Cause? Effect? [Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος]

A few hours ago I suddenly realized that I have eaten practically[1] no chocolate for the past week or two.

I've felt like utter crap most of the past two weeks. The knee pain (I've also not worn heels for a couple of weeks, 'cause I thought the knee might do better with flats); really poor sleep; difficulty sleeping at all; eye problems and remarkably persistent headache; shin pain; grumpy "don'twanttodealwiththeworld"-ness.

Cause? Effect? Random irrelevant coincidence?

[1] Absolutely no chocolate chocolate -- i.e. chocolate bars, chips, M&Ms, etc., which I usually consume small amounts of several times a day. I have had some chocolate-bearing products such as Oreo cookies (well, those "Oops" ones, or whatever they're called, with vanilla cookie-parts and chocolate-oid creme), but in addition to the lower chocolate-density of such foods, I've been eating less of those than I would normally eat chunks of Hershey Special Dark.

Survived the two-hour gig and the five hours of travel (half an hour of driving and two hours as a passenger, each way). Did so in a "better living through chemistry" manner, which included (over the course of the day) five and a half grams of ibuprofen (God help my liver) along with various other medications. Dumped a lot more crap into my bloodstream than I'd really like to have, but I got through the gig. Longer gig report if I stay awake long enough to write it or if I still feel like writing it after I've slept. Moved wrong on the bad knee a couple of times, but nothing really bad (because I was paying a lot of attention to precisely how I moved), and all-in-all the gig went pretty well.

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Shall we feed you lots of chocolate for the next two weeks and see what happens?

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Yes. :-)

Actually, once I realized that I'd had no chocolate for a while, I went and ate a bunch. I'd half a mind to continue not eating any, as an experiment to see whether I'd get better anyhow, but the half that said, "Eat chocolate and see if it helps, even if I can't really tell if it helped because I don't have a control" won.

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Hows your caffeine intake otherwise? Forest has fibro, he doesn't eat much chocolate - he loves the very dark rich stuff and it makes his joints worse - but always seems to do better on several cups of very strong espresso each day, in fact I can usually tell if he's *not* had any yet. Have you looked at links between food and symptoms at all, we've found several weird ones for Forest, like chillies and macadamia nuts he needs to avoid or else.....

I take in almost no caffeine. Most of the time, none at all. I don't know whether the theobromine in the chocolate is a factor here or not, though it's likely. I'm not noticing a stimulant effect from it, but that's not surprising -- caffeine and theophylline (the stimulant in tea) tend to make me drowsy (unless I take them with pizza, oddly enough) and can give me headaches (but can also help relieve a headache if I've already got one)... and theobromine is only one-seventh as effective as caffeine in humans, according to what I've found on the web. But until I find out what other medicinal chemicals are contained in chocolate, something to do with the theobromine is by best guess.

So I keep a small amount of caffeinated cola in the house, and some normal teabags, specifically for headache, and the Canadian over-the-counter codeine tablets I'm almost out of contain caffeine as well (which is usually a reason to reach for the stuff I've got a prescription for instead; the other reason being that the codeine upsets my stomach unless I take it with cheese). But most of the time I'm completely caffeine/theophylline free. Or, on those occasions when I indulge in "decaf" coffee or Earl Grey, as close to stim-free as "decaf" actually means.

I haven't noticed any food connections until now, but I also haven't properly tested for any effects other than short-term (observable in a day or so) effects.

Worth investigating the chocolate effect, certainly... I think phenylallinine (spelling?) is one of the main chemicals, its the one that makes sense of all those "chocolate is better than sex" comments as its the same chemical produced in the brain when someone is in love.

Hmmm. *goes to rummage in cupboard*

*HUG*

Want to run some experiments as to whether the dry cocoa helps versus the cocoa butters?

I've got some vegetarian gel-caps and a tin of cocoa powder ... I just need to drill some holes the right size in a piece of wood and find/make a funnel the right size to make filling the capsules less of a PITA, and pick a month or so to do the various permutations of diet for the experiment.

Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

Cause? Effect?

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January