I Lived on an All Algae Diet for A Week and Didn't Die
It's been a month and I've been quietly testing out various aspects of going on an all algae diet as a means of generating data for an IRB (Institutional Review Board) as well as prototyping recipes using nothing but algae and water.
I think scientific research doesn't often prototype and I really wanted to take an easier and more iterative approach. Since this is an N=1 study, I don't have many challenges to overcome in regards to approvals except to showcase the potential downsides of the diet. That means that I get to mess with myself as a guinea pig. I decided to do a week of eating nothing but slime to see how my body responded and as a means of gearing up to longer tests and better recipes. Fun fun fun.
I kicked off the week with a 2-day fast to stabilize my gut microbiome + get a metabolic panel prior to changing my diet over. I'm an omnivore, leaning vegetarian. I guess I would categorize myself as "freegan" where I live in a vegan household and only eat meat if I'm out with other people + there aren't other options. I tend to eat anything that's going to be thrown away and when traveling I never make a fuss about food. I don't have any allergies, and I'm quite regular so my gut microbiome is seemingly healthy. I eat eggs on toast for breakfast normally, with some kind of quick smoothie, salad or sandwich for lunch and a heavier dinner with a main protein, roast vegetables and grains.
As a means of starting from this baseline, I kicked off the week drinking nothing but water (with some electrolytes). I took a preliminary gut microbiome sample, started my continuous glucose measurement with Levels, and some initial metabolic testing via Forward:
Blood albumin levels were a bit out of whack here because of slight dehydration. Besides that, everything looked average and stable.
I was a bit concerned about my liver enzymes changing over the week which had happened before when I tested some AFA previously (I do NOT recommend to eat AFA or anything wild harvested from Klamanth Lake) so I wanted to make note of my AST and ALT. Kidney function (eGFRcr) was normal.
I ran into some trouble with my doctor at Forward on scheduling an end metabolic test within the time window of the diet. I think I'll shift over to getting a paid metabolic screen from Quest or Labcorp in the future to account for the timing of the diet. In addition, I'll attempt to get more metabolites tested like my thyroid levels to check up on any excess iodine in my system. I'm also quite interested in what other tests I should run during the next iteration of the diet; please let me know if you have any thoughts on testing!
I started the fast on a Friday night and carried it through over the weekend. Initially I was in good spirits, spending time with friends, especially since I ate a high-protein meal as my last meal prior to the diet. As you can see, my weight dropped dramatically from 172 to 167 lbs over the course of 2 days. I was drinking 3+ liters of water daily so I'm guessing that this is when my body was kicking over into ketosis. I was starting to burn some of my fat reserves. With a quick check of my ketone measurement device, that seemed to be true:
Optimal ketosis during fasting diets is defined as between 0.5mmol/L - 3mmol/L which means I was a bit out of that range during the start of the diet.
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