Diets and reduction of ill health

[Iceni]

Suffering from arthritis and not being able to get into an outfit for a 'do' I decided to trawl the comments on this site on diet and tried a short stint of cutting out complex carbohydrates (bit of a do it myself Atkins/South Beach thing) to lose weight and so increase my mobility.

I lost 5lbs quickly and was able to get into the outfit last night. I ate a huge French meal and all the complex carbs that TWO birthday cakes (one French one English) could dish up. I drank in low moderation. I did notice that the hot flushes that had almost gone came back with a vengance - but put it down to a warm evening. We came home early (midnight) as we both felt tired.

Last night I slept badly with flush after flush and woke up with a bad set of stiff joints, nasty aches, pains and hayfever symptoms and the penny dropped - I had very reduced symptoms whilst I cut out the bread, potatoes, rice and most importantly sugar.

Back on the diet - not to lose weight but to see if this really does make a change to the way I feel. Those on the Atkins/South Beach - has anything like this happened to you?

Di
http://www.iceni-it.co.uk

[Janey]

Di, for the past year I,ve been plagued with hot flushes. Went to the doctors recently to say I wanted to loose weight and he put me on a diet. I,m not allowed bread, poatoes, rice, sugar and alcohol. The good news is in 16 days I,ve lost 81b and ...hardly a hot flush in sight. I am stil having night sweats but I,d rather have them than hot flushes during the day, in the supermarket, in the bank in fact just about everywhere that you,d rather not have them!
janey

[SaligoBay]

I have a French woman staying in the house just now, and she's doing almost all the cooking. It's very nice, we've had paupiettes de veau in white wine sauce, tonight we had fresh mackerel, it's trop cool.

BUT she is a great (traditional?) believer in the power of carbohydrates. She tells me they build up your muscles, and if I say I'm hungry, she says "I told you to have some rice at lunchtime, no wonder you're hungry".

I do remember the hunger from the last time I tried Atkins, and I think that sadly she's right, there ain't nothing fills you up like carbohydrates.

How do you all cope with being hungry? If I don't have the carbs, I just eat eat eat eat whatever I can lay my hands on! I can snack on radishes till they're coming out my ears, but it all gets a bit expensive - rice is cheaper!

[Charallais]

As I am at the certain age I too had terrrible hot flushes and night time was absolutely horrendous. I started taking some capsules from Holland and Barrett called flush fighters, I am not allowed the old HRT you see, and I started to feel better. Then when I spoke to the pharmacist in France he said you should use soya. Dragged hubby round the supermarket and bought soya milk, soya yoghurts, anything I could find. And it works, then I looked at the capsules from Holland and Barratt and they are 80% soya. I do get hot occasionally but we don't drive in the winter with me having to have the car window open or sleep with the windows open! I also take oil of evening primrose, calcium tablets for the bones you know.Hubby has cod liver oil, (huile de foie de morue.) A lot of pharmacies do complementary medicine especially in the larger towns.
Hope this helps someone.
Charallais