TL;DR - follow a paleo diet for a week or two and see what happens

Hi All,

Long time lurker, first time posting. I've been visiting this board regularly since '08. So needless to say, I've tried nearly every possible cure that's been discussed here. I've visited countless doctors, (but no dermatologists) and have had numerous blood tests, an ultrasound, CT-scan, endoscopy and even a colonoscopy because I'm convinced that our condition is the result of a digestive problem. Unfortunately none of these tests proved useful and all my doctors signed me off with a clean bill of health.

Recently I started reading a book titled 'Digestive Wellness' by Elizabeth Lipski. There's a section in there where she talks about different types of intestinal conditions. One of them that stood out for me was what she termed 'intestinal fermentation' because many of the symptoms that were listed matched up with what I've been experiencing. The gist of this particular condition is that carbohydrate intake causes overgrowth of bacteria in the small intestine. It's pretty similar to candidiasis except there's a little more scientific research that supports this being a valid medical condition. Just google 'gut dysbiosis' or 'intestinal fermentation' for more info.

Anyway, so I've basically been following a paleo diet for the past four days, eggs, lean meat, all sorts of veggies, almonds etc. I've also been taking a high strength probiotic capsule and vitamins. I know it's only been five days and I'm well aware of how naive it might seem to draw any conclusions this early into a new diet. But so far, my lips have noticeably improved. Not so much with the color (they're still about the same shade of red) but they're a lot softer, especially the bottom portion of my bottom lip. My lips have always been so stiff and hard even after an hour or so after exfoliating them in the shower. So the difference in the texture of my lips so far has been HUGELY noticeable and encouraging. The amount of dead skin I've been rubbing off in the shower has gone down too (I use vaseline on my lips at night which makes my peeling cycle daily).

But what's been even more encouraging are some of the other changes I've noticed so far after having stopped eating carbs. I've been sleeping through the entire night (THIS RARELY HAPPENS!), my skin has been a lot less oily (I'm almost 30 and still have ridiculous oily skin), and generally speaking I feel a lot better (less brain fog, less anxious)... I've tried eating healthier before and I even gave up wheat for about two months but I never really noticed any difference. Now I think the reason for that is because I was still eating plenty of other carbs, mainly rice and oatmeal.

I know this diet sucks, and the variety is pretty limited. I'm even avoiding dairy just to be safe. But you can retrain your palette to enjoy eating vegetables as I'm learning to do now (i was never a big veggie eater) and honestly, if this proves to be a definitive cure and my intestinal lining gets fully restored I will have absolutely no problems sticking to this diet for the foreseeable future. If anything, I'll view this as the silver lining to EC, in that it motivated me to eat healthier on a long term basis. But I'm getting ahead of myself, it hasn't even been a week yet. But I'm excited and I wanted to share this suggestion with you guys.