Debugging the Dr Esselstyn Diet

I've been on the Esselstyn diet over two years, although I didn't do it quite right for a great deal of that time, having olive oil, peanut oil and nuts on a daily basis.  Worse yet the nuts I picked, sunflower seeds, were loaded with omega sixes.

Chest pain while exercising is the most thrilling experience when you're on a diet that is supposed to prevent them.   Had I been watching my blood pressure, I would have noticed the change before the chest pain.

But I stopped using the oils and nuts and continued to exercise and the chest pain went away.  Eventually the blood pressure came down to the normal range.

I've been drinking cod liver oil too, although that doesn't cause the problems that olive oil and nuts did.  It just kept my weight up. I would stop when I went above 210 and continue when my weight dropped.

My excuse for the cod liver oil is that I needed omega 3 fatty acids because I can't convert plant omegas to human omegas.  I must be missing the enzyme.

My guess is that it's not that uncommon.  The mental glitches from not having much of any omega-3s in my system were profound and upsetting. I just can't remember what they were.


So my omega-3s are up to where they should be and I'm planning on switching to a standard (Nordic Naturals) omega-3 supplement.  I moved from the cod liver oil to (Carlson's) to Carlson's salmon oil capsules and since those are almost out I'm going to the most available good quality supplement I can.

While reducing my cod liver oil and especially on vacation where I had only fish oil, I started to break out in hives after each meal.  No food, no hives. 

At first I thought I had developed food allergies because if I took Allegra, the problem seemed to go away, but as I selected food to test to see if I had a problem, I found that it was almost everything.

Why would I suddenly be allergic to everything I eat?

Well, I thought, although the oil and nuts gave me chest pain, they didn't give me this problem.  Maybe I'm missing some fat?

So I started putting coconut oil into my morning oatmeal.  The rashes and itchy hives improved.  As I stayed on this change in diet, over several days, things got better until now the problem is practically gone.

Coconut oil is full of saturated fat, but it's very low in omega-6's.  Will it cause chest pain if I keep this up?

My blood pressure is up: 144/82 which is a problem, so how do I deal with the hives?














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