Overeating is hard not to do...

Yesterday I learned a very valuable lesson about the consequences of overeating. Because I had overeaten the day before I not only woke up at 4am nauseous, but spent the majority of that day feeling quite sick and nauseous. Fun. Then, once I felt better I overate again at dinner and spent the rest of the night nauseous. Double fun. I felt so sick that I ended up sleeping sitting up on the couch because I knew (from past experience) that if I laid down feeling that sick it could easily lead to a GB attack and possible vomiting. Not exactly how I enjoy spending my evenings.

Here is the really sad thing, I overate healthy food. It's not like I dove in to the cookie jar and downed 18 Oreo's in a single sitting, or ate a pint of Ben & Jerry's. I simply overate. After dinner I decided to make a dessert of cucumber and watermelon juice (which has a weird green color with pink foam, but tastes very refreshing) and that was what put me over the edge.

After years of being able to overeat with only mild consequences, I didn't realize how truly grueling it is on your system until my experience yesterday. My body was so overwhelmed trying to digest all of the food I put in to it, albeit whole and natural foods, that I had a quite severe reaction to it. I could feel my pulse racing, my head felt almost dizzy, and I was so sick that even having my husband come near me to soothe me made me want to vomit. It was bad.

Funny thing is that as I write this blog entry, my husband has just finished off a bowl of cereal (at 10:45pm) and is laying down to go to sleep... yet, I know he will sleep the majority of the night with no discomfort except for maybe some mild heartburn. In some ways, my system might be more sensitive than others, but then I think back to when I first starting experiencing heartburn about eight or so years ago while I was in college and eating lots of heavy "fourth" meals late at night right before bed. My body was trying to tell me something, and I ignored it. So, here I sit, eight years later, with some serious digestive and health issues as a result. Our bodies try to tell us when something isn't right, but I am finding more and more that you have to always have your ears wide open to listen to it fully.

For example, I spent all morning yesterday blaming my nausea on eating rice milk. It wasn't until I got seriously nauseous again after dinner that I realized that my body was yelling at me not for what I put in to my body but for how much I put in to it. There was simply too much in my stomach for proper digestion, especially with my sluggish, weakened GB not being able to do it's job fully yet.

So I spent today focusing on eating appropriately sized meals and listening to my body when it says "that's enough food for now, thank you." And guess what, I feel good and haven't had any nausea! This overeating thing is hard not to do right now, but I know it's going to get easier the more I retrain my brain and stomach to communicate with each other 100%.

As a side note, I wanted to share what my tongue looks like when I am having stagnation/digestive issues such as I was having last night. My acupuncturist pointed this out to me, and I really wish I had taken a photo about 4 weeks ago so you can see how bad it used to be. When my body is stagnated the side of my tongue gets this wavy ripply looking things in it. My camera is not the best, but you can see a little bit of the wave edge that forms on the sides of my tongue. The day before, there were no waves in my tongue at all. Before I started working on my GB and seeing my acupuncturist the side of my tongue was so wavy that the edges were very defined and white. Now, it's getting much closer to a normal tongue. Chinese medicine uses the tongue to diagnose ailments in the body, but I will explain all that another time... Until then, check out my wavy tongue.

It's 5 O'Clock Somewhere

Well here I am, up at 4am, feeling nauseous from the rice cereal with rice milk I ate last night at 8:30pm. Yes, yes, I know there are rules about not eating after 7pm, blah, blah, blah, but I was hungry damnit! The good thing is that I'm not having a full blown GB attack. If that were happening I would be in pain and hanging my head over the toilet right now. This is just a mild case of nausea... though that mild nausea was strong enough to actually wake me up long before I wanted to be up. At least I got some sleep and it wasn't the usual GB attack 2am routine!

To kick the nausea in the rear I am taking the Super Phos acid drops supplement every 15-20 minutes, and I think, on what will now be my second dose, it should go away. Like I said, it's mild. Most normal people would just go back to bed at this point, but my husband likes to set his alarm for much earlier in the morning than is actually necessary and it will be going off in a few minutes so I know it will just keep me awake. That and I have to be on the road to Chicago at 6/6:30 so I'll need to be getting up by 5:30 anyway. All I have to say is that it's going to be a long day. And I can't have any caffeine. Yikes! Hopefully the small amount that is in Green Tea will do the trick if I get desperate.

What gets me is that even "fake" dairy from rice milk is enough to make me nauseous. I noticed it last week when I ate the rice cereal for breakfast (and a late night snack), too. Dairy products are on the serious no-no list for GB problems, probably because they increase mucous which in turn worsens the sludge in my GB. For the most part, I have done a good job of avoiding the dairy products altogether, but I happen to have a sweet spot for them so I was hoping to at least have this one small pleasure. From my deductions on how I am reacting to the rice milk, that small pleasure can only be had during morning hours and should be avoided altogether during the evening hours. Otherwise, I can expect to wake up with nausea the next day. Ugh.

Adventures in Healthy Food

I got a little creative and experimental with my food today. After yesterday's debacle with the millet bread not working out the way I thought it would, and just generally trying to add some more variety back in to my diet (I am starting to get really sick of rice, no joke), I tried a few different things and it all went well.

For breakfast I ate some awesome wheat and gluten free waffles with peaches and honey on top. I sauteed the peaches in some honey to soften them since they were a little under ripe and boy was it goooooood! I'm really surprised at how totally tasty the waffles are by themselves too. Health food really does taste better!

For lunch I ate a spinach salad with baby bella mushrooms, artichoke hearts, cucumber, and a simple flax seed oil and lemon vinaigrette. On the side I took a piece of the millet bread, toasted it, and then topped it with olive oil, salt, pepper, and garlic powder. Best lunch ever! Most of all, I couldn't believe how good the millet bread was with the olive oil and seasoning on top. It was so good I went back for a second piece. Definitely a successful adventure on that on. Sorry, no picture though.

For dinner I decided to try quinoa for the first time ever. Not surprisingly, it was quite tasty. When I was toasting it at the begin it smelled kind of like a cookie (ideas are already spinning in my head for super healthy Christmas cookies, sad but true), and then once it began to simmer with all of the seasonings-- tomato and basil-- it smelled like a great homemade barley soup. It made an excellent side dish for the fish and green beans. The picture doesn't do it justice because of the horrible lighting in my apartment, but you get the idea. Tasty... and just talking about it again makes me hungry.




