Low-B6 Recipes: Pad Thai

Pad Thai
This is one of my all-time favorite dishes. And that's saying a lot, considering how low it is in B6. I often double the recipe so I have enough to last for several days.

Salad ingredients

• 1 cup red cabbage, shredded
• 1/3 cup cilantro leaves
• 1 teaspoon fresh lime juice
• 1/4 cup onion, thinly sliced or chopped
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup cucumber, thinly sliced
• 1/2 cup red bell pepper, thinly sliced and diced
• pinch of salt

 Sauce ingredients

• 1/2 cup almond butter (harder to find than peanut butter, but much lower in B6)
• 1/2 tablespoon fresh ginger, finely grated
• 2 garlic cloves
• 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
• 2 tablespoons maple syrup
• 1 tablespoon chili sauce
• 1 tablespoon soy sauce
• 1/4 cup water
• pinch of salt and pepper

1. Combine the red cabbage, cilantro, and lime juice in a bowl, sprinkle with salt, and let sit for 30 minutes.
2. Meanwhile, combine all the sauce ingredients in a blender and blend until smooth, adding more water if needed.
3. Add the remaining salad ingredients to the cabbage mixture (onion, cucumber, bell pepper) and toss.
4. Serve over Asian rice noodles (sometimes called rice sticks or rice vermicelli), or over white rice. When you store the leftovers, keep the sauce and salad in separate containers.

Low-B6 Recipes: Carrot, Raisin, and Maple Salad

Carrot, Raisin, and Maple Salad
This side-dish can be served on a bed of lettuce or by itself. The maple syrup brings out the natural sweetness of the carrots.

• 1 cup carrots, peeled and grated
• 1/3 cup raisins
• 2 tablespoons maple syrup
• a pinch of salt

1. Combine the ingredients in a bowl and toss.
2. Serve immediately, or refrigerate and serve chilled.

Served with rice and asparagus.

Low-B6 Recipes: Green Beans and Carrots in Orange Sauce

Green Beans and Carrots in Orange Sauce
All the ingredients of this dish are very low in B6.

• 3 cups carrots, sliced and peeled
• 3 cups green beans, cleaned and trimmed
• 2 tablespoons orange juice
• 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
• 1 teaspoon maple syrup
• a pinch of salt

1. Steam carrots alone for 5 minutes.
2. Add the green beans and steam for another 5-8 minutes, or until the carrots and beans are tender.
3. While the green beans and carrots are steaming, combine the orange juice, lemon juice, salt, and maple syrup in a bowl.
4. Add the cooked carrots and beans to the bowl with the sauce. Toss to coat, and serve.

Low-B6 Recipes: Roasted Parsnip and Carrot

Roasted Parsnip and Carrot
When roasted, parsnips and carrots become sweet and tender and can be added to almost any low-B6 meal.

• 1-3 cups fresh parsnip
• 1-3 cups fresh carrot
• salt and pepper
• (optional) any desired herbs, such as thyme
• (optional) 1-2 tablespoons maple syrup

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
2. Peel the parsnips and carrots and cut them into even pieces, either chunks (for a meatier texture) or long strips (for a crunchier, french-fry-like quality). If using maple syrup, then drizzle syrup on top.
3. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper, lay the parsnip and carrot on top (as evenly spaced as possible), and sprinkle with salt, pepper, and any desired herbs.
4. Bake for about 15 minutes, then remove from oven and turn the pieces over. Bake for another 10-15 minutes.
5. When the pieces look nicely browned, remove from oven and serve either hot or warm.

Roasted parsnip and carrot served with basmati rice and green beans.

The roasted parsnip and carrot, tossed after leaving the oven.

Day 23-26: Ping pong

I feel like a ping pong ball, bouncing back and forth between good and poor health. Currently I'm in the poor health phase -- I ate a lot of B6 foods yesterday and paid for it. My arms feel like they survived a nuclear war -- but just a few days earlier, I had no symptoms at all, I was starting to re-incorporate foods into my diet, and I was ready to claim victory over B6 and enter "post-recovery mode." Now all that has slipped away and I feel like I'm back at square one.

