Background info:
I, like most people, started out on high-fat, low-carb paleo with tons of green vegetables, cauliflower, nuts and berries as my main sources. After a few months of worsened strength and performance, I jumped on the potato and rice train and have never felt better.
Now, one thing that was odd when I went paleo was that small injuries- like a little cut or scrape would take weeks to heal. There are a couple of threads on paleohacks that attribute slow wound healing to vitamin deficiency, especially vitamin C.
Well after a few months of eating 2 or 3 potatoes a day, I managed to give myself a pretty serious stabbing when I was pitting an avocado (another topic, but seriously folks, use a spoon! I now its lame, but I did some likely permanent damage to myself and I've pitted thousands of avocados safely with a knife before, so it wasn't from lack of experience).
It was a pretty deep cut and went throught the fat, muscle and knicked the tendon, but by the time I got to urgent care it was closed up to the point that the doctor pulled on it gently and it wouldn't open. It felt mostly better within 4 days and it's been two weeks now and it's completely healed, although I'm still dealing with scar tissue hindering my tendon and I haven't gotten my full range of movement back, but I'm about 85% there. My doc is astounded.
Okay, long story, but I am seriously curious about what happened. On a diet with lots of nutrious, vitamin rich vegetables and berries (lots of vitamin C from brocolli and strawberries) I could barely get a paper cut to close up and now eating less nutritious plant foods, mostly potatoes, rice, onions, carrots and bananas, I am like wolverine with special healing powers?
Could it be that on low-carb paleo, if you aren't eating a ton of protein, then you could have problems with all those body building needs, such as wound healing? Was all the protein I was eating being diverted to my glucose needs? Although my vitamin intake from vegetables has gone down, my potassium intake has gone up from daily potatoes and bananas. Could that have something to do with it?
Anyone else experience anything similar? Maybe we should all be more careful about glucose, whether you get it from protein or carbs. Make sure you eat enough of either.
