Satisfying Cravings with Healthier Versions

Hi Everyone!

I have had some requests to go over how to change your diet. I will first tell you what I did and then I will give you the advice I wish someone would have given me at the beginning.

I went for kinesiology testing with a chiropractor, she said Lupus and all autoimmune diseases were related to leaky gut and leaky gut over time created many food allergies. All of my food allergies were causing more inflammation in my body, and it's a no brainer that anything that causes inflammation...especially when you have Lupus, is a BAD THING!

So I came home that day and on a few future visits with a list a mile long of foods to avoid.

At first this is what I did for substitutions:
(Vegan means no eggs or dairy in this case)

Food Allergy

regular cupcakes and cookies
regular bread, biscuits, and pizza
chocolate pudding with milk/eggs
regular mayonaise
wheat tortillas
ice cream
gluten grains
regular crackers

Substitutions

GF Vegan cupcakes and cookies
GF Vegan Bread, biscuits, pizza
Tofu chocolate pudding
soy mayonaise
corn or rice tortillas
soy or rice ice cream
GF grains quinoa,millet, brown rice
GF Vegan crackers


I have many GREAT recipes for GF Vegan and GFCF on my blog at
http://myfamilysfavoritegfcfrecipes.blogspot.com/

There were lots more substitutions waffles, hot pretzels, GF breaded chicken cutlets, etc.

Then I realized that all those starches and sugars were probably not great for my body either and now my diet substitutions are more like this:

Food Allergies

bread
cupcakes and cookies
chocolate
gluten grains
chicken/ beef
crackers
pudding
ice cream
potato chips
hot chocolate

Substitutions

Food for Life Brown Rice Tortillas
Raw food treats sweetened mostly with dry fruits
GFCF chocolate or raw chocolate
quinoa, millet, brown rice some times sprouted sometimes cooked
turkey/salmon/flounder
flax crackers
raw almond butter with 1/2 tsp of raspberry jelly or raw key lime pie or 1/2 avacado
nut milk smoothies with fruit or cacao nibs or both
kale chips in the dehydrator
almond milk hot cocoa



Of course on both plans there are TONS of veggies and some fruits added in both, I just avoid the veggies and fruits I am allergic/intolerant to. What I want to show here is that you CAN still have foods that satisfy you and they can be healthy and delicious. Please see my Lupus Hope Cookbook blog for delicious recipes that are good for you too! http://lupushopecookbook.blogspot.com/

If you would like to email me at lonedoggy@netzero.com with a specific food or foods that you love and don't want to give up, I will try to find or make a recipe that will be like your old favorite foods but much healthier!

Alissa Cohen in her book "Living on Live Food" has many "mock" raw foods such as pizza, enchiladas, calzones, chick-un patties, sausage, meat loaves, mashed potatoes and gravy!
She also has many desserts too. Also see my recoomendations on other raw food books as well at
http://lupushopecookbook.blogspot.com/2009/08/great-raw-food-books.html

This is "do-able" but at the beginning changing your diet is hard and challenging, but with each day it gets easier and you get more into a routine, and your new found better health is WORTH IT!
My advice is skip the gluten free and vegan goodies and go RIGHT TO the raw and/or macrobiotic foods they are much healthier in the long run! If you feel the need to go slower though, take the gluten free goodies and breads and ease in to the raw and /or macrobiotic foods
Good Luck to all of you and if you have any questions just ask...you can email me or post a comment below!

Nutritional Kinesiology and Vibrational Energies

This is a topic that has surfaced for me lately...Here are my thoughts on this topic.
I believe God made foods that we can all eat in moderation. On the other hand we, as a nation/world have "messed with" the environment/foods too much. There are so much toxic chemicals and pesticides in our world. I feel that these toxins, plus candida and other parasites, plus daily stress, and nutritional deficiencies from poor choices of foods and malabsorption from digestive issues create allergies to foods in our bodies.

This is what I am dealing with right now.... TONS of allergies to foods! Keep in mind that every time you ingest an allergic food your immune system has to kick in to rid your body of that allergen. Your immune system recognizes it, not as a healthy food, but, as a foreign invader and with white blood cells and inflammation takes care that the allergen is removed from your body. So if you have a hidden or unknown allergy and you continually eat that food you will have MASSIVE inflammation that never COOLS OFF! Hello Lupus!