So what about those periods of good health? Over the course of my toxicity, I've had several. These periods typically last a few days, and they don't necessarily occur when I do everything right. For example, I went two or three days without exercising last week due to a stomach virus, but had no toxicity symptoms during that time. So maybe exercise isn't as important to recovery as I had thought. Or maybe the effects of not exercising just take a while to build up.

All I can say for certain is that yes, diet has a huge impact on toxicity symptoms. If you want to do yourself a favor, then eat as little B6 as possible, and don't be fooled by a few symptom-free days. The tide can change with just one meal.

Low-B6 Recipes: Bean Soup

Bean Soup
Beans aren't necessarily low in B6 (according to the USDA, a cup of pinto beans has about 0.39mg.) But they don't seem to trigger my symptoms in the same way that other foods do, and they can be quite filling even in small servings. That's why I like to combine beans with other foods to create a complete, low-B6 meal. This simple bean soup goes well with Spanish rice, roasted vegetables, and many other foods

Update (12/23/15): I've since had reactions to pinto beans, and I no longer consider them low in B6. Black beans seem to be altogether better.

• 3 cups dry pinto beans
• 6 cups water
• 1/2 cup diced onion
• 1/2 cup diced celery
• 1 teaspoon salt

1. Soak beans overnight in 6 cups of water.
2. Strain beans the next day and replace with enough fresh water to rise about 1 inch above the beans.
3. In a large pot, add the beans, water, onion and celery and bring to a boil.
4. Lower to simmer and cook covered for 3 hours. Make sure the temperature isn't too high or the water can boil over. (If you prefer a thicker soup, then cook the beans uncovered for part of the duration. But watch them closely so they don't boil dry and burn.)
5. Serve with chopped green onion, grapes, salsa, or anything else you think would be good. Add salt to taste.

Served with green onion and a dollop of salsa.

Day 14-22: Steady Improvement

I have been feeling better lately. Recently, I had a few days without any symptoms at all. Because of this, I decided to start reincorporating B6 foods back into my diet in this order:

• leafy greens and tomatoes
• oats, maybe brown rice
• bananas, avocados, and potatoes
• all cereal grains

I started the first stage a few days ago, but after a day of eating pasta sauce and salad, I noticed a return of symptoms. As such, I'm going to give B6 foods a rest for a while again. But I'm not discouraged. The symptoms were less severe than they were a couple weeks ago, and they took longer to develop, so I feel that I am definitely improving.

Day 10-13

Not much has changed in the past few days. My symptoms are about where they were on Monday. I am noticing, however, that even when I'm feeling "good," things can quickly turn sour if I do the wrong things. For example, when I do a lot of manual work, my arms tend to ache or cramp (it's that hard-to-describe carpal tunnel feeling I've mentioned before). In fact, my arms get worn out pretty quickly. 40 minutes of typing feels like 3 hours. I even get worn out holding a book open at night. That's a little worrying to me.

My legs, meanwhile, have felt pretty good for several days now. I think they may have healed quicker because I do a lot of leg exercises and stretches. As a jogger, most of my workout routine is lower-body. This has been a bit of a problem, however, because while my legs are doing well, my arms, as I said, are not. I'm not sure what to do about that, as I can't lift weights every day. I guess I need to find some low-impact arm exercises. Unfortunately, nothing hits the spot the way jogging does.

Meanwhile, I ate more B6 foods today and am again feeling the effects. This time the symptoms aren't as bad (because I didn't eat as much), but it's still disappointing. You might wonder why I would eat food with B6 in it, and there are two reasons. First, eating low-B6 foods every meal has meant missing out on a lot of other vital nutrients, and I don't want to get deficient in other vitamins. Second, I like to test myself every few days to make sure I haven't gone straight from B6 toxicity to B6 deficiency, which has the same symptoms. But given how long it typically takes B6 toxicity to clear up, I think I'll wait a while before trying B6 foods again.