The more healthy food options I try the more I am loving the whole food diet thing. Tomorrow is going to be somewhat challenging since I have to figure out what to bring to eat on the road to and from Chicago. And I spend the day in the car, leaving before 6am, so I'm gonna need some snack food too! Thankfully, Whole Foods can help out while I'm up there!

I am no match for hormones

Well, it happened today. I broke down and ate some serious no-no food. There was no helping it, I had to do it. My will power is only so strong and can't combat the serious carb cravings that my hormones demanded. So I ate a bag of sour cream and onion potato chips and a Milky Way. And let me tell you, almost immediately I paid for it. My gallbladder started to ache and wouldn't stop aching for the better part of an hour and a half, despite taking my supplements to help out the cause. On top of that, as soon as I started eating both items it felt like my throat was mildly itchy and a lot of mucus started form. Gross. And double gross.

Let's think about this for a second though...

Why in God's name would anyone want to eat something that caused that much disgusted mucus to form in their mouth when eating it. It was so thick it felt like the kind of thick gooey snot you get when you have a serious sinus infection, like it should have been neon green in color. It was beyond nastified (yes, I made that word up). Thinking about how severe a reaction it caused to my system after not eating any of that stuff for only three to four weeks made me wonder why I ever ate it in the first place? Or why manufacturer's actually get away with selling that crap without having to put warning labels on them: WARNING! May cause severe mucousal thickening in your mouth and digestive tract upon eating. Do not consume if you value your health.

But I digress. This sugar stuff has a strong hold on me, and when my hormones hit (at that certain time of the month) I am no match for it yet. I do anticipate that next month will be easier to get through. Heck, if I can get through the rest of the week with no more strong undeniable cravings, I will be one happy camper!

In other news, today I decided to try some wheat and gluten free bread. I opted for the Millet bread because it was sweetened with fruit juice.

Sounded good, and it tasted good. Just not good as a sandwich bread. More than anything it tasted like cornbread and I could see myself eating it with some hot soup or something to soak it in. Not realizing this was how it tasted, I had made a cucumber sandwich for lunch to use up some cucumber that we got from the farm (yeah, for having access to a half acre garden at the in-laws farm... we spent an hour or so last night freezing corn).

The sandwich didn't taste bad, it just wasn't something I would make again. By the second half of the sandwich I was eating the bread and cucumbers separately. At least I know what the bread tastes like now though so I can plan accordingly in the future!

Two other things I have discovered in the last few days:

1. Vitamin Water makes me feel really good. I guess despite all of the fruits and veggies I've been eating I still needed more vitamins. Of course, it could have something to do with the cane sugar they use in it too...
2. Iron supplements also make me feel better. I need to make a more concerted effort to attempt to get more iron in to my new primarily vegetarian diet.
3. Pants that are two sizes too big make you look awful. Dumpy, frumpy, and larger than you actually are. It might be time for a new wardrobe or some serious alterations....

Maybe the Doctor Was Right

Yesterday I had a really bad dizzy spell. Like so bad I thought I might pass out, dizzy spell. It has probably been three or four months since I last had one, and before that it was only ever when I had vertigo during serious sinus infections. This dizziness is more of a lightheaded feeling than "the world is spinning" type I've gotten with vertigo in the past. The last bout of dizziness a few months ago I believe was due to serious stress and anxiety (I had LOTS of personal changes going on then), but now I am starting to second guess that theory.

The acupuncture has alleviated the feelings of panic and anxiety that I had been having, and for the past five or so weeks I have felt really level headed and calm. (Which is awesome.) So when I had that dizzy spell yesterday I was kind of worried as to what would have caused it. I remembered my acupuncturist telling me that while I was doing the detox foot baths I should take a vitamin that he gave me everyday because so many "metal" minerals are being pulled out of my body, and that if I didn't take the vitamin I could pass out from the deficiency. Um, yeah. Not so good about taking that one every day like I'm supposed to. Whoops. Perhaps the doctor was right.

Thinking about it-- especially with the amount of "flushing" body has done the last week-- it actually might make sense that I would be getting lightheaded from a lack of those minerals (or whatever) in my body. It might be that in my body's attempt to cleanse itself it is flushing out more than just the bad stuff. And with amount of times a day I end up in the bathroom most days, I believe it's true. So last night after I had the super bad dizzy spell and I took and iron supplement (remembering how little meat I have eaten the last three weeks, just in case it's iron related) and a mineral water. I felt better.

Today I felt mildly dizzy again, but was at work so I didn't really have anything to take. I had taken the vitamin my doctor gave me though. So now I am thinking it could be related to the iron deficiency thing. I've been super cold all week and feel like I have a hard time getting warm, I feel tired, and I've got the dizzy stuff going on. All of which leads me to believe there may be an iron issue going on. I think it's time to start eating more than fruits, vegetables, and rice again.

I have successfully resisted the Krispy Kreme

Today I successfully resisted Krispy Kreme doughnuts. The original glazed Krispy Kreme doughnut. I was able to overcome temptation and not eat a single crumb, even though the box of them sat in our workplace all day after they were brought in this morning. Can I tell you how hard that was?!?!

As a recovering sugar addict (that's what I'm calling myself now), it was really difficult, especially after getting a good whiff of them. The smell of the sugar alone is like a drug for me. Yet somehow, I was able to stand by my guns and resist the FREE (did I mention they were free, courtesy of one of our appliance reps) Krispy Kreme. Talk about a challenge, but I did it and I couldn't be prouder of myself. So here's a little pat on my back from me for being able to "just say no" to free Krispy Kremes.

Part of this may be due to coming to the realization this morning that I take a massive number of pills to get well. It's ridiculous. And expensive. For the sake of documenting how serious I am with this personal health project (or whatever you want to call it) I decided to take a photo of all the pills I take in a day.

I've separated it out in to piles for each meal, and you can see the large volume of what I gulp down in a day to get my body working correctly. Missing from the piles are the liquid supplements, one of which is pictured and I do take with every meal, and the other of which (not pictured) I take once a day. In pills alone I take 27 per day, and if you add in all of the liquid supplements and the one other vitamin I take it is 31-32 per day. THAT'S INSANE!!!