I have heard many people mention the "vibrational energy" of foods. Especially when talking or reading about raw foods. When a food is uncooked in it's raw and natural state it has more ENERGY. Many times people call this more vibrational energy.

When I started my journey to health I tried Nutritional Kinesiology. This form of allergy testing not only can test for allergy/inolerance but also if your body can tolerate the food's vibrational energy.

With Nutritional Kinesiology the practicioner tests to see if your own bodies' energy gets weaker or stronger from the ingestion of a foods' energy. Each food is tested separately. For more on this see my post at http://lupushope.blogspot.com/2009/03/nutritional-kinesiology.html

Do check into you Nutritional Kinesiology practioner's success rate. Get recommendations from trusted patients/friends. A great Nutrtional Kinesiology Practicioner is worth their weight in gold!

I think many people who are Raw Foodists do not consider allergies/intolerances. You CAN be allergic/intolerant to HEALTHY foods! Take it from me I have "issues" with asparagus, garlic, tomatoes, peppers, cranberries, pomegranates, bananas, pecans, nutritional yeast(seemingly "healthy" foods) and not only through kinesiology testing but also many show up on my IgG blood tests too!

Obviously there are other ways you can tell the food energy just doesn't match yours the more you get in tune with your body. You may feel too sluggish or too hyper or too stressed. Read Theron Randolph's book "An Alternative Approach to Allergies" for some outrageous ideas into "hard to believe" food allergy symptoms from runny nose to schizophrenia! You will hear many raw foodists say that they are going to eliminate something from their diet because it just doesn't "feel right" to have it any more. I believe it is the energy in the food doesn't match with the person's energy anymore. Our cells are always dying and replenishing with new cells, our body is always in a changing state. So the foods you tolerate change too.

Have you ever listened to certain music and felt "recharged" or watched a sad movie and felt "depressed" or eaten a food and felt like "going to sleep" , or is there a person at work that you always feel upset or uneasy after speaking to? Everything and every person has an energy or a vibe and if their vibe isn't synergistic with your vibe you will not feel great and be at your optimum energy level.

Pay attention to your body and how it feels today as you eat and do the things you need to today! Please God give everyone reading this time to find moments of peace today so they can really listen to their bodies and change what they need to to feel better! Amen !

Have a GREAT DAY!

Gluten free first, then healthy and allergy free

I thought of something the last few days and wanted to document it. I had gone gluten free and other foods free at the beginning a little more than a year and a half ago, but over time my diet has gotten better and better.

At first I was eating GF breads/cakes/cookies, made with GF flours, you know the potato starch and the tapioca starch and the rice flours. Now I don't have those in my diet much at all. I had found Babycakes recipes that were GF and vegan (because not only was I GF I was egg free and dairy free.) I have found the recipes that were posted on the internet were even better than Erin's cookbook which I bought and tried some recipes and wasn't as happy with how the recipes in the cookbook came out..... :(

I was sad about a thing that Peter Green said at the Celiac talk that I went to...he said that a GF diet was not healthy...well it can DEFINITELY be healthy. Of course if you replace all the healthy whole wheat bread with potato starch and tapioca starch and white rice flour made bread that will NOT be as healthy.
On the other hand if you have whole grains like quinoa and amaranth and millet instead of bread or add those flours to your GF bread you may actually be HEALTHIER than a wheat eater!

Lately I eat naturally GF foods like flax crackers and nut butters and fruit and veggies and "raw" food dishes and desserts. I also eat beans and brown rice and brown rice tortillas and free range/no antibiotics/grain fed ground turkey, wild Alaskan salmon and wildcaught cod and flounder. (I do not eat chicken anymore because the NAET practioner said if I am highly allergic to eggs then I shouldn't eat chicken either because people that have an allergy to one usually have an allergy to the other)

My one "bad" thing if you want to call it that is that I still eat cocoa/chocolate(without milk of course-I only eat dairy free or dark chocolate) I don't have it that much though.
I think I have been feeling even better, the Dr. Cranton rare foods diet sealed it, I had felt much better after doing that. I have added some things back in after the elimination, but all in all am doing better.

