A walk down Main Street

Here are some pictures of a walk I take at times down Main Street from the town I live. There are trees everywhere. I tried to capture the leaves changing colors. The phone camera didn't do it's justice I feel. 

 I looked out my window one day and saw this deer. They just looked at me, then continued to find food to eat. I've only seen this deer a few times with their young ones. I mostly have squirrels to watch. They can be funny at times on the trees. The squirrels can't stay still too long for pictures though. 

Die-Off vs. Food Intolerance

This has become one of the BIGGEST questions I have asked myself, and tried to answer for others. When you are trying to heal your gut lining through GAPS, they say be prepared for die-off reactions. In addition, you are also coming to know your body more and recognizing which foods your body can't tolerate at this moment. This is one thing that Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride says about the difference:

How can you tell the difference between die-off and food intolerance?  For example, how do you know if flatulence is caused by the meal you just ate or from the meal prior to that one?

The die-off symptoms can be new symptoms or can be your usual symptoms getting worse, when you introduce new diet, probiotics or anti-parasitic, anti-fungal/anti-bacterial remedies.  Food intolerance symptoms appear when you introduce new foods into your diet.  If you have been eating a particular food routinely, which you suspect as causing food intolerances, remove it for 3-4 weeks, then try to eat it again.  Your body will let you know if you are intolerant to it.  Production of gas takes time; it is the pathogens in the gut (usually fungi) that convert food into gas.  So, it is your previous meals that produced the gas.  Every meal sends a propulsion reflex down the digestive system, so that gas in the bowel may be released when you are eating your next meal.

So from my previous post you can see that I had been going through some not so fun arthritic pain for the past two weeks. I thought it was die-off. I have come to learn, that nope, it was a food intolerance manifesting itself BIG TIME! Once I figured it out, and took it out, the arthritic pain went away! So I think right now I will have to cross off beef, pork and possibly chicken from my list. I am experimenting with turkey. So far so good. Luckily there is a Sprout's an hour away from me, near my sister, where they sell also some wild game (Elk, deer, bison....). I will have to check that out, and see if I can alternate. I heard this can be resolved, just need to have it out for a bit. I also tried adding cauliflower back in my diet, and it seemed to cause brain fog. I am LOVING not having brain fog right now. I wish I knew this during mid-terms!

So you may be asking, are these new food intolerances, or did I just not recognize them? This is what Dr. Natasha said in her FAQ:

I am mostly doing GAPS because of multiple food intolerances in my kids and a history of the same for myself. It seems that it really is only getting worse. I need to understand the ‘science’ of why that is.There is a so-called masking phenomenon in food allergies. When the person keeps eating offending foods, reactions to them overlap with each other and it is impossible to know what exactly the person is reacting to. When you start removing foods hidden allergies get unmasked, which is often a nasty surprise. In GAPS people their gut is damaged and porous, so they may react to most foods, if not all of them. As we cannot starve ourselves, we need to ignore those reactions and get on with healing the gut lining. If a particular food is causing an unacceptably severe reaction, then keep it out for a while. But if the reactions are not too drastic, just live with them, while working on your GAPS Introduction diet. In the meantime bio-resonance therapy, medical neutralisation, homeopathy, NES and other vibrational forms of medicine can help you to reduce the severity of reactions.

Some things I am noticing now with my food intolerances are change of thoughts (sometimes emotions as well), increase heart rate, fatigue, joint pain, headaches, foggy thinking, abdominal discomfort, acid reflux, problems sleeping, craving that food, not feeling satisfied after eating, etc. So what do I do? I try to decide which symptoms I can deal with, and which one's I don't want (no joint pain!). I'll due my best to limit the one's I know I react to, and then try them back in, after some time and see if I am stronger. I have seen so many testimonials that people's food intolerances have been fixed through this. Need to keep having hope!