But you know what? If I can avoid the temptation of a Krispy Kreme doughnut, I can do anything. Right?

Rice Milk is Yummy

During my detox/GB fixing period I am supposed to avoid dairy products. I personally happen to have a deep love of dairy products so this has been super hard for me! Being creative, as I always am, I figured I would try Rice milk as a substitute.

I actually bought the rice milk a week and a half ago, but was hesitant to try it. Part of my hesitation was due to the uncertainty of how it would taste and stuff and the other part was due to fear that even the rice milk would aggravate my gallbladder. After having no less than three friends assure me that the rice milk was super tasty I finally starting eating it yesterday with my cereal. Boy is that stuff yummy! The vanilla flavored rice milk mixed with the flax seed cereal I bought actually tasted kind of like Cocoa Puffs. It was weird. I also added some raspberries to it for fun. Awesome breakfast.

It's all very tasty, but I am going to make sure to pace myself on it just in case it is an irritant to my GB. I sure hope not, because it tastes so good and gives me a little bit of variety from all of the fruits and vegetables!

Speaking of fruits and vegetables... My body decided it needed to do a "cleanse" during work today after lunch. Lunch was sauteed zucchini on rice with nothing more than a little garlic, s&p, and olive oil. Apparently this was enough for my body to rid itself of some more crap (literally and figuratively). The internal cleansing bouts come and go quickly, which is both good and bad. Good in that it's a short-lived event, and bad because once the stomach cramping sensations start I have less than five or so minutes to get myself to the bathroom. Ugh! And the funny part? As soon as my body has finished cleansing itself I feel completely energized, like I could run a marathon or take over the world.

So I'm all for my body cleansing itself of toxins, but I wish it would wait until after work to flush everything out! Hopefully, this phase of the detox will pass soon!

Healthy= Expensive

Today I came to a very sad and painful realization. Eating healthy is really friggin' expensive! On my shopping trip to stock up for the week I spent just over $100 on nothing but fruits, vegetables, and a few other random items, most of which were organic/natural.

I guess it seems counter intuitive to me that eating healthy should be so expensive. I heard from a friend the other day that congress is considering passing a "junk" food tax to make unhealthy food more expensive. Here is the funny thing, the source who told me about this potential tax also told me that Pringles somehow got out of having the tax applied because they aren't actually potato chips. Crazy. But how American, sadly. Anyway, the point is that it still costs a ridiculous amount of money to eat healthy, and even a "fat" tax on junk food isn't going to change that dynamic at all.

Unfortunately, I need to find a way to eat organic and healthy and still have some semblance of a budget for the next three months. On the bright side, my in-laws have a farm with a half acre garden so I am sending my husband to stock up this weekend. Heck, if I can get even a few cucumbers free that will save me about $5!! Oh, and my Debbie Meyer green bags, so long as my husband stops throwing them out after one use!

Cleansing

Since I started on the gallbladder supplements and really started eating a true whole foods diet I started to notice and interesting side effect-- "internal cleansing" (aka diarrhea like BMs). Gross, I know, but I promised myself I would be very candid on this blog so as to accurately record the process. Besides, I'm sure there isn't much of anyone reading this anyway!

I noticed the loose BMs after being on the supplements for about two days. Before taking the gallbladder supplements I had actually suffered from a good deal of constipation, despite eating only fruits and vegetables for a week or two. So, I actually was glad to have some movement going! I figured it might clear up after a day or two, but it didn't, and I was having these "cleansings" anywhere from two to four times a day. When it didn't clear up after a few days I e-mailed the lady I bought the GB supplements from to see what was going on. She finally got back to me late yesterday and recommended that I stop taking one of the supplements for a short while.

The funny thing is that I actually feel great, despite the loose BMs. Better than I have in eons, and I feel really good after I have one as well. Since the GB lady took a bit to get back to me I actually asked my acupuncturist about it at yesterday's appointment. It was weird to ask the question, but I knew that a) he is doing a detox right now, too, and b) being a natural medicine guy he should know the answer. Well, he laughed a little bit that I asked the question, but then told me right away that it was actually normal and part of the cleansing process. Thank goodness!

He explained to me that when your body is bombarded with lots of toxins that it can't deal with quick enough it's solution is to actually "dilute" as opposed to flush. This explains why, now that we have fixed the stagnation problem with the GB supplements and healthy diet, my body is flushing so much out of my body. I am no longer filling my body with loads of toxins and it can now deal with the problem and flush all the crap out... both literally and figuratively. Which also explains why I feel so great, as well! Usually if I were to have diarrhea like that I would feel god awfully sick! I actually went through a period in grad school where I had a lot of it... I guess my body was trying to tell me something back then!

Because the body "dilutes" when it is overwhelmed with toxins there is a lot of weight gain associated with it. And the best news of all is that now that my body is cleansing itself with my detox program of GB supplements, diet, acupuncture, and foot baths I am dropping and average of two to five pounds per week. Ridiculous! As of a week ago, I was already down over fifteen pounds, and I know that it's more now. So, not only am I feeling awesome from the detox, I am looking great as well!

Foot Baths

With all of the things going on with my detox program I haven't gotten around to talking about the neatest part of it, yet. My foot baths.

Late at night you can see infomercials for a product called a Kinooki Foot Pad that you put on your feet while you are sleeping. The premise is that the foot pads draw the heavy metal toxins out of your body, which will make you feel more energized. Well, I'm doing the real deal. Not a foot pad, but an ionic foot bath. Twice a week for the past four or five weeks I have a foot bath to help draw out the heavy metal toxins from my body.


It sounds like a lot of hog wash, I know, but it really does work. My proof that it works is both in my energy levels and that no foot bath ever looks the same at the end, and other people's baths don't look the same as mine. For example, the other day a girl did a foot bath right before me and had hardly any heavy metal "junk" showing in the water. I did mine the day before and that day and had a ton of junk showing in the water, and my water smelled funny from the amount of toxins being pulled out.

