Sunday, May 3, 2009

Taper + What Is Wrong With Me

Basta finished his last long week. Now the taper begins. He's really looking forward to tapering.

Not that he's been working out religiously. His work situation has him very busy right now and he's let his training suffer these past few weeks as a result. He's skipped a lot of workouts, in fact.

But he says he's ready. He's been saying he's ready for a long time now. Mentally, physically, he's ready. He has his nutritional plan set. He says he's really ready.

Maybe he is. I really wish he would have done all of the hours of these last few really hard weeks, but it is what it is. He's as ready as he's going to be.

Logistically, we're nearly ready. I got my passport renewed. We got our visas a few weeks ago. We're going to try to get Yellow Fever vaccines tomorrow. We don't need that for the event but we do for the Amazon river cruise we're taking afterwards.

As for me and my troubles. Well. Here is my saga:

My doctor surprised me and actually did listen to my problems. She took my blood pressure and agreed it was way too high for my age, weight, and reported athleticism. She ordered a bunch of tests, which I did, and a chest x-ray. The blood work came back fine, nothing to worry about, maybe a touch of anemia. Blood sugar a tad high. Cholesterol a tad high. Odd considering my healthy eating habits and fitness level, but nothing to worry about. Chest x-ray showed that my lungs are fine, so is the heart. She thought it could be a food allergy and referred me to an allergist. Yes.

While all that was going on the kit for my Alcat test arrived. I had the blood drawn for that, sent it in, and waited most impatiently for the results. I had high hopes that would give the answer to my problems.

The Alcat test identifies food intolerances. These are different than allergies. With a true allergy, your body reacts by pumping out histamines, swelling dramatically, potentially causing anaphylactic shock and death. A food intolerance, on the other hand, won't cause death. But it can cause muscle aches and pain, joint aches, itchy skin, coughing, gastrointestinal distress, high blood pressure, rapid heart rate, lack of energy, water retention, weight gain . . . A whole host of potential symptoms. Most of which I was experiencing.

I've thought all along that this was caused by something I was eating. I tried to figure out what it was by eliminating this and that suspect food from my diet but nothing seemed to do the trick. I knew it wasn't a true allergy because I've tried taking Benadryl for it but that made no difference. I was really hoping the Alcat test would shed light on my problem.

Well, as they say, be careful what you wish for. The results of the test arrived. I have a HUGE list of intolerances, far more than I would have ever imagined. For instance:

Brewer's and Baker's yeast. That means no more alcoholic beverages, baked goods, or bread. Nothing made using yeast. That includes soy sauce & all vinegars. Most sauces, in fact.

Cabbage. In all of its many forms -- white cabbage, red cabbage, bok choy, sauerkraut, coleslaw, etc.

Carob. No biggie here. That's probably in some of the 'sports' bars that I consume but those are easily skipped.

Chicken. I knew this. I haven't eaten chicken for over 10 years now because of this. But chicken broth is everywhere and it's hard to avoid. Every time I have it my neck turns red and I itch all over.

Coffee. WTF? You can have an intolerance to coffee? Apparently so. I was keeping a diary of foods and my reactions and I did note a sneezing and itchy spell after consuming coffee but thought it must have been caused by something else. Guess not.

Hops. No beer. No biggie. So this is why I turn red when I drink beer? Or is it the yeast? Or the double-whammy effect? In any event the brewer's yeast eliminated beer anyway so this is redundant.

Onions. Seriously -- WTF? Onions? Onions are in everything. EVERYTHING. It's more prevalent than chicken broth, even. This one is really hard. It includes all onions -- green onions, shallots, leeks, etc.

Peaches. And their bald cousins nectarines. Not a problem here. One of my favorite sports drinks is peach flavored and I wonder if it actually has some peach extract in it.

Those were the big reactions. Along with that I had minor reactions to another collection of foods. Cinnamon. Crab. Brussel sprouts (oh darn). Sesame seeds/oil. Olives & olive oil . Cashews. Bananas. Black & green tea (no more iced tea at lunch). Corn (or tortilla chips). Cottonseed oil. Grapefruit. Oregano. Salmon. Rye. Snapper. Yellow squash.

