Striving for Health

So last week I mentioned that I was going to run right out and get another bottle of CoQ10 so that I could determine if that helps to keep the aliens at bay... I'd like to be supplement free, but this is a long process of elimination to find what does and doesn't affect my body and if I can get some added benefit from the CoQ10 (check out the benefits here) I will swallow the pill.

Well, I did go out the next day to Rite Aid (which is where I swore I bought it last time)... but when I got there I was shocked (and appalled) by the prices! WOW! Then I remembered that I must have ordered it from Vitacost because that is where I buy all of my vitamins and supplements. I checked that evening and I had ordered it. Just in case anyone else is interested, I ordered Vitacost brand, 100 mg. Their 240 capsule bottle is $21.99. When you order $25.00 worth of Vitacost products your shipping is free - if you order $49.00 of ANY products, your shipping is free. In every instance that I've had to pay shipping, it has been $4.99. The pricing for CoQ10 at Rite Aid and CVS was something like (don't quote me because I'm not looking at the prices right now) $16.00 for 40-50 capsules... and that was for the lowest dose available... and that was the store brand!

So, we all know where my allegiance lies when it comes to vitamins and supplements... and oh so many other products! I open two tabs in my browser and I check the prices between Vitacost and Amazon (I am a Prime member so I get free 2 day shipping) and I usually end up buying from Vitacost unless I absolutely need it fast or Vitacost doesn't sell the item!

Onward to this week's update. I just got the CoQ10 in the mail yesterday so supplementation has not been a factor. I ate pretty much the same food as I regularly do this week. Eggs and avocado and a frozen veggie (usually broccoli or Cali mix) for breakfast, baked chicken thigh or leg with a frozen veggie and cauliflower mashed and then an orange for lunch, and baked chicken thigh or leg or a hamburger with veggies and salad greens for dinner. Of course I've varied it a little... like this week since I bought the fabulous Paderno Spiral Slicer from Amazon I've done a couple of experiments with zucchini and sweet potatoes! With the zucchini I spiraled the whole thing (huge veggie!) and then put it in a drop or two of coconut oil in the frying pan and sautéed it. I then added full fat coconut milk (I use this brand because it has no other ingredients like guar gum or other gums for thickeners, the can lining is BPA-free and the product is Kosher, even though it is not organic. If you'd like to make your own coconut milk, here is an article that will give you some insight on making your own coconut milk), a couple of teaspoons of nutritional yeast, a ton (not really, but quite a lot) of powdered garlic and a pinch of sea salt and a pinch of fresh grated parmesan... tasted so much like alfredo sauce! Yum!

Yesterday I was at a party with some friends and the basic meal was London Broil and crab legs but some other folks brought a sweet Hawaiian bread, a taco salad dip with Tostitos brand tortilla chips (love love love tortilla chips), and beer (three different kinds)! Fortunately I had brought some fresh strawberries and I had put a can of coconut milk in the refrigerator to whip the cream! I had also made this fabulous "cheesecake" for dessert!

I've decided that gluten really is the enemy here after the past two weeks of having an alien take up residence on my groin (right where my undergarments normally lay of course!) and not going away no matter what I applied to it (heat, aloe, cocoa butter). On Friday morning I had decided (since I seem to be mostly a masochist when it comes to my own body) that if it was still in residence after work that I was going to have pizza for dinner. Yup... there are some things that I just still want, even though I can't really call it a craving (not dying for it), just remember the taste and when it's good, it's great! Fortunately I did not do that as I would have just prolonged the stay of execution on this bastard and possibly created a new monster somewhere else! Because I stayed strong (it really wasn't hard) on Friday night I was less tempted yesterday to have the taco salad dip (black beans and cheese and gooey-ness on top of wonderful salted-tortilla chips!) and the Hawaiian bread with my dinner. I'm not much of a beer drinker so that wasn't a temptation anyway.