The science of how it works is a hair confusing to me, but it still makes sense nonetheless. Here is what the flyer for the system says:


"The EBR-Pro(TM) ion therapy device utilizes direct current to create and electro-magnetic field in which the patient places their hands or feet in an aqueous salt and mineral solution to increase energy and the positively charged cellular activity through the attached array. Water molecules that pass through the array split causing the ionic field. ...

... By immersing your feet in the water you will enable an electrical contact with all the primary meridians in the body. Change charge density, and you will change the geometry, releasing trapped molecules... The meridians are one of several pathways for toxins released to exit the body. .."



Here is one of my foot baths from a few weeks ago. Unfortunately I didn't take photos of my earliest baths where I had the most gross stuff being pulled out, but at least you get the point. This is right at the beginning of the session so the water is completely clear and you can see the bubbles starting to come out of the ionizer.

After about nine minutes the machine switches polarities. From the first half of the session the water gets murky looking and frequently develops lots of foamy looking stuff. If my camera weren't such a POS then you would be able to see it...

At the end of the eighteen minutes the water has become very yellow and has tons of black flecks in it. The peppery-looking black flecks are the heavy metals that have been pulled from your body through the pores of your feet. Or, at least, that's how my doc explained it to me.

Again, I wish my camera wasn't such a POS so you could see more of the junk that is in the water, and I wish I had taken pictures of some of my earlier sessions, but you get the point.

The good thing is that the more I do them and the less junk food I eat, the less toxins are pulled out. One of the worst baths I had was a day I had binged on a whole bunch of processed food (Cheez-Its Chex Mix, among them) and had eaten McDonald's the day before. The water smelled awful and all sorts of nastiness came out that day. Says something about that food, doesn't it?

Binging is way too easy to do...

Tonight I went to a cookout at my friends' house and discovered just how hard it really is to stay focused on my detox diet. The temptations were everywhere and I wanted to binge on some food hardcore. Being that it is Sunday and I do allow myself some small freedoms with my gallbladder/detox diet on Sundays I did eat some cheddar cheese rice cakes and some strawberry and jello salad dessert stuff. No complaints from my stomach so I think I chose wisely. I was also very prepared and brought my own food so as not to stray too far from my dietary restrictions by eating a brat or hamburger-- which at this point would be gallbladder suicide. This helped out the cause a lot, but those old habits of sitting in front of the food and binging were really hard to resist.

Another thing I noticed was that I got a little "rush" from eating the cheddar cheese rice cakes. I could feel the triggers in my brain firing and wanting me to keep eating them. While I did indulge the craving a little, I paced it out by eating a little at a time so as not to completely binge and eat the whole bag in one sitting. It was hard to do, but it seemed to work.

The larger issue is what this says about the overly processed, fake, refined, flavorings, and preservatives we use on our food. Even on a simple rice cake, the fake flavoring added to them triggered that "nic fit" feeling and gave me a sense of euphoria. Processed food has become a drug for me, and I suspect most of the rest of the country/world. After having desensitized myself from processed food for the better part of 2-3 weeks now, it can still cause a rush that messes with the receptors between my brain and stomach, making me want to eat long after I am satiated. The notion of this is mind-boggling, but sadly true. "Modernized" food (aka processed/refined/fake food) is a drug.

Progress?

I was daring today. I ate a very small slice of Pizza Hut pizza at lunch (because it was free at work) and hoped that it would go over okay with my tummy. To my utter surprise, it did. Not a hint of indigestion at all. I couldn't have been more surprised! Usually I would get heartburn and indigestion hardcore, but not today. I think we are making progress!

Not to say I'm going to start scarfing down pizza though...

Here's the funny thing. It didn't even taste good. In fact, it tasted almost flavorless. I took one bite and didn't get that usual "rush" and want to simply devour more and more. If I wasn't so set on seeing how it digested I would have put the piece of pizza down and stopped eating it altogether. But of course, I didn't, and I ate it all. While I can't say that it made me want to eat more pizza, I did notice that I started staring at the vending machine with a mild craving for a Milky Way later. However, I was good and didn't get anything out of the vending... I didn't want to ruin the good thing I had going!

So, I think we are making progress. The supplements and my detox diet are really working. Digestion is better, nausea is gone, cravings are milder and milder, and I'm starting to get used to making all of that food in the morning before I go to work- and actually craving those flavors instead of junk food! Tomorrow I am going to a cookout- I can't wait to see how that goes...

Detoxing is Hard to Do

To help fix my gallbladder and do a full detox of all the "ick" that's in my body I am following a very restricted diet. It's a lot of fruits and vegetables, limited to no processed/packaged foods, and limited to no refined sugars. The detox diet is going great and I am feeling so much better than I did in both my digestion and energy levels. As a result, I am also sleeping a lot better. So, I am really liking this detox diet thing. Oh, and I forgot to mention the crazy amounts of weight I am losing (more about that in a later post, I'm sure).

However, there's one major problem with the diet: meal planning for a whole foods diet sucks with today's lifestyle. My work schedule is such that three or four days a week I am eating two meals at work. That means that before I go to work I need to have two complete meals prepared. No microwave meals, no fast food, no lunch meat (or even bread for that matter), no eating out of the vending machines. As you can imagine, it takes a lot of planning ahead, which, for me, means making lots of leftovers on my days off that I can eat the rest of the week. This is all well and good except for the fact that I have a husband who likes my cooking way too much. Which is how I ran in to a problem last night when I asked him what he had for dinner...

He ate my leftovers. Not just one meals worth, but two. Which means that I either have to starve, or make something else to replace it. And can I tell you how not fun and time consuming that is? Especially when you spend your twelve hour days on your feet the whole time. There is no way I am making any meals at night after getting home from a twelve hour workday at 9:15 pm!

Because I had strictly told my husband before that those leftovers were not to be touched, he agreed to make up for it by making me food to eat the next two days tonight. It was very kind of him. Especially since in my scramble to attempt to make enough food for today's meals this morning I was almost late for work, even though I woke up early. I also ended up having to eat a frozen, processed (albeit organic), waffle for breakfast that had some ingredients in it I'm not supposed to eat... which of course, caused some issues with my gallbladder. But at least he made up for it. He takes good care of me, and I couldn't get through this process without him. Despite him eating my leftovers.... :)

"Nic" Fits

As part of my detox program, I am eliminating/reducing my intake of refined sugars and other bad carbohydrates. I am a certified sugar addict, thanks to the good ol' American diet full of high-fructose corn syrup and other fun sugar-laden products. Over the past couple of months I've realized that my sugar cravings are along the line of a nicotine addiction. Or, at least, I assume it is (being that I've never smoked even a single cigarette). When the sugar craving strikes, it's as though someone in my head is whispering "eat carbs, carbs, carbs, carbs, carbs, sugar, sugar, sugar...." And it's non-stop. Which is why I liken it to what a smoker's "nic fit" would be like, but instead it's a sugar fit.

