So a couple posts back, I referenced my food issues, and the very sweet and charming Love Comes First asked what happens to me when I eat the forbidden foods. Her question made me realize that I have never told the full story here on the blog, so in the interests of boring you all nearly to death with the minutiae of my medical history, I will be telling the story today. It’s very interesting to me (naturally, because it’s ME, and there are few things that fascinate me more in this world) but I am fully aware it may not be so for you. So feel free to skip this post, if you’re looking for something juicy.
About 3 years ago, I started having weird symptoms. They all appeared quite separate from each other, in time and in general description. First, I had an episode of double vision that lasted exactly a week. When I woke up in the mornings, I saw double so badly that I couldn’t really do anything for about half an hour, after which time it would resolve enough that I could be up and about and driving. Throughout the rest of the day, there was an odd sensation in my peripheral vision, like when you are wearing glasses and just move them around slightly. Like looking through a very slightly distorted lens. I went to the doctor after a few days and unfortunately saw a replacement doctor who was handling walk-ins that day. My regular doctor is a superstar, but this guy was a chump. He didn’t really listen to me, and ended up prescribing a medication to help with the dizziness, even though I didn’t have dizziness. I took the script and talked to the pharmacist, who told me that the medication was actually an anti-psychotic drug that was more commonly used as an anti-nauseant for people undergoing chemo. If you know me at all, you will not need to be told that there was no fucking way I was taking that drug, given that it didn’t even treat the symptoms I was having. So much for that. I waited a few more days and went back to see my regular doctor this time, who referred me to an opthamologist, who did a little routine on me, but couldn’t see anything wrong. Another day or two, and it was over. So I just figured it was a weird one-off and left it at that.
At some point in the fall, I had what I think was an episode of gall-stones. Unfortunately, it happened while I was visiting Quebec City on business and was about to eat what would have likely been one of the best meals of my life in an amazingly posh restaurant. I was struck with intense pain, and my one trip to the ladies to try to fart it out was unsuccessful. So I had to get a cab and head back to my hotel, where I writhed in pain for about an hour until it passed. Eventually, I had an ultrasound when I got back home, but they couldn’t find anything, so who knows what it was. It had never happened before or since, and I don’t know whether it was connected to the rest of my weird symptoms or not.
Later in the fall, I was under a lot of stress at work, and my appetite just disappeared. That is unusual for me, as I generally have a super high metabolism and eat a lot. But I would eat half a sandwich and feel so full I felt kind of sick. I chalked all this up to the stress and just tried to eat when I was hungry. I still ended up losing a bunch of weight, about 15 pounds or so, but my vanity was kind of stroked by this, and it’s not like I was dangerously thin, so I just carried on.
Then, about two and a half years ago, I started having the weirdest symptom. Numb patches, all over my body. Just numb, like being completely frozen from the dentist. It wasn’t tingly or painful or anything else. They would last in one spot for a week or a few weeks, and then they’d disappear, only to crop up somewhere else. Manny did a “blind” study on me by touching my leg under the table to see whether I could tell when he was touching me. I was wrong twice. So I figured that was serious enough to go back to the doctor to try to figure out what was going on. At this point, I had already had the thought that it could be MS, as there were 3 people in my extended family who had MS, and I live in the place with one of the highest rates of MS in the world, and I’m kind of a prime candidate to get it – woman, 30s, Scandinavian descent…not good. I was worried at this early stage, but had read enough to know that it wasn’t presenting typically – tingling and weakness is more common than numbness in early MS, and I hadn’t had either of those.
So off to my doctor. After a few months of testing and fiddling around (I didn’t have a B12 deficiency, but I was anemic, which can cause numbness, but after supplementing my iron and getting my levels up to where they should be, there was no improvement), my doctor referred me to a neurologist for an MRI, as he thought that even though I didn’t have typical MS symptoms, I should still be seen by a neurologist to rule it out. After that appointment, I was a lot more stressed than I had been before. When it was just my neurotic mind thinking MS was a possibility, that was one thing. But when my doctor actually said the words, it became a lot more real and a lot more scary. But he assured me that it would be a matter of weeks to get in to the neurologist, and that calmed me down a lot.
Except it wasn’t a matter of weeks. Turned out it was going to take 6 months to even get the first appointment with the neuro, and then a further wait for the MRI. (Canadian health care – I love it, but even a good socialist like me, living in the cradle of Medicare, can get impatient when waiting for something like this.) When I found out I was going to have to live with the symptoms AND the uncertainty and anxiety for 6 months, I crossed 3 lanes of traffic on the western medicine highway, and took the nearest exit to alternative medicine, in the form of my naturopath.
