Sunday, June 1, 2014

Boils, boils, trouble & toil!

I have been following a pretty strictly regimented Paleo diet since March 24th. I had to get back on track... I had been so far off my path and not only was I breaking out regularly, I had one persistent and painful one under my right breast.

Now it is June 1 - 10 weeks - and two days ago I felt the beginnings of 6 new breakouts... two of which came to fruition yesterday and one that I woke up with today!

I am not sure what exactly to pin these on: I eat pretty much the same things day in, day out... because of the royal pain in the ass it is to cook for just one person, I cook about once a month - in bulk and I eat that throughout the month. That's lunch usually and sometimes dinner too. When I do cook dinner I usually cook enough for at least 2 to 3 meals... and I tend toward the same foods.

A Paleo diet should have diversity - actually, every diet should have diversity in the foods you eat because of the nutritional values of different foods. But my taste buds beg to differ! I like many things that I just can't eat because the Paleo diet doesn't support them or because my HS doesn't support them... and so I'm relegated to what I can buy that I know I like.

So my diet basically consists of: 3 eggs over easy with broccoli and either an avocado or a sweet potato for breakfast; a banana or berries with coconut milk cream for a morning snack (if I have one); baked chicken and broccoli or cauliflower for lunch - sometimes with a kale based salad; taco meat made with a mix of grass-fed beef and ground turkey on top of a kale or spinach based salad with homemade mayo.

I sometimes have sweet peppers (nightshade, I know) - damn! come to think of it I had sweet peppers in my chicken salad for dinner last night. I wonder if that is the reason for the big bruiser (not that big) on my left thigh this morning?

But, if so, what is the cause of the two I had yesterday? I haven't had a sweet pepper in a while.

I do keep a record of my menses. I started doing this when I realized I was peri-menopausal and I wanted to keep track of when I was and wasn't getting my period. I use an App called WomanLog. I like it well enough. Since I'm not worried about pregnancy and I just use it as a tracker for my symptoms and actual period start and duration, I just use the free version. I was entering symptoms yesterday (mild cramps and back pain plus libido lift!) when I realized I was in my "normal" cycle. I wonder how many of the three active sites I have right now are based on my hormones?

On Friday I had a cup of gluten-free creamy clam chowder. Yes, that is dairy and white potatoes. I just realized this morning that any part of that could be the culprit here too. On Friday I also bought a cashew butter from Aldi's that has sugar and oil in it... and a processed stevia with dextrose... even though it is organic, I wonder...

It is so hard when you have a breakout to find the true culprit. If you're anything like me, when you slip, you don't just do one thing, you do multiple "things" outside of your normal eating pattern. Now I have to go another 4-6 weeks CLEAN before I can try to truthfully introduce any one food back in and know that it is or isn't a trigger.

This is hard!

Monday, February 3, 2014

Probiotics - pros and cons

After finishing Tara's book, The Hidden Plague, I immediately ordered probiotics because my brain finally made the connection (okay, with the push from Tara) that besides helping to heal my leaky gut, I had also removed the healthy (good) gut bacteria in my digestive system by taking antibiotics for close to 18 months straight.

Tara suggests that Saccharomyces boulardii is a good probiotic strain to take so that's what I bought. I got two bottles of 50 vegetarian capsules, NutriCology brand. The suggested use on this packaging is 1-3 capsules three times daily, preferably on an empty stomach, or as directed by a healthcare practitioner. These need to be refrigerated too, so since I work I could only take them before breakfast and before dinner.

I started taking these and almost from day one I found that my hunger was reduced significantly. After taking 3 of these pills while I was getting ready to leave for work I started finding myself not even hungry for breakfast. A couple of days I even did skip breakfast because I just couldn't muster up enough hunger to eat anything.

I couldn't take the pills before dinner because I couldn't swear that it was on an empty stomach because I still felt full from lunch... so I decided that I would only take them in the morning.

