EVERY food in any amount knocks me out. - Healthy Eating

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EVERY food in any amount knocks me out.

Fooddrugged profile image
11 Replies

No matter what I eat I Have to sleep. Any amount, any food, anytime. I can eat a salad and I feel like I'm drugged. One deviled egg- same thing. 2 plain crackers, lettuce,..anything. I just take a taste and down I go. All hours of the day. There is no way to change it except not eating. I have tried everything. I can eat a full meal or barely anything it doesn't matter. Vegetables or meat, 1 cup or one spoonful.

I try fighting it but I just get worse. I get so sleepy it's like I'm drugged.

Oh, I've been tested- no sugar problem.

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Fooddrugged profile image
Fooddrugged
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11 Replies
andyswarbs profile image
andyswarbs

Does drinking water make you sleepy? What about tea? It's important to have tea with no milk, and ideally green tea because of the antioxidants. Try a homemade juice of just cucumber and celery and see if you feel sleepy. I don't want shop bought juice so we know exactly what's in it.

How soon after consumption do you feel sleepy? Do you keep a diary?

Fooddrugged profile image
Fooddrugged in reply toandyswarbs

Drinks don't just food and it's almost immediately. Within 5 minutes.

andyswarbs profile image
andyswarbs in reply toFooddrugged

Knowing what I know now, I would have two lines of attack. One is to go through an exhaustive elimination process starting with very basic foods, no flavouring. When I say basic I mean quinua, buckwheat and pak choi, since these are some of the safest foods ie few people have reactions to them. Nothing else for two days. These provide a reasonably complete nutritional profile, incl protein.

Whatever approach you take you are wasting your time if you don't keep a diary. The foods you have listed so far shows you are at the beginning of your journey.

Next is to research and research the subject. You'll find lots of misinformation en route so don't expect this to be easy.

Don't expect good info from your doctor about nutrition, he probably knows less than you do! He's certainly had little or no training in nutrition. If you decide to consult a dietitian that can also be fraught with difficulties since their training and materials is often financially influenced by meat and dairy industry.

grace111 profile image
grace111

you really should go to see your doctor about this and find out if there is anything going on inside. Are you overweight? This can make one sleepy after eating. I hope you get to the bottom of this as food is so enjoyable when we eat the right food. let us know how you get on. wishing you well. grace xoxo

whatgoingon profile image
whatgoingon

I have this problem too. My bloodwork is fine. It does make a person not want to eat. I don't eat much and usually two meals per day. It is very frustrating. I am going to read the responses to your post to see if there is any ideas for me!

Zest profile image
Zest

Hi Fooddrugged

I am sorry to hear that you're experiencing this sleepy 'drugged' feeling after eating every food - that must be really horrible. I hope you can find out what is causing it. I think I would definitely go and see your GP and try to get to the cause of it. I realise you've been 'sugar-tested' but maybe they can do further tests.

I can see that whatgoingon is also experiencing it. I hope you can find out the cause too, Judy.

Wishing you all the best for a good week and Welcome to the Healthy eating forum.

Zest :-)

Skende profile image
Skende

Do you have any other symptoms that would suggest that what you have is caused by allergies? If not, then It doesn’t sound like you have an allergy to anything, it sounds like you have a condition where by your body produces sleep hormones Rather than hormones that say to your body that your body that you are full. Your sleepiness is caused by another condition.

Skende profile image
Skende

Sciencealert.com says...”Sleep helps to balance our appetite by maintaining optimal levels of the hormones ghrelin and leptin. So, when we get less sleep than normal we may feel an urge to eat more.”

There is a connection between sleep and hunger hormones. My guess is lack of b vitamins which unlock energy. This could cause sleepiness be body works so hard during digestion.

Skende profile image
Skende

Also, serotonin and melatonin are produced after meals and they make you sleepy. Make sure to read last paragraph of article.

thejakartapost.com/life/201...

IanJa profile image
IanJa

Hi food rugged, did you get to the bottom of this? I also have this condition. I've seen immunologists, drs, nutritionists you name it. Still no idea.

