Index to the Fibromyalgia is a Pain T-Shirt and Gift Idea design

Chronic-Illness.org invites you to read Julie Wendell’s Fibromyalgia story:

Living with Fibromyalgia

by Julie Wendell

“Mommy, open this, please?” my 3-year-old son asked as he handed me a cereal bar early one morning.

I tried to tear off the top of the wrapper, but my fingers would not move or grasp the wrapper!

Terrified, I tried opening it again, but to no avail.  I had lost all strength in both of my hands!   As calmly as I could, I asked my 7-year-old son to open the cereal bar for his brother.  But inside, I was panicking because the weakness in my hands persisted for about an hour.

What was happening to me?

Little did I know that the morning of February 10th, 2008 marked the beginning of a myriad of severely painful symptoms.  My life was about to drastically change.

Over the course of the next few weeks, I started to experience alarming new symptoms. In addition to the weakness in my hands, I noticed that the joints in my hands were very swollen and stiff. I even took pictures of my hands from all angles to make sure that their odd shape was not just my imagination. I would often feel sharp zinging pains in my extremities, especially in my hands, wrists, knees, and ankles. My muscles and joints ached like I had the flu. There were times when I would be convinced I had a temperature of at least 101, just to find out it was completely normal every time I checked.

My level of fatigue went from being a “full time single working mother” to feeling like a “full time single working mother who also ran 100 miles a day.” I was physically exhausted from dealing with so much pain every day.

To make matters worse, I started noticing that when I woke up each morning, I would not feel refreshed, even after a full straight 6-8 hours of sleep.  Instead, it felt like I only slept for one hour each night.  So not only was I physically exhausted, I was emotionally drained as well.  The overall level of exhaustion was indescribable, the worst I have ever experienced in my life!  But I was hoping that whatever was plaguing me would just stop on its own.

One afternoon in April 2008, after I got off work and picked up my kids, I couldn’t get home fast enough.  My body was overwhelmed with pain like I never felt before.  As soon as we walked through the door, I immediately headed for the couch, where I spent the next four days. I had to call my mom to help me take care of the kids.  In addition to my existing symptoms, I also suffered from oppressive chest pain, muscles/joints that felt bruised, extreme coldness in my arms and face, and TMJ-like jaw pain.   I also had the sensation that my aching spine and pelvis were going to slide out of my body.

I cried often, because I had no idea how to cope with these bizarre symptoms.

I tried heating packs, ice packs, Tylenol/Advil, but nothing even remotely helped me.

My temperature was still normal at 98.6.

My mom, who is a nurse, thought maybe I had a virus, but most of the symptoms did not even resemble any virus I had ever had in the past, plus I was not running a fever.  Even after the four worst days of feeling severely “sick,” most of my symptoms never fully disappeared.

At this point, I was at my wits’ end, so I finally decided to get some help.  So even though I was terrified of the possible outcomes, I made an appointment to see my primary care physician.

After reviewing my list of symptoms and seeing the pictures of my hands, he thought it was very likely that I had rheumatoid arthritis. He immediately referred me to a rheumatologist, who wanted to test me for not only rheumatoid arthritis, but also lupus, mononucleosis, and multiple sclerosis.

He ordered some x-rays of my hands and a lot of bloodwork.   He also prescribed a week’s worth of steroids to see if that would help.

My daily life started becoming a real chore for me.  Everything and anything I usually did without a problem was now unbearable or overwhelming.  The mornings and evenings were the worst times of day for my pain, fatigue, and weakness.  I tried to stay strong, especially for my children, but there were days where I felt like giving up on everything.

I tried talking to a few friends and family members about how I was feeling, but they would just say that I was complaining too much and/or accuse me of being a hypochondriac. I had never felt so alone in my life.

The results of the blood tests and x-rays came back the following week and were completely normal.  Also, the steroids ended up not helping me at all.  Based on these findings, the rheumotologist suggested that I may have fibromyalgia.  He prescribed an NSAID called mobic to help with my muscle/joint pain and an anti-convulsant/anti-neuropathy medication called gabapentin to help with my nerve pain.