I have a severe reaction to Candida, which indicates that I probably have candidiasis -- a systemic Candida overgrowth. I don't have any external symptoms of that so it is all in my gut. As a result, I can eat no sugar, no fruit, and no mushrooms. That's sugar in all of its many forms, including honey, molasses, fructose, sucrose, dextrose, maltose, etc. Nothing that the Candida can flourish on. Avoiding all grains, potatoes, rice and flour is also advised because they raise the blood sugar. Candida loves blood sugar. Avoiding all of this should make it die off within a few weeks.

I have a minor reaction to casein but not to whey. Still, that means no dairy. I'm not a milk drinker but the no cheese, no yogurt, no butter, no sour cream part is sad. Since I can't drink coffee any more the no half & half is not a problem.

So that's the foods. That's bad enough, but it gets worse. They also tested for molds, environmental chemicals, and food additives/colorings. I react to a handful of food colorings (orange, green, red, yellow), potassium nitrate (no more processed meats), aspartame & saccharine (I knew those bothered me and never have "diet" products as a result). I am best off if I just stick to natural foods -- nothing processed, nothing from a box, nothing colored or preserved.

Then there's the molds. I severely react to botrytis -- a mold that is most commonly found on wine grapes. Great. Given the severity of that reaction I will probably never be able to have wine again without suffering bad effects. A bunch of other molds, too, like the ones that grow in the shower. I am lucky I don't live in a more hot/humid climate where molds thrive more.

Last but not least are the chemicals. I reacted strongly to fluoride, of all things. Also to chlorine, nickel, and orris root. I can't wear my white gold wedding rings for more than a few hours at a time or they burn my finger, so I knew about the nickel. Orris root is the base for most perfumes, so now I know why perfumes make me cough and sneeze. I've always hated swimming in a pool because of how the chlorine wreaks havoc on my skin and hair and saps my energy. Every time after swimming in a chlorine pool I had to go home and have a deep and hard sleep of the dead for a few hours. I thought I was just a bad swimmer and it wiped me out. Now I know that is not the case, it's my reaction to the chlorine. It really does affect me differently and more strongly than it does most people.

The fluoride is a big surprise. I switched to a fluoride-free toothpaste but my city adds it to the water supply so it's in everything. I think that's why my mouth almost always feels inflamed and irritated. I think that and the onions are causing that reaction because it is still somewhat with me, though much reduced. My mouth always flares up after eating at a restaurant, and I think it's because onions and onion powder are so common and because restaurants use tap water in the kitchen, so I'm getting a lot of fluoride in every dish. I've ordered a fluoride filter for the home and it should arrive next week. In the meantime I'm drinking and brushing my teeth with fluoride-free bottled water. I hope with reduced exposure the mouth symptoms will fade, even though I won't ever be able to achieve complete fluoride elimination.

So there you have it. For two weeks I've been trying to adapt to these restrictions. It's not easy, as you can imagine. I thought I had a pretty healthy diet beforehand but now it is absolutely pristine healthy.

What can I eat? Beef. Pork. Eggs. Soy. Garlic. Tomatoes. Lemon. Avocado. Peanuts. Those are on a lot of people's lists but I tested no reaction to them. Most vegetables are okay. Hooray for small things. I can eat something.

Basta, who is the chef in this family, is adapting to this beautifully. He has a list of my can't-eat foods and makes extraordinarily tasty meals around that. If I could eat at home all the time I'd be fine. It's eating out that gets me. Imagine ordering something in a restaurant that doesn't have onions, butter, or olive oil in there somewhere. I am doing the best I can, but after every meal out I get a reaction of some sort. Either an inflamed mouth or itchy skin or a stomach ache. But it's mild and it passes in a few hours.

Because now, after two weeks of avoiding these things as much as I can, I feel tremendously better. Blood pressure dropped to 103/63 after the third day of dietary purity. Resting heart rate dropped to 73. I am thrilled with that.

All the other symptoms are dissipating, too. My ears no longer feel like they are stuffed with cotton and don't itch any more. My skin in general doesn't itch, just for an hour or so after eating at a restaurant. I can live with that. My joints don't ache and my knuckles feel fine. I can write with a pencil without pain again. The feeling of needles stabbing into my quads is gone. The overall muscle aches are fading.

My energy is returning, too. I don't have to plan my weekends around naps and I don't come home from work too weary to do anything but take Misty for a short walk and then crash into bed. I actually have the ambition to do things after work now. Like work out. I feel like a blanket of weariness is slowly being lifted off of me.