Anhedonia profile image
Anhedonia

I have this same issue, but I can tell its worse with carbs - though it can be ANY food-type except for plain meats like steak and chicken without other food-types adorning them (aka a super boring/expensive diet is the only way i could cure this completely),

However, I switched to the Keto diet years ago and it has helped a TON with food comas. Before keto all my measures were in the bad/dangerous range (except for blood sugar): triglycerides, LDL, HDL, Cholestorl Ratio, etc.

After one year on Keto they were all in the Ideal range, and that was without exercise (stupidly, I should exercise). Now years later I still have good blood sugar (98 on the last panel), and the food coma problem has become less frequent.

Intermittent fasting also helps, but even more than reducing the comas, it allows to me to keep the crashes to occuring in the evening.

As to the cause: I lean towards over-permeability of the GI/intestines being the cause, aka "Leaky Gut". After gastric emptying occurs is when the problem starts for me. Last night was particularly bad. When your gut leaks the grain proteins, like gluten, it has a cascade of effects on the body - and for me, one of those is lethargy/sleep. But dairy has also caused this for me, and meat with sugars like barbeque has done it too.

Last night I ate some much-higher carb/gluten/grain-protein-containing foods than I typically do, and within 25 minutes I was asleep and I couldn't stay awake. Frustratingly I am on call and needed to be awake, and this knocked me out at 6PM.

Note though that this same problem has/does occur for me with all types of food, AND rich or nutrient-dense drinks. I have found that Coffee (which I usually with creamer/sweetener ) is one that knocks me out the most ironically.

I would say that when i eat a plain meat, no dairy or carbs, that I rarely experience the knock-out effect. But I think it has happened; though rarely is meat consumed by itself.

I am not unconvinced that the "carnivore diet" might be the best diet for humans if it was affordable and easy. Truly only after the invention of agriculture, after 98% of our times existing as a species existing as hunter gatherers, did we start eating grass-seeds.

Truly we didn't evolve to eat little tiny seeds picked off grasses of various species (rice, wheat, millet, barley, etc, etc)...

Indeed, once we invented agriculture we had a solid supply of food - and admittedly grains/starches don't cause fatal conditions until after years and years of eating them (cancers, heart-disease, etc).

The fact that grain kill you very, very slowly is the biggest problem with them. We never evolved to not die from the cancers, autoimmune, and heart/vascular diseases they cause.

If you can have and raise kids before something kills you, natural selection never takes place - though it lowers quality of life, the trade-off of having abundant food from agriculture outweighed the health detriments of moving away from being the hunter-gatherers we were forthe first 98% of our existence,

When we started eating agricultural products, we were still able to produce the normal ammount of offspring; only into our 30s and 40s did the conditions, likely resulting from eating this diet we were un-evolved to consume, end up killing us. So if you just die earlier, but are still able to procreate, and produce equal numbers of offspring as your competitors, natural selection never kicks in - as such, we NEVER evolved to eat grains/agricultural-starches.

If grains killed us in something like a span of months to a few years, then natural selection could select for the survival of those who can best metabolize carbohydrates without ending up with Heart Diseases, Cancers, and Auto-Immune Disorders. But since it does't; you just end up with a population with more long-term health problems, especially in later life, that they never naturally-select a tolerance for. Natural-selection driven evolution doesn't work without the selection - i.e. You can't evolve to tolerate a new food product better if it doesn't kill you before you procreate and before your offspring become self-sufficient.

Anyways, I clearly digress. I think still it is carbs and/or dairy, foods that we are poorly evolved to rely upon that trigger this knockout the most.

As stated many foods trigger this in me, but rarely to never has a plain meat, like steak or even deli-meat, triggered my food-comas. But I can't afford the carnivore diet, so I stick to as much grain free products as I can. Dairy causes the issue less, but it triggers my auto-immune issues even when it doesn't trigger my food-comas.

So I'll stick to Keto, which has reduced my food coma's occurence rate by at least 80%, and combine it with intermittent fasting. This has given me the fewest, and best timed, food comas - and it has put all of my blood panels from the WORST range to the BEST range (it even raised my good cholesterol).

That is the best advice I can give for reducing the food-coma occurences that we both experience - stick to Keto and cut out all foods containing plant seeds or plant starches - i,e, cut out ALL grains and plant-root starches like potatoes.

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