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.

NAET update and blood glucose control

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.

1. The Carol Tuttle morning energy routine shortly after getting up.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. Yoga. I've been doing chair yoga for several months, more off than on. I've found I enjoy it and am benefitting by doing it.  I've focused on doing it five days this past week instead of 1-3 times a week. It's making a difference.

I wasn't fully committed to number 5 though. It is to go walking every day.

Folks, it's getting cold out here in the intermountain west, and I really didn't want to do it!

Last night, however, I tried out a blood glucose monitor I'd ordered from Amazon after dinner. A not-so-great meal, I might add. Grilled chicken sandwich with waffle fries from Chick-fil-A. Yes, gluten free bread is basically junk food because starch substitutes for the flour!  Initially the numbers weren't horrible--around 111. 

However, that number doubled two hours later to 221. Uh, Google says you go to the ER at 250. I panicked and hit my mini trampoline for 1/2 hour straight, and then took a spoonful of Black Seed Oil to drop and stabilize my blood sugar. I drank about 64 ounces of water too.

Mind you that about 5 days ago I started a strict regimen to make sure my blood sugar was maintaining. My latest MD had told me that my A1C numbers were perfect at 5.0 with an average of 97 so he didn't order a new test this fall. Unfortunately, those numbers were the same numbers my first doctor had warned me about 2 years ago so I've been obsessing over that ever since.

The exercise and black seed oil worked and my blood sugar dropped to 85. Checking it periodically whenever I woke to go to the bathroom, it seemed to be okay. After a good lunch (from my new recipe book), I checked it again and was back at around that 111 number so I went for a lovely brisk walk. The sky was blue, the mountains were gorgeously topped with a bit of  snow. I tapped in the pleasure of all the beauty!

So number 5 item, walk outside, is going to get attached to after meals. It was a bit nippy, and I was still in my Sunday dress, so it was necessarily a fast walk! I'll dress more appropriately next time! 

This is all part of my effort to instill better habits to help my body lose its insulin resistance. Yes, exercise does that. I'll be keeping an eye on my blood sugar so I don't go somewhere dangerous with it again! I'm also consciously focusing on the pleasure of walking outside, which is at least as important or perhaps even more important! I've been learning about neuroplasticity and am trying to implement more of those strategies so I continue moving forward in my journey back to health.

As a check point, I'm starting to figure out my sleep irregularities. I have enough energy to do most things I want to do in a day. In NAET, we are going back and clearing some of the same sensitivities but in different combinations now, and I've been treated for several traumas I experienced in my 20s. I am highly reactive to gluten and wheat, but can be cautiously optimistic with other grains. I say cautiously because NO flour can contaminate it except with my cornbread recipe (which also has butter that I react to.) I asked to be specifically cleared for that! I watch my protein intake to make sure it is high enough because that makes a difference. I have realized how close Mother was with meat. She only used enough for flavoring, hearkening back to a time when my folks were on no income for about a year. I've wondered how many of my sensitivities hearken back to that. So much fear of lack!

I was scared

 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 sometimes my own experiences.

This week’s challenge is mine, I believe, and it’s a doozy! We’re slowly working through Grains, and every single one of them is taking multiple clearings! Corn took three, wheat took another two. Rice is fine—hooray! Now, though, I’m clearing oats. Oats and gluten. Corn and wheat also had to be cleared with gluten. The one thing NOBODY with Hashimoto’s is EVER supposed to reintroduce into their diet. 

So, oats and gluten.

I know that story!

My mother always made hot cereal for us in the morning, and we ate together as a family. My sister had to leave at 7:10 a.m. so I had to get up to eat. Two things. I hated getting up early, and I detested hot cereal. My sister came home from an early morning religion class at our church and had 5-10 minutes to gulp down breakfast and race out the door! 

After breakfast, I had a leisurely couple of hours before I had to leave to walk to the bus stop about a half mile away. Just had to throw that in! :)

Breakfast went slowly for me as well. Did I mention I hated hot cereal? We had several different ones, all different grains. And oatmeal? Um, yes, and it was the worst! It was slimy, and I was so revolted by it that my throat would reject it and try to push it back. It was even worse cold. Then it was all around disgusting! Eventually my mother gave me smaller and smaller portions until only a couple of spoonfuls made it into my bowl, which got cold even faster!

🐶 to the rescue!

Our dog would always sit in the doorway to the dining room hopefully, and it didn’t take long for me to understand she would eat ANYTHING. Including oatmeal. Cold. She would also be neat about it and take it off the spoon with no spills.

That was important because my mother would clear the table after everyone except me left and start washing dishes, but the sink was in sight of my place at the table. So I couldn’t risk being seen solid surreptitiously give him one spoonful at a time.

Our bodies connect the dots well although sometimes erroneously. It interpreted my revulsion to grain cereals as something to avoid at all costs and most likely developed allergies to it so it wouldn’t be harmed. Here my mother was trying to give me something nutritious, and it completely failed.

DNA?

 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 distorted her face my magnifying her eyes.

Grandma died at age 56 because of cirrhosis of the liver. She was being treated for sugar diabetes, and she had never drunk a drop of liquor in her life. Now we know there are other reasons besides alcoholism causing that disease, but then they hushed up the cause because they knew liquor could not have caused it.

Another cause is Hashimoto’s Disease.

They had not discovered that Hashimoto’s existed back in the 1950s.

My diagnosis came at age 58.

Was I living on borrowed time? 

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.

Day 22 What do you think?

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 driveway and up the walk until I reached the steps so I could actually see the front porch. The yard was THAT overgrown!  This time I could see the whole house as I drove by!  Id been missing it because the jungle was gone!

So to whomever owns it now, thank you so much! The house can breathe!

Now to show you day 22 with a non-smiling face:

With my preferred expression:

Day 0:

What do you think?  I'm thinking my skin is softer and has more volume and I think the lines are beginning to lessen. Especially the ones around my mouth.  I think the circles under my eyes are lessening as well.

And I also think I shall never start a before and after with an unsmiling picture!

Day 17 check in

 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 frown lines.

When we needed to wear masks, I was very happy that my eyes showed smiles.

Big blessing.

I also think every time I take a picture I’ll make sure I choose better colors, and boy am I seeing the difference! The blue sweatshirt in the first picture has great memories because I bought it in Boston, and I chose the one I liked the best, but it’s definitely a stay-at-home and be lazy shirt for me for now on!

That said, I value bringing back more elasticity into my skin. Fewer wrinkles.

I’ll take it.

So takeaways: 

1) I think I’m seeing improvement. 

2) Smile!

3) Wear colors that really enhance you.

4) Collagen Elixir 

Oh, yeah, I mentioned the softer skin. That’s all over, including my heels, because you don’t just put the elixir on the target areas. It’s a wonderful apple tasting drink that I enjoy!