Dr. Amy Nett: Great question. Everyone manifest these things a little bit differently. Is it possible that it’s a detox reaction? Maybe. It depends a little bit. How much of the change this is from your baseline diet? Have you done any testing? Do we know if there are any toxicities there? You know, the other thing we think about, though, even if you’re on a Paleo reset diet, every once in awhile patients will have a real action to some of those foods that are generally considered safe—that we think of as safe there on the recent diet, but it’s just going to be more of idiosyncratic reaction or a food sensitivity. That is why sometimes we’ll end up doing food sensitivity testing because we do have patients that have sensitivities to foods that are within the Paleo context whether that’s because of intestinal permeability or otherwise having some sort of just food sensitivities.
That’s something to think about, but it sounds like you’ve had this reaction before, and again, all of my patients, their reactions are unique. And so, you just have to think is this your body’s way of communicating something to you in the sense that, yes, for you maybe this is the way your body manifests a detox reaction, so it’s possible.
Ways that you can improve detox, the easy things are going to be doing something like an Epsom salt bath or maybe doing saunas to help support detoxification. If you’re comfortable with these supplements you might include some glutathione. Maybe you want to use a binder like, you know, a modified citrus pectin. There are things you could do to support detoxification. Doing things like milk thistle and acetylcysteine. Herb Pharm, I think, has a liver health tincture. You can do supplements to help support your detox and see if that improves the rash, but given that you tried a ketogenic diet and saw a similar rash, it does sound like it’s a response to your diet maybe due to a detox.
Again, I don’t know what your baseline diet is and if it is a really big shift from “normal” or what your body’s used to. That would make me think it’s a little bit more likely that it probably is a detox reaction, and it’s not that big of a shift. Then, I would wonder if you tried something new, if there was a food that you introduced that for whatever reason wasn’t too agreeable for you. Unfortunately, you probably have to do a little bit of trial and error. You can try doing some detox support and see if that helps. Think back where there are any foods that maybe you added for the first time. Did you go too high on fermented foods? Could this be a histamine-type reaction? So, a couple other things to consider in there, but those are some of my thoughts on diet and detox reaction.