Friday, December 14, 2012

Chapter 2

Around the time I started this blog, my life turned upside down.  I started seeing double, lost color vision, and even lost feeling in a part of one hand and my feet for awhile.  This effectively put a stop to all cooking and blogging as well as many other normal life activities.  My problems are now mostly under control for the moment and, it would seem, were caused by an auto-immune reaction.  In the process, I was given steroids that caused more problems than they fixed and a bunch of other things that did more hurt than help.  I saw a dietitian in my local hospital who put me on a low fat, low calorie diet heavy on the whole grains to lose the weight I put on while taking steroids and it nearly killed me.  Within 4 days, I ended up in the ER in the kind of pain that 3 IVs couldn't even completely get rid of.  I also developed severe eczema during this time that nearly drove me out of my mind.

So I wen't searching for what I could do for myself.  What are the things within my power to change?  Hippocrates once said, "Let food be the medicine, and medicine be thy food." And I started to mull over this idea and search for diets that reduce inflammation and provide a better balance of the minerals and vitamins than the one the dietitian gave me.  In the process, I heard various forms of the paleo diet mentioned so many times I started to check into it.  What I read at first was overwhelming, but it stayed in the back of my mind as I struggled with a load of neurological symptoms, severe eczema, and digestive problems.  The breaking point came in August, a year after my first bits of double vision, when I still had no answers, but had a new unbearable (unexplainable) pain in half of my face.  I've started to eliminate one thing at a time - the first being gluten.  Within two weeks, I lost the eczema and I've been feeling better in other ways as well.  (And no, I'm not celiac.  I've had even the genetic testing done and I don't have a single match, fortunately.)

While I won't pretend that it's cured me, for it seems there is no cure what ails me (yet), it's made a world of difference in lessening my symptoms, waking up with more energy, and -bonus-... losing weight!  So, now that I'm back at the stove, my posts will likely be different than my original style of cooking.  It's become more of a journey.  I'm learning basics about food and nutrition that I never knew or really considered.  I'm learning that if I eat to satisfy nutritional needs, my cravings will also be satisfied.  Funny how what we want is rarely what we need.  ;)  

So here's to a new chapter in my life.  If you'd like to come along, welcome!  From those ahead of me in the journey, I'm looking forward to learning.  As I go, I hope to one day be able to pass on what I've learned to someone else like me... looking to nourish and hopefully heal their bodies with the food that we're designed to eat.  

1 comment:

  1. Excited and interested to see these new recipes...hope you're doing well!

    ReplyDelete