The doctor said that diagnosing fibromyalgia was very tricky because there are no actual diagnostic tools. Instead, the diagnosis is made after everything else has been ruled out.  He also wanted to wait and see how the next few months went with the new medications before confirming the suspected diagnosis.

During the following months, both of the medications had made a difference to where my daily activities became more tolerable.  I still felt very fatigued, but my quality of sleep seemed to be more restorative (due to the gabapentin).  My muscle and joint pain were definitely persistent but they were on more manageable levels (due to the mobic).

When I went back to the doctor in August 2008, he reviewed all of my test results and evaluated me again, then officially diagnosed me with fibromyalgia, a syndrome characterized by chronic pain, stiffness, and tenderness of muscles, tendons, and joints (definition by MedicineNet.com).

The treatment for fibromyalgia includes pain medication and exercise.  The doctor advised me to continue with the medications I was currently taking and to try doing light exercise when possible.  He also warned me that my medication combination was not always going to be perfect.  He said it may take a few tries with various medications before reaching optimal pain management, and what works for me now may not work for me in a few years.

I was completely devastated, knowing that I was going to live with unrelenting complicated pain and severe fatigue for the rest of my life.

Sometimes, in addition to medication and exercise, doctors recommend a gluten-free diet to help alleviate fibromyalgia symptoms.  Coincidentally, I had already been on a gluten-free diet for 4 years already, due to having an auto-immune digestive disorder called Celiac Disease.  Unfortunately, being on this diet did not stop me from having fibromyalgia nor had it eased its symptoms.  My doctor said that I’m one of the unlucky fibromyalgia patients who was not positively affected by a gluten free diet.  Sometimes I like to think that being gluten free has stopped my fibromyalgia symptoms from becoming uncontrollable.

A diagnosis of fibromyalgia carries a negative stigma in society because the symptoms are very vague and are not so clear-cut as other diseases/conditions.  I have actually heard people say that there is no such thing as fibromyalgia, or that the symptoms are fake and they are all in the person’s head.

It is also widely believed that people who have fibromyalgia just want attention and/or medication.  There are many doctors do not recognize fibromyalgia as an actual medical condition.  Therefore, people who do have fibromyalgia usually have to see numerous doctors before receiving a diagnosis.  Luckily for me, reaching a diagnosis for my symptoms only took 6 months and involved seeing only 2 doctors.  Some people suffer for years before finding an answer.

Since my diagnosis, additional symptoms have added themselves onto the original list, such as hypersensitivity to stimuli.  For example, if there is too much light or sound, I start feeling very overwhelmed and need to remove myself from the situation.

There are times where I cannot be touched, when even my clothes feel like too much overload on my skin and receiving a hug actually HURTS.

I also started becoming sensitive to the weather patterns, especially low pressure systems.  I jokingly call myself the “human barometer” because I seem to predict rain better than the weatherman!  During periods of damp or cold weather, my muscles and joints heavily protest, and in turn, the pain increases substantially.

I found that I have a low tolerance for any kind of exercise, it makes me feel worse rather than making me feel energetic and refreshed.

I have also developed difficulty with my short term memory and concentration (ie-”fibro-fog”), which has affected all aspects of my life, especially work.

Today, it remains difficult for me to deal with the pain and fatigue that I experience every day with fibromyalgia.  My doctor has changed my pain reliever from mobic to tramadol, which is a bit stronger, so my pain is at a tolerable level most of the time.  But I definitely have my share of bad days.

On a positive note, I have learned a few things from my experience with fibromyalgia.

I’ve learned not push myself to do more than I can handle, but I’m still learning that it’s okay to ask for help.

I have also learned to prioritize what is actually important and to just take things one day at a time.

Having fibromyalgia has made me realize it is so important not to take anything for granted.

After my diagnosis, my rheumatologist had pointed out to me that fibromyalgia is not a deadly or destructive disease, which is very fortunate.  However, living with chronic pain and fatigue is still a difficult challenge, no matter what the cause.

Yes, fibromyalgia is REAL.

My Fibromyalgia Story: Living with Fibromyalgia by Julie Wendell is a post from: Chronic Illness.org

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Diabetes is the name of a 3 metabolic diseases in which a person has high blood sugar –  either because the body does not produce enough insulin or because the diabetic’s body does not respond to the insulin that is produced. This results in high blood sugar, which produces the classic diabetes symptoms of polyuria (frequent urination), polydipsia (increased thirst), and polyphagia (increased hunger).

