February is for Heartbreak

February is the month of love. Thanks to that one singular day smack dab in the middle the whole month is flavored with gushy notions of love. Normally I get caught up in the hype, decorate the house, bake treats – but not this year! Nope. February has been a month of heartache and break-ups. It has been a rough month which has wiped me out emotionally. Saying a fond farewell to a long-term relationship was not easy, and there hasn’t been a day yet that I haven’t thought longingly about reuniting. Fantasized, really. I have gone so far as to live vicariously through others – and I must say it isn’t nearly as satisfying. During a snow weekend a few weeks ago I was out for a walk in the freezing cold, enjoying the beautiful white world, when I caught a hint of my forsaken love and it brought me to a full stop. I stood there on the sidewalk, in the snow, breathing deeply to a point of near euphoria. My resolve to end the relationship was worn thin and stretched almost to the breaking point. It was only a sense of social norms that kept me from walking up to the house from which the heavenly scent was coming from and asking for a cup of coffee.

Yes, that’s right. I’m talking about coffee.

Even though I have an obsessive love for that versatile bean, I decided to have a trial separation which started February 1^st. I still long, yearn, and crave coffee.

Every.

Single.

Day.

On February 1^st I started the auto-immune paleo protocol (AIP for short) which eliminates all high inflammation triggers such as coffee, chocolate, dairy, grains, nuts, seeds, eggs, nightshades, etc. It’s challenging, especially since it means I am making food from scratch for every single meal. (Although there is an awesome food cart called “Cultured Caveman” that has delicious food that is “safe” and has become my Friday treat.) It is a good thing I enjoy cooking because these days just about all my spare time is spent in the kitchen. But of all the things I gave up, coffee has been the hardest.

To help ease the transition, I have been making this weird “drink” that is surprisingly tasty. I found the inspiration on Mark’s Daily Apple. But have tweaked it to my own liking. Here is my variation:

Niffer's Warming Tea

Ingredients:

1 Can of whole coconut milk

½ can of water

½ - 1 tablespoon of turmeric

1 thumb size piece of ginger, grated

½ tablespoon of cinnamon

2-4 tablespoons of honey

(Tip: buy fresh ginger, peel it when you get home then stick it in the freezer. When you need ginger for a recipe, grate the frozen ginger using a Microplane grater and you end up with finely ‘shredded’ ginger.)

Directions:

Place everything into a pot and mix well. The turmeric will turn it bright yellow – be careful – turmeric will stain!! Heat on a low simmer for at least a half hour. Pour, and enjoy!

I leave the pot simmering and sip on small mugs of it during the day. Sometimes I add more honey when I need a sweet fix. Other days I add less water and have a more decadent drink. I've also mixed it up without the water and kept in the fridge overnight and make a mug by using the coconut milk mix and boiling water.

It sounds like a weird concoction but I made my mom try it and even she liked it (I’m still working on her to give kombucha and my homemade ginger kraut another try). Really, it’s a super healthy drink – coconut milk is chock full of good stuff, ginger is great for your digestive system, turmeric is a wonder spice that alleviates inflammation and can help fight cancer, cinnamon helps regulate blood sugar and is anti-bacterial, honey is anti-bacterial and soothing. Plus, it has a strong taste and a full mouth feel that mimics my coffee and cream. There are days when I actually crave this drink now. 

While I do hope that my break-up with coffee (and chocolate, and dairy, and nuts... everything that's off limits) isn't forever, for now we are total splitsville. What keeps me going is that I am actually starting to see small improvements. 
Dear Coffee, please just don't say good-bye forever. I miss you horribly. Really it's not you, it's me. I just need some time to heal, but I've never stopped loving you. I hope we can get back together real soon, because breaking up is hard to do.  Much love, Niff  xoxoxoxoxoxo

Periodic Status Update

Over a month has passed since the grand auto-immune paleo experiment began, which means it is time for a self-reported check-in.

General paleo compliance -- 94%
Auto-immune paleo compliance -- 83%
(my very scientific & accurate guesstimation)

It is not perfect, but I'm okay with that. The goal is to have a straight 30 days of 100% compliance to the auto-immune protocol at some point soon; it will require more lead time to work up to that. There are a few hurdles to cross that just keep tripping me up. They are named: nuts, paprika, caffeine, and a tiny hurdle the size of Andre the Giant of cocoa powder.

