Online Recovery Programme Session 7

Where We Are Now

I had suffered from IBS for many years and it flared up when I was nervous, if my stomach was empty and when I was full. I had been through all the regular tests and was told to eat more fibre and avoid stress.

More fibre sometimes caused a severe reaction so I read all I could and I eventually came across an old book called The Hay Diet Made Easy. I am so glad I am a bookworm!

It was one of those Eureka moments.

I could totally understand why my digestive system was struggling so much. It made complete sense.

The Hay Diet is otherwise known as food combining and its message is so simple:

‘Don’t Mix Foods That Fight’ War Zone On a Plate

Inside your body the enzymes that digest the starchy chips will fight with the enzymes that you produce to digest high protein foods.

That was exactly what I could feel going on in my body whenever I ate - a war. I learned that when you eat carbohydrates at the same time as protein the different enzymes that are required to digest them cancel each other out.

Then some simple rules worked for me. They won't necessarily work for everyone but they're a good place to start and see how you feel. (There is more information on different options later).

• Cut out processed food processed foods
• Separate starches from protein
• Eat 50% fresh fruit and vegetables

I learned about creating the right environment in my own body and this bit really excited me:

‘If we give our own body the right conditions it will come to our aid, releasing its own remarkable healing power. All we have to do is give it the raw material to do the job and take away everything that hinders its work’.

- Jackie Habgood

It takes some planning and then you realise how habitual your eating habits are! I tried this and got great results and then I would forget sometimes or just thought I might just get away with it.

Guess what happened? I would be back to experiencing all the discomfort and misery of IBS.

What is Candida?

Candida is a yeast that lives in your gut and can result in a serious condition which causes a range of symptoms including chronic fatigue, thrush, abdominal bloating, depression and, if left unchecked, can also result in irritable bowel syndrome.

Yeast and sugar feed the candida, so every time you eat anything with these in it, it multiplies and it nearly always causes food intolerances.

A good way to test at home is not very pleasant, but will give you an idea of whether you have Candida. Spit into a glass of water at night and in the morning, look in the glass and if it looks like it has grown and has gone spidery and has legs, then you have probably got Candida.

Again you can get this tested with Practitioners.

We have a questionnaire for you to answer in this module which will give you an idea if you have it. If you do have Candida you should avoid yeast, which is not just in bread, but in gravy, sauces and many other foodstuffs.

Sugar is also in so many things you wouldn't even think about - baked beans, nearly every sauce, jars, canned food (eg soup), so it's not the easiest thing to avoid, but doing so will make a big difference to your energy levels.

Sugar causes havoc with our blood sugar levels which rise sharply and then fall, causing fatigue as it also kicks in the adrenals, and then they stay on!! Cutting sugar out will have a bigger impact than you think.

Once you know what foods you intolerant to, and if you have tested positive for Candida, you need to start planning what you're going to cook and have a plan of what you can have to eat when you go out. You can make your lunch and take it with you.

You can make your own cereals as most of the boxed versions contain sugar. One suggestion is a lovely cereal made with barley, & rye flakes, seeds, cinnamon, & fresh strawberries & blueberries, with either rice milk or a new coconut milk in a carton (not the tins) - you can buy it in Tesco.

It is important to be prepared, as on the days when I was really tired and I didn't have the energy to cook, having soups prepared made life so much easier. Freeze a few meals when you have a day that you feel a bit better, or get some help from family and friends.

So what happened when I saw a nutritionist?

I had some tests done, and Candida came back clear, which was a relief to know. A year of depriving myself of so many nice foods and chocolate was worth it! 

So what was causing all this? Parasites!! I had 2 really bad parasites.

One was systemic, so I was riddled with it, and the list of symptoms from that alone was bad enough. I also had zero gut flora, which meant that I had no friendly bacteria to fight off the bad bacteria from the parasites and any other bacteria. That is also why it took so long to kill the Candida.

70% of our immune system is in the gut, and I had zero immunity. No wonder I was struggling for so many years, and why I kept reacting badly to so many foods, because my digestive system was completely shot to pieces.

Even though I was taking a high strength pro-biotic for years, that particular brand didn’t work for me either.