I find that it is much easier to stay away from foods that are temptations the longer I stay away from them. I've read quite a few testaments to the fact that you just stop craving foods once you stay away from them... this is probably true... but another factor that you also have to weigh is your determination. The longer you stay free of something that you are determined to be free of, the stronger your resolve becomes because you don't want to break your streak of "freedom". You know how hard those first few days or weeks can be and to put yourself back to being a "slave" to that item... nope, it is just not worth it! I am determined that I will be strong with gluten (ah, pizza!). I used to smoke (for 28 years) and now I don't (for 4 years)... this is doable!

This week I was also determined to keep my calorie intake lower than it has been in quite some time. I'm not counting calories, per se, but I do know that cashews and almonds and bananas and nut butters are quite dense calorie-wise and I was over-consuming those items. I was snacking on handsful of almonds... throwing a couple handsful of cashews into the Nutribullet and blending them with raw cacao and honey and shoveling that into my mouth as a snack when I got home from work. I was also buying bananas and eating 4 or 5 of them in one day... too much sugar and calories! I've made a conscious effort to be mindful of my eating. I know that I have an eating disorder (I just eat - usually tied to emotions - and then I get fatter and feel guilty and start getting aggravated at myself and then I lose control of what I'm eating and stop caring about any restrictions, whether tied to weight or skin or health and I go too far and it becomes a monster in and of itself) and the only true way to keep it under control is to not start in on foods that I lose myself into - and sweets are definitely in that category - especially "healthy" sweets!

The alien on my groin area is much smaller than it has been all week (although still there) - it has not drained but it is receding and that is a positive measurement!

This week will be more of the same as this past week, strong step forward, exercise when I can because I never know when an alien will step in the way of "comfortable". The high school just down the street from my house has a fitness center that is available for use to township residents 4 nights a week from 5pm to 8pm. This is free usage! I just realized this and I'm ashamed to say that I could have been taking advantage of this for years now... better late than never! Get out there and see what you might be able to take advantage of to save you money yet get you moving into a healthier you!

 

CoQ10

I've been lamenting about the fact that even though I have been damn good on my paleo diet - with a couple of slips here and there, my skin has not been as clear and clean as it was during that first month or two (January and February of this year) of paleo... and I've been trying to figure out what might be different.

Yesterday it hit me like a ton of bricks while I was taking my supplements - some I take because I don't eat enough fish (Krill Red) and some I take because I'm perimenopausal (Red Clover, Black Cohosh, Wild Yam, Evening Primrose Oil) and some I take because back in December I moved to day-shift from second shift and I need the eye-openers in the morning (B1, B3, B6, B12).

Back in November my dentist's assistant - sorry, I don't know her exact title... was telling me about how CoQ10 sometimes works to help your gums. She and I were talking about this because she used to work for a holistic dentist in NJ before she moved out here to PA and because she knew that I was trying to be as natural and health conscious as possible in the choices I made for my body. I went to the drug store next door and about fell over with the prices... and of course the higher the dose the higher the price... I bought the lowest dose and took 1 pill a day for 4 months. That was November through February!

Off to the store I will be tomorrow to pick up more CoQ10. I'm already spending a fortune on supplements for perimenopausal symptoms (hot flashes and night sweats!)... if I shift that money (so it's summer, who doesn't sweat?) to the CoQ10 and my skin clears up nicely? Oh yeah!

If, after 4 months of taking the CoQ10 my skin is still reacting to something, I'll look to maybe taking eggs or my beloved hot pepper, chili pepper, chipotle pepper (and on and on) out of my diet. Yes... I said that cutting out the nightshades didn't work for me last year... but in conjunction with all else that I'm doing now I might have to look at it again. It's not cut and dried for everyone (or anyone). This is a "what works best" scenario. I'm looking for overall health and to finally be free of this horrible disease. I hope you all can maybe relate some of the things I am doing to how you might help yourself.

Duh... beer!

Duh. Duh. Duh.

So of course I know that beer is made from wheat and has gluten. Of course, for the most part of my gluten-free life (all of 6 months) I have been thoroughly excluding beer from my diet... but a few times over the past month I have had a few... and because I have had breakouts very closely tied to those times ... well, you all know where I'm going with this.

