Red peppers? Nightshades?

 Yesterday things finally clicked in my mind. Red, yellow, and orange peppers are against AIP protocol. I never liked green peppers so I never ate them.  They look so pretty sautéed in butter with onions!

I've learned to sauté them in olive oil and often leave out the onions.

But guess what? I've been eating them lately and I am waking in the 2 o'clock hour and can't get back to sleep.

My skin itches.

My Gamin watch tells me that my body battery is climbing slowly. Very slowly. I'm exhausted.

Oddly, the skin on my left hip itches so badly I'll leave red scratches if I mindlessly itch.

My lips are dry and chapped.

I've learned that my skin doesn't naturally itch or get dry and chapped except when I'm eating foods I can't process well. That's an allergic reaction.

I finally got curious enough about lectins to start researching them. I checked out The Plant Paradox Cookbook by Dr. Stephen Grundy from the local library.

I don't like books with shiny pages and grey print. With opposing astigmatisms in each eye, reading has become hard work, and shiny pages and grey print make it so much worse! I might buy the Kindle version or perhaps the Audible.

I was stunned to realize the peppers have some rather dangerous lectins. Dangerous because they harm the gut, mess with the body's insulin, and basically cause leaky gut. I was convinced decades ago that the source of all disease lay in the gut so it was a quick jump to realize Hashimoto's issues stemmed from the gut.

Back to peppers. The seeds taste disgusting so I've never eaten them except accidentally when I didn't clean them out good enough. But the skins? Lectins hide there. 

Roast them. Don't eat them raw. Then peel the skins off before eating them. Don't eat even a slice until they're roasted (yup, I'm guilty of eating some as I slice them!)

My sinuses at the base of my nose feel full. 

My voice sounds scratchy but black seed oil didn't seem to burn at all. I use black seed oil when it feels like nodules are forming on my thyroid, and it's harder to swallow. I've been using it these last few days since I've realized my thyroid was inflamed again. I'm taking my thyroid tea from traditional Chinese medicine called Thyroforte twice a day again.

And now I'm connecting the dots to specific foods.

Peppers. It doesn't have to be hot peppers to cause issues.

Can I go back to sleep now? Sleepnessness and fatigue are my worst symptoms and I'm back to that again.

Hashimoto’s!? Oh my!

 Between April 2021 and today, I was diagnosed with several autoimmune disorders including Hashimoto’s Disease, high-ish blood sugar levels (under pressure-diabetes but probably always at the higher level so a risk of diabetes), high cholesterol, low blood pressure, and osteoporosis and osteopenia. The Hashimoto’s can explain all of the above. My family nurse practitioner prescribed a low carb, no grains, nuts, seeds, sugar, dairy, nightshades, and high levels of organic beef and meat diet. I think I caught all of that! 

After some research, I started the AIP protocol, or Autoimmune Paleo diet, a couple of weeks before Christmas. Yup, I skipped the sugared goodies (mostly).  I’ve actually loved it although it’s expensive. The organic part of the meat stopped because my budget bloomed with the increase in meats. You do the best you can and pray that it will be enough.  Oh, and tons of supplements, adding in methylated B12 and folate, B6, B2, biotin, lysosomal vitamin C, zinc, Benfotiamine with Thiamine, D3, calcium, strontium among others. Oh, yes, I also started taking all the hormonal replacements including NP Thyroid, and bio-identical estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone.

A few months later, and this was a game changer, my niece started going to an acupuncturist who also practiced NAET and Chinese herbal medicine. She saw him for NAET, which stands for Nambudripad Allergy Elimination Technique. Its basis is that many illnesses actually stem from allergies.  NAET uses knowledge from many fields such as Western medicine (mostly for why it works), acupuncture, chiropractic in creating something that actually desensitizes patients to those substances that are causing allergies. When you have an allergy to a substance, your body blocks it.

So basically you don’t get the nutrients you need from either supplements or food.

Boo, hiss.

The NAET practitioner muscle tests you for each thing individually and then clears you for the item that comes up as a problem. One. At. A. Time. For something like Hashimoto’s, it will take awhile! It isn’t covered by insurance yet, but I think it will save me THOUSANDS of dollars over the long haul. 

My only symptom for Hashimoto’s? Extreme fatigue with crippling insomnia. For a time, I even slept in a spare bedroom so I wouldn’t disturb my husband and so I could sleep WHENEVER I could!

You got it. I ran on cortisol for YEARS!

Ten years before, I finally went to the doctor to try to understand why I couldn’t sleep or shake the fatigue even when I could! 

I remember they told me my thyroid numbers were normal for my age. I was around 49. Perhaps a little high but nothing to worry about.

They didn’t test for autoimmune conditions.

In 2019, another doctor in another state diagnosed the osteoporosis/osteopenia. And we found out I’m allergic to Fosamax. To the extreme. Lockjaw. Thankfully the two times I took it, I woke up at night in discomfort and realized I couldn’t open my mouth so I forced it open—talk about extreme willpower!—downed a couple of teaspoons of Natural Calm ionized magnesium immediately. I never took it again instead opting for a supplement called Algae Cal.

Fast forward two years later to January 2022 to the knowledgeable nurse practitioner in another state and another DEXA scan. No improvement.

Any surprise when I tested allergic to calcium in NAET?

Magnesium was fine, but not calcium!

Long stories usually go longer but I’ll shorten it now. 

I’m still basically on AIP, at least when I want to avoid migraines and lousy sleep, but we’re slowly working through the allergies.

I’ve cleared calcium, B vitamins (yup, I was allergic to those too), my own thyroid gland and adrenals, serotonin (no wonder my sleep quality was so bad), calcium, to name a few biggies. 

Now we’re working through grains and gluten. Hello to some really tough ones! I’ll talk about where I’m at next time.