And then there were a few instances that were not paleo, and therefore, obviously not AIP either. Absentee-brain moments. My sweet, thoughtful mother had bought me some groceries after my trip to Washington, D.C. One item was an organic heat & eat beef roast from Trader Joe's. She had made the comment, "It is organic, so I think you can have it." Awww... you think it's hard for me trying to figure out what is on the yes/no list, my poor mother is having a heckuva time! It seemed logical, but it wasn't until I was tossing the packaging into the recycle bin that I noticed soy was listed in the ingredients for the sauce. Dang it! I ate it anyhow. That blasted soy is insidious and is in e v e r y t h i n g. It is really hard to avoid. It is even in tea! TEA!?!?

Giving up coffee has been one of the hardest aspects. Harder than chocolate!! I started drinking more tea (lots more), which I love equally as well, but it just doesn't have that same texture and "kick" that coffee does. I counted down the days to day 31, when I would try reintroducing coffee. Attempting to stack the odds in my favor, I even made cold-brew coffee the day before hoping the lower acidity would help. Just the smell  of it in the house was euphoric. Giddy with excitement in the morning I made my first cup of coffee, and it tasted odd (had I lost my taste for it?). After finishing off the first cup, a fresh cup was made, and drunk. And then, my body told me NO MORE COFFEE!! Oh, coffee... how I love you. Why, WHY won't you love me back???

Even though nuts have sporadically been eaten, I have stayed away from them enough that when I do have them, I notice it - and not in a good way. Once I get more into a groove, and get this whole AIP thing more ingrained, I will eliminate the nuts completely until I can get my gut healed. First, I need to find a substitute for that glove compartment "emergency snack."

Has it been easy? Oh, heavens to Betsy, NO! But does it seem worth it? Yes. One of the hardest aspects was my cocky assumption that I would transition with ease. My logic was that I was mostly paleo already, becoming a little more restrictive wouldn't be so bad, cutting out my occasional indulgences wouldn't have much impact. I read a couple 'what to expect in the first 30 days' kind of blog posts and sort of blew them off with, "So little is changing, I'll probably just skim right over these phases." Reality is the opposite, not only have I gone through the 'slump' stage and the 'I crave everything - even things I wouldn't have normally eaten' stage, but they have lasted at least twice as long as the norm. There is a lot more balancing, tweaking, and experimenting to do until I figure out what my body needs. (And with my luck, right when I figure it out, it will change.)

I was hoping the results would be nearly instantaneous, miraculous even. Although I knew that was far from likely, I'm still a little disappointed it didn't happen. Yet, my main flare spot - my right middle knuckle has calmed down some. When I make a fist, there are four distinct knuckles again instead of one normal and one massive blob. It is going to take time, patience, and persistence in following the course. Other issues are starting to improve as well; my sinus allergies are improving, my energy level is more even, my (ahem!) digestive issues, etc.

Onward, ho!! 

Lab Rat, Table for One!

It was probably around ten years ago now when I sat in the exam room, meeting with my Rheumatologist, discussing options and the effectiveness of the latest drug I was trying, and I asked 'Are there any recommendations for nutritional therapy?' Brusquely she answered, 'Diet doesn't have any impact on the disease.' I tried to explain that I had noticed a correlation between my symptoms and certain foods, which was quickly dismissed. Not long after this incidence the same doctor told me that I needed to go on to a level 3 drug - a biologic modifier - since I had exhausted all of the options in class 1 and 2 with no significant improvement. Considering I had been on a variety of drugs and experienced minimal, if any, benefit, but most of the side-effects, including the really odd and rare ones, I was not eager to start a new medication (Humira being the one pushed) that a frequent side-effect was leukemia.

So doc, you want to put me on a drug that may help alleviate the symptoms of the rheumatoid arthritis, but I also will have a good chance of developing cancer. Yeah, that sounds like a great plan.

I don't think so.      

