Food, glorious food, (not)

Day 148

I put out a call into the universe, a query, a request, a challenge to the Gods, and would you Adam and Eve it, I got a reply, pronto. I was led to a book that I got from the library two weeks ago but had forgotten about - suddenly, I felt a desperate urge to take myself off to bed early with this book, and study it.

Just to back-track, a few years ago I was working part-time in the photo processing at Safeway, but was sometimes on the checkout, which was a lot of fun. If you, like me, are always having a nosey at what other people have in their baskets whilst queueing, then you'll understand how much better it is to be able to deliberately look at it, c'os it's your job.

One chap, I remember, had 40 cans of lager and an apple. I told him to go and get a bag of carrots because that one, lone apple wasn't going to counteract all that booze. I used to comment on everybody's shopping and had some great conversations, it was a fun time.

That's how I met 'candida girl'. She had the healthiest shopping I had ever seen - organic veg, rice cakes, fresh salmon, herb teas, wholemeal tampons, the lot - and I told her so. She said she used to have CFS but had been put on this diet and it had completely turned her life around. I made the queue wait while she wrote out the website address I needed to visit and her contact number.

I've always been of the opinion that what you put into your body affects your health - it's how I was brought up. After my sister was born and the medical profession had given up trying to 'cure' my mum of what was most likely post-natal depression, she and my dad spent years investigating alternative medicines and healthy diets.

It was the sixties, and they were definitely not hippes (mores the pity), but I remember a large, brown case of tissue salts, Bach flower remedies, natural homemade yoghourt (out in the garden - but in a thermos flask?), goat's milk, wholemeal-stone-ground-rock-hard bread, and spending weekends collecting chickweed for poultices, dandelion roots for coffee, or rosehips for syrup.

My mum's 'Keble Martin', as it was always called - 'The concise British flora in colour' being it's real title - has pages and pages of diligently researched, hand written notes at the back. Clematis is good for headaches, stings, eyes and sore feet, apparently, Rosemary (with salt) is for wounds, Meadowsweet helps feverish colds, and Burdock is good for chilblains as long as you're not pregnant. At the time I honestly thought my mother was a witch.

When in my turn the medical profession washed it's hands of me, my natural instinct was to go down the holistic therapy/alternative medicine route. I tried as many things as the budget of a family with only one working parent could allow, all with some limited success, and was left knowing that the one thing I could do at home, was monitor what I put in my body.

So when I found out about the anti-Candida diet, I was quite excited - this was the first time that all the symptoms I had were attributed to one cause, including many that I hadn't even considered as symptoms, but had been living with all the same.

The diet was hard - I had to cut out all sugars including those from fruit, all caffeine drinks and alcohol, anything fungal or fermented - vinegar, marmite, cheese, mushrooms, yeast and bread etc. - and lots more besides. At first I went through a horrible detox, then slowly I started to improve. I never broke the diet once. I cooked for the family without tasting their food, ever, so I'm not sure how great their diet was either. I had birthdays, weddings and Christmas - all on this diet.

Then a horrible thing happened - I started to get worse again. I worked really hard at it, but I continued to deteriorate. Going back to the Nutritionist who had outlined the diet for me, I was given tests from urine, spit, etc., and it was found that my liver was getting backed up like a clogged drain.

It was suggested that the illness had caused 'leaky gut syndrome' where particles of food sneak back into ones bloodstream and are treated as aliens by the immune system, the resulting detritus being more than the liver can handle. This in turn causes a sensitivity to those foods, the most common suspects being dairy, gluten products and all of the nightshade family, so I cut those out as well.

I was now on the most restricted diet imaginable, and another Christmas was coming up. I felt no better, but I had stopped getting worse. I decided to take Christmas off and start again after, as it had been eighteen months and I just couldn't bear it anymore. Trouble was, after Christmas, I couldn't seem to get back on it again - I didn't have the will-power and I felt too shitty.

I've tried many, many times since, all with no lasting success - my body just doesn't want that level of deprivation and hard work any more, with no actual results guaranteed. Had I felt great on it, it would have felt worth all the effort, but I didn't, I felt rotten, and I couldn't even have a glass of wine or some lemon sorbet to take my mind off it.

Roll forward a few years. Here I am again, stuck needing to change what I do to improve my health, feeling fitter and more emotionally able after the joy of college for the last two years, but knowing my body isn't happy with what I put in it - I am having too many headaches for that to be true.