In a few days I started noticing that I had heartburn when I laid down in bed - this even persisted through until the morning. Imagine waking up with heartburn! Ick!

At this point I decided to change my probiotic. I started taking Ultimate Flora - the directions on this product says to take 1 pill daily preferably with a small meal. This is made from 10 strains of healthy bacteria - unfortunately it doesn't include the S. boulardii which Tara specifically mentions in her book. Since I have a bottle of the S. boulardii still in the fridge I am taking 3 of those before I leave the house in the morning (empty stomach) and then I take the 1 pill of the Ultimate Flora when I have breakfast at work.

Positive side: no more heartburn! I'm not exactly sure what was causing it - especially since I've only had heartburn about 10 times total in my almost 50 years of living. I know that specialists and "doctors" will say that just being overweight is an indicator for heartburn but if I'm proof, they're full of it!

Negative side: MONEY. These things are not cheap! The 50 caps of S. boulardii was almost $18 and the 60 caps of the Ultimate Flora was almost $34. I will not buy anymore of the S. boulardii because I can't afford them at 16 servings for $18!

The bottom line is that a healthy gut is the first step in healing your skin and your overall health so get on a regimen with a probiotic that works for you. A few months solid probiotics should help considerably and check with your healthcare provider to see how long you should continue.

UPDATE: 6/1/14 - I know it is months and months later now, but I neglected to come back and update this. After a few short days of taking the Ultimate Flora I started having heartburn again. Because I was still taking the S. boulardii I believed those to be the culprit and cut those out. Still heartburn. This was crazy. Went to the health food store again, bought another brand, same result. After a few days the heartburn persisted. Once I stopped it was about 4 days before the heartburn was relieved. That is just crazy!

Wednesday, December 11, 2013

Free give away - The Hidden Plague by Tara Grant

I've been waiting and waitng for Tara Grant's book to be finished and published for what seems like forever now!

The wait is over for everyone but me though! I put this book on my Christmas list and now I have to wait to see if I get it before I run out (Amazon!) and buy a copy...

Those of you who cannot run out and buy a copy or those of you who would love to own a copy but just don't think it is the best use of your money right now... well, here's a chance to win 1 of 5 free copies that Tara is giving away.

All you have to do is email her with your story of why you want the book... and she will make the choice after the cutoff date of December 21.

Here's the link to her blog:  http://primalgirl.com/2013/12/09/hidden-plague-giveaway/

Go. Do. It!

Yummy, yummy in my tummy!

I thought I'd share one of my easiest breakfast joys! Since I don't have a lot of time on the days I work, this is definitely a weekend treat for me... but YUM!

Ahead of time I bake at least 1 long (if not 3 or 4) Oriental Sweet Potatoes. These are purple-skinned, white flesh tubers that are so much better (in flavor) than regular sweet potatoes. I have not looked up the nutritional information for these babies... but they have won my heart!

After you bake the potatoes you can store them in the refrigerator for a few days... if they last at your house that long!

In a frying pan put in some coconut oil and let that get warm.
Slice off about 4 1/4" to 1/2" thick slices of sweet potato and add those to the frying pan. Heat through and make sure to allow the potatoes to get crispy.
Crack a couple of eggs into the frying pan and cook over-easy.
Slice open an avocado and slice one half of it onto your breakfast plate.
Slide the eggs and the potatoes onto the plate with the avocado. Voila! Breakfast with protein, fat, carbs & YUM!


Add your own zing to this... add onions to the potatoes... after heating up the potatoes pull them out of the pan and make an egg omelet... put bacon and the potatoes into the omelet with onions and cheese and mushrooms!

Enjoy!

Stress ... it does a body harm!

I'm "controlling" my HS with my diet right now. I pay attention to every morsel of food I put in my mouth... yes, sometimes I eat things that will not help my skin, but I make the choice to do so. I weigh the consequences. Sometimes even if I eat something that I think will affect me, it doesn't... and I chock that up to the fact that 99.9% of the time I am eating on the path to recovery... but then...