My lungs took the longest to recover from this. Up until two days ago I still had the shortness of breath thing whenever I climbed a set of stairs. I could feel that my lungs just weren't right whenever I tried to exercise, no matter how gently. It's hard to explain, they just didn't feel right. I felt pressure and like the lungs were laboring far too hard for what I was doing, and doing so incorrectly. Like they were sliding against something in there. I'm glad I had the chest x-ray done to tell me that nothing was obviously wrong in there. No pneumonia, no cancer. And now, at last, that symptom is gone. That is a huge relief. I can work out again.

It's nice to know what was wrong with me, even though the solution is very difficult. I am to avoid all of these things for 3-6 months, then I can try to introduce them back on a very occasional basis and see if I can handle them. The key is to not do constant exposure. Someday, I can maybe have a dairy product one day (cheese!) and have a minor reaction, then if I don't have it again for 3 days the reaction will clear from my system and I can have it again. 4 days is apparently how long it takes these reactions to leave the body completely. So they recommend a rotation diet: Don't eat anything more than once every four days. Not even things that I'm not currently reacting to, because I may start reacting to them due to overexposure. Given that I am obviously prone to food sensitivities, this is good to know. I don't want to develop a problem with anything else.

So we are trying to do the food rotation thing. We have beef day, fish day, pork day, shellfish day. Different veggies and salad greens each day. Substituting a vegetarian meal or an uncommon meat like lamb or buffalo at any time is fine. We rotate the oils, using grapeseed, canola, coconut, safflower, peanut, or walnut oil instead of just olive all the time. I am eating an abundance of varied vegetables, not just broccoli, cauliflower, carrots all the time. We've switched from the mixed lettuce salad to one type each night -- romaine, spinach, mache, arugula, butterleaf, etc. Basta made a garlic/lemon dressing with grapeseed oil that I can use (once every 4 days) since all of the commercial ones have at least one ingredient on my banned list.

So yeah, there's a lot going on. Feeling better and having all of these symptoms fade away is worth the effort, though. I am committed to doing this strictly for at least 3 months, then maybe I will start to see what I can add back in on occasion without causing me too much trouble.

The first 5 days or so of this was really hard. I had headaches, aches, pains, weariness -- worse than the actual symptoms I was having before. I was warned that would happen as my body was working hard to clear everything out. After that phase was over I started to improve rapidly. As of this morning my blood pressure is 88/60. That's normal for me. Finally.

I've lost 10 pounds so far, too. I'm thrilled about that. At this rate I'll probably lose another 10 within a couple of months. Then I'll be right around my goal weight.

And I'm exercising again. I swam 1.2 miles in the ocean today and it felt fantastic. The heart and lungs felt fine, just fine. I was thrilled to be out there and having a good swim. Yesterday I ran/walked 3 miles and it felt great, too. The legs are still a little weak but I have high hopes my strength will return in full force very soon. I know I've lost some fitness through all of this so it's partly a matter of building the strength and fitness back up, too. Since I'm unable to consume sugar in any form my workouts are pretty well limited to about an hour, but I plan to make full use of that hour. I can stay very fit with an hour a day and I can work on speed.

I'm looking forward to a good bike ride tomorrow. And to having a bit more energy, a few less symptoms. I can only imagine how good I'll feel 3 months from now.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hej Ana!
I have been missing your blogg and I have wondered how things proceed with you. Good that you now have an ANSWER but such a long one...must be stressing. It must have been a terrible time for you as more or less no-one took your observations seriously. No fun to be looked upon as a psycosomatic person (spelling?). Now you have the verdict and have to try to live with it and see further about your body's reaction. So far so good. But remember - the more you train the more muscles you get - maybe no more weightreductions but body volume. continued

Anonymous said...

Crister again:
I will myself go for an Alcat or what is available as I do have some odd reactions to onions, olive oil and clorine. Sorry that I should get the idea by your struggeling.// So after Brazil - maybe Basta will pay back and give you all the support you have given him. I have a feeling that you will now train a lot when you found the way. continued

Anonymous said...

Crister again:
As long as Basta has the target to complete his iron man distance - he will succeed! I wish you both good luck in Brazil and by the way - check that there is enough water! Crazy? No - the other year - some parts were too low - a Dutch friend had big problems. Connie and I were in Ecuador Amazonas but we had no problems. It was big fun!/Crister