Low-B6 Recipes: Rice with Pineapple and Vegetables

Rice with Pineapple and Vegetables
White rice has less B6 than brown rice. I recommend basmati, if you can find it.

• 1 cup white rice (preferably long-grain)
• 1/2 cup peas
• 1 can of pineapple chunks, with juice
• 1/2 cup carrot, shredded
• 1/2 cup asparagus, chopped
• 2 tablespoons soy sauce or tamari

1. Cook rice according to the instructions.
2. While the rice is cooking, combine the vegetables, the pineapple, the pineapple juice, and the soy sauce in a skillet, and simmer until the vegetables are tender, 5-10 minutes.
3. Combine the rice with the vegetables, pineapple, and juice.
4. Add more soy sauce or tamari to taste.

The finished meal

Music for Healing: Beethoven Concertos

I've started a YouTube channel that includes various playlists of classical music. Everything is intended to facilitate healing, so most of it is calming and relaxing. You can find the channel here.

Today, I'm posting the music of Beethoven, a composer whose music is generally considered quite rousing. But sometimes rousing is needed for healing. Stretching, for example, is rousing. So is exercise. Maybe a better word is invigorating.

The following playlist includes most of Beethoven's greatest concertos: the piano concertos nos. 4 and 5, the violin concerto, and the triple concerto. The symphonies might seem like a natural place to start (and I plan to post them at some point), but I find the concertos a little more inviting. Symphonies are big, cosmic, universal -- you can almost get left behind in the torrent of sound. But a concerto is different. A concerto is essentially a dialogue between soloist and orchestra, and that dialogue gives us something to focus on as listeners. Enjoy.

Day 9: Back on Track

Yesterday, I continued to eat an unregulated diet (brown rice pasta, broccoli, etc.), and after a day of severe neuropathy, I am confident in saying that foods rich in vitamin B6 do indeed worsen B6 toxicity symptoms. The neuropathy continued through the night, and it wasn't until this afternoon that I started to feel "normal" again.

Many sites recommend avoiding B6 foods, of course, but my hope was that the effect would be minimal. B6 foods make up a large portion of my diet, so going without them has been particularly difficult. There aren't many ways to combine asparagus, iceberg lettuce, and carrots into a satisfying meal. But as I've discovered, it's just not worth eating foods high in B6. The consequences are just too high.

Luckily, I have found a few good low-B6 recipes, and I will share them with you all at some point. This morning, for example, I had steamed rice with vegetables and pineapple, which wasn't bad at all. I've also been eating homemade bean soup. Beans do have some B6 in them, but I haven't had any issues with them yet.

In other news, I have stopped all supplements except vitamin D3. I also walked 5 miles yesterday and 3 miles today. To reiterate: Exercise is the only tool I've found that gives immediate relief from neuropathy.

Day 7 & 8: A Step Back?

I had two setbacks these past two days. First, I took a megadose of B12 (for a total of 2,000 mcg) and almost immediately developed new symptoms of anxiety and heart palpitations. Apparently, these symptoms are indicative of a B12 overdose. I'm doing better now, but I had a rough night as a result and I've decided to stop taking B12 in the meantime.

Second, I ate a lot of food that was high in B6 yesterday. I was feeling pretty good at that point, and I was starting to crave B6-rich foods, especially since they typically help me sleep at night and I didn't want another restless night after the B12 overdose. Up till now, I hadn't noticed a correlation between eating B6-rich foods and experiencing toxicity symptoms, but today, I woke up with noticeably worse neuropathy in both arms. This marks the first time that I've woken up feeling worse than I did the day before.

It's possible that the neuropathy worsened for another reason: lack of exercise or lack of B12, for example. I didn't get as much exercise yesterday as I normally do, and I didn't take any B12 (I've heard that B12 helps lower B6). But today, I'm going to eat less B6 and see what happens.