The Food We Eat

Good Digestive Health Post #5

What we put in our bodies is as important as how our digestive system functions. So obviously, no discussion of things to know about the digestive system would be complete without mentioning the importance of what we eat.

Every time you eat is an opportunity to nourish your body.  That is why it is important to eat organic whole foods and animals that were pasture raised without antibiotics.  But what nourishes some of us, might harm others. I’m sure by now you’ve heard about certain foods that cause an adverse reaction in many people: dairy, gluten, even other grains and nightshade vegetables. But for a small portion of the population, it could be raw vegetables, certain fruits, nuts or shellfish.

A person with a food allergy could have a wide array of reactions: from immediate vomiting to anaphylactic shock or potentially even death.  Others who are allergic might get a rash, or hives or something annoying and even alarming, but not life threatening.

It is much more difficult to pinpoint when someone is intolerant – as opposed to allergic – to a particular food.  There are many new tests that measure food intolerances that have come out in recent years, but some of these tests are unreliable and could give false negatives or positives. Some practitioners use muscle testing to determine what foods are problematic for their patients, but that diagnostic practice can be unreliable.

There are clues that we can use to try to detect a food intolerance.  Overt symptoms such as intestinal gas, abdominal pain or diarrhea might be common for some people and, so long as you are paying attention, you will see the correlation between what you eat and how you feel.  A good way to pay attention is to keep a food journal, complete with a section explaining how you felt at several points of the day.  That way, you might see a pattern or patterns between your diet and your wellbeing.

But for some people, the symptoms are not as obvious. Asthma, arthritis, inability to lose weight, depression, anxiety and even neurological disorders might stem from food intolerances.  For one person, taking an irritant out of the diet could turn ill health around immediately while for another, it might take a very long time and include multiple steps.  But if you have not felt well for some time and no pill or medical intervention is helping, looking at your diet will always be a good idea – it is, after all, the least invasive way to treat.  A good rule of thumb is that it takes at least 30 days to rid the body entirely of a food that might be harmful.  So, begin an elimination diet by taking out one food at a time for at least 30-60 days.  But with this approach it is important to know that there can be absolutely no cheating – even a small amount of food that you cannot process or digest can trigger a systemic response.

It is possible that if a person eats an extreme amount of a certain food (eggs, for example) a person can become intolerant to that food.  Sometimes, all it takes is holding off on eating that food for a period of time before reintroducing it at a later date.

In the end, the food we can handle is highly individualized and depends on many factors – genes, personal history with a particular food, the presence of a leaky gut (generally caused by antibiotics), toxicity in the environment, lifelong dietary habits and exposures.  Which is why there is no magic formula for healing from a food intolerance.  The good news is that you have the power to heal yourself – your body knows what to do, it just needs you to do a little detective work to find what you need.

The Road to Healing

Welcome to Themindfulgut where I will share what I have learned on my lifelong journey from chronic pain and illness to good digestive health and overall wellbeing. The science is clear: better digestive health will help with metabolism, nutrient absorption (which is the root cause of so many ailments) and a better mental state. It is possible to feel better and live a healthier and happier life, simply by understanding the importance of what we eat, learning what our body needs and then eating and living mindfully.

At the age of 14, I was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis (an inflammatory bowel disease or IBD). Ulcerative colitis is an auto-immune disease that affects the lining of the large intestine (colon) causing severe abdominal pain and gastrointestinal bleeding, among other things.  There is no known cause of Ulcerative Colitis and there is no cure, other than to remove the colon. I resigned to live a life where I casually took nine capsules of medicine daily, always felt mildly uncomfortable and often was in pain.  I lived with the disease by managing it, which worked for many years.  Until it didn’t.

When I was in my late twenties, I saw top specialists for a variety of physical ailments, but no one was connecting the dots.  I was diagnosed with Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS), psoriasis, spondylitis - all autoimmune disorders - but no doctor saw that these issues were related. The doctors treated symptoms individually, but there was always something going on - and as time marched on, more symptoms arose. When I spoke to my doctors about ways I could change things for myself by way of diet and nutrition, I was told there was nothing I could do to help myself other than take my drugs and try to reduce stress.

So I did what I could to reduce stress.   Yoga and psychotherapy helped.  I ate a diet of mostly organic foods.  Although I was ill into my thirties and was sick during both of my pregnancies, none of my doctors seemed alarmed.  Indeed, I was told that I was high risk for getting colon cancer and lymphoma, but it was understood that since I was being monitored by the top doctors in New York City, whatever disease I might get would be caught early enough to treat.  This was unsettling, but I felt there was nothing I could do except trust these highly regarded experts.

It was not until my infant son began to have health problems, that I learned I could heal myself.  In order to understand and resolve his health and developmental issues, we went to a very progressive developmental pediatrician.  We completely changed my son’s diet, eliminating dairy, gluten and soy.  In solidarity with him, I took dairy out of my diet.

Amazingly, within five days, some of my son’s physical and neurological symptoms diminished. And within weeks, my colitis and many of my other ailments began to disappear. Six weeks after taking dairy out of my diet, and putting myself on omega 3 and probiotic dietary supplements, my gastroenterologist of ten years performed a colonoscopy and said,  “I don’t recognize you. Keep doing whatever you’re doing”. One year and another colonoscopy later, my doctor said, “If I didn’t know you, I’d never know you have ulcerative colitis.” After that visit, I took myself off of the drugs entirely.  One year later, my doctor said there is no sign of the disease and that he saw no evidence that I ever had ulcerative colitis.

This was diet. I now live disease-free and drug-free.  I have educated myself through reading, research and learning from various alternative and open-minded medical practitioners.  I am now a Nutritional Therapy Consultant, where I help people understand that they, too, can take control of their health and see dramatic shifts in their physical, neurological and mental health. It is not too late to reverse the effects that your diet or your genetics or your microbiome has inflicted on you. You don’t need to accept poor function or chalk things up to the effects of aging. Our bodies have an innate intelligence that can guide us to healing. The key is to find, in your specific case, how best to get on that healing track. Hopefully these articles, recipes, mindfulness exercises and alternative therapy recommendations will help you find a way to help yourself.