So I send out a call and am drawn to a book - about a diet - that is even more restricted than the first! This one is about the natural chemicals that are present in all foods, but which can cause problems in 'sensitive' people, CFS being a common complaint.

It would be churlish in the extreme to ask God for an answer and then whine because it isn't what one wants, and consequently ignore it. So I will give it a go. It may have much less variety than the other diet but I can have more treats on it, mangoes, for instance. The sweetest thing I was allowed on the other diet was a sunflower seed and, call me picky, but I just can't overdose on them.

I need to wait until the next lot of housekeeping money comes in from the dole office, and then do some careful shopping, and a lot of planning and pre-cooking, but my intention is to give myself a few weeks on this in order to detox and have a good old clear out. (Hoping the pre-menstrual food-cravings don't sabotage it too much.)

If I feel a little better - great! If I don't, then I haven't lost anything by doing it and it's back to the drawing board. If I feel really bad when I revert to my normal, fairly healthy eating, then It looks like I'm stuck on another long term diet - Oh whoopee (not). Either way, wish me luck, and don't expect 'happy Bev' while I'm detoxing!

Bad sleep, boiled kids, and The Great Potato

Day 91

Steve forgot to order my Progesterone cream in time to beat the Christmas post, and so I ran out yesterday. This is not the tragedy that it would have been a few years ago, when the absence of it would have resulted in me pacing the floor, shaking and sweating as if with the DT's, crying, anxious, and unable to do anything except count the seconds away. No - those days are long gone, thankfully, and my recovery from this rather bonkers illness is well under way.

I still need it to help me sleep now that I am menopausal though. This has pushed me back a bit - hormones even further out of whack than usual - so I find supplementing my progesterone is the only thing that knocks me out and keeps me that way, (five trips to the loo notwithstanding). Last night, I dozed a little, then was wide awake from 2.00 until about 5.30, so am all over the place today. This may explain the odd, last, dream memory I had upon waking, and my subsequent thoughts.

In it, I remember seeing someone in a huge, loose-knit, stripey jumper trying to climb over a wall, but being prevented by several other people from whom he was obviously trying to escape, hanging onto his jumper. Couldn't recall the rest of the dream so that made no sense, but then the words of the second commandment popped into my head out of nowhere - "Thou shalt have no other God but me", and that did make it weird.

(Not as weird, however, as going online and checking the number of the commandment only to discover there is actually a version in Exodus which states "Thou shalt not boil a kid in it's mother's milk"! Well, you wouldn't anyway, would you.)

It got me thinking - always a bad thing when my sleep is haywire - that if this were a written law, then it could be picked to pieces in court quite easily. For a start, it implies there are other Gods available, and that a choice - if not necessarily 'right', according to them - is possible.

Now that is the Old Testament for you - all God's wrath, and testing, and punishment, and other stuff that would make you consider different options if more than one God was around, so perhaps laying down a commandment about it was the only way that made sense to them at the time. You get to the New Testament and things have quietened down a bit. Here one is told that all good deeds done in another's name go directly to this God anyway - all roads leading up the same mountain, so to speak. Phew.

Then of course, big J announces that no-one gets to 'the Father' but by him. What's that all about? If there are no other Gods then it doesn't matter which name you pray to, surely? And isn't the desire for world domination the one distinguishing characteristic of all super villains? Not good advertising! And frankly, not very good for peace and love, which the J man was supposed to be all about.

Sadly, the truth of the matter could be in the fact that the Bible was written long after Jesus died, and was therefore the tabloid newspaper of its day. No actual interview, as such, just lots of half remembered quotes and other peoples opinions. Folk tend to remember only the things that had impact on them, and it's quite easy to take things out of context.

So here's what I think. That every living atom in this universe and the next, and all the spaces in between, has at heart an energy that is beautiful, and extraordinary, and divine, and perfect, and you can call it any name you like. It doesn't need worshipping because it has no ego, and it can't ever stop existing, it can only change it's form. It is simply life, and I call it God because that works for me, but I could just as easily call it Frank or the great potato, it would make no difference.

This Christmas, when I hear people celebrating with carols the birth of Jesus, and singing praise him, hallelujah, I will let the words pass me by and focus on the spirit of it all. The joy, the wish for peace, the neighbourliness, and the practice of giving and appreciating, these are all good things. From Wenceslas to Santa, generosity and love have been hallmarks of Christmas, whichever name you give your God, however you worship, and whatever your beliefs.

Real peace on Earth can only come about with acceptance of others, including their beliefs. If we can see it as all part of the same thing, then it gets a little easier, I think.