Signs of improvement

Apparently I feel somewhat decent every other day. It's a start, I can't complain.

I worked out again today (another Spinning class) which was great, but my legs were still a little sore from Sunday's class. Obviously, in more ways than one, I'm still building up strength.

I did something crazy today. I had a spoonful of my Mom's fresh homemade ice cream. She doesn't use any sugar in it, it's sweetened with maple syrup so I don't have to worry about that. Of course, I've been allergic to milk my whole life, so that's why this was crazy. I didn't just do it because of my new diet plan....it's only been 4 days, I know nothing's going to change that quickly. But I have been using ghee in most of my food for over a year now. This was because of a modified GAPs diet that I've been on, intending to get over my allergies.

Ghee was the beginning of healing my body so that it can handle lactose. After using ghee for about 6 months I started slowly adding goat and sheep milk products. Goat and sheep milk are lower in lactose than cow milk. I added things slowly; a little sheep cheese here, a little goat yogurt there. If anything caused a reaction I wouldn't eat it for a few weeks and then try again. Of course throughout this whole time I was taking probiotics to build up the flora in my gut.

I now tolerate any goat or sheep milk product incredibly well. I have goat or sheep cheese with pretty much every meal. I've realized recently that I need to start experimenting with cow milk products to see how much I can tolerate. I've sometimes had vegetables cooked in butter and the butter doesn't cause a reaction.

I sometimes sneak a tiny taste of ice cream when my Mom makes it. This is something I've only been doing for a few months. It's a big thing for me because milk has been the biggest thing for me to avoid my whole life. Not being allergic to it is so foreign to me. But I know I'll be there one day. So I actually took about a spoonful of ice cream today. I had the tiniest bit of an itch in my mouth and throat. It lasted about 30 seconds. That's it. I will slowly keep testing my tolerance like this.

I'm reading Gut and Psychology Syndrome right now and it's completely blowing my mind. It's very scientific and I'm not grasping it 100% but I'm understanding it on a basic level, and it's unbelievable. Unbelievably scary. Thankfully it has cute pictures to help me. Like this:

Isn't it cute? It's an enterocyte. These are cells that are found in the gut lining and these cells complete the digestive process and absorb the nutrients from food. The little circles on the sticking-up hairs are the actual digestive enzymes. There's also a drawing of a sick enterocyte but I don't want to show it to you because it's scary. It's giving me nightmares already. It's skinny and sad and has very few hairs with very few digestive enzymes on it.

So this is part of my new visualization technique. I am picturing these little guys lining my gut. Mine don't look like this right now. They are somewhere in between the sick and dying one and this. I will continue getting pribiotics into my gut to help my gut produce strong healthy enerocytes. I want them to be cute and healthy and happy like this one. When I drink kefir or take my probiotics I'm picturing this. 

I'm also talking to them. Yes, I'm talking to my gut lining. 

"If the gut flora is domaged, the best foods and supplements in the world may not have a good chance of being broken down and absorbed." 

- Gut and Psychology Syndrome by Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride MD