Last night that tapping and screaming in my head for sugar would not stop. I had done really good for the previous two weeks, eating minimal to no refined sugars everyday. But, last night's craving was too strong and I gave in. Trying to find something that wasn't going to aggravate my gallbladder as much, I shyed away from the cookies and ice cream (or funnel cakes from the county fair down the street) and made some pancakes and ate them with butter and grape jelly. Yummy. The sugar craving stopped, but oh did I pay the price for it. When I laid down to go to bed I was greeted with a nasty case of GERD. Without going in to the gross details, it felt as though nothing digested and was slowly making it's way back up my throat. All of this despite taking my digestive supplements after eating the pancakes. Ugh.

What does that say about the diet that we follow? Are we meant to digest such overly processed carb laden food? After two weeks of improved GERD/acid reflux from eating a more "whole foods" diet, binging on a few pancakes made my digestion go right back to where it was. Perhaps if the jelly was homemade, like my mother-in-law does with regular table sugar and fresh grapes, as opposed to high-fructose corn syrup and artificial flavoring and other junk, and the pancakes homemade (they were a box mix) the results might have been different? And did I mention that my mother-in-law's homemade grape jelly tastes amazingly light years better?

Anyway, this experience has started to make me think even more about the foods we eat. Overly processed foods, such as in the American diet, filled with high fructose corn syrup and other artificial ingredients are difficult to digest-- even with digestive aids-- and cause some rather uncomfortable side effects, but also cause us to crave those foods we can't digest even more! It's a vicious circle, and a difficult one to break. I know my sugar "nic fits" will subside even more as I detox my body and avoid processed, sugar-laden foods. But what to do until then? How can I quiet the voice in my head and that banging feeling it causes in my brain?

"Old Biddy"

A couple of days ago, one of my coworkers accused me of being an "old biddy" because I can't go out and party and drink like a lot of other people my age. In a lot of respects I am a self-proclaimed "old lady," (note: lady not biddy, there is a difference) mostly because my health requires a lifestyle similar to that of a much older lady, but also partially because I am in to stuff that a lot of "kids" my age aren't in to: opera, wearing pearls with St John suits (if I had the money, I would), cooking and entertaining with super high-class food, and fulfilling my manifest destiny of becoming a fabulous rich old lady (I was destined to be one and you all know it).

Either way, I have to be an "old biddy" right now. My body has left me no option. Just take a look at all of the pills I am taking everyday, most of them three times per day, to fix my ailing body.

This is everything I take from the "gallbladder starter kit" that I got. I take one dose of each per meal. From left to right:

• Super Phos: to help during a gallbladder attack, but also to help with the indigestion, pain, nausea, and vomiting that comes with having a bum gallbladder. It takes like stomach acid after vomiting. No joke.
• Beet Supplements: not only does it make my poo purpley-red (which is fun), but it helps to thing and move my purpley-red bile, metabolize fats, and stop constipation. Oh, and I still have to eat beets as well as take this supplement.
• Bile Salts: breaks down fats, stops constipation, and helps my body absorb nutrients I am sure it hasn't been absorbing for a while now since I can't digest without them- vitamins, A, D, E and K and essential fatty acids.
• Mega Acid A: makes my tummy produce hydrochloric acid since it struggles to on its own, so that I can digest protein properly and it also helps my gallbladder to actually empty like it's supposed to.
• Mullzyme: has enzymes in it that help to digest protein and helps my bowel to clean itself for better absorption of nutrients.

And if that weren't enough...

... I get to take even more supplements for digestion and to get rid of the gallstones! The first two my acupuncturist gave me to fix the candida (or yeast) overgrowth I have in my digestive tract, which I assume is in no small part due to my wonderful overly sugared American diet. I take one per meal:

• Probiotics: to help support a healthy intestinal environment, free from bad bacteria
• Enzyme Plus: to help me digest, because again, my body has ceased to be able to digest stuff on it's own.
• Yeast Away (not pictured): this was a supplement I was supposed to take to kill of that bad yeast in my tummy, but unfortunately it had Aloe Vera in it and it made me sick, cuz, like the messed up person I am, I am allergic to Aloe Vera. Thought you would never hear of that huh? Yup, that's me. I'm going to try to start taking that one again in a month or so to see if it goes over any better.

Then there is the Chinese medicine gallstone dissolving stuff:

• Gallbladder Nano-Detox: stimulates bile secretion and helps to dissolve stones. I drink some of this diluted in water once a day, sipping slowly.
• Dissolve GS: it does what the name says, dissolve gallstones. I have to take 3 capsules 3-4 times daily.
  

And did I mention the monthly cost of all these supplements to fix me? Not cheap.

Believe me, there is nothing more in this world that I would like than to go out partying with my friends like we use to back in the old days-- which any of my undergrad friends will tell you, I was really good at. I mean, I'm talking total rockstar kind of night. But what would happen if I did? It wouldn't be just a massive hangover that I would suffer, it would be more than that. In one night I could potentially reverse all of the hard work I have done to detoxify my body, and have to start all over. And for what? So I can not feel as left out and prove that I am somehow cool? No way. Not worth sacrificing my health. And if that makes me an "old biddy," then I will gladly wear that badge with honor, because I am living my life smart. So don't make fun of me. It's not a bad thing, it's a really good thing. And when you are faced with a compromised health situation years from now, you will understand. There really is no other option than to be that "old biddy."

Stagnation

Apparently, I am not progressing as quickly as I thought.

Ok, who am I kidding? I know I'm progressing like molasses in winter.