Advice for anyone coping with diabetes is that:

• Diabetes is a very complicated disease — emotionally and physically.
• No one likes to test their blood, but it’s better than the consequences — of feeling lousy, poor control, or not picking up on blood sugar levels too high or too low to remedy.
• The factor most people don’t consider is that when sugar levels are regulated during a hospital stay, the “patient” is on a schedule of regular meals and snacks; that schedule must be maintained to avoid hypo- or hyperglycemic episodes.
• Not maintaining sugar levels can affect one’s moods immensely. While a healthy person gets grouchy because of a missed meal, you must multiply that reactive feeling by more than 100 to appreciate how a diabetic reacts to altering his or her eating schedule.
• It’s hard to convince people that if they take care of themselves, even though it’s a pain, they’ll feel better; they’ve usually felt bad for so long that they forget what good feels like.
• 6 small meals a day are usually better than 3 larger ones.
• Too many people equate insulin with a cure. Insulin plus work is a way to make coping with the condition easier, but it still takes work.
• Dealing with the psychological aspects (of diabetes) is a huge undertaking.

The diabetes patient sometimes may feel he has lost all control, and that his only control is to not control. But once someone recognizes that while it is difficult to live with a chronic condition, that it isn’t impossible, he can then appreciate that the efforts necessary to cope with his condition are well worth it. I like to tell people to get in the habit of doing as much maintenance on their bodies as they do with their cars. If someone drives a vehicle for a year without changing the oil, it’s going to lock up on them and ruin the engine. Doing simple maintenance — even though it’s a pain and costs a bit — is better than losing the car. And you can’t buy a new body. If a person with diabetes eats right and checks his blood sugar levels, then his engine will run better, too.

The Three Main Types of Diabetes

1. Type 1 diabetes that results from the body’s failure to produce insulin; the Type 1 diabetes patients is usually required to inject insulin. Type 1 diabetes is also referred to as insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus (IDDM) and juvenile diabetes.
2. Type 2 diabetes which results from insulin resistance, a condition in which the diabetic’s cells fail to use insulin properly; the condition is sometimes combined with an absolute insulin deficiency. This condition was once referred to as non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus (NIDDM) and adult-onset diabetes.
3. Gestational diabetes occurs when a pregnant woman, who ha never had diabetes before, has a high blood glucose level during pregnancy.

This page is possible thanks to the help and assistance of an RN, BSN diabetes nurse educator with diabetes who does not wish to be named; she is well-qualified to be our expert.

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Diabetes is a post from: Chronic Illness.org

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(Revised) There are lots of diet plans to choose from. Each has its own claims to fame — or at least its promise of a more healthful eating lifestyle. Part of the problems with those diagnosed with syndromes and conditions like Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) and Fibromyalgia (FM) is that not everybody experiences exactly the same symptoms. For example, some with Fibromyalgia have Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS); others do not. Therefore, the same as not every treatment plan works for everyone diagnosed with CFS or FM, there isn’t a “one size fits all” eating regimen either. Many find they must match their diet with their (for lack of a better word) form of their disease, syndrome, or condition.

Details on the Specific Carbohydrate Diet™
by Bernie Standish

The Specific Carbohydrate Diet™ (SCD™) is a grain-free, lactose-free, and sucrose-free diet that was originally designed for Celiac Disease. Today the SCD is also used for Irritable Bowel Syndrome, Candida, Crohn’s Disease, Ulcerative Colitis, Diverticulitis, Cystic Fibrosis, and Chronic Diarrhea. The SCD™ is proving helpful to many with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Fibromyalgia as well. [Read more....]

The Anti-Inflammation Diet

Citing Jack Challem, author of The Inflammation Syndrome, this article by Catherine Guthrie explains the dietary steps to stamp out inflammation leading to high c-reactive protein (CRP) levels associated with the elevated risk of heart disease, arthyritis, fibromyalgia, and other disorders.

May the (Organic) Source Be With You

Most experts agree that organic and all natural foods free of chemical additives and preservatives are the healthiest food choices.

