or on the other end of the spectrum, they do very low dose but for 5 days at a time, or shorter infusions for 3-10 days in a row, or you name it.
My first, 40 mg per hour infusion (I was 77kg, so that's just about 0.5mg/kg) was pretty mild, and hilarious: I was so highly suggestible that the mostly-below-ground surgicenter reminded me of a rabbit warren, and suddenly, the medical staffers all had bunny ears and noses, even though they were walking around in blue scrubs and talking while they worked away. I couldn't stop giggling to myself, to the point that I made my own face ache from smiling. I did get pretty substantial relief from that first infusion, but only for days when it came to the pain, and about 3-4 weeks for the digestive, motor, sleep and cognitive issues. I still only get relief for weeks, not months, even at the higher dose, but function is SO improved, that the 4 hours per month that I spend getting the infusion over at "Rabbit Central" is SO worth it... Not just for me but for my family, who were watching me walk around in the pre-Ketamine days, sort of like something out of "Night of the Living Dead". My last infusion was the same dose as the previous 3 had been, but for some reason, the experience was muted; less colorful, more flat. But it worked just as well on my symptoms, so I don't really care. Nobody promised me a party, after all
That being said, in the literature there are a bunch of references to the fact that just like with Neurontin, or Naltrexone, etc., a certain subset of CRPS patients respond well to very well, but some are just kind of like "Meh". Used to be, there wasn't much of a way to determine ahead of time who was who, but more and more, they are discovering that CRPS is a lot like "cough": It's not one straight-up condition, but instead a sort of spectrum of related conditions that just all converge in terms of the signs and symptoms, or mostly so. Some cases of CRPS are clearly triggered by trauma, but some cases may not be. Many CRPS sufferers have a loss of small nerve fibers on skin biopsy testing, but some don't. Some of the ones that do, have length-dependent small fiber loss, but a few have non-length dependent small fiber nerve loss instead; and this latter one, NLDSFN, is what I have. Instead of appearing over many months, it went from my left knee to toes only, but then after knee surgery, it was literally all over my body inside of another 8 weeks. And I mean it was up my nose, in my mouth and ears, and we won't even talk about my "swimsuit" areas. Sheesh! Turns out, it may have to do with exactly how and how fast the symptoms get into your central nervous system, and exactly what they do/where they go when they get there. Almost everybody has insomnia and anxiety to a greater or lesser degree. I temporarily lost about 20 IQ points on exam about a month after my surgery, when my CRPS was spreading weekly if not daily (mainly because my short-term memory had gone up in flames, as it turns out), but about a year later, I got most of my points back., and I just developed ways to work around my deficits as time went by. Anyhow, Ketamine treats not so much the CRPS, but the central sensitization. That's why it works on stuff like PTSD and fibromyalgia, too: All these conditions have a central nervous system component that keeps amplifying your pain. Ketamine helps to normalize your central nervous system again. But you know that from your reading
Sorry...My sleep has been sort of spotty this week; I really need to get another Ketamine infusion soon . Just wanted to remember to add: Regarding the Naltrexone... The doctor who basically took a flyer by letting me trial Naltrexone said that he had only had one other patient who tried it and she/he were not impressed by the results. You are no doubt aware that Naltrexone comes in 50mg tablets. This same doc on follow-up was astonished to hear that instead of taking the whole 50mg tablet daily, I had just looked up the protocol from Dr. Pradeep Chopra at Brown University for this drug: Dr. Chopra says to go low and slow, so I dissolved the tablet in 100ml distilled water, and used a little syringe or baby med dropper to dose 1.25mg to start. I took it in the AM, when I got up, because I had read plenty about it giving some patients really wild dreams, and I wasn't getting much sleep anyhow, and so wasn't looking to add any fuel to that particular fire.
