Vegan and Gluten Free...otherwise known as VGF (verygoodfood) - Part 1

Hi!
Been a while...its now 2013 and its February...how time flies.
Quick update...Chinut is gluten intolerant...oh yes indeedy :\
How does one 'find out' that they are gluten intolerant? It begins with denying the fact that every time you eat bread or similar, you experience awful wrenching pains across the diaphragm, up the esophagus and get a smashing headache and sweats to go with it. Yes, for a while there (a long while actually) I'd considered that it must be eggs, or butter, or a combination of eggs and toast with butter, so I'd try 'no butter' and still get a reaction...so I tried 'no eggs' and I still got a reaction. Finally (oh dear me, yes, it takes a while for the light to dawn...) I tried 'no bread', but I told myself it was so I could actually lose some extra flab because admitting that the pain was caused by bread was like telling my best friend they were a bad influence on me...just a hard thing to do.

So bread was eliminated and I went on to feel marvelous. I lost a stack of weighty flab from my bod. I felt so much better! The peri-oral dermatitis I'd had flaring very very badly even went down. These subtle and not-so-subtle indications of my body's massive internal imbalance, helped me to stay bread free for some time. Though, contradictorily, I did not want to admit I had gluten intolerance. It seemed like a weakness to me. It seemed to me that I'd have to admit 'something was wrong with me'...

I ate oats, and with minimal reactions and the actual goodness of oats, I was able to 'feel full' after a meal of them. Three years down the track from my wonderful pregnancy with Angelina where I'd done all the bread-free work, and I'd slipped back into old habits. I can bake bread really well, and its a source of pride for me to produce this for me and my family, so it was difficult to bake this gorgeous smelling stuff and not sample some too...you know what I mean. Out of the oven comes a hightop loaf of wholemeal or tray after tray of vegetable Cornish pasties and it turns into Drool City. When I would see my babies all heartily tucking into the goodies I baked it made the world seem right. Baking tends to lend a certain atmosphere of comfort to a home.

Zipping forward to the pregnancy with Jeremy and I've again established a massive flare up of peri-oral dermatitis. Its awful. I feel like a baboon's arse, my face is red, inflammed, itchy and cringefully ugly to me. I desperately try every known trick I have and ask informed friends for their best take on what to do. Time and time again we return to pro-biotics and pre-biotics as the indications all point to massive internal imbalance. I even go so far as to try out MMS (water cleaning) treatment, but it was a little to much to take. What does help is the pro-biotics. I used Kefir milk. It's sour and zingy, creamy and wholesome. I like it but I don't like having to drink it. 'Consistency' is not my 'thing'. I help this by also using a pro-biotic vegetable powder (In-Liven by Miessence) but its made with greens that contain gluten, so I end up having my skin blow up from that. I go back to Kefir. Better. At this point, I am still eating bread (yeah! can you believe it?!) and having the pain reactions to it, but being pregnant and sometimes very hungry, I choose the quickest option and 'make a sandwich'. (this does cause me pain but I can explain it as indigestion of pregnancy...nice'n'tidy) In fact, we all can see, its not a quick option and not even the lazy option...that would have been a pear or an apple, which is what I did during Angelina's pregnancy.

Along comes Jeremy, birthed at home into water, and he's just beautiful. I enter this stretch of Motherhood with conscious foreboding. I look at him on the first night and shake my head, say to myself 'how am I going to do this when I feel like 'this'?', and we end up just 'getting on with it'. That's what I am good at. Perseverance. I persevere. If nothing else I am the Energiser Bunny...I'll just keep on keeping on. A couple of weeks in and we all know something is definitely wrong. A baby, any baby, shouldn't be able to produce this much wind. Its just in.sane. And me too! I can't get over how much bloating and wind I have. Its uncomfortable and unsociable. I read all I can about babies, gluten intolerance, dairy intolerance, and colic being a convenient way for us all just to keep on eating a standard western diet and dose our infants with colic mixtures. Tidy,...again. Society seems to enjoy tidiness.

Jeremy around four months old, and me ;) still sort of bloated...we've found gluten free bread, but I don't think it helps one to stay slim... ;\

This is like a red rag to a bull in my case. 'So I should just dose my bubba and hope it works?'. Like fuq I will. I know there is a solution, but it will be a difficult one for me to get my head around. I make no bones about it now. I am a product of conditioning from the society I was brought up in. I'll get past that too though,...one day soon. I try one week without dairy, and little effect (because I'm still eating bread) and then the next week with no bread. Well. After one 24hr stint of no bread Jeremy sleeps for four hours, peacefully, in the morning. I conclude, 'I am gluten intolerant and so is my baby'. Tah-dah!

