Some cook, I sew and write: creativity brings joy

 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 wit...

This week I've been working to bring my blood sugar under control so I've been implementing more self care protocols. I have five main things I've been bringing into my daily regimen this past week. The Carol Tuttle morning energy routine shortly after getting up. Whatever plan I'm working in from the Carol Tuttle Healing Center. Right now, I'm participating with the group in the Chakra healing plan. Scriptures. I'm reading The Book of Mormon between a week ago and New Year's.  I've shifted my focus to understand how to quickly shift my focus when I start overthinking negative things. As I build my relationship to Jesus Christ, I can better turn my focus back to Him in those truly awful moments of despair that I'm still dealing with such a limited diet! And when I don't stick with it and eat things that break down too quickly and send my blood sugar soaring. Yoga. I've been doing chair yoga for several months, more off than on. I've found...

 I was scared. Could I change this? It had been over 10 years since I’d first started looking for a cause, longer since I’d easily slept. Facebook posts attest to poor sleeping. Migraines worsened every year. I went from a couple of headaches a year to a couple a week. Sleep habits weren’t changing even with my dietary changes.  To make it worse, I had a Samsung smart watch that tracked my sleep quality.  Lovely. Now I knew how bad it was. DRUMWELL, please. Enter Dr. Lindsey with NAET. It took weeks and quite a few treatments of various things, but my sleep quality started improving. Unless I ate something I was still allergic to, of course. Now I know headache is a sign of allergy. Or of a clearing that didn’t take. I hate those. NAET not only clears physical allergies but emotional origins as well so they can really wipe a girl out!!! Most of emotional stuff that came up as needing clearings immediately brought stories up. Connections, sometimes to ancestors and sometim...

 So I have learned that there is often a marker in our genes for Hashimoto’s. Where was mine? Because I’ve been living with my parents for the past two years, I’ve learned a few things from my sister that I never knew before. Like my dad commenting to her once when he saw her sprouting wheat that his mother used to sprout wheat and she tried many other different, holistic ways to improve her health through nutrition. His mother went blind after his birth because of hypertension. Her nurse sister-in-law came to visit once and saw how sick she was and told my grandfather to rush her to the hospital. She had to have the baby (my dad) that day! My dad was born at 7 months. In 1931. He’s a survivor because the technology did not exist to save him at such an early gestational age! But Grandma went blind for three years due to cataracts. They finally were blue to correct them enough for her to see through coke bottle thick glasses, and she was grateful although embarrassed because they di...

 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 ...

So I've made it to Day 22. I just got a haircut, and it has been a hard day.  I've had a hard time staying upbeat. Several upsets. BUT One funny story. I went for a drive this evening, and ended up retracing the drive to my high school and returned home by way of the high road, which is no longer the highest road on the mountain. Coming home, I detoured to go past my grandpa’s house, except I couldn’t find it. I went past several more times and couldn’t spot the jungle that marked his house. (When we sold the house, the new owners re-landscaped it and put far, far too many trees, bushes, and other plants in, and then let it overgrow the entire yard.)  Finally, as I approached one last time, I spotted the west side of the house, a side that has been all but invisible for years!  Excitement growing, I searched for less overgrowth and saw it! The front porch!!!  I squealed with excitement! Last summer, I desperately wanted to see the house again so I walked up the drive...

 Reporting in on the journey with the Isagenix Collagen Elixir at 17 days! I’m 17 days into this Collagen Elixir trial, recovering from not much sleep, and hating that I didn’t smile at least a little bit in my first picture! I don’t like documenting my non-smiling self.  Smiles bring joy! So Day 000 with no collagen elixir in my system.  Zip, zero, nada. And today.  I know the backgrounds are different. I’m traveling. There’s not a lot I can do about that. I’m sorry.  I still have dark bags, but I think the puffiness under my eye is lessening. The skin is soft and doesn’t feel dry anymore. That’s a BIG deal. The dark? Umm, heredity so a bit harder to eliminate. I’m not saying impossible, just to be clear! The lines around my mouth are a little less chiseled. I’ll take it! I much prefer smiling pictures.  Much more personality! I remember watching my dad and his smile lines and realizing that if I was going to have lines, I wanted more smiling lines than fr...