Anyhow... When you consider that people with drug and alcohol dependency issues take the whole 50 mg tablet at a time, I was amazed to find that for the first week, I couldn't increase my teeny-tiny dose at all, not even by a tenth of a milligram, without extreme dizziness and moderate nausea (And my adult daughter who takes it for menstrual irregularities experienced the exact same thing!) and constipation resulting. I thought at the time that I was in fact, crazy. Since then, I have read that a lot of other patients have pretty much some version of this same thing with Naltrexone. It took me, no lie, almost a calendar year to work up to my current dose of 4.5 mg daily. I can still, if I'm having a bit of digestive upset due to most recent Ketamine IV on the wane, take 1-2 tenths of a mg extra Naltrexone if I have to travel in the car a long way, or sit in a doctor's waiting room, etc., and know for a near-certainty that I won't have to make a mad dash for the bathroom to have diarrhea. Just that little tiny bit extra Naltrexone does the trick. Go figure! Makes me wonder if my doc's other patient who trialed Naltrexone didn't just swallow the whole 50mg tab at once, resulting in not very nice side effects for her, and so no good symptom relief overall.
And re: Ketogenic diet. Yes, and yes to the thread about glucose metabolism abnormalities causing all kinds of extra problems with pain and function. The ketogenic diet helps to normalize these metabolic glitches and reduce body and central nervous system inflammation at the same time. My only caveat: This diet was developed in the 1920's by a pediatric neurologist who was trying to find something-anything at all- to help his epileptic patients have decent quality of life if the medications of the day didn't work for them... And the ketogenic diet was the result. Now, back almost 100 years ago, eggs, meat, butter and sour cream, etc., all came from animals that were allowed to graze on natural pasture grasses. I suspect the modern version of the ketogenic diet isn't quite as beneficial as that original version was. That's likely because conventionally-produced animal products aren't as high in Omega-3 fatty acids; they have more Omega-6 fatty acids proportionately. Unfortunately, the tipping of the scale in favor of more 6's and fewer 3's in our modern diet produces more inflammation and depression, and maybe atherosclerosis as well as some cancers and even some forms of dementia. This is under study on a lot of fronts, but just saying. I will keep eating my pasture-fed butter and cream, and organic coconut oil. I eat ALOT of fat; if I skip a day of this, boy do I feel it by about the 36-hour mark!! Talk about burning pain!
Good for you for being inquisitive! CRPS patients sure as heck need to be well informed, because you run into the craziest opinions out there in the world, even among some of the medical folks who see CRPS patients, for sure.
Best of luck finding what works for you, and keep me posted!
Yessss!!!! So true; errors in glucose metabolism lead to increased system and neurogenic inflammation, and hence to errors in protein synthesis, and even mitochondrial replication/division errors!!
Sorry... I'm not just a CRPS patient, but a former biologist as well as an RN.
Not many people, even healthcare professionals, truly understand the import of too much carbohydrate in the diet/too high of fasting glucose levels, too frequent insulin release!
Oh I am so pleased it could be good advice. I have suffered 3 years of hell with not only the terrible burnings, tingling but lots of other awful symptoms too (to numerous to mention)! I think every nervous system in my body has been affected. I have had to become a medical researcher myself to get any sort of relief! Whenever I asked GPs about blood sugar they actually SHOUTED at me that I 'was not a diabetic'! Because I am not overweight, and fairly slim they just think I could not be diabetic! But my problems started when I gave up smoking my pack a day....and smoking itself has now been shown to not only correlate with diabetis...but also be be causal! In other words smoking can CAUSE diabetes even. I have discovered that every time I had a cigarette my liver would immediately dump insulin into my bloodstream! Each cigarette was like me eating a crispy creme doughnut!! So when I suddenly stopped smoking my whole system was thrown into chaos.....my muscles, within days, turned into deflated balloon and the fatigue was boneshattering. I have lost 3 years of my life, but am hoping that now I know it IS a blood sugar issue (despite what 'medically trained GP's say) I will continue to make improvements. I hope others try it and post their progress on here. We need to help ourselves.
I'm happy to share with you what works for me, but keep in mind I've been vegetarian for about 35 years, so my choices may not be your personal go-to's, and that's OK. Everybody's going to be a bit different, not in the least because with CRPS, I'm sure you've noticed that now and again, you can sure try to talk yourself into eating/drinking something because it's good for you, but if it sounds/looks/tastes bad to you, it's not a good idea for your gut at that particular moment in time.