The thing that I am trying to say here is my body may still need time to heal because I was still eating foods I was allergic to not so long ago. I will keep on pushing on and I have faith that I will find peace from all my symptoms. May you all find peace too!

So where am I now? How is my Lupus? almost Spring 2009

Well right now after all my hard work and having changed my diet for over a year now, I still have double stranded DNA, I have antiphospholipid antibodies, I have a positive ANA, I still have some painful days. I get very stiff joints some days. I still seem to have sun sensitivity but will check more when the weather gets warmer, I am in NY and it is still winter and very chilly here. I am very tired (fatigued) some days, more than others.

I have figured out that my red face means I have eaten something my body doesn't agree with, either an allergy or an intolerance. I figured out that my face would get red(Lupus rash) when I eat wheat, tomatoes or tomato sauce, or corn, (also when I am in the sun too long.) I figured this out through keeping a food/symptom diary.

On the positive side, my face rarely gets red anymore, my migraines have gone away, my acid reflux went away, my restless leg syndrome went away, I lost 30lbs, and my cholesterol went down 14 points(I don't eat cheese/dairy or red meat, very little chicken, no eggs because of my allergies and being health conscious). I have no sores on my face or scalp(discoid Lupus), they went away. Where I had sores on my scalp the hair has grown back!(I've read that the scarring from the discoid Lupus makes that impossible. BOLONEY!) Another positive is I haven't caught a cold in a very long time(my kids have been sick and I didn't catch their illnesses either!)

I am not on any medications at this time, not even aspirin, but I do supplement my Vitamin D-3 and calcium and magnesium. I also take UltraInflamex360 Plus by Metagenics that was given to me from the chiropractor/nutritionist. It has lots of ginger and turmeric(anti-inflamatory and blood thinning) and vitamins in it. I also try to eat as much healthy anti inflammatory, and other blood thinning foods as well.

I get monthly chiropractic treatments as well as craniosacral treatments.

I try to get exercise each day, just a little, if I am feeling too tired, I find the exercise lessens the stiffness, even if I am very stiff at the beginning.

Because of possible kidney problems with Lupus I don't eat very much salt and try to have VERY little fried food if at all, also dry foods are not good, like chips, rice cakes etc.

One thing that is hard to hide is my frustration with doctors. I feel that doctors form their own opinions and many of doctors are very hard to talk to. For instance I had been seeing 5 doctors at one time, an GYN Oncologist(I had pre cancerous cells in my cervix), a dermatologist specialist, a breast surgeon(had a possible mass in my breast), my general physician, and my rheumatologist and all 5 doctors knew I had Lupus with sun sensitivity and none of them told me to get tested for Vitamin D deficiency. Finally the chiropractor/nutritionist asked me to get tested, but my blood work would not be covered with my insurance through her, so she asked me to see if my general physician would order the test. After fighting with him, he finally tested me and my D levels were extremely low! I thought Vitamin D was in the news so much lately that surely all doctors were aware of the importance of testing and supplementing if a person had low levels but that just wasn't the case!

If you find a doctor that you can talk to and trust, this is worth it's weight in gold! Be very thankful if you have such a doctor!

OK you have Lupus, What's Next?

Here are some steps I recommend that you try if you are diagnosed with Lupus or any other autoimmune disease:

1)Keep a food/symptom diary. This will show if you have a repeated reaction to a food that you need to avoid to feel better.

2)Get tested for Celiac disease(often Lupus and Celiac go hand in hand,check the internet for articles)

3)Get a complete blood test from your health practitioner and also test if you are deficient in Vitamin D, Magnesium, Calcium, check mercury levels, thyroid function .Check for osteoporosis, bone density.

4)Test for allergies(with kinesiology or blood testing) (allergies and autoimmune diseases go hand in hand too again check the internet)

5)Avoid all foods you test allergic/intolerant to.

