Reddit reviews The Plant Paradox: The Hidden Dangers in "Healthy" Foods That Cause Disease and Weight Gain

This is “blatantly” untrue. If you look at recent research such as that from Dr. Dale Bredesen ketogenic diets which include meat improve neurological function and reduce systemic inflammation. Depending on your genetic make up you may or may not respond well to saturated fat. PUFAs and omegas, simply are not unhealthy. That’s not to say that a whole foods plant based diet with primarily lean meat isn’t a good option for most. Also read The Plant Paradox and Grain Brain.

The Plant Paradox: The Hidden Dangers in "Healthy" Foods That Cause Disease and Weight Gain https://www.amazon.com/dp/006242713X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_5GJXDb2V4KW2Q


Grain Brain: The Surprising Truth about Wheat, Carbs, and Sugar--Your Brain's Silent Killers https://www.amazon.com/dp/0316485136/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_AIJXDbBZNYRTS

I went to one AA meeting when I first got clean and never went back. I understand people have found support and success in it but to me, personally, I felt it only increased the stigma of drug addicts as these broken hopeless people barely hanging on by a thread. It's an outdated system that relies on little science or attempting to progress the participants and relies more on holding people in place and focusing on the past. Instead I just worked towards becoming a normal person. Here are some of the resources I used:

r/Fitness - Getting Started: Exercise is probably the #1 thing that will aid you in recovering. It can help your brain learn to produce normal quantities of dopamine again as well as improve your heath, mood, well being and confidence.

Meetup: You can use this site to find people in your area with similar interests. I found a hiking group and a D&D group on here which I still regularly join.

Craigslist: Same as above - look for groups, activities, volunteer work, whatever.

Diet

This will be the other major player in your recovery. Understanding your diet will allow you to improve your health,mood, energy, and help recover whatever damage the drugs may have done to your body.

How Not To Die Cookbook

Life Changing Foods

The Plant Paradox

Power Foods For The Brain

Mental Health

Understand whats going on inside your head and how to deal with it is also an important step to not only recovery but enjoying life as a whole.

Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy

The Emotional Life Of Your Brain

Furiously Happy

The Science of Enlightenment: How Meditation Works

Educational

If you are like me you probably felt like a dumbass when you first got clean. I think retraining your brain on learning, relearning things you may have forgot after long term drug use, and just learning new things in general will all help you in recovery. Knowledge is power and the more you learn the more confident in yourself and future learning tasks you become.

Illegal Drugs: A Complete Guide to their History, Chemistry, Use, and Abuse

Why Nations Fails

Ideas: A History of Thought and Invention, from Fire to Freud

The Modern Mind: An Intellectual History of the 20th Century

Thinking, Fast and Slow

The Financial Peace Planner: A Step-by-Step Guide to Restoring Your Family's Financial Health

Continued Education / Skills Development

EdX: Take tons of free college courses.

Udemy: Tons of onine courses ranging from writing to marketing to design, all kinds of stuff.

Cybrary: Teach yourself everything from IT to Network Security skills

Khan Academy: Refresh on pretty much anything from highschool/early college.

There are many more resources available these are just ones I myself have used over the past couple years of fixing my life. Remember you don't have to let your past be a monkey on your back throughout the future. There are plenty of resources available now-a-days to take matters into your own hands.

*Disclaimer: I am not here to argue about anyone's personal feelings on AA**

You may be having trouble with Wheat Germ Agglutinin (aka WGA, a lectin found in whole grain wheat flour) and/or Transglutaminase (aka 'meat glue'), transglutaminase is used to replace yeast in a large amount of the United State's baked goods. Whole grain baked goods and pastas not only have gluten but also WGA, making white bread, which only contains gluten, actually the healthier option from a gut and overall perspective. WGA promotes inflammation, interferes with the digestion of proteins, kills cells, and all sorts of other bad effects, making it worse than gluten by far. The 'whole grain goodness' fad starting decades ago kicked this off in America. And transglutaminase, the yeast substitute, actually causes the body to become gluten sensitive if it wasn't already. This is why cultures that depend on gluten as a major source of protein are fine with it. Seitan is a dietary staple in Indonesia, and while it contains gluten it does not contain WGA.

I'm gonna guess you're in the U.S., it's entirely possible that if you ordered a loaf of sourdough in France you might experience no brain fog or muscle tension (not to mention the fermentation process of sourdough actually eats up extra gluten, compared to conventional bread making). This is why many gluten sensitive people have reported minimal to no symptoms while eating bread goods in parts of Europe.

Second thing relates to what you said about studies focusing on gastric distress, that's probably true, but at this point it is well known that the gut effects the brain in many ways, and not insignificantly. What you see as brain fog and muscle stiffness may very well start in the gut. I might be mistaken but I think Chris Kresser has talked about the connection of the gut to other parts of the body. He's a very smart guy and I like him a lot but I want to direct you to someone with a fair amount more (medical) experience, Dr. Steven Gundry. Check out The Plant Paradox, I highly recommend you read this even if you have no intention of changing your diet (I didn't when I first started reading, been battling gut issues and symptoms like you describe for 5 years, going gluten free for 3 of those years hardly helped though, and I learned why in the book), he gives a fantastic summary of why foods humans have been eating for thousands of years are suddenly turning against us. Can't recommend it enough. I could go on but I am not a scientist or a doctor but Steven Gundry is, his book will do a better job than me summing it up here.

I hope you find this helpful and informative, I wanted to reply to you yesterday, before your comment was buried at the bottom, little late now so I guess I wrote this all out just for you since no one else is gonna see it :P Hope you have a good weekend!

Edit: spelling. Also meant to say, I'm still gluten free due to keto but I do think gluten has gotten a very bad rap here in the U.S. in the past several years. There are certainly good reasons why gluten-free foods and diets have taken off but some of them have less to do with the gluten itself and more to do with our food industries and the way foods are harvested and processed.

There are more reasons to avoid all grains. I already noted one doctor's Grain Brain book above and grains' tendency to be inflammatory.

Dr. Gundry in his Plant Paradox book advances a theory that auto-immune conditions are caused by gut problems and that grains are a problematic issue there too.

The excess calorie idea you advance is no doubt true, but as MSers if we're having gut/intestinal problems, are forced by the disease towards a too-sedentary lifestyle (and its concerns about weight), those 2 issues force us to logically want to eat high-nutrition foods rather than foods with calories that don't give us much nutrition (i.e. grains).

This isn’t evidence but this book lays out the idea of how some vegetables may cause you harm from their natural pesticides.


The Plant Paradox: The Hidden Dangers in "Healthy" Foods That Cause Disease and Weight Gain https://www.amazon.com/dp/006242713X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_FNyYDbRB0DC8E

Every body is different but we all have some common traits. Have you ever looked at Dr. Gundry?

https://www.amazon.com/Plant-Paradox-Dangers-Healthy-Disease/dp/006242713X

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This book is a good start: https://www.amazon.com/Plant-Paradox-Dangers-Healthy-Disease/dp/006242713X

https://www.amazon.com/Plant-Paradox-Dangers-Healthy-Disease/dp/006242713X

Published just a few weeks ago from one of the world's leading cardiologists: https://www.amazon.com/Plant-Paradox-Dangers-Healthy-Disease/dp/006242713X