I love, love, love Dr. Joel Fuhrman's "GOMBS", or "Nutritarian" diet. Dr. Fuhrman is an MD who says that your body is not stupid; if you follow a diet that doesn't meet or exceed your body's needs for micronutrients, your body will do everything in its power to trick you into eating more, so its needs will be met, even if that ends up making you fat and tired as a side effect of the strategy to get more nutrients. How right he is!
After much research of the current nutrition and metabolism literature, I basically have evolved into eating a low-carb version of this diet (On the Furhman website; plenty of great recipes there) but with a few modifications that just happen to work well to keep my pain levels and energy levels as optimal as possible.
I don't eat breakfast because solid food early in the day just doesn't work for my gut. Instead, I drink what my son calls a "fat bomb". This is from the book "Bullet-Proof Executive" which is a version of the ketogenic diet, and truthfully, it's still somewhat controversial with nutritionists, but happens to work for me: It's 1/4 cup unrefined coconut oil, 2 tbs. pasture-fed butter, and a bit of stevia for sweetness. I blend it with 8 oz of fresh-brewed organically-grown coffee. I sip it over the course of about 1/2 hour, and I don't need another thing except maybe water or a cup of tea, for the next 4-6 hours. If you need a snack, though, I have found that a high fat, moderate protein, low carb snack is best: A handful of nuts or seeds, a pasture-fed hardboiled egg, a dip with a few raw veggies, etc., works very well as long as I remember to chew my food
Don't want to forget; with this low-carb dietary strategy, you WILL go into ketosis (start burning fat for energy) so your urine will smell more or less like nail polish remover at times, and you will need to drink 8 or more glasses of water per day so as to facilitate the process: Ketosis is not quite as efficient of a metabolic process as your typical glucose metabolism is, so it takes more energy (read: calories; great for those of us who have some extra pounds) but also more water. If you don't drink the water, you may get a headache, or even be a bit dizzy due to dehydration.
I fill up a 64 oz filtered-water pitcher in the morning, and drink out of it all day until it's empty. That's how I make sure I don't space out and forget to drink enough on any given day. I have learned that getting dehydrated actually makes the burning pain of CRPS worse on any given day. Go figure!
I have a fasting window of 14-16 hours daily, where I just don't eat from about 9 at night until 1-2 PM the next day. This is kind to my sensitive gut (I'm one who has small fiber/CRPS digestive issues) and is an eating pattern that indigenous cultures adapted to over time, due to their hunter-gatherer lifestyle; they went into ketosis easily and efficiently so they could continue to function optimally while seeking out food sources, and had very low incidence of obesity as a result. I eat 2 meals per day, one at about 2 PM, one at about 7 PM, though it may change a bit if I have MD appointments, etc..
Lunch is usually a lean protein and greens and/or mixed low-carb veggies of some sort; I eat some meat substitutes such as tofu, and a great product called Beyond Chicken is a current fave of mine, too. If I wasn't vegetarian, I'd also include fish, chicken, etc., ofcourse. Dr. Fuhrman has GREAT lunch salad recipes that hit all the nutritional goal posts as well.
Usually I eat up to about 60 grams of carbs per day, total. On holidays or special dinners, etc., this may go up to about 100 grams net carbs per day. Dinner often includes a modest helping of beans and gluten-free grains (I don't think I'm actually allergic to gluten, but I do note that I feel better on a refined sugar/refined carb/gluten-free diet overall; less pain, less anxiety, more energy). I may have a relatively low-carb dessert, based on a bit or organic, pasture-fed dairy and/or berries. You can buy bags of frozen berries for cheap, so if you need that little bit of sweetness at the end of the day, you won't be so tempted to go totally off the wagon and do donuts or brownies on a regular basis (Sorry; that's probably just me, not you). I lost over 50 lbs a couple years back, just following this dietary strategy. I have no idea if it will work for everyone but it is working well for me. And incidentally, just like for most other chronic illnesses, overweight and especially obesity, just make pain and functioning worse than they need to be for a lot of patients, statistically speaking.