Diabetes and Diabetic Diets:

CookingWithPam.com Diabetic Cooking Section

Chronic-Illness.org Diabetes Section

The Everything Writing Well Cookbook recipe index

Special Diet Web Sites:

Enabled Cooking

Coping Skills: Special Diets is a post from: Chronic Illness.org

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Thanks to The Store Wars Veggie Tales-style animation, Chewbroccoli and a galaxy of other characters can help educate you and your family about the benefits of organic foods. The animation even has a “salad bar” cantana sequence!

It doesn’t end there. Unless you’re fortunate to have a store like Whole Foods Market in your neck o’ the woods, finding organic products isn’t always an easy task. More and more supermarkets are adding some organic foods to their store selections, but as anyone who doesn’t have the time and energy to read each and every label can attest, those selections are limited. (Until recently, none of the local supermarkets in my “farm country” smalltown Ohio area have preservative-, nitrite-, or nitrate-free deli meats, for example. So, if I wanted bacon, ham, salami, or other deli cuts, I had to rely on my niece bringing some with her when she visits from Atlanta or a nephew picking some up for me in Detroit — or I had to order directly from the Wellshire Farms Web site. While choices are still limited — and unfortunately far more expensive than regular deli meats, Kroger and WalMart now carry such brands as Hormel® Natural Choice® lunch meats and bacon.)

While the choices may not be certified organic, most local farmer’s markets do have vendor’s who sell locally grown, pesticide-free produce. Another way to find sources of organic foods is to visit The Organic Trade Association Web site; they’re the organization responsible for the “Store Wars” animation and they have an extensive organic foods directory available on their site.

May the (Organic) Source Be With You is a post from: Chronic Illness.org

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Excerpt from:

10 Natural Remedies That Can Save Your Life
by James F. Balch (Doubleday, April 1999)

GARLIC :

No one is neutral about garlic, just as no one is neutral about skunks. Some people love the look of a skunk’s soft, furry body, its quizzical face, its seemingly gentle demeanor. Others bluntly say that a skunk stinks, and they want nothing to do with it.

And then there’s garlic. Some cuisines seem to start with garlic, the other ingredients, like tomatoes, herbs, and shellfish, serving as mere afterthoughts. There are gourmets, bon vivants, and, if truth be told, gluttons who all speak of garlic the way wine connoisseurs speak of their favorite vintage and cheese lovers talk of the subtle distinctions in flavor of one variety over another.

The garlic haters, on the other hand, say it smells terrible. They can’t stand the way it comes out on the breath, the way the odor seems to ooze through the pores of the eater. They even joke that garlic is an excellent method of birth control; if one lover eats garlic, the other will maintain a distance of at least ten feet. For some people, garlic is even mildly toxic, upsetting their stomachs.

Garlic and alcohol are substances that are not metabolized. They are absorbed through the stomach lining, which is why they leave the telltale odor. And it’s why some people are sick to the stomach after ingesting them.

Fortunately, there is an aged garlic product that is detoxified and thus deodorized. Just as deodorized skunks make great house pets, so the more sociable garlic, with slightly altered chemistry and sold under the name Kyolic, can be used by people who can’t eat ordinary garlic. In fact, a number of studies indicate that Kyolic may be more effective than raw garlic when it comes to boosting the body’s immune system.

Why is garlic, in its original form or as the extract of the aged vegetable, good for you? Garlic contains germanium and selenium, which are sulfur-containing antioxidants that boost the immune system. In the study mentioned, conducted by Dr. Tariq Abdullah, Kyolic killed 20 percent more of the tumor cells in laboratory cultures than did raw garlic. And raw garlic is by itself one of the most potent boosters of your natural killer cells.

Kyolic has also been found more beneficial for hypoglycemics–people with low blood sugar levels–than raw garlic. The latter lowers the blood sugar level, unfortunately, but Kyolic stabilizes it. The aging process that creates Kyolic produces a supplement whose benefits I find stronger than those of raw garlic.

