I've come to a conclusion recently: it really is possible to over think everything dramatically. Sounds kinda obvious, I know, but seriously; how many people actually realise just how much they over think things? Pretty darn few I can tell you. Me included! Until now, I think. We over think what to wear, what to watch at night when we plop in front of the telly, which brand of fermented cod liver oil is better, whether to try meditation or hypnosis for our insomnia which leads to more insane listing of the pros and cons of each and then leads to an actual worsening of the insomnia! Ask me how I know this...I have been trying really hard to listen to my intuition and tap into the power of the Universe (which I talked about in my last post) and yet here I am - drowning it out with all the frontal lobe chatter. Where is my lizard brain when I need it to shut up the Monkey, I ask you?
You see, having reached another low point in my health and having removed the crutch that was holding me up (ahem -
pregnenolone drops) I realised that all the time I've been obsessing over everything that came my way, I was simply diverting attention away from the real, actual elephant in the room. Stress - aka life. Nothing in life is ever perfect, but when you have had a really shitty time for such a long time, you start to point the finger everywhere else in the hopes you can actually change something!
So for the last year and a half, I have been "following" the autoimmune paleo diet (read: being mostly good with things that I know for a fact will cause me a direct eczema/acne reaction, but failing to avoid the things that are actually paving the way for the reactions, such as cadbury's, or do the things that will mitigate the reactions such as sleep) and I have been feeling worse and worse and finally it just got to the point where something had to give. I've been waking up every morning with a belly full of painful gassy cramps and not knowing what to do about it. I struggle to sleep through the night because of it. It makes it hard to be on my feet during the day.
So I did what I always do when in this situation; acknowledge that this too shall pass, and start reading. Gut bugs. That seems to be what everything boils down to; the microbiome. So I looked into the GAPS diet and though I can see the merit of it, don't agree with all of their food selections. It was also something I thought could help my middle son, who has behavioural problems. I looked into the SCD program (which the GAPS diet is based on) and got very annoyed with each passing chapter that I'd actually spent money to be told to boil carrots for three hours before mushing them up and adding more water. But again, the idea of a liquid diet to help starve the bad guys and give the mucosal lining and the good guys a chance to heal and replenish, seemed sound.
So last Sunday I thought, what they hey, and spent the whole day drinking chicken broth, eating apple juice jelly and drinking decaff green tea with coconut milk and honey (delish by the way). And did I feel better by the end of the day? Yes and no. I was less bloated, but I was hungry, and not in the usual way, but rather in an odd, shrinking stomach kind of way. I also did a liver flush - I'm not even going there with you. So the next day I ate soup of the broth and a veggie, blitzed up, and a banana along with the apple jellies. Felt better. Then the next evening I had some roasted butternut squash and woke up the next morning in agony again. Today I had a cookie made of coconut and arrowroot starch and tonight I had sweet potato, after not touching starches for days and I am suffering again, big time. So. Starches and me are currently not friends.
I have totally digressed. My whole point was that really, after all the hassle, the effort, the pain, the frustration, the neverending questioning of what to eat vs. what not to eat is all bloody pointless! If you don't have the right balance of gut bacteria, you can avoid your current sensitivities, but you'll just create new ones because you're not healing the cause. I have gotten about half way through Dr David Perlmutter's new book, Brain Maker and it really opened my eyes. Sean Croxton's latest newsletter also helped me reach this point, when he bemoaned the he-says-she-says yo-yoing of the health experts we hear so much from but that don't actually give us the whole story, when the story is really meant to be simple. Eat real food. Or JERF as Sean says.
Now I have a yoghurt maker on the way, a fridge and freezer full of real food and raw milk and a bottle of Biokult probiotics to get me going. I haven't touched sugar in nearly a week and though store bought bio organic yoghurt has given me some spots along my chin, I'm confident that raw milk yogurt won't. And if it does, I'll switch to coconut milk yoghurt for a few months and then try again. Because I now understand that all I've really needed to do to heal my body, was to make friends with the little guys in my belly. Or at least, that's my latest thinking ;-)
Does this mean I'm going to ditch the AIP? Or go back to eating all the crap I used to like wheat and sugar and deep fried everything? HELL NO! I do still want to reach old age with some kind of functionality. It means I am going to work hard to reinoculate my gut with good guys and then systematically try to reintroduce all the real whole foods I've been avoiding. Like nightshades (tomatoes, the Italian in me has missed you so much!) and nuts and carrots and broccoli and eggs etc. For me they've either been off the menu for the AIP or because they are known allergenic foods for me and I'm tired of not being able to eat the standard fare of a Sunday dinner.
If you are also suffering in some way (and who isn't these days) I hope this will give you a bit of peace of mind - it doesn't have to be so hard. I am now listening to my instincts about food and information I find about food and I highly recommend you do the same. Do you have a nagging suspicion that a certain food is causing you problems? Do you keep eating it anyway because you can't bear to be without it or because you're denying your inner knowledge for the sake of your taste buds? Has something I've said hit a nerve with you? Very often the things we get irritated by are the very things that we are failing to address that need to be faced. Don't shoot the messenger! It pisses me off just as much, honestly.
Seriously though, I do hope anyone who reads this will take something away from it - even if it's just the simple truism that everything comes to pass. Eventually ;-)