GAPS Diet - First few weeks experiences

I started the GAPS diet a few months ago, and noticed a difference right away. Then I started to get prideful (in a sense), and went through the stages a lot faster than my body was able to. I think my thinking was "I have been eating something similar to this for many moons, so I shouldn't need to be on the beginning stages for too long..." Boy was I wrong!

I began to get sick again, and experience bad symptoms all over about 3 weeks ago. I didn't know what to do. I talked with my doctor and decided to start GAPS all over again. This time just go down to the bare minimum - broth and meat, then slowly add a vegetable in one at a time. (I'm still at broth and meat - but it's ok). My body really needed to heal, and I needed to allow it time to heal. I had a short "honeymoon" period of one day :) Wow! did I love it!!! My brain fog completely cleared, my mind calmed down - no more racing, I could concentrate, my anxiety was gone (especially after eating) and the crazy, depressive thoughts that were becoming increasingly present had stopped.

Then the "detoxing" began. This has been one of the hardest and longest detoxes I have ever experienced. I can see now that one of the problems with the SCD diet is that when  you go on the full version, you then start to eat A LOT of high oxalate type foods - nuts, spinach, quinoa etc. A lot of the substitutions used for baking are high in these. I have been consuming almonds, quinoa etc for a long time now. I can see that they were almost like an opiate for me. Would be my "calming" food. This isn't good, but hard to see when you are in the thick of it. It was REALLY hard to stop eating these things. I noticed I would crave them, even though I wasn't hungry. I finally was able to just stop them 2 weeks ago. What I didn't know was what would happen if you had been consuming high oxalate foods for awhile, and then stop it. The first few days, my large joints were badly inflamed, and it was hard to move. I noticed that it was mostly on parts of my body that I had been having trouble with previously. The inflammation would move as well, almost moving downward. I joined a yahoo support group for Low Oxalate Diet, and discovered that the vitamin Biotin can help with the pain. So I bought some and was surprised at how fast it worked. If you take the right dosage, then within 5 minutes the pain would be gone. I LOVE BIOTIN!!!

I am still feeling the effects of detoxing after 2 weeks, but they are not as severe as when I first started. I am also noticing that I am calming down inside even more than before. It's a great feeling! I went and got acupuncture done yesterday, and have noticed even less inflammation today with my joints.  Tai Ji and some QiGong movements have also been helping.

So what have I learned during this time:

• GAPS has been working for me so far. My digestion problems are much better, as well as the brain fog, and calmer thinking.
• I NEED to go much SLOWER than I originally thought, and have more patience with myself. Luckily my body is really loving the added fat to my diet. I noticed that I feel so much better after eating it, and calmer.
• Fermented foods, and probiotics are beneficial, but also can be strong. These need to be added in slowly to not detox too fast.
• You don't need to just "suffer" through detoxing reactions. There are some great tools to helping reduce or eliminate the symptoms - enemas (the BEST really fast fix), epsom salt baths, activated charcoal, Biotin, magnesium. 
• When I go to full GAPS to watch my oxalate intake, and not get too carried away with all the almond flour, etc. in order to to eat eat baked goods. 
• That I love learning how to cook all these old traditional meals - bone soup/ meat stock, sauerkraut. And am looking forward to learning how to make Yogurt in a crockpot, Kefir, etc. 
• Knowledge is so important. Reading the book has helped as well as finding additional information online, and other people's experiences. Also talking to others, so you can hear yourself as to what is going on, or getting insights from others. Sometimes I don't notice reactions, or things I am doing to hurt myself. I am grateful that my two others sisters are doing intro with me - it does help. 

