Food For Thought Part I

One small step to determining your body's individual needs

A little bit of background:
Let me introduce myself. Aside from my bio, I am an optimistic pessimist. Yes, we do exist. I also have a love of life and learning. I also have this very interesting body that has its own agenda.
I suffer from many physical things. But today we will talk a little bit about the hormonal migraine headaches that I get to experience every month for 10-17 days. And no, that is not a typo. This leads me to share with you the hypo allergenic diet that I went on a couple of years ago, that has been very helpful.
Here’s how it went. I had some long visits with those who practice traditional medicine. They were not helpful. I actually appreciate traditional medicine and I am not against it, but it just wasn’t working for my body. Thus I went to see this fabulous woman, who is a naturopath. She started the diagnostic process by asking me a lot of questions about my body, and how it worked. She recommended some supplements which have really helped. I’ll talk about that on my next post. She also set about to determine if I had any allergies. This is what we did, and it has changed my life.
The Hypo-allergenic diet
My naturopath, an individual who uses a holistic approach and focuses on natural remedies like herbs and foods instead of synthetic drugs or surgeries, had me remove the following things from my diet, for an entire month, to get them out of my system.

The NO list
Fruits and Veggies: NO oranges, orange juice, tomatoes, corn, or any creamed veggies.
Grains: No wheat, corn, barley rye, kamut, no gluten-containing products. No products made from Wheat, corn, spelt, kamut, rye or barley.
Soy: No soy, no soy products. NO tofu, soybeans, soy milk etc...
Nuts: No peanuts, or peanut butter
Meat and Fish: No beef, pork, shellfish, Sausage, hot dogs, cold cuts, or canned meats other than fish in water.
No Dairy: All Dairy which included, milk, cheese, cottage cheese, cream, sour cream, yogurt, butter, ice cream, non-dairy creamers, eggs.
No Sugar/sweeteners: No white or brown refined sugar (insert weeping here), honey, corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup, maple syrup, Soda pop/ soft drinks. No chocolate.
No Alcohol.
No caffeine: No coffee, tea, and any other drinks with caffeine in them,
No dressings or condiments. No ketchup, relish, chutney, soy sauce, BBQ sauce, and any/all other condiments. No margarine, butter, shortening, hydrogenated oils, mayonnaise, and other spreads.
Some of these things were not hard to stop, because I don’t consume them. On the other hand… it is a flavorless and time consumingly difficult way to prepare food from the Yes list. I can also chat about this in my next post.

Here is what I could eat
The YES list
Fruits and Veggies: Yes to unsweetened, frozen, dried, or canned water packed fruits, and fruit juices, anything but Soy.
Grains/Starches: Rice, Oats, millet, quinoa, amaranth, teff, tapioca, buckwheat, potatoes, arrowroot.
Nuts: Any nuts but peanuts. Seeds are also ok.
Meat and Fish: Yes to frozen or fresh chicken, turkey, fish, wild game, lamb, and canned water packed fish.
Drinks: Distilled, mineral, seltzer or filtered water, decaffeinated herbal tea.
Some Sweet: Fruit sweeteners, blackstrap molasses, brown rice syrup and stevia.
Some Spice: All spices like salt, pepper, dill garlic ginger, cumin oregano, parsley… etc. and Vinegar.
The Result:
After a challenging month of eating from the Yes list, I gradually re-introduced each “no” food into my diet one at a time. And the results were fascinating to me. For example for me personally, I should not eat oranges, honey, lunch meat, pork, soy, or eggs. I should be careful with peanuts, certain dairy products, shell fish, corn derivatives and tomatoes. I learned this from the way I felt after I re-introduced the foods from the “no” food list.
What does this all mean? Well, first of all when I was eating the hypoallergenic diet. I have never felt better. Secondly by using the information I got from this diet, I have been able to reduce my migraine pain by about 50%.
In the next several posts, I will break down this process for you, and help you examine some options for yourself. I do this so you can think about it. This is food for thought, but I would never recommend you doing this without visiting with a naturopath or other person who practices alternative medicine. This diet along with the guidance of a naturopath can be one helpful step to determining your body’s individual needs.