As enthusiastic as I am about barley grass, if someone were to ask me which single supplement he or she should use, I would recommend Kyolic garlic. It is among the oldest and most versatile of the documented natural remedies. When Hippocrates, the father of diagnostic medicine, was busy noting which treatments worked for the Greek people he treated, he listed garlic. A total of twenty-two ancient Egyptian remedies were found to use garlic, as noted in the Ebers Papyrus dating from the sixteenth century B.C.E. Garlic was a tool against the plague when it struck Marseilles in the 1770s. Albert Schweitzer found that, when he ran out of pharmaceutical supplies in his African mission, garlic successfully stopped dysentery. Louis Pasteur discovered that garlic had antibacterial properties. The Vikings would not go on long sea voyages without garlic. And, of course, as we know from fiction, garlic is an excellent defense against vampires.

Garlic’s value for your heart is well known. First, it contains properties for fighting “bad” cholesterol. We know now that high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol is not dangerous, but low-density lipoprotein (LDL) certainly is, because it can be oxidized by dangerous free radicals. Oxidized LDL is an enemy of the white blood cells, which become enlarged as “foam cells,” and ultimately are deposited on the arterial walls in the form of plaque. The lumen, the open space of the artery, becomes more and more narrow until it is completely clogged.

HDL works in a more positive fashion. It is thicker than LDL and acts a little like an older sibling assigned to keep the younger one out of trouble. HDL, in a way, takes the LDL by the scruff of the neck and escorts it to the liver, where it is broken down and removed from the body. LDL behaves itself only if it has not been oxidized. And it is the antioxidant quality of garlic that so diminishes the free radical damage to the cholesterol that LDL doesn’t need its sibling HDL to hang around. It can be safely removed by itself. The result is that the garlic reduces the start and the progression of arteriosclerosis.

Heart patients, therefore, are especially blessed by garlic, but it is important to check with your doctor before adding garlic to your regimen, because there are pharmaceuticals that match its chemical properties. This is especially the case with popular blood thinners. In fact, Germany licenses garlic supplements as drugs for the treatment of arteriosclerosis.

In the 1920s, the world was introduced to one of the most valuable yet dangerous drugs ever created. This was aspirin, and 25 percent of all people will, at some point, have a serious, perhaps life-threatening reaction to it. Even more important, some children may develop Reye’s syndrome from aspirin because their body chemistry is not sufficiently stable. Yet despite the risks, most emergency medical physicians and heart experts say that at the first sign of heart attack, you should take an aspirin and then call 911, because aspirin thins the blood, and this can delay or prevent a heart attack.

Garlic is natural aspirin, not because it contains salicylic acid, which was first identified in willow bark tea as a substance to ease headaches and reduce joint inflammation, but because it can help to prevent red blood cells from clumping together. Other qualities of garlic, so different from aspirin that they present no risk, dissolve clots and lengthen clotting time. This natural thinning of the blood helps every aspect of blood flow within your body. It is the safest source of prevention of heart attacks and strokes. Keeping that aspirin bottle tucked in with emergency medical supplies is still a good idea, but the regular consumption of Kyolic will almost certainly preclude the need for more drastic measures.

We know that garlic provides a benefit for the cardiovascular system. Perhaps you or someone you know has a little difficulty in walking. It doesn’t seem serious, but maybe it’s reached the point where you just don’t want to walk any more than you have to. You find that your legs feel weak, or you have a certain amount of leg pain. And when you stop walking to pause for a rest or sit down, the discomfort goes away.

That discomfort is caused by poor blood circulation in your legs. The technical term for the problem is intermittent claudication. Since it is known that garlic improves circulation to the body’s peripheries, studies were conducted with patients experiencing this problem. The regular use of garlic lengthened the distance they could walk without weakness or discomfort. And as a side benefit, their cholesterol levels were lowered, and their blood pressure dropped to a healthy level.

This is what happens when garlic becomes part of the diet and supplement program of those with heart problems. In these cases, we know that individuals who, by all rights of family history, should be experiencing problems with their hearts are not having problems. They are doing better than their ancestors. In longer-term studies, they have outlived everyone simply by adding garlic in one form or another.

Are these individuals genetically unique? Possibly, but it is doubtful. Instead, it is safe to assume that the garlic made the difference. Yet this is not scientific methodology. It is just common sense, which, when it comes to the use of garlic to counter genetics, makes for good medicine.