I've been home, pretty much locked in my house, since Monday. I worked on Sunday and the snow/ice that was on the roads (even the highway) had me in fear/stress mode. I have a dog at home... I'm sure I could have asked my neighbors to let her out and stayed in a hotel... wasn't going to happen. I wanted to be home with my cats and my dog and be safe and warm together. So I did everything that I could to push the stress from my mind (you can only tell yourself not to stress over something so often without the mantra itself becoming a stressor) as much as possible. I knew I would get home and all I had to do was drive at a safe distance from other cars on the road and at a safe speed. I had my Nissan Sentra not my Jeep, so 4-wheel drive was not an option. I had 25 miles of road ahead of me and because it was Sunday the road crews were not out in force as they would have been had it been a weekday. And... this was my first time driving the Nissan in a situation of ice and snow. I'd driven it in winter before but the roads had been cleared already.

I tested the stopping power of the brakes as I was leaving the parking lot and the back end swerved but I got it under control. Turning out of the parking lot was not an issue and I traveled along between 15-25 mph. Making the turn from the road I was on to the on-ramp to one of the highways I had to take was a bit scary... there was a car off to the side with the 4-ways blinking away... this car had not quite made the turn... and my turn was a right turn... I had to yield to oncoming traffic turning onto the ramp ... so I just waited until there was no more traffic and I slowly accelerated to get onto the ramp. The car fishtailed a little, but I was in control.

The story was like that the entire way home. The main road I drive (I-83 in PA) was not cleared yet and there were ruts where the cars had been driving so it was necessary to keep a focus on the road ahead. A couple of hills (going down) were quite scary because of the guardrail being so damn close to the road... and going over a couple of bridges too... yeah, I was not having a good time.

By the time I got off the highway I felt like every muscle in my body was sore (clench much?)... but I relaxed at that time because I knew I was now less than 5 miles away from home and I would drive the car off to the side of the road and walk the balance to home if I had to. That's a freeing feeling, knowing that you are in walking distance, even if it is freezing outside and sleeting/snowing! I made it most of the way home and my last monster road is the road that leads to my driveway. It winds up a hill and it is a back road for sure... the lanes are narrow, sometimes I barely think there is enough room for a car within the one lane... and since it was not plowed I was sure I was going to have to park the car and walk... but she made it! Fortunately there were no oncoming cars and no cars already stuck, mid-rise on the hill, I coached the car... "come on baby girl, you can make it, I know you can"... and I kept chanting that to her all the way up to the base of my driveway!

Harrowing? Yes. Life-threatening? Yes. Stress-inducing... apparently.

The moral of this story is: no matter how much diet you put into it, stress can undo your hard work. Because I worked on Sunday I had Monday off... I cleared off the Jeep on Monday and drove that down to the gas station because I didn't want to get caught without gas in the Jeep if I needed to drive it... but I was already broken out with inconvenient HS lumps... (yeah, they are never convenient... but these were in places that I couldn't get dressed without pain)... I was wearing just sweat pants and a sweatshirt, no undergarments and that was all I could do...

I emailed my boss on Monday afternoon to let her know that I might not be in on Tuesday due to this... woke up Tuesday, still too painful. Woke up today, still too painful. How long does it take to dry these things up when you eat healthy 99.9% of the time? I'm still counting. It's not looking good for me to go to work tomorrow either... but we shall see what the morning brings.

Sunday, December 1, 2013

Beautiful... oops, what's that?

Just last night I was laying in bed and I was thinking how wonderful my skin is starting to feel... no open, seeping, smelly wounds. Yes, still some scarring and still some bumps but nothing massive, nothing that could really hurt me...

and then....

Just about an hour ago I got up to put some turkey soup into a bowl for dinner and I decided to take my bra off and I felt an alien that had popped up sometime today. I really think it had popped up in the last 4 hours or so... and what caused it? Hmmm.