This is probably Too Much Information... But hope some of it at least gives you some avenues to investigate to find your own best strategy
Turns out that it's not even so much your fasting blood sugar or hemoglobin A1C, but instead your glucose tolerance, as you mention; CRPS seems in the literature to correlate with abnormalities in glucose metabolism, including inappropriate insulin release. Dr. Robert Schwartzman, professor of neurology, emeritus, at Drexel University, has a great comprehensive CRPS article published in 2012, I believe, and now online: Systemic Complications of Complex Regional Pain Syndrome. It covers this topic and more, in spades!
It explains SOOO much. I think every healthcare professional out there who treats CRPS patients should have to be MADE to read this article. Patients would ultimately be better off if their doctors, nurses and therapists had that information.
I will have a read of that article Sabrina. It is shocking how very little that heathcare workers know about chronic pain (or diabetes, fibromyalgia, CFS, ME, depression, allergies etc. All the 'chronic' diseases that patients are just left to live with). But it forced me to find my own solutions. I am 68yrs old and am not medically trained....but, I can read and I have a brain. I knew that all the terrible pain and symptoms that disrupted every system in my body were NOT 'anxiety' or 'depression'! Your muscles do not disappear overnight, your eyesight and voice fade away, you stomach and digestive system stop working completely, ....you don't wake up every 40minutes and have vivid constant dreams for months on end, or terrible itchy rashes with 'anxiety disorder either!. (rash disappeared when I gave up grains. Dermititis Herpetiformis). My first Hb1ca(?) was 41 (UK number for diabetes diagnosis is 42) but this was not a 'true' picture of my status because I stopped smoking abruptly 6 weeks before the test was done, and I had eaten hardly anything in that time as I had been too ill...I had lost over a stone when I dragged myself to doctors, so probably when I was smoking my numbers would have been off the scale....the Hbc test is the AVERAGE of the last 3 months! But...41 told my GP that the very ill woman before her was NOT diabetic!. I have bought a monitor and eat very little carbohydrates (50grams) and feel already that this regime is working..symptoms are lessening and strength returning. Its worth a try for anyone. May take some time to fully recover but what else have we got?
Hi Brenda.....people always say 'well done' to me for giving up the cigarettes....but doing that was what catapulted me into this awful illness so I wish I had not done it really. lol! If you see my reply to sabrina you will see some of the symptoms I have had to deal with. As for what I eat now.......it is what I on't eat that is important. I don't eat carbohydrates.....and that included fruits and vegetables too!. I know that this would be very very difficult for anyone with a family to look after and feed, but my children are all grown so I only have to feed myself, so my weird eating habits don't impinge on anyone else. If you read William Davies book he has lots of very good advice (and motivation), especially in the centre part of the book which discusses blood sugar specifically. A monitor will show you what your blood sugar is doing, and if you keep it below 6 (I don't know the US equivilent) you will see a lessening of symptoms very quickly. Well, I did anyway. As my symptoms lessen I will be able to eat a bit more carbs....but giving it a few weeks for my body to get a head start on repairing itself is not that difficult if you want to rid yourself of pain and burning without dosing yourself silly on painkillers. I am not a diabetic (acording to my GP??) but I am eating as a diabetic should.....and you have seen that lowering your blood sugar (when you were given metformin which lowers blood sugar)) helped your body to become healthy enough to carry a pregnancy. So keeping blood glucose at a level that suits the body is a good thing. Diabetics keep it stable with drugs, but I am keeping it stable with food, and I aim for a reading below 6. Please try it Brenda and I hope it will give you some relief, and some hope.