Where scientific methods can be applied, as with antibacterial factors, garlic has been repeatedly proven safe and effective. Probably every woman and most men have heard of “yeast infection” (a.k.a. yeast syndrome or chronic candidiasis), a term defined mostly through symptoms. Blood tests or stool cultures can reveal the infection. But usually it is determined through a careful, complete physical history that reveals such problems as depression, irritability, vaginal yeast infections, frequent bladder infections, chronic fatigue, lack of energy, reduced sex drive, inability to concentrate, and other distresses. Any one of these is a concern; several in combination generally indicate the presence of chronic candidiasis.

Because yeast infections, along with fungus problems and viral infections, are not usually life-threatening, double-blind studies have been carried out on garlic as a treatment. The findings from these studies have repeatedly shown the value of garlic, in some cases used alone, and in others administered in combination with other natural therapeutics.

Note: Be certain not to self-medicate with garlic in response to the problems mentioned above. With candidiasis, for example, there may be several other concerns. You must eliminate from your diet alcohol, high-sugar foods, and other substances with a high-yeast or mold content. Your digestion must be improved. Detoxification of the liver must be pursued and the immune system strengthened. Then you must coordinate your efforts with your doctor’s for continued treatment, because yeast infections can lie dormant and suddenly return if you fail to continue your care after the immediate flare-up.

Garlic is also excellent in the handling of body fat. This does not mean that you can eat garlic instead of getting exercise. You might be able to scare a vampire, but sloth, indolence, and overindulgence have no fear of garlic. Garlic, however, is acknowledged as one of the most effective means of reducing fat in conjunction with a healthy diet and exercise program.

This is not to say that you can eat all you want, using garlic as a magic pill. What you eat and how much you eat determine one source of fat, perhaps the most controllable source of fat in your body. The younger you are, the easier it is to burn the fat you take in through diet. As you get older, the ability to burn fat decreases. You may be as active at forty as you were at twenty, but you will find that a diet that left you with a flat stomach and slim hips in your youth is now forcing you to go to a larger size of clothing. This is natural and not unhealthy, but excess fat is never a good situation.

Note: Recent reports of long-term studies on body weight and health show that excess weight alone is not the danger it was once believed to be. The more excess fat you carry, the greater the stress on your body, but repeated dieting causes even greater stress. An important factor is your volume of exercise. An overweight person whose weight is stable, who is physically active, and who eats a healthy diet, including the appropriate supplements, will be far better off than the “hard body” whose diet and exercise habits are wrong. To be fat is not necessarily to be unhealthy. It is simply the most visible sign of a potentially dangerous condition that may manifest itself if you do not respect all the other factors that insure good health.

The fat we scold for clinging to our bodies as we age comes from two sources. One fat stays there because our bodies fail to break it down and eliminate it. The other fat is made by our bodies, a process known as endogenous lipogenesis. Both may be products of our lifestyle as much as our age and eating habits.

For example, do you drink? I don’t mean to excess. I mean a beer after work or some wine with dinner. Nothing to worry about. Nothing excessive.

What you probably don’t realize is that the alcohol you consume interferes with the breakdown of dietary fats and stimulates endogenous lipogenesis. In other words, alcohol triggers the body’s fat-producing mechanism and inhibits the body’s ability to break down and eliminate fat.

Taking garlic is not an excuse to drink. I don’t want to see you spending your happy hour sipping margaritas and downing quantities of Kyolic. However, garlic does slow or stop our body’s production of fat by breaking down the lipids and enhancing the elimination of various by-products. Garlic also moves lipids from tissue to the bloodstream for eventual removal. Garlic can dramatically reduce the bad consequences of a multitude of dietary “sins.” It truly is a good thing.

Perhaps one of the most promising findings of research on the use of garlic has come in the field of cancer. The Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York has found that garlic inhibits the growth of cancer cells in the laboratory. And in a study of colon cancer conducted at the M. D. Anderson Hospital in Houston, Dr. Michael Wargovich determined that diallyl sulfide, a major component of garlic, reduced the growth of colon cancer in mice. A related experiment showed that diallyl sulfide may prevent cancer of the esophagus and help in preventing prostate cancer in some individuals.