Fat Myths

(excepts have been taken from the Gut and Psychology Syndrome and Nourishing Traditions book)

When you go on the GAPS diet, a lot of paradigm thinking needs to be shifted towards back to our ancestors time. One is that you are asked to eat A LOT of fat in your diet. Consuming the fats are one of the biggest healing mechanisms we can give to our bodies. What does the body need fat for:

• Out brain is about 60% fat (dry weight)
• 25% of all body cholesterol is taken from the brain
• Myelin is 20 % cholesterol. This is a structure in the brain and nervous system, is a fatty substance. It coats every nerve cell, and nerve fiber like an insulating cover around electric wires. In addition, it provides nourishment and protection for every tiny structure in our brain and the rest of the nervous system. Those who tend to lose myelin start to develop Multiple Sclerosis.   
• Every membrane of every cell and every organelle inside of the cells are made of fats.
• Many hormones, neurotransmitters and other active substances in the body are made of fats.
• Almost 1/2 of the cell wall is made of cholesterol
• After the brain, the endocrine glands are the next big organs that need cholesterol - adrenal and sex glands - produce steroid hormones (testosterone, progesterone, pregnenolone, androsterone, estrone, estradiol, corticosterone, aldosterone and others.  - regulate our bodies metabolism, energy production, mineral assimilation, brain, muscle, and bone formation, and assist with behavior, emotions and reproduction. - Lack of this causes ADRENAL FATIGUE!!!
• Immune cells rely on cholesterol in fighting infections and repairing themselves. 

Foods give our bodies the ability to not have to work so hard to produce cholesterol. In a healthy person, the body produces cholesterol as needed. If we consume cholesterol, then our body does not make as much. When we don't consume any, then it will produce what is needed. However, they are finding if you take lower cholesterol drugs, than this is different. The stop the body from producing their own cholesterol, thus breaking our wonderful natural balancing body. 

So why do those who need to follow GAPS then required to increase their fat consumption? GAPSters have a lot of toxicity  and nutritional deficiencies in their bodies, that they are unable to produce enough cholesterol on their own. Research is showing that those who are not able to produce enough cholesterol on their own are prone to emotional instability and behavioral problems.  Low blood cholesterol has been routinely recorded in criminals who have committed murder and other violent crimes, people with aggressive and violent personalities, people prone to suicide, and people with aggressive social behaviors and low self-control. In a sense, it is worse to have a low cholesterol blood level, than a high cholesterol blood level. 

So when did our minds shift towards the REPULSION of eating any kind of fat, and going on Low-Fat, No-Fat diets? 

• The theory - "the lipid hypothesis" - was proposed y Ancel Keys in the late 1950s. He stated that there was a direct relationship between the amount of cholesterol and saturated fat in the diet and the incidence of coronary heart disease. A lot of research after this has proven this theory to be wrong. Unfortunately the media pushed Keys ideas more, and the vegetable oil and food processing agencies promotes more research to support this research as well.
• Nathan Pritkin, was also known as a strong advocate for lowfat diets. His original diet consisted of elimination of sugar, white flour, and all processed foods from the diet and recommended fresh raw foods, whole grains, and an exercise program. The media though, picked up on the lowfat aspect of it. Those who followed it found their weight and cholesterol level declined. Pritkin soon found though that the fat free diet had problems. First, it was hard to stay on it. Second, those who did stay on it, developed a variety of health problems: low energy, difficulty concentrating, depression, weight gain and mineral deficiencies. Soon, Pritkin stated that you needed a small amount of fat from vegetable sources (about 10%). 

So what have we been finding, that our great grandmother's already knew....