Don't have much time Brenda, but don't eat breakast as I leave at least 16hrs window without eating anything, a sort of mini fast every days. I just drink tea or coffes (without sugar) in the mornings. one tip...never eat carbs without eating protein at the same time. This slows down the absorbtion of the carbs, and it is carbs which raise blood sugar! Protein and fat will not raise your blood sugar so eat more of those, they will help stop the sugar cravings, and you will not feel hungry. The aim of this 'diet' is to NOT raise blood sugar too high! The aim is to keep blood glucose somewhere between 4-6 at all times, and certainly keep it below 7.. The 16hrs that I don't eat at all means my BG has 16 hrs with no BG spikes....which gives my tissues time to recover a bit. Protein will NOT raise BG, so protein foods are not a problem (eggs, chicken, meat, fish, seafood, nuts and cheese). The carbohydrates you do eat should be vegetables and a small amount of fruit...preferably berries. The vegetables should not be starchy types (potatoes, carrots, swedes, sweet potatoes, squash) but should be leafy green vegetables or salad foods. I eat 2 eggs (fried in best block butter...not 'spreadable' butters....they are not butter....real butter is not spreadable. I put the butter I will need for the day into a butterdish, and leave the block in the fridge.That on the worktop will become 'spreadable' at room temperature). Later I may have a steak with small amount of salad with garlic and olive oil. Or may roast a chicken which I can 'snack' on when cold. Or salmon steaks cooked in foil in the oven. I always cook 2, so that always have something in the fridge to snack on. leave defrosted prawns in covered dish in fridge to snack on also. another snack is cheese cubes with maybe celery or red peppers, or a dish of mixed nuts...cashews, walnuts, hazelnuts, almonds, pistachios, peanuts etc. If you snack on these things you will not feel hungry at all. Lamb/beef curry with a small cup of cooked rice is ok, it is the rice that may spike blood sugar so don't have huge amount of that. ...the curry part is fine. I don't eat any grains, so no pasta, pizza, bread, cakes, buscuits, cereal, granola, cakes, pastry, pies etc. Sounds difficult but it is not if you organised. I still make a bolognese sauce but put it on veg such as cauliflower, kelp, cabbage or spinach. (I dont bother with 'spiralising' things...no need). Sausages, bacon, and cold meats are also good standbys. I also parboil some brocolli or cauliflower, cover with cheese sauce (or just grated cheese if lazy) and put in the oven for a while. Thats eating a carb (brocolli) with a protein (cheese) so slows the sugar spike that just the brocolli would give. Ooops...just looked at the time!! will come back later
Just wanted to throw in a few practical tips for prepping nutritious meals: When you're trying to switch over to eating a higher fat, moderate protein, low carb diet, you may initially find yourself doing one or both of the following: 1) Buying expensive foods 2) Buying prepared foods
If you are absolutely on a very tight grocery budget, it can seem pretty overwhelming, because you are having to stand up in the kitchen and do more preparation than you may have been doing since you got the CRPS signs and symptoms. Truthfully, even though I'm a basic biological scientist and a nurse, there were days when I was getting pretty teary-eyed from fatigue by supper time. I wished I could justify just tossing a frozen, prepared cheesy-mac dinner into the microwave and be done with it, but knew if I went back to my old way of eating, I'd just feel that much worse as a result.
My situation is slightly unusual in that I'm vegetarian and my husband is not. But it is just the two of us now that the kids are all grown, so I have only two people's tastes to consider now, instead of five.
I was an athlete a lifetime ago as well, and as I noticed that over time, the CRPS symptoms waxed and waned according to the weather, etc., it occurred to me that I could approach what in healthcare they call "Activities of Daily Living" as if they were interval training exercises for, say, track and field events.
This means that on "good" days (I watch the weather online, so I know ahead of time if a storm is coming and act accordingly), I thaw out one or more large pieces of meat so that I can cook them in a Crock Pot or covered dish in the oven. These tend to be inexpensive cuts, that are best cooked low and slow. We are lucky enough to be able to buy in bulk each Autumn from a local beef and pork farmer, but whatever is currently on sale at your local grocer works just fine, too. I season in such a way that versatility is built in, as each roast, etc., is the basis of 3-6 meals over the course of the next few days, plus snacks for my husband as needed. One way and another, these meats tend to produce a moderate to large amount of juices which I save to put over grains and veggies, or to make the base for a soup or stew, for my spouse. They are nutritious and delicious, and take no extra work whatsoever on my part.