I never went back to that doctor. Instead, I started seeing a naturopathic doctor. It has been helpful, but it hasn't solved the problem. While experimenting with different supplements over the past 8 or so years, I have also learned a great deal. One thing I have become convinced of: I can 'cure' myself of the rheumatoid arthritis, an auto-immune disease, through nutrition. God made our bodies incredibly intricate, and with an innate ability to heal - if we give it the proper building blocks. Yet, knowing this and implementing it is a different story; it can be very confusing to know exactly what is the proper nutrition for healing. There is a lot of information out there on the interwebs, a lot of conflicting information.  I'm sort of a weirdo in that I really enjoy researching nutrition and health issues. The list of blogs that I regularly read, the books highlighted and lining my shelves, the food based documentaries watched, the podcasts I listen to while commuting should be worthy of a degree in nutrition. Seriously. But all the information can lead to info-paralysis, a state I know all too well.

Two years ago I was stuck in a vicious cycle. The RA raised my systemic inflammation, which told my body to store fat, which raised my inflammation, which aggravated the RA, which raised my systemic inflammation, and around and around it went. Around the time I realized that something had to be done about the excess fat I was carrying if I ever hoped to get the RA under control, several friends were losing weight. Polling each of them about how they were doing it, I got the same answer: Take Shape for Life. So I jumped on the bandwagon. And it worked, for about six months and 50 pounds. Then I went to Honduras for a week, and then Czech Republic for two weeks. It was a huge struggle to get back on track that I couldn't quite master for more than a month at a time, and even during those month sprints the scale wouldn't budge like it had before. Part of this is because I started training hard and exercising too much for the program. Another part was that all of the program's foods contained at least one or multiple ingredients that I knew I reacted to badly. I have my theories about why it didn't bother me at first, but then started being a problem, but I won't bore you that much. And the stress component fought me too.

While thinking of New Year's Resolutions this past January, I asked myself the question - 'If I were at a healthy weight and didn't need to eat weird packaged powdered food-like substances, how would I want to eat for my best health?' From my research, it was pretty easy to describe what seemed to be the best way of eating, but I wanted to drop more weight before starting to eat that way. Making wholesale changes at once is overwhelming, and often not lasting, so I made a plan to adopt one change a month towards my ideal while sticking to the Take Shape program to lose the weight. Good plan, right? And it has been (except the weight loss part-that wasn't happening).

Three weeks ago I was working on my Bible study while eating breakfast before work and my knuckle was so painful and swollen that I could hardly hold a pen to write my answers. That was my breaking point. No more lying to myself, my RA was not under control, the flare-ups were too frequent, a new hot spot had developed in the last six months. In addition, auto-immune begets auto-immune, and the last time I had my thyroid checked the results had some suspicious numbers pointing to the beginnings of Hashimoto's disease, and this last winter I started having symptoms of Reynaud's disease. This is not okay.

It is time to make some changes. Time to make my health - and regaining great health - a priority. Top priority. What does that mean? No more incremental changes. I'm jumping in cannon ball style into the paleo lifestyle pool. But not just any ordinary variation of it, I'm going to follow the auto-immune paleo protocol. And let me tell you, it is going to be TOUGH. My month-by-month resolutions were leading me to a paleo lifestyle already and by March I had almost given up all sugar (my vice is Endangered Species Black Panther 88% dark chocolate bar), ditched all dairy - even cheese which I doubted I could do, and every grain & legume - including soy. And I was feeling much better. Then I went on vacation last week and after the race tossed all my good eating habits out the window - and suffered.  The auto-immune variety of paleo cuts out all nightshade plants and their derivatives: tomatoes, tomato paste, eggplant, peppers, paprika, chili powder, etc. Pretty much all of the main-stays of my cooking. Brutal. Oh, did I mention that it suggests (mandates) avoiding coffee? Shoot me now. Is this going to be the magic bullet? I don't know. This is all experimentation. But if the anecdotal results others have shared can be even partially true for me, it is worth it. Feeling good is better than coffee, right? RIGHT??!!??

I can do it.
I know I can.
Because I am Streger Strong!
We don't quit, we persevere!

But prayers are very much appreciated.
No coffee. {whimper}