• Before 1920 coronary heart disease was rare in America. When Paul Dudley White introduced the German electrocardiograph, he had to seek out patients to use this on, and Harvard University advised him to put his energies into a more profitable branch of medicine. 
• The Farmingham Heart Study is often cited as proof of the "lipid hypothesis. The study began in 1948 and involved about 6,000 people from the town of Farmingham, MA. Two groups were compared at 5-year intervals - those who consumed little cholesterol adn saturated fat, and those who consumed large amounts. After 40 years, the director of the study had to admit: "In Farmingham, MA, the more saturated fat one ate, the more cholesterol one ate, the more calories one ate, the lower the person's serum cholesterol... we found that the people who ate the most cholesterol, ate the most saturated fat, ate the most calories, weighed the least and were the most physically active." The study did show that those who weighed more and had abnormally high blood cholesterol levels were slightly more at risk for future heart disease, but weight gain and cholesterol levels had an inverse correlation with fat and cholesterol intake in the diet. (Cholesterol & Your Health by Christopher Mudd, MS, JS, Copyright 1990)
• In a multi-year British study involving several thousand men, half were asked to reduce saturated fat and cholesterol in their diets, to stop smoking and to increase consumption of unsaturated oils (margarine and vegetable oils). After one year, those on the "good stuff - unsaturated oils" had 100% more deaths than those on the "bad - smoking" diets, in spite of the fact that those on the "bad" diets continued to smoke. (Cholesterol Myths by Uffe Ravnskov, MD, PhD, Copyright 1999)
• Mother's milk provides a higher proportion of cholesterol than almost any other food. It also contains over 50% of it's calories as fat - mostly saturated fat. Both cholesterol and saturated fat are essential for growth in babies and children, especially the development of the brain. A recent study has linked lowfat diets with failure to thrive in children. (Enzyme Nutrition by Edward Howell, MD, COpyright 1985)

So what kind of fats and oils are best for us:

• Animal fats (fats in fresh meat, fats rendered in meats, dairy fats - butter, cream, ghee - and fats in egg yolks. These contain largely saturated and monosaturated fatty acids. 
• Fermented cod liver oil
• Good seed/nut oil blends
• Olive Oil (when not used for heating, or on hot foods)
• Coconut oil

Natural fats in their natural state is the best thing we can do for our bodies right now. It's a hard paradigm shift, as we have been indoctrinated so well by the media. I am finding that by increasing my fat consumption, I am not as hungry as before, and feel more satisfied after eating. If anything, try it out for a month and see if you notice any difference....

If you would like more information on this you can go to The Weston A. Price Foundation or Gut & Psychology Syndrome website or book

Sauerkruat

Sandor Kratz has become is the the Prince of Fermentation. He has a great book on how to ferment almost anything. Here is a YouTube video he made on how to make Sauerkraut. From this, I have been able to make my own Sauerkraut successfully :) It tastes really good, and is great to add the juice to the dinner to increase stomach acidity, as well as probiotics.

GAPS Protocol

Much has been occurring in my life the past 3 months. I have made a complete life change in a sense. I let go of my music therapy practice in AZ and moved to Northern Cali to study Oriental Medicine. This seemed crazy the entire time I was making this change, yet I had so much peace that this is the direction my life needed to go at this time.

In addition, my health had started to really decline before the move. I was becoming intolerant to more and more foods. It was down to pretty much nothing. Not knowing what step to take next, my cousin, introduced me to the GAPS diet (Gut and Psychology Syndrome). My doctor had recently talked about it as well, so I started to look into it. It followed the Specific Carbohydrate Diet (SCD) in many ways. I knew the benefits of this, as I had followed this when first diagnosed with Crohn's disease 11 years ago. I believe that by doing this, I avoided a lot of harsher medications, and surgeries. It wasn't until I started to eat away from the SCD diet that my health really started to go down.

What I like about the GAPS though is that it has strengthened the SCD, where looking back, I see did not work for me. I can also see where the GAPS is needs strengthening as well in some areas, but we are all different, and have individual needs. The GAPS diet though is more flexible and helps you to see what to do for your individual case more.

With the GAPS diet, it is not a life long diet, nor a way to help you deal with the issues at the time. It is a way to permanently heal the digestive system, the leaky gut, the autoimmune disease, etc so that  you will in the future be able to eat those healthy foods you find you can't at this moment.