It's not that I didn't think that gluten was a bad thing... it's just that I didn't really tie it into the whole auto-immune thing too much... but my head must be up somewhere... because gluten proteins (oh, and grains!) are one of the biggest contenders for leaky gut out there. They are high up there on the "avoid at all costs" list.

What was I thinking?

Well, I'll tell you what I was thinking... I was being social. I was thinking that it would be nice to sit back and relax and have a beer with my friends (round one of beer since going gluten free, 3 or 4 12-oz. May 27th - breakout May 28th) and also to sit in my backyard after a day of running around and doing errands and share some talk and a beer with my neighbor (round two of beer since going gluten free, two 16-oz. June 15th - breakout June 16th) and then the final one, again having a beer with my neighbor after some pretty heafty yardwork (round three of beer since going gluten free, 1 16-oz. June 22). Today is June 23rd... we'll see how much more I break out... I'm still trying to heal from last week's breakout... multiple locations and multiple intensity of pain/soreness/discoloration.

And, I gotta say... when I go all "glutenized", I don't just stop at beer. Back in May, not only did I have that beer, but I had crab cakes which had some sort of bread in them... then the next day I had pasta! PASTA! Like I said in my previous post - classic Peg. Last week when I had the beer it was because I had already had a breakout going on (not a horrific one, but nontheless) and I thought ... oh yeah, you saw that coming didn't you... classic Peg.

So, I will need to heed to my body's wellness first and foremost. Have a glass of wine - not great but better for me than the gluten and grains. I can still be social, I just have to learn that I can say "no thank you" and still participate in the conversation... have a glass of wine, a glass of water, a coconut water... anything but the damn beer!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My journey to skin health through nutrition - Part 2

Thank you everyone for your comments last week, I appreciate every one of you. Hopefully along the way I will be able to help others in their search for a cure for this nasty disease.

Last post I left off in March of 2013 when I realized that beans (oh, that sucks!) were a culprit in this disease that has done its very best to take over my life.

Since that get together I have stayed away from beans altogether. In that bean soup there were kidney beans, navy beans, black beans, small red beans, and cannelini beans. I have had none of those. I know, it could be just one of them causing the issue... I might be able to eat black beans again some day (ah, what a nice thought)... and I might be able to dip a carrot or celery stick into some wonderful garlic hummus (garbanzo beans)... but right now I'm in the infancy of trying to figure out just what causes these breakouts.

Since the revelation of BEANS being the cause, I pretty much put every other option out of my head. Why could there be MORE THAN ONE cause? I mean, other than things like ibuprofen and other drugs that might cause your gut to leak... right?

So in April I went happily along my way eating anything and everything... and experimenting with so many "paleo-ized" foods for sweets/desserts. I started to notice that my previously starting to feel smooth breasts and thighs were a little bumpy... no, nothing huge, but definitely moving in the wrong direction. Then I woke up one day with three huge "aliens" under my left armpit and a few other of those nasty embedded blackhead things... this on the arm that hardly had any scars... I was shocked!

I realized that I had been eating a few slices of tomato on my salad every day. Now, I know I wrote last week that when I excluded the nightshades from my diet for 28 days I had seen no discernible difference in my breakouts. I was even concerned because it got worse during that time.... but since the nightshades were what Tara Grant PrimalGirl had found to be her trigger and because in all the Paleo-related books I had been reading the nightshades were listed as bad-guys when it comes to autoimmune, I figured that I must be triggered by tomatoes. I certainly wouldn't go so far as to say "all nightshades". Not yet. I still haven't proven yes or no on these guys but it doesn't hurt me to exclude them for right now.

Then came May. I now have given up beans forever and cut all tomato products out of my diet. Still eating willy nilly as long as it is Paleo. Of course, during this time (Jan-June) I have gained weight, not lost, because I've been stuffing my mouth full of dates and figs and nuts... and coconut milk and creamed coconut goodness. (Yes, I apparently have an eating addiction - as if I didn't already know that!)