The experiments have been thorough and the results encouraging. Garlic is gradually proving to be an effective treatment for cancer as well as a preventive, and is now being tried, in conjunction with other treatments, on immune-system disorders like AIDS. Laboratory results are consistently positive, and trials on humans show similar findings, though they are not yet far enough along for garlic to be stipulated as a treatment. However, as I said at the start of this chapter, if I had to take just one supplement for my health, it would be Kyolic garlic.
Copyright© 1999 by James F. Balch

From:
10 Natural Remedies That Can Save Your Life
by James F. Balch

Garlic: One of 10 Natural Remedies That Can Save Your Life is a post from: Chronic Illness.org

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Breaking the Vicious Cycle: Intestinal Health Through Diet by Elaine Gloria Gottschall

The Specific Carbohydrate Diet™ (SCD™) is a grain-free, lactose-free, and sucrose-free diet that was originally designed for Celiac Disease. Today the SCD is also used for Irritable Bowel Syndrome, Candida, Crohn’s Disease, Ulcerative Colitis, Diverticulitis, Cystic Fibrosis, and Chronic Diarrhea. The SCD™ is proving helpful to many with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Fibromyalgia as well. The SCD was designed by Dr. Sidney Haas for his young Celiac patients. Years later his son, Dr. Merrill Haas also joined him in his research and together in 1951 they published a book called Management of Celiac Disease. Elaine Gottschall popularized the SCD after her daughter successfully used the diet in the late 1950s to recover from Ulcerative Colitis.

After receiving her Bachelor of Arts in biology and later a Masters of Science, Ms. Gottschall further studied and improved upon the Specific Carbohydrate Diet. She spent four years investigating the effects of various sugars on the digestive tract working mainly on the cellular level.

It is believed that intestinal microbes (bacteria and yeast) contribute to intestinal problems. These microbes need carbohydrates for their energy. The SCD uses carbohydrates known as monosaccharides (single sugars) that are easily digested in the first part of the small intestine, where they are well absorbed and therefore don’t remain in the digestive tract where they can feed the microbes.

The more popular elimination diets, particularly the Candida diets, believe that the ingestion of yeasts and fungi also contribute to the overgrowth of yeast and bacteria in the intestinal tract. However, the SCD concentrates on the elimination of the disaccharides (double sugars) and polysaccharides (starches). The disaccharides include lactose, sucrose, maltose, and isomaltose. The more complex carbohydrates do not completely breakdown in the small intestine and therefore arrive undigested in the further sections of the small intestine and the colon. There they are able to feed the bacteria and yeast. This can lead to malabsorption of nutrients because of injury to the surface of the intestine.

The suggested diet is an all natural diet, including meats, fish, canned fish packed in water or oil, poultry, some cheeses, dry-curd cottage cheese, home-made yogurt, eggs, nuts, fats, butter and oils, whole fruits, some juices, and non-starchy vegetables. Honey is also permitted as it is a single sugar. Yogurt must be home-made and left to sit for 24 hours to ensure it is lactose free. (Store bought yogurt has anywhere from 4.5 to 7 grams of lactose per cup.)

A partial list of foods to avoid are all grains, including rice, cereal and pasta; table sugar; molasses; corn syrup; maple syrup; milk and milk products except those listed above; processed meats; smoked meats; canned meats; canned vegetables; white potatoes; sweet potatoes; yams; corn; parsnips; and margarine.

After following this diet, most people will notice some improvement in as little as three to four weeks. By six months some people are able to decrease or stop taking their meds, and after approximately six months to two years most people can start adding back the forbidden foods one at a time without a return of their symptoms. (Instructions on which foods can be added back to the diet are given beside each food on Elaine Gottschall’s Legal / Illegal Foods Lists.)