If only I had known this year’s ago, and been tested for these all together. I would have saved myself years of feeling so ill and a lot of money on tests I didn’t need. We all try so many things, and the biggest problem is that we don't know what we don't know.

Because I was unaware that parasites existed I was never tested for them or my gut flora - I had no idea. So the reason I am sharing this story is because if I had known back then what I know now, the first thing I would have done was to go and see a nutritionist.

You can't see just anyone as they need to have an understanding of these chronic exhaustive conditions. It may cost a bit for some tests, but if you know the difference it can make, and I‘m hoping from my experience and my story, you can learn from that, that the cost could be the best money you will ever spend.

Not everyone has this many digestive issues, so my advice is, if you are relating to my story in any way, then PLEASE see a Nutritionist or a Nutritional Therapist. Some Naturopaths are also able to do many of these tests.

Co-Enzyme Q10 (Co-Q-10)

This is a most amazing supplement and is beneficial on so many levels as it protects our bodies against free radical damage. It is responsible for many essential chemical reactions in your body.

It helps with:

• Weight Loss as it stimulates your body's metabolism
• Increasing energy
• Immune System: significantly enhances immune function

Good Quality Multi Vitamin & Mineral Supplement

Good quality being the operative words. Vega is a good brand. They don’t have to be too expensive, but the cheaper ones in Holland & Barratt have not got the right combination of Vitamins & Minerals and they are not worth taking.

Probiotics

Probiotics are live microorganisms (in most cases, bacteria) that are similar to beneficial microorganisms found in the human gut. They are also called "friendly bacteria" or "good bacteria."

There are many advertised in yoghurts or drinks, but these all contain sugar, and this sugar can then kill the friendly bacteria, so the best options are supplements, containing at least 4 billion microorganisms

Let’s look at a few examples.

Oils & Fats

What fats are better for you? Vegetable seed oils or saturated fats found in animal meats? Well, go back a few thousand years, and think about how you would make an oil out of vegetable seeds? Basically you couldn’t really, you just wouldn’t have the tools to squeeze an oil out of them in the quantities we use today.

Meats

Now what about animal / meat products? Of course we would have been eating meat, and in fact have been eating meat for millions of years. This is a Palaeolithic diet, so we are far more adapted to eating and processing the saturated fats in meat than any other oil.

Grains

My next example is similar: are we more adapted to eating meats or grains such as wheat? The answer is virtually the same. Grains have only been produced in agricultural quantities in the last 10,000 years, a drop in the ocean compared to how long we have been eating meats. This is a possible answer to why so many people are wheat intolerant, our digestive systems just aren’t as well adapted to them.

These are examples of general patterns in our nutrition/ evolution. We can get more detailed than this and look at our genetics and family background too. This is most easily explained by looking at extremes.

Let’s take for example the Eskimos. Their diet consists of nearly 100% animal meat and is extremely high in animal saturated fat. Most people know that the Eskimos have incredibly low rates of heart disease, yet we have been indoctrinated to believe that these are the exact foods that should be clogging our arteries if we even so much as look at it!

An extreme in the other direction are certain African tribes where they are very nearly 100% vegetarian and they have the same fantastic health as many other indigenous cultures around the world (this is based upon research by a dentist called Weston Price).

So would you make an Eskimo vegetarian or an African tribesman consume large amounts of meat? No - of course not, it's all about the individual and how their own body responds to the food they eat.

Everyone is an individual: we all look different on the outside and our metabolism is as different on the inside too. We will each respond better to different foods, different mixes of protein, carbohydrates and fats and will even do better with different sized meals at breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Some of us will thrive on 3 meals per day, others will do better with 6 smaller meals.

How do you think your diet is performing for you?

The simple way to find this out is 'how do you feel?' If you are not as healthy as you want to be, then you are probably doing something wrong.

A very simple piece of advice is to try something different.

So if you are tired, have recurrent colds, infections and other illnesses and you eat vegetarian then I would say try not being vegetarian! If you are overweight and lethargic and eat meat at every meal then try cutting your meat intake down and get closer to being a vegetarian - simply experiment with your foods, trying something new.

Junk Food

The other piece of simple advice is to stop eating anything that is man-made and refined (sugar, hydrogenated fats etc.); if it wasn’t around 10,000 years ago then don’t eat it!