My Food Journey: Part 2

It's hard for me to know where to start with this without it being boring but still get in all the info of what's been going on with me and my health. So I guess I'll start at the start.

 A month or so ago I got strep throat. This was out of the blue and not normal for me. Since I had an infection, I had to stop taking my arthritis medication (Enbrel) which caused my knees to flare and me to hobble around the house. I got better and started taking my medication again. A couple weeks later, I got the flu (as per past post). Again, I quit taking Enbrel. During those sick days I had no appetite and was barely picking at my food. After a few days I noticed my knees looked like they had zero inflammation. They looked down right beautiful I tell you. Since being gluten-free for over a year, I know there is a link to what I'm eating and inflammation, but it really hit home at that moment. I started looking online and saw that someone recommended a book called "How to Eat Away Arthritis." I went to Amazon and saw lots of very positive reviews and went ahead and spent $7 on a used copy. Meanwhile, I was feeling better and thus eating regular food again. My knees flared up badly and walking was painful. It's frustrating to feel like a victim of a disease and also scary. Going gluten-free gave me some control, but maybe I could get more? The book arrived after a few days and I started reading. There's story after story of people who changed their diet and their disease left- or at least they were symptom free if they continued eating the way they needed to. The book goes step-by-step on how to do it and I decided to go for it right then hoping to help my painful knees. (note- I did also take a shot but normally my knees still have some inflammation.)

 The first step is a 2-day water fast. I had fasted about a day and a half before but never that long. It was not easy. The second day I pretty much stayed in bed and read my book and slept. The kids were here part of the day and were very sweet to me, and Amy took them for a chunk of time too.

 

 I think Pepper was happy to have some company for the day.

 

 I took care of phone calls and made an appointment at a Naturopath's office for a food allergy test. The third day you get to eat a fruit at breakfast, a fruit at lunch, and vegetable broth/soup for dinner- for which  they provided a recipe (a variety of vegetables boiled in water for an hr-2 hrs.).



 Every single person that sipped my soup came up with a disgusted face, but let me tell you after 3 days of pretty much no food, it tasted pretty darn good. The next day you get to have a whole-grain, non-gluten hot cereal with fruit for breakfast. My friend introduced this one to me:

 

It's really yummy, you should try it.
So here I am today which makes 1 week and 4 days since I've had: sugar (including juice and anything sweet), eggs, dairy, wheat, meat, potatoes/tomatoes, and anything processed. Here's what I have been eating: A non-gluten whole grain hot cereal in the morning with rice milk mixed in and sweetened with lots of fruit. A big salad for lunch. For dinner I've been experimenting with quinoa recipes with beans. Or I can have a corn tortilla with black beans and lots of cilantro- a little dry but yummy when you're hungry. Herbs are my seasonings since I'm not using salt. Cold water fish is okay too and tonight we're having salmon, brown rice, and broccoli. Mmmm- can't wait.

So the point of doing all this is to cleanse my gut. My new book says that if you have an autoimmune disease you have "leaky-gut". This means that food passes from your stomach into your bloodstream and your body kinda freaks out and for RA, attacks your joints. The book describes this much better than I do. Anyway, what you're trying to do is re-boot your digestive system and then after 2 weeks (according to the book, and 4 weeks according to the Naturopath) introduce a possible trigger. Like dairy for example. (Which by the way, butter has been the hardest thing for me to not have.) Then you wait 4 days and see if any inflammation occurs. If so, that's a food you need to avoid. Also, my food allergy test results will come back in about a week and that will narrow down the things I need to test.

 Obviously, I would LOVE to be medication free someday. I would eat this way the rest of my life if I could be. But even if I can have no inflammation on my knees with my shot that would be nice too. So like with any journey- we'll find out what happens :) For now, I love having ANY amount of control over my body. I'll take what I can get with gratitude. I just want to make sure I'm doing everything I possibly can. I'll update again in about a month. Wish me luck- I have 2 vacations coming right up!

 P.S. I'll be the one with a cooler full of veggies and the skinny knees :)