Gut Healing

I have been doing a lot of reading online lately. To the point at times of making my head want to explode, but it hasn't yet.  Mostly it has been reading about the connections found by homeopaths of Leaky Gut, Gluten Intolerance and Autoimmune disorders. Most importantly Lupus, which is the disorder that I have been dealing with. I had started taking medication for it, but it had a very negative effect on me mentally.  I felt like I had lost my battle to it. That my own physical health was no longer in my control. That is a very hard thing to grasp. It brought around bouts of depression that I drowned out by binge eating things that I had been avoiding for the past few years. This of course made my feel worse, but sated my monster briefly.

Then something happened that changed my perspective and brought about my late night readings online. One of my best friends infant daughter developed severe food allergy eczema brought on by the food my friend was eating while breastfeeding. I have to emphasize on serious huge broken out patches of skin that are weeping blood and puss. So in desperation she went on an extreme elimination diet and as a result her daughters skin improved by 75%. This of course was after her late night reading sessions, finding out the there is such a thing as steroid cream addiction, and that she is also allergic to detergent sulfates. As well as a mass of other things that continue to pop up like some kind of terrible whack a mole game.

Her daughter has an overactive immune system.

This got me thinking about my own body, which then lead me into the realms of Leaky Gut and Autoimmune Disorder definitions and treatments.

The trouble with Lupus is simple. There is no one treatment, the same way there is no one symptom. It is a conglomerate disorder. There are other disorders that mimic Lupus and people are often misdiagnosed with other issues when the issue is Lupus. The whole thing is very very gray. The biggest problem is that this leaves doctors with very little to work with, some limited studies and only one medication that has alleviated the general symptoms.

Then I read this article by FOODMATTERS: Natural Ways to Prevent and Reverse Autoimmune Disorders. .  It brought up some points and things to consider that I never really gave any thought. I have had my vitamin supplements that I've been taking religiously since day one. Apart from my breakdown, I had been sticking to a dairy, citrus, nightshade plant, and sugar free diet. I had never considered that something as simple as not chewing my food into a pulp could of been part of the problem, nor that I could possibly have a gluten intolerance as well (*What Doctor's Don't Tell You).

As a mom, food has become a luxury and the idea of being able to eat anything some days is almost a pipe dream. So the concept of the damage I may of done by forcing my stomach to digest whole chunks of quickly ingested food, actually made me feel horrible. My body is already working double time trying to heal itself and here I am making it work harder.

So, I made the decision to go gluten free, vegetarian and to sit and chew my gosh darn food. This of course being added to what I have been already doing. So I am basically a gluten free vegan for lack of a better term. It sounds horrible I know. But what has helped me is visualizations. I have been picturing my stomach like my friend's daughter's inflamed skin. If I eat something that I'm not supposed to, I picture it wounded, open, bloody and weeping. Like something from the ICU of a hospital. I have to do this, because there is no external cue that what I just ate is bothering me. It's all inside.

So far I am into day 5 and let me tell you. My stomach feels so happy right now. I am much less gassy and bloated than I have been in a long time. If anything I have noticed effects from foods that I have eaten today that I now know I can't eat again or at least for a while. For example, I take a daily health tonic called Fire Cider. I started taking it daily to combat the symptoms from the Raynaud's Syndrome I recently developed. It's got quite a kick to it. Well, today I took it for the first time in a few days and my stomach burned immediately after I took it. Not like heartburn, it was as though I had swallowed a match. It happened again later when I bought something to eat at work. I don't know if it's happened before because I don't know if I was paying close attention to what my gut was telling me before. Or if I even suffered a single phenomenon like that because my entire gut was a war zone. Who notices a single bomb when they are going off all around?

My goal with this is not be on my medication anymore. If it is something that is controllable with drastic diet changes for the rest of my life. I am fine with that. The long term effects of that will not cause cancer nor cause me to go blind, like the side effects of my medication.

I'm a big girl. I can eat my soy and kale.