Information on Elaine Gottschall’s Specific Carbohydrate Diet™ book, Breaking the Vicious Cycle: Intestinal Health Through Diet

How to Make Homemade Yogurt (as recommended for the Specific Carbohydrate Diet™)

Index of Web Sites Featuring the Specific Carbohydrate Diet™

Breaking the Vicious Cycle Web Site

SCD Web Library with SCD Recipes

Revision Copyright © 2010 Blue Rose Bouquet Group, LLC
All Rights Reserved

Details on the Specific Carbohydrate Diet™ is a post from: Chronic Illness.org

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1. Coping Skills: Special Diets Diets Streamlined for Those with Disabling Chronic Conditions (Revised) There...
2. Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Fibromyalgia, and Multiple Chemical Sensitivities Personal Stories and Reports Personal Stories & Reports (revised) T-Shirt and Gift Merchandise...
3. Redefining Slow: A Chronic Illness Realities Comic Strip View the design for the shirt Pammy is wearing...

To help in your efforts to educate yourself about additives that can adversely affect your health, consult:

Wikipedia Food Additives Information

MedLine Plus Food Additives Information
U.S. National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health

Alphabetical Listing of Food Additives, Their Codes, and Links to National Library of Medicine Citations

Food Additives (uses other than as flavouring agents) Database
Administered jointly by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO)

Food Intolerance Network
This Australian Web site is “http://www.fedupwithfoodadditives.info/” and shouldn’t be confused with the .com site by the same name that was created to counter the food additives information mentioned on this site.

Birds Eye in the UK bans artificial food additives from their products

U. S. Food and Drug Administration Explanation of (Justification for?) Food Additives

Food Navigator
Breaking News on Food & Beverage Development in Europe

Nutritional Ingredients: Preservatives and Their Link to Allergies and Sensitivities is a post from: Chronic Illness.org

Related posts:

1. Coping Skills: Special Diets Diets Streamlined for Those with Disabling Chronic Conditions (Revised) There...
2. Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Fibromyalgia, and Multiple Chemical Sensitivities Personal Stories and Reports Personal Stories & Reports (revised) T-Shirt and Gift Merchandise...
3. Redefining Slow: A Chronic Illness Realities Comic Strip View the design for the shirt Pammy is wearing...

Small Poster | Sweatshirt | Black T-Shirt | Other Gifts featuring This Comic

This comic is the January page in the Collection #1
Chronic Illness Realities Comic Strip Calendar

and the January poster print in the Collection #1
Chronic Illness Realities Comic Poster Calendar

Featured in the Low Carb Frustration comic strip:

Whenever Clock

Low Carb Frustration is a post from: Chronic Illness.org

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Small Poster | Greeting Cards | Other T-Shirts and Gifts featuring This Comic

This comic is the February page in the Collection #1
Chronic Illness Realities Comic Strip Calendar

and the February poster print in the Collection #1
Chronic Illness Realities Comic Poster Calendar

The Need for a Name Tag While Low-Carb Dieting is a post from: Chronic Illness.org

No related posts.

According to research done by the National Cancer Institute and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) — which just happens to be the most thorough research on the subject done to date, when a sensible diet results in a few pounds over what those charts tell you is your ideal weight and you find yourself :::gasp!::: :::shudder!::: “overweight,” as long as you’re not obese that may not necessarily be a bad thing.

The most hilarious (and, therefore, the most enjoyable reading I’ve come across on this topic) has to be David Brooks’ Living Longer is the Best Revenge, an op-ed piece in The New York Times. Brooks reminds us that “[t]he release of a report in The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) indicating that overweight people actually live longer than normal-weight people represents an important moment in the history of world civilization. It is the moment when we realize that Mother Nature – unlike Ivy League admissions committees – doesn’t like suck-ups.”

Fat and Happy is another op-ed piece about this topic, this one by John Tierney, who says: “Porkers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your diets!”

It seems that everyone at The New York Times wants to weigh in on this issue: Editorial: You Can Be Too Thin, After All

Once you’ve laughed about the subject, you might want to take a serious (pun intended) look at some information on the issue:

Some Extra Heft May Be Helpful, New Study Says

FULL TEXT – JAMA: Excess Deaths Associated With Underweight, Overweight, and Obesity

Some Extra Heft May Be Helpful, New Study Says, The New York Times

Related Information:

EXTRACT – JAMA: Deaths Attributable to Obesity

ABSTRACT: Secular Trends in Cardiovascular Disease Risk Factors According to Body Mass Index in US Adults

Weighty Issues is a post from: Chronic Illness.org

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