6)Detox your body(safely) don't try anything too wacky... I like eating tons of organic veggies and fruits and making fruit or veggie juices(always fresh fruit or veggies) or smoothies(with fresh or frozen fruits/veggies)

7)Flood your body with nutrients, eat super healthy foods,seasonal foods, raw food diets, macrobiotic diets, certified organic food, lots less salt(if you overdo), NEVER eat processed
foods, don't drink alcohol, don't smoke, have lots of Omega 3's, no soda, avoid too much caffeine/coffee, no trans fats, no artificial sweeteners, less real sugar or no real sugar. Chew each mouthful of food many times to aid in digestion, swirl juices smoothies in your mouth to be sure they are mixed with saliva before swallowing. Try to eat in a peaceful environment.

8)Exercise(don't laugh at me) I know you are in pain, try small steps, go get the mail, walk your kids to school, park further out from the grocery store, walk walk walk anywhere you can. Stretch! Yoga Or Tai Chi or Pilates. One thing to remember, DO NOT overdo on your good days, always strive to end early don't push yourself or you will hurt and not be able to do ANYTHING tomorrow.

9)Rest when you need to, say "no" if you are too tired!

10)Stress less... try not to sweat the small stuff, practice breathing exercises, many CD's are available at your local library, Andrew Weil has some excellent CD's on breathing/relaxation visualization and healing. Watch comedies, read joke books LAUGH!!!

11)Feng Shui-or lessen the clutter, clean your environment(don't laugh at me) I know you are too tired to clean! Try to do a little at a time or at least clean your bedroom and that can be your retreat...

12)Detox your house and your work space and your world as much as possible.
What is in your soap,shampoo, your deodorant, your toothpaste,your make up, your shaving cream,etc.?
Your skin absorbs everything into your body.
Try to get a shower water filter, or a whole house water filter(chlorine is a nasty chemical). Don't use bleach in your laundry, get a environmentally safe laundry soap, dishwasher soap.
Don't use aluminum pans/foil(at least don't let the aluminum foil touch your food, use less canned products many are coated with harmful chemicals, don't wear cheap jewelry many have lead in them and other harmful chemicals, don't wear nail polish
Home carpets/rugs and paints have many nasty chemicals in them try to find environmentally safe home decor items. Use wood, stone metal rather than plastic etc.
Avoid phlalates in many toiletry items(soaps, shampoos,perfume,etc.)
Get an air purifier and use it.
Use natural home cleaners such as vinegar and baking soda.
Real the labels, look up chemicals on the internet. Some are very scary!
Wear organic cotton clothing
Read "Pain Free in 6 Weeks..." by Sherry Rogers MD and/or any other Sherry Rogers books.


***Always ask questions and keep reading and learning about your disease. Doctors don't know everything and there is so much information to learn. You may stumble on something that can help you and you can bring it to your doctor's attention. Good Luck!

"The Lupus Recovery Diet" and Kinesiology

My next discovery was that many of the foods I tested weak for were excluded from "The Lupus Recovery Diet" book. OK, this was starting to make sense to me.... I continued to see the Chiropractor/Nutritionist/Kinesiologist(Dr. Christine Gizoni) and she explained to me that "Leaky Gut" or intestinal permeability is present in many diseases, especially autoimmune diseases. I needed to heal my "leaky gut".

Back to the library I went to get "The Lupus Recovery Diet" by Jill Harrington again! I studied again. This time it made sense and somehow do-able. So I eliminated all the foods I tested weak for at the doctor's office. I began to feel better, the doctor was RIGHT! I tested many more foods over many months and my present list of foods to avoid is this: Bananas,tomatoes,wheat,dairy,eggs,gluten,salt,sugar,shrimp(shellfish), beef,yeast,onions,all processed foods,peppers(not the hot chile variety),corn.

What do I eat?
Salmon(wild caught), tons of organic veggies and fruits, homemade oatmeal cookies, homemade chocolate peanut clusters, chicken and lamb(only occasionally), beans, brown rice, quinoa, brown rice pasta, almond "milk", nuts, seeds, tofu(occasionally), gluten free oatmeal, homemade brownie bottom "cheesecake", flax crackers, "raw" seed bread, and lots more!

Yes some days it is difficult,VERY difficult. I had to relearn to cook with different foods, I MISS some foods and cooking some foods immensely but my HEALTH is worth it!

In the next post I will tell you how I keep knowing I am on the RIGHT TRACK!