First off you don't have to eliminate animal products for the rest of your life, although at first you'll have to go near-vegan until you detox. I still eat eggs, cottage cheese, and fish occasionally and could probably start eating more now, but like being mostly vegan.

It seems consistent you have leaky gut also with you being allergic to everything. Read some of Anthony's posts. He had a lot of the stuff you have. He healed his problems from eating high carb/low fat & protein, but staying away from grains until his intestines healed. Stay away from dairy too.

To maintain weight, you need at least 3,000 calories a day for a male (more for being very active or very sick/stressed because stress makes your body use up more calories) and most importantly, getting at least 5 grams of carbs per your healthy body weight a day for energy and mental clarity. Most people who are under-carbed have a lot of emotional and mental problems, such as anxiety, depression, and general lack of concentration and they start making poor choices.

Your staple for calories has to be either mostly from tubers (e.g. potatoes), starchy vegetables, or fruit. It's a little trickier going low fat because fat has 45% more calories than carbs, so you'll have to eat a lot more carbs to make up the difference, which can be fun if one likes so to eat a lot like me!

If you have a juicer, that would be good to start your detox as it's easy for your body to absorb and gives your body a break from having to process all that fiber. If not, I recommend making green smoothies with a blender. They are a lot easier to make and absolutely delicious and satisfying! I have one just about every morning.

The two diets I recommend to look into, although you don't have to do them strictly vegan are:

The Starch Solution (Dr. McDougall)
80-10-10 (Dr. Doug Graham, an avid athlete)

There's a lot of videos on youtube about those diets and some forums about these diets to further help:

Starch solution:
http://www.drmcdougall.com/forums/index.php


80-10-10:
http://foodnsport.com/forum/


Another 80-10-10 site:
http://www.30bananasaday.com/


(The 30Bad site is ran by an avid triathlete who has a lot of good informative and entertaining health videos here: http://www.youtube.com/user/durianriders/
)

Nice. Sounds like a solid plan.

I just started making my own kefir today using kefir grains. I hoping to finally restore my intestinal flora to 100%. I don't know if you're buying kefir or making it, but there is a big difference.

I got the idea from someone to check on craigslist and found someone within 20 minutes from me that was selling their excess kefir grains.

http://www.culturesforhealth.com/milk-kefir-grains.html


http://kefirlady.com/


http://users.sa.chariot.net.au/~dna/kefirpage.html

There's a curezone forum "kefir grains" dedicated to the subject

Nice. Sounds like a solid plan.

I just started making my own kefir today using kefir grains. I hoping to finally restore my intestinal flora to 100%. I don't know if you're buying kefir or making it, but there is a big difference.

I got the idea from someone to check on craigslist and found someone within 20 minutes from me that was selling their excess kefir grains.

http://www.culturesforhealth.com/milk-kefir-grains.html


http://kefirlady.com/


http://users.sa.chariot.net.au/~dna/kefirpage.html


There's a curezone forum "kefir grains" dedicated to the subject

Your starving all the time because you're not getting enough carbs and calories. You're going to have to eat more carbs to reach at least 2,500k (females) or 3,000k (males) calories per day and at least 5 grams of carbs per body weight a day to not under-carb yourself.

Potatoes, sweet potatoes, yams, or fruit has to be your stable of calories if you have leaky gut.

Eric,

I've posted my story many times recently on these forums, and your case sounds classically like my own. I'll send you a link to one of my messages back in 2002 when I discovered my greatest relief. Here's a list of the key steps that I took to recovery, excluding the 100 other things that I tried that didn't help, including low fat diets.

1. I had srep throat 3 times in my teens for which I was prescribed Antibiotics .
2. Through HS and college I suffered from groin and anal itching and fungal overgrowth and mild Psoriasis dry skin and dry scalp. Doctors could prescribe antifungal/steroidal creams which only temporarily provided relief.
3. After 10 yrs (now the early 90's), I randomly went to a dermatologist to have my issues addressed. He turned out to be a Holistic Dermatologist practicing combined traditional Western with alternative treatments. He said I had Candidiasis.
4. He provided some digestive supplments with cleansing characteristics and followed that with a very, very small dose of Nystatin powder.
5. I felt great. I had a very positive reaction whereby the white coating on my tongue came off in patches until it was completely gone. I had red streaking under my skin, and the skin on the palms of my hands and feet peeled off, just like snakeskin. I felt super energetic.
6. Then WHAM! I was sick. Sicker than ever. Could barely walk any distance particularly in the hot weather without extreme fatigue. My Candida was gone, but something "BAD" took over.
7. I was so sick that I had a gastroscopy performed and some bile extracted (different doctor). He said i had thick bile with cholesterol crystals which may be irritating my bile ducts and digestive system. I subsequently had my GallBladder removed, which I now know I could have avoided.
8. I still was sick and went back to my Dermatologist. He ordered a CDSA, which still can be pursued through Genova Diagnostics. I highly recommend that you find a Naturopath or other Doctor who's willing to order this test for you.
9. My test revealed severe dysbiosis (overgrowth of harmful bacteria) namely Candida Parapsilosis, Staphylococcus Aureus, Pseudomonas Aeruginosa and undigested Fatty Acids.
10. the nice thing about this test is that it not only confirms which 'parasites' are taking overthe digestive system, but it recommends the most effective treatments. in this case, it came back with a list of anti-biotics, but also a natural product called Tanalbit http://www.intensivenutrition.com/Tanalbit.htm