During May I realized that I still have some breakouts going on... a couple of occasions they have been more than "small" but nothing so debilitating that I couldn't move... So I took stock again of what I've been eating. In many places I have read that although mostly healthy, an overdose of nuts is not healthy for your gut and can cause leaky gut. Damn! So there go those cashew nuts!

The end of May marked my birthday and I was on vacation for a few days. At first I was as Paleo as a road trip (16 hours each way!) could allow for... which meant that when we stopped at Wendy's I got a double burger with cheese and bacon and removed the bread.... Even eating at my Aunt & Uncle's house was easy enough to stay Paleo and away from those things that harm me... until about the fourth day. We went out to eat at a restaurant and beer was ordered... well, I drank that.... then I ordered crab cake sliders. No, I didn't eat the bread... but there's breading in it... and after that I pretty much gave up for the next two days while we were travelling back home. I ate almost anything but candy and cakes. I put a dressing from Ruby Tuesday's on my salad - which one? It wasn't oil & vinegar, I can say that! I ate the bread when I ordered a mushroom & swiss from Hardees at one stop. I had a Wendy's frosty in a waffle cone. Yes, I felt the breakout coming on... did I change my eating? NOPE! In the classic, "it's already started, why bother to change now?" thought mode, I had half a ciabatta sandwich and another ice cream cone before the 2nd day of traveling was over! Classic Peg.

Now it is the middle of June and I've been off of cashews since the week before Memorial Day. Paleo - no tomatoes, no cashews.

I had a hankering the other day when I was shopping. I ended up with 2 store-baked giganto muffins. One lemon and one double chocolate chip. I ate them both. Then a few days later I had another hankering (it's emotional, not hunger, and not even craving) and this time I pushed it and pushed it... but I eventually fell victim to it because I was hungry and I ended up eating a full cup of Auntie Anne's cinnamon pretzel bites. Now I've got a breakout. It is relative... it is in a few different places but it is not as deep as they've been in the past... but still... I've stepped outside of my struggle? My battle? My healthy steps toward a healthier me? Yes... that's what I did and I caused this. What was the particular cause? Who know? Gluten? Maybe. Processed garbage? More than likely. But - I also have another factor - stress. Not that we all don't have every day stress in our lives, we do... but I just got a new adopted dog from the SPCA and she was incredibly ill the first 3 days of living with me and she ended up at the vet... and $1027 later she is now home and well. Yes, money causes me stress because I don't have any. I am living as most of us are, paycheck-to-paycheck and anything like this that causes me to have another monthly payment stresses me out incredibly because I am already stretched to my every last dollar of each paycheck. So I have to cut back somewhere and trying to find that area may have just caused this breakout as well. Or, a mix of both. I do not know. That's what this is all about. Helping myself (and you hopefully) figure out what causes this!

Oh, just so you know, I'm also going through Menopause during all of this. Last year, two days before my birthday and during my nightshades test, I got hit with incredible hot flashes... not just flashes... but sweat-dripping events... while I was on vacation!!!!!!!! So I have my hormones to deal with here too. I am not only trying to heal my skin, I am trying to heal my body so that I can get past these hot flashes and night sweats once and for all!

On top of that, I need to lose another 60 pounds (or more). I say another because two years ago I concentrated on me, joined MyFitnessPal, found a great group of friends and I lost 77 pounds. That did not change my outbreaks. I don't care what doctors say... this IS NOT caused by being overweight. It might be exacerbated by being overweight because of skin that rubs together... but it is not caused by it. Do not add another reason to be depressed over your weight. Right now I have pushed my weight to the back burner until I can make my body healthy. Yes, the right body mass is part of health... but as you all know, our skin condition makes all other health moot because we can't do much many times and we don't feel attractive and we don't want to get out there and try to do anything because we may not be able to join in when we want to... yep, I've been there. I refuse to be that person anymore so I want to heal my body... fat I can deal with... there are a lot of people who are overweight out there and they have boyfriends... I want to get my skin healthy, my insides healthy, and then I'll concentrate on losing the fat!