Without gluten I become calmer. My skin clears up and I 'handle' stuff better. Now, all I need to do is get this bod into gear and balance the internals, because, yep, we've got thrush on a massive scale. Both baby and me. We clear it away with liquid and gluten free pro-biotic (Fast Tract from Miessence) some organic extra virgin coconut oil, a little colloidal silver and lots of fresh food. I am still on this particular 'journey' and this bacteria or parasite or whatever is stubbornly refusing to fuq off out of my system or at the very least calm down enough to be undetectable...so we are in a kind of def-con 5 situation with this little 'bastid' (or could that be 'blasto'?)...I'm starting Pokeroot Tincture in the coming week so will keep you posted on that little experiment too.

I notice from now on, that when I have a milk tea that Jeremy gets bad nappy rash. It manifests like his bowel is on fire..poor little chap gets red blistery like things around his anus...and so again I can conclude that at least for Jeremy 'my baby is dairy intolerant'.  I also observe that eggs make me feel queasy. They give me a pep of energy via the protein, but from what I am researching about gluten intolerance, it lends credence to the theory or research so far that gluten intolerant people seem to have difficulty processing certain proteins.

It is at this point I now know that Vegan and Gluten Free is going to be my future. Now starts the de-programming from a life so far of breads, standard grains, dairy and egg. Honey! omgoodness...I'll have to give up honey! damn. Then I discover maple syrup. ok!...its all ok again... ;)

More to come on my amazing Vegan and Gluten Free Journey in future posts! Stay tuned for amazing insights into Almonds, Cashews, and Brazil nuts (yum). The glory of Tahini. Wonderful wonderful Maple syrup and the joys of dried fruits and bliss balls. Banana and Spirulina smoothies, fresh organic herb teas, stacked green salads to make your mouth water,Chia Seed fantasticness and more :)

Blessings! xxx

Memories of madness and migraines...

I was once a chronic migraine sufferer. I didn't get the standard 'oh my head hurts' type of migraine. I got the industrial strength, skull-splitting-gut-spinning-eye-swirling-tongue-numbing kind. With a little temporary paralysis thrown in for good measure too.

It always ended in a vomit. A three hour journey to heave all the contents and more from my frame. Then the pain would increase, and for days onward I would have that feeling like someone had injected a rubber inner-tube filled with water inside my skull around my brain. Owch.

I remember my first ever migraine vividly.

It's a very lucid memory.

I was five years old and had come home from school with the measles. I remember that Mum and Dad had bought me some Fruit Tingles for a nice sugery hit to make me feel better. I can remember being allowed to play outside in the sunshine for a little while after coming back from the doctor's and then waking up in bed after my fever had broken, but with this weird thing happening to my eyes and a smashing headache. I left the bed, went down to the garden and retreived my half packet of Fruit Tingles from above the hose tap. Then, as I was walking back to the brick steps I heard the rumble of the large semi-trailers steaming down the hill at the bottom of our street. They sounded very far away,..... but I distinctly remember thinking at that moment that if I just could get myself down the road, I could walk under a truck and all the pain would stop. The next thing I remember is being in bed again with Mum telling me I should NOT get out of bed and wander around whilst I was sick. I told her about the trucks then. She was shocked and scared. I scared my Mum really good that day, without any intention to.

Inevitably this prolonged experience with migraines lead to analgesics. Painkillers of many and varied sorts. Aspros did nothing, just made me vomit earlier than usual. Then I was given a few Pethadine injections.(lovely, lovely, lovely) Then, I was prescribed Codiene Asprin at the ripe old age of 15. And, if you give a 15 year old access and permission to prescription pain relief, well then, the outcome is pretty much set.

Anyhoo. Life went on, up and down, small bouts of suspected insanity. A little behavioural self-abuse, a little alcohol abuse (pffttt! actually, a lot), a little bit of running away from my responsibilities, and generally erupted in a big sense of not knowing what the hell I was here for.

They abated suddenly after meeting my husband about 12years ago. Now. I'm not convinced either way which catalyst it was. It could have been the introduction to large amounts of marijuana resin for a short intense period of time. It could have been the meeting of my lovely husband that gave me purpose and connection. It could have been getting out of the family home and running away to the other side of the planet. Methinks it was a conglomerate effect.

I've had a total of about 4 migraines since I've been married, which is a vast improvement on the 2 to 3 times weekly I was having before I met him. I had one today. Out of the blue. I usually like to be able to pinpoint the catalyst, in some form of stress trigger. But no. Don't know.

At least now when I have them I meditate the bastards out and only sometimes have to take a little panadol. It just sucks immensely that I can still get one.

Om Mani Padme Hum.