My first visit with her was amazing. I was with her for about 3 hours, answering her questions about every facet of my physical health, touching also on my emotional health and the circumstances of my life at the time. It’s a bit weird to tell someone you’ve just met about the consistency of your poo and the details of your menstrual flow, but it’s so rare to meet someone in health care who actually listens that I was just happy to talk. Towards the end of the visit, she took my pulse and looked at my tongue. She told me that my adrenals were extremely depleted, and prescribed an adrenal supplement, which I think was made from dried New Zealand cow spleen or something equally delightful. She also prescribed nutritional support in the form of a daily multivitamin and fish oil supplements. Mmm, burpy. The worst was yet to come, however, and though I had expected it, I was still pretty daunted when she told me what to cut out of my diet. She asked me to give up the following for 2 weeks, and then reintroduce things, one at a time, to see where my sensitivities were:
- wheat
- dairy
- eggs
- soy
- nightshades – potatoes, tomatoes, bell peppers, eggplant
- oranges
- peanuts
Yup. Kind of all conveniently available food, at first glance. But mostly, I remember feeling really good that I was finally doing something about my health, and was more excited by the possibilities of healing than horrified at the restrictive diet. I wasn’t convinced I was sensitive to any of these foods – after all, I had been eating them my whole life, and had never really been sick before. Why would they be linked to my numbness or any of the other symptoms I’d been having?
Within two weeks, all the numb patches had disappeared, something that hadn’t happened for the past year. This was, and remains, a huge motivation to stick to my diet. A lot of people wonder how I can be so disciplined – for me, it’s not really discipline. I went from having neurological symptoms of a pretty serious disease to having no symptoms at all. When no regular doctors could tell me anything useful, a simple change in what I ate, along with a few supplements, completely changed my health and reminded me again that I am my own responsibility.
I started re-introducing foods, one at a time, to see which ones really bothered me. I started with soy, cause I was already pretty soy-dependent, drinking soy milk and eating tofu fairly regularly. But life without soy milk is a bitch, and I couldn’t do it. At the time I was travelling fairly often for work, and soy milk is widely available. Try getting breakfast in an airport when you can’t eat the things on my list – a Starbucks chai latte with soy saved me from getting faint-y with hunger more than a few times. To date, soy is the only thing that I have brought back without restriction, although at home I do tend to rotate my “milks” and use almond and rice milks as well.
As for what these foods do to me – well, they’re all different. The reason my naturopath prescribed this diet is because these foods are all inflamatory foods that can increase inflamation in the body. I think this can mean different things for different people, but for me wheat makes me mucus-y and if I eat a lot of it, I will feel like my sinuses will explode; dairy gives me scaly skin on my face, and if I eat uncultured dairy (like ice cream or straight up milk), I get a gut ache and upset stomach; nightshades make me feel tired and achy all over, and also give me weird needle-like pains in my mouth while I’m eating them, like the feeling you get when you salivate a lot all at once; oranges make me itchy, but only if I have quite a bit, so I will sometimes indulge; eggs make me feel overly full and kind of pukey, like they just sit in my stomach all day, and also I get a weird sensation of being overstimulated, like being in Wall-mart for way too long; and peanuts are tolerable in small amounts, like oranges, but they are known to foster yeast issues, so I generally stay away.
I eventually had the MRI, which came back negative for MS or anything else. By the time I had it, I had been mostly symptom free for about 6 months, so I wasn’t expecting them to find anything. Whether or not I would have gone on to develop more severe symptoms if I hadn’t followed the advice of my naturopath, I don’t know. I certainly don’t think that I had MS and I cured it, and while I feel turning to alternative medicine was hugely beneficial in my case, I’m certainly not dogmatic about it when it comes to other people. But what I do know is that from my very first visit to my wonderful naturopath, who has since become a good friend, I’ve been on a healing journey that has encompassed taking 9 months off work and eventually changing jobs to something far less stressful, paying more attention to my spirituality, seeing a counsellor, and blogging. My life is so much better now, and I’m really grateful to my naturopath for helping to set me down this path on which I accept and embrace responsibility for my health, in all aspects, and am able to make choices that are the right ones for me, regardless of how weird or difficult they might be.
So there you have it – the long tale of my last few years and my health. I’ve healed enough now that I can occasionally indulge and not suffer huge consequences – when I first started this diet, just having a tiny amount of wheat was enough to have me whining in pain over my sinuses and expelling gross colourful snot. Now, I can eat a whole sandwich and feel pretty normal, maybe just a little stuffed up. I think a huge amount of this was down to stress, which is a whole ‘nother post in itself, but since quitting that job and working on my emotional and spiritual health, I’m a lot healthier overall. I know I’ll be restricting these foods for the rest of my life, but as the years go on, I will likely be able to ease up even more than I have now. My naturopath says that my having food sensitivities greatly increases the likelihood that my child will, as well, so it’s important to be quite strict during pregnancy and breastfeeding, and then to be mindful of this as well when introducing solid food to children. So other than my CD1 ritual, I’m trying pretty hard to be good. I’ve always eaten very well, and these last few years have kind of reinvigorated me when it comes to cooking and eating.
So how about you, internets? Any weird tales of illness or healing you feel like sharing? What foods bug you? If you’ve made it this far, you deserve a gold star. So thank you, and gold stars all around.