I went to the acupuncturist today for a detox session (aka pinning and foot bath), and my acupuncturist said that he is still seeing quite a bit of "stagnation." Despite all of the nausea starting to subside and all that good stuff, I'm still not digesting well. In fact, it feels like nothing digests period. It's a rather strange feeling, to tell you the truth. You eat, and hours later you still have a sensation of the food just sitting in your stomach, not going anywhere.

Without me saying anything, my acupuncturist can tell this is going on just by looking at my tongue. Crazy. After seeing that today, he changed up my pinning spots a little bit. I think he's just as perplexed as I am as to why my digestive system just won't get moving. He pins me in all the spots that increase the flow throughout the body to stimulate the gallbladder, but we aren't seeing a huge improvement in the gallbladder. Other areas, a big resounding YES we are seeing results, but with my digestion, not so much. I guess the "sludge" is much worse than my regular MD let on...

So its a good thing I am going to start taking the gallstone and sludge dissolving supplements starting tomorrow. Fingers crossed I don't have any allergic reactions. I'm thinking I will be alright, but since I don't know what they ingredients actually are because they are all in Chinese I am just going to have to trust that it will be fine. Chinese medicine is made up of herbs, and I can't think of any herbs that I have ever had a problem with in the past.

Here's hoping... let's get that sludge and stagnation to clear up fast!

Benedryl Haze

Well, it happened again. Another allergic reaction to God only knows what. The day started out great with a tasty breakfast of turkey sausage and flax seed waffles (neither of which are on my approved foods list, but everyone needs a day off, right), and I took the new supplements I got for my gallbladder. I first noticed a funny sensation in my mouth and throat towards the end of breakfast, most notably right after I took two of the digestive supplements: Beet concentrate, and Mega Acid. I thought nothing of it, and went to work. The gallbladder pills worked awesome, as I had no digestive complaints or nausea, so I felt amazing otherwise.

About 15 minutes after I got to work I noticed a tightening and drying out of my throat, again, thinking nothing of it and assuming it was just a mild side affect from the acid supplement I took. About 30 minutes after that I started to feel a lot of pressure behind my eyes like I would when having an allergic reaction and it caused some problems with my vision. Still being the idiot that I am, I thought nothing of it and kept going with my day. About an hour later, I noticed that it felt like something was stuck in my throat and it was kind of itchy, too, real high in the back of my throat. I kept going for a little while longer and then went home for my lunch break so I could make my Cucumber Fuzz juice. That's when it got really bad...

I started making the cucumber fuzz juice and decided to add a nectarine in for flavor because the ones I have are super ripe and ready to be eaten (and I LOVE nectarines). I took a small bite of the nectarine while I was depitting it and that itchy sensation in my throat went from mild to awful in about 10 seconds. I went to the mirror to see if there really was something in my throat, and sure enough, there was one hive that looked like a good sized pimple in the back of my throat. I immediately took one benedryl to slow down the reaction thinking that would do the trick. Not even close. As I was drinking my tasty lunch, it went from bad to worse as the itching sensation intensified and spread across the right side of my mouth. Not sure why it was only the right side, but it was. Popped a second benedryl, finished my lunch and started running through my head all of the possible things that could have caused the reaction. Guesses, at best. By the time I was on my way back to work my lips were in full force tingle and felt like they would have swollen right up if it weren't for the benedryl already starting to kick in. Back in the day, when my food allergies were new and I didn't know to take Benedryl at the first sign of tingling, my lips would swell up super bad and my manager at the time used to always tell me that a lot of people pay good money to have lips like that. I ensured him that their lips probably didn't ooze and itch with hives all over.

Anyway, I spent the day in a benedryl haze. Can I tell you how hard it is to sell stuff and carry on intelligent conversations when you are ready to fall asleep standing up? It was rough, but at least the hive was going away and the tingling, itchy feelings subsiding. This reaction was bad. It took almost eight hours for the swelling and tingling to completely go away after I took the Benedryl.

So what caused this allergic reaction? It felt as though I was having an allergic reaction to apples, but nothing I ate contained anything remotely related to apples, so that's not possible. Here are my theories as to what might have caused the allergic reaction:

1. The beet supplement contains 4mg of sulfur. Perhaps I am allergic to sulfur? What bursts this theory is that beets, that I have been eating all week, have sulfur naturally occurring in them and I have yet to have a problem with them in their natural, non-pill, state.
2. The Mega Acid supplement was too strong for my stomach. Not sure on this one... not quite as plausible but I'm not ruling it out either until I see what happens that next time I take it.
3. The nectarine was not organic and I didn't wash it well enough. Believe or not, this may have been the straw that broke the camels back. It's happened before, so it's definitely in the realm of possibility. This however would have had to be simply exacerbating something that had started earlier in the day. Which, I think, has also happened in the past.
4. The new cranberry blossom honey that I just bought is made from a pollen that I still have an allergy to, despite my allergy shots. I am putting this one as a very strong contender for what started it all because I had put it on my waffles in the morning, and when I put it on some biscuits that I ate tonight (again, I wasn't being very strict on my diet today, biscuits are definitely not on the approved list) I felt that tingling in my mouth again. I switched to regular clover honey after that and the tingling started to subside.
5. A combination of all of these things put together.

Long story short, I'm lost. I wish I could just eat and digest normally like everyone else. Spending your day in a Benedryl haze is no fun whatsoever, especially if you can't just sleep it off.

Adventures in Juicing

I am super excited today because I got all of my natural supplements for fixing my gallbladder in the mail! I haven't taken any yet, and I'm going to start tomorrow at breakfast. I'm a little nervous that some of the pills might make me sick or something, but that is just my anxiety talking (mainly from having so many bad experiences recently with most any pill I've popped to help out my cause, but these are natural so they should go over just fine).

Besides that I had some adventures in juicing today. For both breakfast and lunch I "juiced" my meal, and both turned out successfully. For breakfast, I tried a recipe for the "immune buster" drink, made out of plums, grapes, strawberries, and raspberries.

I can't even begin to tell you how good it tasted. I even added in some of the leftover pulp to add some bulk and extra flavor to it. That recipe is a definite keeper, and heck, if it boosts my immune system too, I'll take it.

For lunch I made the "Gallstone Solvent" recipe. The book describes it as being a "bitter tonic" to help dissolve gallstones, so I thought, what the hey, let's try it. The recipe called for tomatoes, watercress, celery, parsley, radishes, and lemon.