I cut up pasture-fed cheeses and good-quality prepared luncheon meats into 1-inch chunks, and keep them in a covered container in the fridge.
I keep hardboiled eggs and boiled or baked chicken on hand in the fridge as well, particularly as a cool protein snack in summer weather. My husband also likes full-fat cottage or farmer's cheese for a change of pace now and again.
I buy raw nuts in bulk, and keep them in the freezer; removing some each week to a covered container in the fridge or on the counter, for cooking and snacking.
I keep full-fat pasture-fed yogurt, and butter, in the fridge at all times; small amounts of these foods daily help to keep my skin healthier and my digestive system functioning optimally. People with CRPS often have an imbalance in gut bacteria, that contributes to their inflammation, and therefore, their pain: See in the literature: SIBO. When really disabling, antibiotic therapy may be of a big help to some sufferers.
Ditto unrefined, organic coconut oil, which is solid at room temp and does not need to be refrigerated.
I buy the big bags of mixed berries and thaw as I need them, to top yogurt or eat alone or with a few nuts, or very occasionally, a bit of whole whipping cream, unsweetened or with stevia only.
I cook up whole fry pans full of low-carb mixed veggies, as I can buy bags of these frozen in winter, or from farmer's market in summer. I mix it up a bit by adding some tomato sauce or chunks (Not too much, as tomatoes have a surprising amount of natural sugars), for flavor. Or I'll mix in some curry spices, or for Asian flavor, soy sauce, a hint of agave sweetener which is much less likely to cause blood glucose spiking/insulin release than refined sugar, by the way, garlic and onion bits or powders, and/or even a bit of paprika or cayenne just to change things up now and again. In one day, I can make enough cooked veggies to go with most of our hot meals for 5-7 days; I clean and refrigerate raw greens enough to last for 3-5 days as well, for luncheon salads.
My spouse is Hispanic, and in his case life is not worth living if he can't have rice. So I have learned to cook rice in several different ways: I'm your basic Scotch-Irish American gal, so potatoes have historically been more in my line, but unfortunately, potatoes have a high glycemic index. This means that too much of them in your diet will make you release insulin to the point that you may feel ill, weak, mentally foggy, etc.; and if you have insulin resistance, you will also get fatter. I tend to eat a small(perhaps 1/2 cup) serving of rice, quinoa, or beans once a day, several days per week, but always later in the day as this is most of my carb allowance for a 24 hr. period and so optimally consumed as I prepare to wind down for the evening. If I eat these items at my early afternoon meal, they will stop ketosis and make me drowsy at the very time that I'm attempting to be most active in my day. Incidentally, I haven't totally kicked my potato habit: If I crave potato, I simply make a few slices of it in a big veggie fry-up, much like another cook would use water chestnut; that way I get the taste and the texture, but not the blood sugar spike. And it keeps me from eating an entire bag of chips by my lonesome!
I keep tofu and a few better-quality meat substitutes in the house at all time; there are a lot of good low-carb choices these days, but beware: Some vegetarian or vegan meat substitutes are actually grain- rather than legume-based, and so are surprisingly high in carbs and (sometimes) nasty-tasting as well. Beware the ones based on vital wheat gluten, especially; they may have artificial flavors and colors as well. You need to avoid these additives, including the wheat gluten, if possible. There's increasing evidence that CRPS is at least in part an inflammatory/autoimmune condition for many sufferers, so the cleaner your diet/fewer common allergens you take in, the better off you will be.
Just FYI: Water or green tea is probably your best bet, always, for fluid intake. Be especially wary of diet soda pop, as it has no carbs to speak of but is absolutely NOT your friend in any other way: The phosphoric acid is bad for your digestive system, and creates a situation metabolically that robs your bones of calcium over time. I've seen Xrays and bone scans of women in their 30s and 40s that you would swear are those of their grandmothers instead, based on bone loss (read: Osteoporosis). CRPS tends to produce some of these same unfortunate changes, though you can moderate this by continuing to eat right and exercise/weight bear with your affected body parts as much as safely possible. So you need soda pop like you need a hole in the head.