Yesterday I went on a hike with a bunch of folks and they wanted to go have a bite to eat afterward. We ended up at Chili's. I ordered their lighter fare chicken with mango salsa dish. This was mango & tomato and onion diced up into tiny pieces and there was a mango spicy sauce on the chicken. The dish came with rice and broccoli. I asked them to drop the rice and double the broccoli. I ate all of it and that was it. We didn't order any chips & salsa so I wasn't even tempted. I had water with lemon for my drink.

Yesterday morning I had gone to a diner for breakfast and I had a couple cups of coffee. I put 2 teaspoons of refined sugar in those. I also used 4 of those half & half creamers that sit on the table. I had an omelet with pork sausage and cheddar cheese and home fries. I tolerate cheese fine so it wasn't the dairy.

Today I made a chocolate cake. This cake had honey and maple syrup in it... and, of course, raw cacao. I haven't had chocolate in about 6 weeks... and I had 2 slices of this cake with a chocolate ganach and 1 without the ganach... about 2-3 hours before the breakout. The cake also contained almond flour, coconut flour, arrowroot powder & tapioca flour... eggs, coconut milk, and coconut oil. The only thing from that list that I haven't had recently is arrowroot powder.

So, was it the processed pork sausage or processed mango spicy sauce or cacao? Of course I have no idea... and here's another straw on that camel's back... I bought green grapes yesterday because they were on sale... I know that grapes are a problem for some of the folks I have recently been in contact with and so I had decided to stay away from grapes until I could test them... but apparently I forgot that yesterday!... so I've been munching on grapes last night and today too... probably about a half a pound...

This is very hard to do but I refuse to give up! I am so damn proud of myself for coming this far... apparently there are more triggers out there than I am paying attention to and I might just need to back off some things for a few months. It's not forever... I'll live.

I'll keep you posted!

Monday, November 4, 2013

Take Pride

I have to admit that I am very proud of myself right now. I recently vowed to follow my Paleo/Primal diet for at least 6 months before I start adding or removing more foods to see what might truly be my trigger. Who knows, maybe I can have a bean every now and again? Certainly not me since I haven't really had any true sense of what does and doesn't work for me.

This last week we had "food day" at my work. I made a Pumpkin Cheesecake for the group because I was going to participate in the rest of the food (tacos). So I figured even though it had sugar in it that I would still have a piece of the cheesecake, just skip the crust. Instead of the normal graham cracker crust I used store bought gingersnaps and crumbled those... Everyone raved and raved about how good the cheesecake was, especially with that crust. I barely even ate one bite of the cheesecake and while I was preparing the crust, I DID NOT feed myself any of those cookies. I LOVE gingersnaps... but I know me, I have one and I tumble ... and I just don't take a small spill, I fall down the mountain, get up again and throw myself down as soon as I hit the top. Not this time.

I am determined to have no "slip ups", no "oh, well, just one"s, no "it's Christmas, enjoy yourself"s, NO.

This is my skin. My health. My life. I don't care (not true) about my waistline... I care about getting my skin healthy.

I want to feel free to approach a man that I am interested in without feeling like I have to give him a doctor's note to prove that my skin condition is not something he can get. I want to feel like I'm not dragging someone into a situation that they're not prepared for... even if they do end up caring for me enough to stay (for a while). I don't like having to feel like this. I don't want a guy to run away from me when we have sex or he sees me naked with the lights on... I don't like the picture myself, how can I really expect a man to not feel like he was trapped into this?

My weight, on the other hand, is something a man can see upfront and if he doesn't want to date me because I am too "big" for him... then that's that... but I can't go around telling guys I have a skin disease that will freak them out before we even get started... because that will just freak them out and scare them off.

But, I am able to say I'm Proud of Me. That's a step in the right direction and I'll get there eventually.