The drink looked weird, and if you let it sit for too long the tomato juice would settle to the bottom and all of the other "stuff" would rise to the top. It was kind of funny looking. My husband tried some of this also and we both liked it. The bitterness of the radishes was a surprising bite in the drink. Now, I'm not sure if it did anything to help dissolve my gallstones, but I can tell you that for about 15-30 minutes afterwards I had a weird feeling in my stomach that bordered on nausea or indigestion, but it completely cleared thereafter and I was fine the rest of the day. Perhaps that sensation was it cleaning out my gallbladder? Who knows?

Today I also discovered that there is one good store to get a wide selection of organic vegetables in town!!! I was at the Kroger on North Knoxville just to run in and get some tomatoes and ended up buying a ton more, including organic golden beets (cuz I'm all about variety in my beets), because they had so many organic food available all in one place! And I didn't even have to go to Whole Foods in Chicagoland to get it! Super excited about that, but I'm sad that I might have to change my grocery store loyalty. It's going to be hard not shopping at Schnucks as much anymore, but I will get through it for the sake of my health... Hopefully, Schnucks will start upping it's organic produce soon so I don't have to switch.

Beeturia is a funny thing

Today I discovered something funny. I have "beeturia." Beets are very important to the gallbladder diet, so I have been making sure to eat at least a serving of beets everyday. Having never really eaten but the occassional beet before this adventure, I was unaware the beeturia even existed. Apparently, in certain individuals, the lovely purple color of the beet can show up in the urine and stool. Fabulous! Apparently, I am among the 10-14% of the population that has this lovely side effect of eating beets. At least the good news is that it's harmless. Funny. But harmless.

Anyway, after yesterday's not so good experience with the juicer, I decided to try a different recipe for breakfast this morning. This one is called "Cucumber Fuzz," and it was actually really tasty. Not to mention super pretty before I mixed it all up.

This recipe called for peaches (the fuzz), cucumber, and celery. Very refreshing.

Look at how pretty it looked before I mixed it up! (Ignore the crappy lighting in my kitchen and the crappy quality of photos that my camera takes)

My tummy loved that breakfast. Too bad I was starving about 2 hours later, though! Thankfully, I had packed rice crackers again, so I munched on those to tide me over. The rest of the day went well eating wise again- probably because I ate the some stuff as the day before! But there is nothing wrong with that, and no nausea to report either as a result!

It's amazing to me how quickly I am seeing and feeling a change in my overall health just by changing my diet to help out my gallbladder. The nausea is going away, I have more energy, my stomach is starting to function normally again, I'm sleeping MUCH better (no more waking in the middle of the night with gallbladder attack pain or nausea... or even peeing for that matter), and my awful sugar cravings are all but gone. One week is all it took. Wow!

As my acupuncturist said, we are "going to detox the hell out of [me]." I like to think we are making some good progress...

I *Heart* Cucumbers

One of the side of affects of gallstones/gallbladder problems is that you are frequently nauseous, especially after eating. It sucks. Hard core. Not wanting to feel sick anymore, and as part of the plan to fix my digestive issues that caused the gallbladder problems I am trying to follow a primarily "whole foods" diet. On the website I ordered my supplements from, there is a recommended diet that I am following for my gallstones. Long story short, I eat like rabbit. Not a whole lot of anything and almost entirely vegetables. In fact, the only meat I can eat on the diet is cold water fish. I've pretty much got to go vegetarian. Luckily, I like vegetables and like to cook, so it's not so bad.

I got a brilliant idea the other day to buy a juicer to help out with the cause. I'm supposed to drink obscene amounts of cucumber and beet juice, and they don't sell that stuff at the store, so a juicer made sense. Being the consumer I am, I naturally bought Jack LaLane's Power Juicer... who hasn't seen that infomercial? The day I got it I made some really tasty grape juice, and since that went over so well I went out and bought a book of juicing recipes: The Juicing Bible. Can't go wrong, right?

I'm not supposed to eat dairy or wheat because they can aggravate the gallbladder... which means breakfast is a bit of a head scratcher for me. I LOVE cereal with milk. No can do anymore. So I looked up a recipe in my handy Juicing Bible. Zesty Tomato juice. It sounded good (and it didn't have anything I was allergic to in it- read: carrots and apples, two staples of juicing).

Tomato, parsley, ginger and lemon. Sounds really good. The tomato, lemon and ginger are all on the gallstone diet, so I thought it would be awesome.

The juice looked really good. Taste. Not so much. It was super tart and it smelled funky. I blame it on the beefsteak tomatoes my husband bought when he did the grocery shopping the other day. Plus, it hardly juiced the parsley (if at all), and it finely grated the ginger, leaving it all in the pulp shoot, as opposed to in the juice.

Anyway, I only drank about half of it before I threw it in the sink and resorted to drinking pear juice from a bottle (organic, of course). Super tasty... filling, not so much.

Despite not eating much of anything for breakfast I was nauseous all morning! Which sucks when your job is to stand around selling stuff to people all cheery-like. Thank god there weren't a lot of customers. When lunch time rolled around I was starving though, which for me is a rarity. I honestly can't remember the last time I actually felt hungry. I know it's weird, but I completely blame it on my gallbladder. It's as though my stomach forgot how to send signals that it needed food. No joke. But, low and behold, even after feeling sick all morning I was actually hungry.

Lunch was a very healthy cucumber salad, some organic rice crackers, and organic raspberries and blackberries. It was very tasty, and for the first time in weeks, I did not feel sick AT ALL after eating! Happy dance! In fact, I had almost zero nausea the rest of the day! Dinner was also in keeping with the gallbladder diet (minus the small amount of lamb in it): lamb and basmati rice stuffed zucchini, beet salad, and more organic berries. Oh, and I forgot to mention that I actually got hungry again before dinner! Hallelujah!

I think I'm on to something here folks. My body is starting to react very positively to the dietary changes. If I can have this much success just changing my diet for a couple of days, why would I even consider taking out my gallbladder?

Battle Wounds

I started going to the acupuncturist a few weeks ago after being up late one too many nights from one health issue after the other. Modern medicine wasn't working for me, and my unguided self-care was only barely managing the issues. Going for what I felt was the last resort, I ended up doing acupuncture.