The GAPS diet was initiated by Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride. A neurosurgeon in the UK, she began to see a connection between the Gut and Brain after her first son was diagnosed with severe autism. She wouldn't accept that there was no cure for it, so she went back to school and received additional doctoral degree's in nutrition. She found the SCD diet and began to apply it to her son and family, with the modifications she observed. From doing this, her son shows no signs of autism now. He is completely mainstreamed in school. She now focuses her practice on helping other children as well, but found that this helps with anyone, as all disease begin in the gut. As she began to have more people requesting her services, she found that she could not treat everyone, so she wrote the book on how to follow the protocol, so that anyone can do this without her assistance.

The GAPS diet follows different phases. You have the Full GAPS (which is similar to SCD), and then you have the 6 Introduction Phases (which is where the healing of the digestive system takes place).

I started GAPS right before I moved to CA. May not have been the best time to do this, but I needed to do something. I think it helped me get through all the transitions taking place in my life. I see now though that I was adding things in faster than my body was ready, and not following it as well.

Last week, I started to have digestive problems again, and so after talking with my doctor, decided to restart the GAPS diet with the Introduction 1 phase. This time though, just really eliminate everything, and eat only meat and broths to allow my body to rest and heal. Wow! if I did not know what would happen by doing this. I have been experiencing the worst die-off effects I have ever had before. I could barely move the first day. The exhaustion and severe joint pain was unreal. It is getting better though, and I becoming much more wiser with how to handle die-offs. I think for me experiencing is the only motivation to do research and to know if something does work or not. But I have been experiencing some incredible benefits as well since doing this. My anxiety has REALLY decreased. It makes me sad, because I finally got an herb to help with this, and now I really don't need it. Also, my mind is much more calmer and at peace more (except when die-off's become really bad).

I'm can't say that the GAPS diet will completely heal me, but I have faith it will strengthen me more. From what I have experienced so far, I think it can benefit a great many people. From those experiencing autism, ADD/ADHD, eczema, leaky gut, candida, celiac, autoimmune disease, diabetes, adrenal fatigue, chronic fatigue syndrome, etc.

I'll keep you updated on my progress and the things I am learning through this new adventure.

Ohhhhh....mom you are going to LOVE this post!

So what is the first thing I think of to do, as I study late Saturday night and need a break?.... make liver pate :)

I am currently following the GAPS protocol, which has been really helping me with a foundation of what to eat in order to heal (thank you B. for directing me to it). In it, she emphasizes eating liver and organ meats to get all those dense nutrients that are hard to get anywhere else. I had been hearing through an online support group I am on with GAPS where it has helped them with their energy levels (due to Vit B). I decided this weekend would be a good time to try it, as I have midterms starting next week. 

I have NEVER had liver before, and had no idea how to make it. I've just heard "stories." I got advice from my Grandpa on how to make it, and went online to see different recipes. I ended combining several recipes, than adding some things for my first experience. I don't have exact measurements, but this is what I did. 

I have to say, it's interesting ordering liver at the butcher counter. The lady next to me started to tell me her favorite liver recipes, then became so inspired that decided to get some herself. The guy behind the counter looked like he couldn't understand what the excitement was with it. 

Soak liver in lemon juice for 3-4 hours (supposedly this is to take away the bitter taste. Rinse the liver off afterwards.

 During that time, cut up 1 med onion and parsley.

 Here is the liver rinsed off - I ordered only 1/2 lb. Had no idea how much that really was.

 Cut the liver up into smaller sizes.

 During the past week or so, I had been collecting the fat from the meat stock I had been making. I take some of the fat and put it in the skillet (you could also use butter, or some other kind of animal fat).

 Cook the liver and onions.

I added some meat stock to the skillet, as it looked a bit dry. I let it cook for a few minutes. Then I cut up one avocado, for use later. (this is something I decided to add on my own...)

 Here it is all cooked up, and looking great!

 Put the meat mixture, some parsley, more animal fat in (I ended up putting the rest of the supply in) and avocado into the blender, or food processor, and blend till "pate" consistency. It looks like a chip dip!

Wahla! Here is it. And the verdict on taste... It tastes really good. It has a great dip flavor. I was really pleased with the results, and it will not be hard at all to eat this a little during the week.