How I got here... Part 3

TMI Alert: For as long as I can remember I've never been able 'to go' - even when I felt like it, even after sitting there for longer than normal, would lose track of how many days it had been. Now based on my childhood diet & lifestyle I can't say I'm surprised although most of my friends lived the same way. I often felt 'too full' in my lower abdomen & had a 'pooch' which turned out to be bloating and as I made my way into my 20s, I had decided this was just me. This was further ingrained after listening to a lecture in my chiropractic curriculum that stated the 'normal' number of bowel movements per week was between 3-21; I felt so relieved, I was normal. [let's be clear, frequency of BMs is just 1 indicator of GI health & going daily is definitely necessary!]

While I was making my way through chiropractic school, a boyfriend at the time had been struggling with a lot of fatigue and reflux —he was in his early 20s and healthy, based on physical presentation. A professor of mine had a private clinic & doing advanced training on ’internal medicine’; he ran a food sensitivity test and deducted from the results that he was suffering from a yeast overgrowth in his gut - fueled by yeast-filled foods (breads, cakes, beer) and sugar — the fuel source for it. He scaled back on these foods and voila - his symptoms greatly decreased. This coincided with the advent of internet-based recipes and websites. I really fell in love with cooking and stared making a lot of foods from scratch so I could tailor recipes as I needed. The quality of my diet would continue to fine tune from here on out.

As I got into practice, the paleo movement became more mainstream. I learned more about a whole foods diet & saw first hand how much that helped my ex-boyfriend’s symptoms; it wasn't perfect but the triggers became much clearer. We adopted more and more paleo-style habits and that became the basis for many of my home cooked meals. I became even more interested in cooking and annoyed with the abundance of crap in the shelved food items at the grocery store. Then my own health issues started to unravel.

November of 2014 I started getting cracked, dry skin on my hands that worsened after a non-toxic cleaning session - hint: don’t use vinegar and baking soda without gloves. Unfortunately, it didn’t clear up. I used every natural moisturizing remedy I could find - including my newly found & beloved essential oils. It waned and eventually worsened to the point where I had to visit a PCP. She diagnosed me with eczema, shamed me for thinking I could treat it with essential oils or natural salves and gave me a topical steroid. It pained me to give in, but my hands were distracting my patients from treatment and it was pretty damn painful. The steroid was able to clear it up, but I would have to continue to use it to maintain results and that really bugged me as I *knew* my eczema wasn't simply caused by a steroid 'deficiency' and that my body was *trying* to communicate something. As the weather warmed, it resolved itself — until November of the next year. 

eczema flares

constant blemishes, perioral dermatitis

Throughout this time I also struggled with lots of acne and 'chapped lips'; my boyfriend thought I was crazy for the amount of applications I'd need. The painful blemishes would come & go; I knew there was a trigger but I was unable to put my thumb on *what* it was.

The following fall my eczema came back again, with vengeance. I, again, resisted the band aid route despite having over half of the topical steroid tube left — I had read a lot about dairy and eczema but really didn’t want to give up creamer in my coffee. I couldn’t continue to ignore what I had read and gave up dairy for a month straight, I was bummed to find it didn’t seem to make a difference. I got through the holidays and decided to cut out gluten for a month to see if that was the inflammatory culprit. No - still not the answer so I eliminated 'harder' - taking out both gluten & dairy. I was surprised to find that my body composition did improve with these experiments but I was up against what I had so fiercely been resisting, the eliminate everything inflammatory protocol... Whole30.

In March 2016 I was dealing with some long-standing personal issues & tough decisions I needed to make at that point for my emotional well-being. Letting go the emotional weight I’d been carrying for years allowed me to finally feel ready to embark on my first Whole30. Retrospectively that was the best possible decision I could’ve made - a lot of my favorite coping methods were banned from Whole30: carb-dense or dairy-based comfort foods, chocolate, other sweets and alcohol. Now - these things weren’t an ‘unhealthy’ crutch by society’s standards; I didn’t have a bingeing problem with either unhealthy foods or alcohol but I definitely used these as comfort when I felt stressed, sad or alone. Eliminating these fallbacks… and basing social interactions off of something other than food or booze was difficult but it forced me to really reflect and understand my emotions not  ‘manage’ them by drowning them in a glass of wine or a dense, fudgy brownie.

I felt like a superwoman while on Whole30 - more energy, felt less puffy, improved bloat and indigestion & fewer breakouts; I was finally seeing the impact of diet on gut & overall health. Unfortunately that lifestyle was pretty hard to maintain andddd no budging on my main GI issue - the constipation despite eating 'cleaner' than I ever had before. I knew I was onto something, so for the next 3 years I cycled in & out of elimination diets, supplements & protocols trying to uncover the 'triggers' behind my food sensitivity, skin & gut issues. No matter how much water, coffee, movement & fiber I had, my digestion was still sluggish. I started taking high doses of probiotics, eating lots of fermented foods and lots of meal prepping; unfortunately I was met with more histamine reactions. And the list goes on & on - it was frustrating to say the least and there was noooo way I was visiting another PCP because I refused to take an OTC or Rx as the 'fix'. 

As I continued to dig further into the gut & testing from a functional approach, I realized that the gut was a lot more complex than avoiding 'inflammatory' foods [this can be very personal based on conditions anyway], taking probiotics and getting in fiber-rich fruits & veggies. Don't get me wrong - that's certainly the foundation but if you already have symptoms, it may be too late to correct the underlying cause with these basic lifestyle habits. Fast forward to present day & I haven't had eczema in over 3 years, my skin has never looked better [& I'm able to track breakouts back to specific triggers -I still don't eat 'perfectly' *wink*], my indigestion & bloat are 90% better and best of all, I can poop daily. For those of you that can't resonate, this might not seem like a big deal but I'm sure many of you will understand! [or maybe you're going too often, I've seen that a lot working with clients, too!] If you've been struggling with gut issues and don't know where to start, then reach out & I'd be happy to point you in the right direction!