The rest of this blog will be listing the foods I am eating, the exercise I am doing and the books and other articles I am reading. I will point you to wonderful recipes I've found and any skin lotions that I find that help to relieve the issue. I'm also going to share healthy food tips for other people who may not have this disease but have other health issues. Eating real food and learning what foods don't work for you have restorative health features that not everyone seems to understand!

My journey to skin health through Nutrition - Part 1

Welcome to my life. It's a bumpy ride but well worth it for the destination.

Health.

 

• The primary purpose of this site is to chart my findings while looking for the "cure" for my hidradenitis suppurativa.
• The secondary purpose is to help other folks with this disease find the way to their own healing.
• The tertiary purpose is to help even more people understand that true health can be found in food, not in drugs offered by companies looking at their bottom line rather than our health.

As of this writing I do not have any formal training nor certifications in the health field. I am learning by reading mass quantities of information from other folks who either are certified or are also learning about their own food/health issues through their own trials. That is why I named this blog trial-by-fire - my own trials.

Since 1982 I have had a nasty skin condition called Hidradenitis Suppurativa. If you've never heard of this disease before it is because we hide it. We (those of us who have it) are ashamed of it, we do not talk about it to anyone, sometimes not even our family. It makes us feel dirty (brought on by the fact that doctors thrust soap at us like we don't bathe!). It hurts. It goes deeper than skin. It goes to our psyche because we can't always participate like we want to and we can't give the "real" reason (we have a bad breakout and just the mere touch of something against that lesionous skin patch is enough pain to send us through the roof... or worse, it breaks open while we're out doing something and the disgusting smell associated with an open "alien" as I've heard them called, is wafted into the olfactory path of someone who might make fun.) These are the things that make us stay at home and be less a part of society than the next person.

Although I was not diagnosed until well into my 30s, this disease has progressed from stage 1 through stage 3 in the 3 main areas of the body that any dermatologist worth their salt will list off immediately - pubic area, under the breasts, under the arms. A few years ago I started truly trying to find a cure for this nastiness. I had lived with it and worked around it for most of my life and I was tired of being depressed because I felt dirty and ugly. I was tired of missing out on life because of this disease. I decided that living was what I wanted rather than subsisting as I had been for the 28 years prior.

I visited my dermatologist again and pushed him toward a lifetime prescription of antibiotics because I remembered that during a period when I was on tetracycline when I was younger, my skin stayed pretty clear. I filled that prescription and happily started taking the pills daily - and I did this for about 12-15 months - with no discernible change in my skin. When I went to the drug store to get the prescription refilled (I could only get 3 months' supply at one time) I was told that tetracycline was no longer manufactured. At this point you'd think that I would've seen the great big arrow pointing the way to another path rather than go back to my dermatologist to find yet another DRUG to try to cure something that they didn't even have an understanding about. Well, you'd be wrong – almost. I did go to my family doctor and asked for a new prescription – whatever he knew of that would be similar to tetracycline. He thought it best that I see the dermatologist again since he had prescribed that in the first place.

After being checked out by “today's dermatologist on call” and an intern or student (not sure), I was told there was a drug trial which I could become a part of if I was so-inclined. I was told that the drug they were testing was already on the market and that it had helped some folks see a reduced number of breakouts. I thought about it for a few days and then they called me to set up the trials... NOPE, I could not go through with it. The side effects of this drug were too many to list and the thought of “reduced number of breakouts” being the best consolation prize they could offer I balked and refused to join the test group.

That's when my search for something different started. I started by trying to reach out to the HS community - I hadn't been there in quite some time but I couldn't remember the specific website that I had been a member of so I tried another avenue - I searched within MyFitnessPal for a group related to HS... and I found one. In one of this group's sessions there was a link to PrimalGirl's  blog (a 2 part series on HS) and my life was forever changed.

