Kimchi/probiotics- WTF?

General Discussion
#1

Hi all. 2 year PFS sufferer and forum lurker here.

I noticed that i’ve been feeling off these past couple weeks, and have been trying to find something to attribute it to. The only thing i’ve been able to pin down was that I’ve been consuming a lot of kimchi. I had a bunch yesterday, and noticed that I felt particularly poor afterwards. have any others found fluctuations in symptoms as a result of consuming probiotic laden foods?

I’m very skeptical of the gut theories of pfs, but might this suggest some kind of link? The symptoms that have precipitated seemingly due to the large amount of kimchi include nausea, hot flashes, anxiety/panic attacks, bloating, gas, weakness, fatigue, rapid heart rate, sore/tense muscles, and just general feelings of malaise. It also appears my eyes have become more sunken in appearance. I have been doing pretty well in regards to my symptoms up until this.

Were it the case that the probiotics are causing this flare up in symptoms, any thoughts into how long this setback could last? According to some surface level digging, it seems the case that probiotics only survive for a couple of weeks at best in the gut.

is it possible that there is some kind of histamine link here? Or that perhaps the kimchi provided substrate for a dysbiotic microbiome to use up, thus adding fuel to the fire, so to speak?

About a year ago, I had a really negative reaction to soy protein. That really screwed with my stomach. Again, I’m very skeptical of theories of guy dysbiosis actually driving PFS, but for something like this to exacerbate my symptoms to this degree, it certainly does leave me scratching my head.

#2

Some probiotics make me worse some I guess have no effect or make me better. Yogurt with added inulin made me worse, kefir made me worse, refrigerated probiotic not so much. Sweets induced dirrehrea definitely made me worse today(so no sweets for me ever). Like we know our microbiota is messed up, but to what extend it has an effect on the symptoms and what caused it needs to be answered. But what happens in gut definitely has an effect on the symptoms

1 Like
#3

Update: I felt pretty terrible today, and ended up taking 1000mg of vitamin C, thinking it could be a histamine response that might be ameliorated by vitamin C’s antihistamine properties. I quickly felt much, much better. wtf? Any thoughts?

#4

Many PFS sufferers have weak adrenals
Some probiotics are histamine inducing which will cause unpleasant symptoms due to lack of cortisol to fight inflammation

1 Like
#5

Very interesting. I’ve long suspected an adrenal link here. I use to take clonidine for years for my insomnia. I believe clonidine interacts with adrenals, and as far as I can tell, no interaction with hormonal pathways really. And yet, when I stopped taking it, for a solid week I had a near full recovery before crashing from soy.

#6

Personally I’ve felt better from consuming fermented foods.

Previously I’ve taken probiotic pills. For some reason lately, I started getting odd cysts on my skin. It took a while but I tracked it back to the probiotics. Stopped taking them and the cysts stopped. Not sure why they were causing it.

It isn’t an issue with the fermented foods, such as sauerkraut. These only seem to produce good effects, like general mood improvement, reduced anxiety levels, etc. They are not a golden-bullet of any kind and are not a cure for PFS/ PAS/ PSSD.