Blood Tests and Tears
Crying over your blood test results doesn’t seem like normal behaviour, and yet that is what I did earlier today. My black and white paper profile just drove home the message that my body has been giving me for the last few weeks: I am entering a flare. Over the years I have, on occasion, flirted with flares, but have always managed to bounce back and write the episode off as one of my ‘down’ phases in my eternal ‘ups and downs’. But this feels different now. It’s not a massive flare so far, thank goodness, but it is a flare nonetheless. So what am I going to do about it?
The first, and most important, place to start is diet. Over the last couple of months I have been reading up on the various ‘gut-healing’ diets that are about, almost as if I knew that the day was coming that I would soon need them. I now stand here dumbfounded, not knowing which dietary path to follow – there are so many, and they seem to say conflicting things. I frequently stress just how personalised the dietary formula to helping your gut, and overall health, can be, and I now find myself facing the question I thought I had found the answer to 15 years ago, when I managed to get myself into remission naturally, namely with diet. The question is quite simply: which ‘diet’ is right for me?
The answer is that I just don’t know. It will require some fresh research and experimentation. I intend to look carefully at the following: the Autoimmune Protocol (AIP), the anti-inflammatory diet, the GAPS diet, the Specific Carbohydrate Diet (SCD), the Low FODMAP diet, the Paleo diet, the Alkaline/PH Diet, the Happy Gut diet, and Ayurvedic Diet. All these claim to be the optimum eating philosophy for good health, some specifically being directed at gut health.
I am, for better or worse, a very ‘in my head’ kind of person, and so, even though I find all this daunting, a part of me is actually looking forward to such immersive study in what is ultimately biological and biochemical theorising and experimentation. If I’m going to eliminate a certain food or food group, I want to know why. But that’s still not enough; I want to go further. It’s not enough to eliminate the ‘bad’ foods, the foods that irritate, I also want to learn about and construct my diet around the good stuff, the food that heals, that strengthens (without irritating!) – I truly believe that my, and indeed anyone’s, ideal gut diet, lies in finding the balance somewhere in this exclusion and inclusion.
This is not going to be easy. I’m not being negative, just realistic. I’m a foodie, and I am super guilty of emotional eating, boredom eating, and self-punishment eating. This is human, yet somehow feels reprehensible in my case, because I know what I know about diet and the gut, I know that diet is the key to keeping me well, and I have already seen how it has helped me personally. So why do I do it? Why do I stray from the path that I feel well on? Why do I test my limits when the result is unpleasant and ultimately risky? I really wish I knew, but until that time, all I can do is just keep trying to get myself, and keep myself, on course. Right now, a major course-correction is called for, and this will involve some re-education, re-learning and revision. I intend to share what I learn. I hope you find it helpful.