And before I forget: Here are my rescue recipes for when you are craving carbs or craving sweets to the point where you feel that if you had a black balaclava and a .44 Magnum you would cheerfully rob your local convenience shop of all their junk foods... Assuming you were having a reasonably good CRPS symptom day, that is!
Popcorn for salty cravings: 1/4 to 1/2 cup organic/non-GMO popcorn (No judging ) in a couple tablespoons organic coconut oil. As this is popping up in your covered pan, melt 2-4 tablespoons butter and a bit of onion or garlic salt. Toss onto popped corn and stir well. May add a bit more sea salt, a tablespoon of good-quality yeast flakes, a pinch of curry powder or cayenne, or powdered mixed veggie and/or powdered mushroom extract. Yes; it's your entire carb allowance for your average day, but it's also a lot of fiber, fills you up, and (as above) keeps you from eating an entire bag of chips.
If you are craving Asian-style salty rice crackers but don't want the MSG that often comes along for the ride, buy or toast yourself over a flame or on a flat pan in the oven: Nori seaweed sheets, like are used to make sushi. Speaking of which, sushi in general can satisfy as well; just look out that it's not made with sweet rice. If any rice in there, it needs to be what the Japanese call "kitchen rice". And ofcourse, the sushi that is all seaweed, sesame seeds, and meats, fish, or low-carb veggie such as celery or green onion, etc., is tailor-made for this diet, with no guilt necessary. One more caveat: Whitefish is almost no carbs, but some shell fish comes with a significant amount of carbs. It pays to read the labels on seafood products, just in case.
For sweets craving: Two cups raw mixed nuts of your choice (if you use almonds you need to halve or soak them for several hours, as left whole, they become rather like little rocks when prepared as follows) mixed in with two to four tablespoons of organic coconut oil, melted, and 1-2 tablespoons maple syrup or agave. Add salt to taste, and your preferred spices such as cinnamon, nutmeg, powdered vanilla (even vanilla extract will do), and ginger if you like it. Bake at 320 degrees F for 20 minutes total. Some people do the baking on parchment paper, but I have done it with and without and there's really no difference that I can see. You can stir halfway through the baking process, but once again, I've noticed no difference here. Just be sure you take the nuts out of he oven at the 20 minute mark, because past that time they will burn very quickly! Taste a nut or two, and if in need of more salt or sweet flavor, sprinkle a bit more sea salt and/or powdered stevia on the nuts. Let cool completely. Now, if chocolate is on your mind (No judging, again!) Melt good-quality chocolate bar or chips (at least 60% cacao) in the microwave until you can stir smooth. You can add a bit more coconut oil to expedite this, if you are using a high percentage cacao. For 2 cups of roasted nuts, a bit less than 1/4 cup melted chocolate will work well. Drizzle the melted chocolate over your cooled nuts. Allow to harden. This takes hours; I'm not sure why. And it's hard to wait!!! But try not to eat it all at once, with your fingers, off the pan, while still warm... Not, ahem, that I've ever done so. No siree... Anyhow, leftovers keep very well for at least a week, in a covered container at room temp in all but the hottest of weather.
Do I recommend the above as daily, or even weekly foods? Absolutely not. But they will keep you feeling much better, and keep your carb intake down compared to going entirely off the wagon due to cravings. The thing I've found is, cravings get fewer and further between as you go along, but in the very early days of eating high fat, moderate protein, and low carb, you do get cravings. And any upset, such as a flare in your condition, an injury, a new therapy or drug, can also trigger cravings you thought were well behind you. Be gentle with yourself; if your "treat" foods are as nutritious as possible, you don't take several steps back in terms of your health and self-esteem; you just take a brief "vacation" and very easily slip back into optimal nutrition mode with nary a hiccup.