Ok, touchy subject time... well, touchy subject at least for me. I had been suffering from severe anxiety for a few months, and that day had been a particularly bad day. To sum it up, I had gone to see my ob/gyn for my annual (as all of us girls must do, unfortunately) and I pretty much cried through the whole appointment. It was my first time seeing this particular doctor, so before we did the exam and stuff he wanted to sit down with me and do a little "get to know each other" session. Very cool. Well, I don't think this doctor knew what he had coming. There I was, sitting my brand new doctor's office telling him about all of my health issues, family issues, and all of that other stuff that revolved around and resulted in the severe anxiety I had been feeling for months. Thankfully, my doc took it like a pro and listened and asked lots of questions, so I believe he actually genuinely cared. Granted, this man is used to lots of pregnant hormonal women crying in his office all the time... so what's so different about little old, non-pregnant, me crying in his office, right? Right. Anyway, the crying didn't stop after my appointment. I literally could not stop crying the rest of the day.

That being said... I was friggin' sick of crying. That's no way to live! On top of that, over the course of the prior months I had tried two different modern medicine remedies (aka anti-depressants) for the anxiety, both of which made me so sick to my stomach that I couldn't function. One of them made me so sick that chunks of stuff were shooting up in to my throat from my stomach. Graphic, I know, but doesn't it seem odd that anyone would consider putting something in to their bodies that might even have a side effect like that? After those two horrible experiences, I resorted to homeopathic remedies, which actually helped out a lot. Only problem with the homeopathic remedy was that if I didn't take it consistently, I was right back where I started with in a matter of days. Which was how I got to where I was that day. I had stopped taking the homeopathic remedy consistently about two days prior, and I couldn't suck those things down fast enough to make up for the lost time.

Sometimes I wonder if there is a higher plan... that there is a path we take for a reason and that new pathways that we need to follow will continue to open up as we go. Across the hall from my new ob/gyn's office that day was a chiropractic/acupuncture place. That night I was up late, not able to sleep, with pain from my gallbladder (though not knowing that was what it was at the time) and continuing to have severe anxiety-attacks- as a result of the pain. Having seeing the acupuncture office earlier in the day, the idea struck me to look in to acupuncture to help the anxiety.

Doing what I always do when something with my health frustrates me, I started to Google the benefits of acupuncture for anxiety. I found a lot of great information that supported the benefits, and I even discovered that acupuncture can help digestive disorders! I e-mailed them that night (around 2am), and was able to get an appointment that next day. Yes, I cried through the whole appointment, just as I had the day before, but by the time I was done with my first "pinning," something had changed.

I stopped crying. I even felt like taking a walk with my husband after dinner. I had energy. The proof is in the pudding though folks-- a rash that I had been dealing with for two full days, that was itching so bad when I went in to the acupuncturist that it was bleeding, had completely cleared within two hours afterwards! Can you say excited?!?! I was!

I will talk more later about all of the awesome results I am seeing from the acupuncture, but in the meantime, I wanted to share this pic of a "battle wound" I received from Monday's pinning.

That bruise is on my stomach from one of the gallbladder points we hit to stimulate and improve it's functioning. Don't worry, it doesn't hurt. But, if this doesn't prove how serious I am about healing myself naturally, and the lengths I will go to do that, I don't know what will!

Breaking Bubbles- The Genesis

At the ripe old age of 28 (yes, 28) I have developed a series of health issues that have caused many of my friends to suggest that I should live "in a bubble." Or as my coworker suggested the other day, "you should be in a medical journal somewhere." Strange food allergies that developed out of nowhere, sensitivities and rashes to anything that has a scent, and even an allergy to the sun. Yup. That's right folks. I'm allergic to the sun. Didn't use to be, but I am now. And every year has gotten progressively worse with my health for the past 6 years, or so.

Now, I can't say that I haven't had health issues all along. I've had severe allergies to anything that grows since I was a little girl. Thanks to allergy shots (love them!), I'm finally not having such a hard time with most living things anymore... provided I don't touch them (which is a whole different story). Either way, even before I started the allergy shots, I was starting to have more and more health problems, especially once I got to college. For the better part of 2 years I had pinched nerves, chronic pain, and symptoms of carpal tunnel.

Going the traditional, Americanized route, I tried your normal everyday docs for a while. I probably tried every prescription for anti-inflammatories under the sun, but had little to no relief. I even had one doctor give me cortisone shots in my wrists to make the pain stop. Didn't work. After giving up on NSAIDS, and all the prescription junk that wasn't working, I did what any college kid would do... when the pain bothered me, I took a shot of vodka. Realizing quickly that it was not a healthy long-term solution, I decided to go see a chiropractor who did acupuncture (at the advice of a friend). Early in the stages of pain, I had tried acupuncture at a friends (her mother was studying to become an acupuncturist), so I fully anticipated I would end up getting acupuncture and hopefully that would alleviate the chronic pain enough that I could function (without resorting to vodka). Boy was I surprised when the doctor took an x-ray of my back and it came back that my neck was practically at a 45 degree angle from the shoulder blades up! Needless to say, we decided to forego the acupuncture and do chiropractic. After 6 months of chiropractic I was pain free and feeling awesome.

So, how is it that traditional American medicine never thought to do a simple x-ray of my back to see if there was an alignment issue? Instead, they chose to pump me full of drugs to mask the symptoms, and thus the true root of the problem.

With that proverbial bubble "burst," I find myself sitting here almost 8 years later, back in a similar situation. Fighting between modern medicine and traditional, but new-age, Chinese and natural medicine. Last week I found out that I have gallstones.

Modern medicine's answer to my gallbladder problem- rip it out.

But here is the kicker- I keep reading report after report that says that patients who have their gallbladder removed still have digestive problems and frequently still get gallstones! So, why would I have them rip out my gallbladder without first trying to address the root cause of the problem? Wouldn't it make more sense to address the digestive and dietary issues issues that caused the stones in the first place?

And herein lies the genesis of this blog. My journey in attempting to restore my health through natural means, carefully examining all advice given to me by modern medicine, and incorporating alternatives medicines to detoxify and fix my broken body so that I can once and for all break out of the bubble I'm living in.