Monday, January 24, 2011

Coconut allergies anyone?

This isn't so much a science post but an open question to my readers.  Although I did adopt a different skin care regime about the time I started low carbing in 2007, I'm pretty confident in attributing a goodly portion of my cleared skin to my diet.   I had suffered from mild (relative to some images I see) adult acne for years, mostly on chin, hairline and back/bra-line.  This all pretty much cleared up to where I hadn't had a breakout worth mentioning in two years.  And one would think that somewhere in those longer cheats at least I would have consumed enough wheat or other culprit to set off a breakout, but nada.  Then summer 2009 I did an IF experiment.  I consistently followed a 5 hour eating window for 3 months.  I lost 10 lbs in the first couple of weeks but gained several pimples!  OK, so perhaps something about the fasting was killing off toxins and they were coming out my pores??  Thinking back, however, something else changed in my diet.   I was making this peanut butter/coconut oil ball dessert.  PB had been a part of my diet here and there and I have no issues with it, but CO was new.   So anyway, I gradually just phased out CO as it didn't produce any more losses and that was that.  The breakouts had gone away but thought nothing really of it.  

Fast forward to the end of this past summer.  I had been relaxing things a bit for a while consuming quite a bit of sushi.  All of a sudden I was getting rather large pimples all over my back and eventually several on my chin.  I figured maybe the sushi, but there was a spell when I didn't eat it at all and the breakouts continued.  Although I was eating a few more carbs as I've shared, I wasn't eating any more wheat or grains than I might have consumed on a prolonged cheat ... probably less.  Well, then I started thinking, this was when I was eating a lot of coconut shreds, fresh coconut, and using coconut milk in my coffee.

It would be a real bummer to discover it being so, but I fear I have a coconut intolerance.  I did notice a slight weight loss/change in body size eating all the coconut so would hate to have to avoid that possible strategy to lose a bit more.  I regularly use a mix of MCT/olive oil for salad dressing so it's not those FA's in the fat to blame.

Anyone ever experience something like this, or am I just weird?  I keep seeing stuff on contact dermatitis for coconut in skincare products, but nothing really for allergies, intolerance or acne.  Thanks in advance!

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