11. I started on Tanalbit and BOOM, instant relief and a fair amount of energy. Enough energy that I was motivated to start running in 1997.
12. I still wasn't 100% and had the same right quadrant just below the ribs discomfort, even though I didn't have a gallbladder. I found curezone in its infancy in 2002 and spotted the Clark Liver flush. I decided to try it and HOLY CRAP!, check out my 2002 post. //www.curezone.org/forums/fm.asp?i=58530

13. After all of this, I could eat almost anything while before the Tanalbit, I could eat hardly anything and would get sick even with smelling perfume. Also, two years after the sequence of flushes, i ran my very first marathon at the age of 42 and qualified for the Boston Marathon, which is no easy feat.


So now, I discovered two critical elements to recovery, but aside from a "good" diet I'm still searching for the third key element.

1. Kill the bad guys in the gut and
2. Cleanse the liver and get that bile flowing

I believe that the key to closing the loop is to:
3. Restore bacterial balance in the GI system.

To this day, I'm still seeking understanding and significant studies on "Intestinal Micobiota" have been published over the last three years. I credit websites like this one for pushing the issue into the mainstream worl of medicine. Fecal transplants are even now being used to alter colon bacteria to correct severe IBS.

Here are some of my recent learnings (Google "Intestinal Microbiota").

1. The symbiotic eco-system in the digestive tract is an important organ. There are more organisms in the gut than there are cells in the human body.

2 This ecosystem isestablished at birth, and is generally handed down by the mother through travel through the birth canal and nursing. Ceasarean births and formula fed babies have a disadvantage from the start.

3. Antibiotics can very easily discrupt the balance and throw it from a beneficial system into a harmful system. Once the harmful system is established, it steals nutrients, prevents proper food digestion which in turn starts to negatively affect the human host.

4. Imbalance of flora can lead to obesity, diabetes, heart conditions, etc, etc. This explains why diet alone, doesn't necessarily solve these problems. Everybody's ecosystem is uniquely different.

5. These bacteria can shut down bile flow. bile is a natural intestinal conditioner, and anti-biotic against harmful organsisms. It is also a natural probiotic for beneficial organisms. This is the piece of the puzzle I'm focused on now.

I'm hoping to prove out this 3rd element, whci is the restoration of balance, but not much is offered in the medical literature except to emphasize that Prebiotics are as important as Probiotics. Together they are called "synbiotics"

It is difficult in this day and age of pasteurization and freeze drying of probiotics for us to get enough to restore our own flora, so I have justed moved into making my own kefir from kefir grains. There's a forum on the curezone site dedicated to kefir grains. So i plan to go another round of Tanalbit and Viracin, with another series of Liver Flushes, plus the kefir with FOS (Fructo Oligo Saccharides) as the pre-biotic.

My goal is to completely close the loop.

So, in summary, given that you took atibiotics and corticosteroids, you could have an internal overgrowth of harmful bacteri which are the culprits that cause leaky gut.

So, based on my own experience, I recommend:

1. Identify the bad bugs through CDSA
2. Kill the bad bugs with the approach recommended from the CDSA. what you use will depend on your own unique condition.
3. Cleanse and Flush the Liver.
4. Restore beneficial bacteria.

By the way, i also read an article that weight loss is normal for these infectious conditions because the bad bacteria are stealing all of your carbs. in order to maintain weight, you have to eat enough carbs to feed the bad guys, and once they are satisfied, the rest is for you, so you need to ingest 500 calories more of carbs than needed by the average sedentary person. I don't recommend it though because you will maintain a nice healthy population of bad bacteria.

I hope there's some helpful information here.