I read Tara's blog with fascination - the thought that food could be the culprit - and the solution - to this horrific disease had never before crossed my mind. That's how "dumb" I was. That's how I feel now... because the answer is staring us in our face and we just don't pay attention. How funny (not really) that we've always had control over our health but we've just never picked up the pieces to make it work for us.

Tara's causative foods are the Nightshade group of vegetables. She swears that this is what causes her to breakout... so of course I eliminated those foods for a month (because she suggested that) to see if they were my cause too. Logic told me that a cure is a cure is a cure... but the human body is so individual that something that causes an interruption in the normal process for one person won't even bother the next. I was truly looking at HS as a disease, not as the way my body tries to tell me that I'm eating the wrong foods! So, during my trial I was somehow (slightly, OK, greatly) hoping they were NOT the cause of the issue because I love peppers and eggplant and pepper spices and paprika and I like to eat french fries every now and again too... but after 28 days of no tomatoes, no potatoes, no peppers, (I cleaned my refrigerator and spice closet out and gave everything away, including my Chipotle Tabasco!!!!), I didn't see a change in my "aliens". At this point I was a bit depressed because I really had my hopes set for this to be over and done with for good.

Of course, my brain kicked in and I realized that maybe the nightshades were not my causative factor and I decided I'd try dairy as the possible culprit... and that lasted about 2 days. I was not ready to give up cream in my coffee and Greek yogurt!

The nightshades test was during the month of May 2012. Dairy was going to be July... in October or November I bought a book called Practical Paleo by Diane Sanfilippo BS NC, and started reading about how food really can be the cause and cure to so many different "diseases" of our modern world.

On January 2, 2013 I started eating following the Paleo diet. I didn't cut out the nightshades (as those of us with autoimmune diseases should) because I had already performed my trial on that particular group of vegetables and all was well there! In about 3 weeks time, maybe 4, I was flying high! My biggest open lesion had closed up, the smaller ones were fewer than ever from recent times and my thighs even seemed like the scars were healing!!!!!!!!!!!!! I was dancing a jig - literally, I was dancing in my bathroom! And I was so very excited that I couldn't contain myself... and my entire attitude toward life started to change. Those of you with this nasty disease probably know how depressing it is and how life feels like a trial you are forced to go through, not something you want to do.

Then I started reading It Starts With Food by Dallas and Melissa Hartwig. This book was mind-blowing. It really put everything I'd read about from Diane's book into an even sharper perspective for me. I started this mid February... about 34 - 40 days into my Paleo journey.

Again, I didn't cut out dairy, even during my Whole30 because I'd been eating dairy for the previous month and my cure was happening! I was sure that Dairy could not be the culprit. The same goes for the nightshades. I didn't overdo the nightshades... I stayed away from tomato sauces and eggplant was not in season ... I cut down my bell pepper intake to about 1 pepper per week. I still used Cayenne pepper seasoning and other chili pepper seasonings to make all my foods taste yummy!

In March I made my own world famous Turkey and Bean soup to take to a get together. As usual it was fantastic and I decided to have a small bowl - which turned into 3 small bowls over the course of a few hours. And 5 to 6 hours later I started getting that "itchy" feeling on the inside of my thighs. Both of them. This only means one thing... breakout on the way. The culprit: beans. Beans are not included on the Paleo diet... but I figured that a few bowls-ful of turkey soup was not going to hurt me... well, it did. Fortunately because I'd been following a very healthy eating regime for the past 2+ months it didn't affect me very badly and healed within a week.

Now, whether beans will make every person who has HS break out within 5 or 6 hours? Who knows? Certainly not me. But the reason I am putting this out there is so you can find out what DOES work for you!

OK - I think that's enough for now. I'll pick up here again next week. I promise to give you the absolute truth about my journey. What I find that works for me, how I manage to eat paleo and pay my bills, and other amazing things that happen (and some not so amazing things - like what happens when you don't have a gallbladder and you start upping the intake of fat in your diet!) when you start becoming healthy and eating the right foods!