The Reluctant Raw Foodist
"I used to be a' foodie' and now I am a "foodist'"
Welcome to my health and wellbeing blog.
I’m not a raw foodist by choice. I was recently diagnosed as having a complicated autoimmune condition including severe Histamine Intolerance and a form of reactive arthritis. I have become hypersensitive to high histamine foods, pollen, dust and some everyday chemicals. My condition affects every area of my life.
I have Mast Cell Activation Disease (MCAD).
I was prescribed a low histamine diet and then a raw food diet to ease my symptoms and over the past 2 years I have overcome my reluctance to a new way of eating and living. I have been experimenting to combine the two diets and I have been learning how to eat a diet comprising mainly of low histamine raw fruit and vegetables and how to change the habits of a life time.
I am starting to feel healthier than I have ever been before. I have also lost 35 lbs in weight.
I will be sharing with you how I got here and I'll be exploring low histamine raw recipes, natural beauty products, how to cope with being "allergic to everything" and generally how to regain health and fitness and live life to the full despite my unusual condition!
Please feel free to message me with any suggestions, questions, or comments. I'd love to hear from you!
Everything I post is the property of its respective owner/creator unless stated otherwise. Everything will have a click-through link whenever possible. If you see something of yours that I have posted and would like me to take it down, please message me and I will remove it.
These are some ads for where I buy my coconut water and stuff like that :
My light reading LOL . When you no longer have a doctor who understands your condition then you do your own research!
Yoga! I need to get back into it. It;s been so difficult with my frozen shoulder but it is now starting to thaw.. Yeeaay! I am so flippin’ glad.. at last, at last x
(via melanie-is-healthy)
… are what greatly contributed to my ill health.
During my teens, while at school, I declared myself to be a vegetarian and I went through a stage of eating very little other than liquorice and drinking black coffee all day and then eating some vegetables at night. I was very thin. I was never diagnosed with an eating disorder but I definitely had one.
Things changed and in meeting my first husband and cooking for all the students in our house my eating habits changed and I ate more and felt better for a time.
I had taken a lot of my symptoms for granted during my teens. I thought the diarrhoea and other symptoms were normal. My depression was put down to being a teenager and I reacted very badly to the contraceptive pill which I took for horrendous period pain.
My symptoms got worse over the years. I consulted doctors and dieticians who advised me that I must eat from all the so called food groups.
Everyday I used to consume milk and cheese (favourite foods!) and most days I ate fish, meat and eggs and I regularly consumed quantities of coffee and tea. At several times in my life I returned to eating as an ovo/lacto vegetarian but when I left off meat and fish I increased the eggs and cheese. Caffe latte became my favourite drink after a workout. Sometimes I would have two - after all, I had worked out very hard!. I could not drink a lot of alcohol but I loved what I did. I loved sweet things and regularly succumbed to a chocolate bar or a piece of cake. I loved bread but I loved it more when covered in butter and cheese or peanut butter. Oh and marmite! I was a marmite baby!
Over a period of time I grew fatter and fatter and more and more miserable as all my symptoms worsened and then my hair started to fall out. My joint pain and body ache became acute and my energy levels were unstable. I became increasingly stressed out and tired. Tired to my bones. I struggled with increasing depression and the feeling that my body was out of control. I reacted adversely to common chemicals and my skin would throw out sudden rashes with no warning.
I tried a number of so called diets… When I went to Weight Watchers I tried WW sweets which contain a sugar substitute. I was so dizzy after eating a few sweeties and my already bad IBS symptoms immediately worsened!
I used to think I could exercise it all off. How wrong I was. I could not outrun my ever increasing ill health.. It was a lot faster than me ….
I always thought I could change things some other time, when it was more convenient, next year maybe…. Then my health forced me to change immediately! x
One of my symptoms is what I call “sudden sleep”. My brain can, suddenly and without warning, sort of cut out and I can find myself asleep or something approaching it with my head on my desk. Sometimes I can hear stuff going on around me and yet I am not able to wake up and respond. At times I have been so deeply asleep I do not wake up at my train stop. I have been mugged for my phone and money without knowing it. On planes I can fall asleep before take off and wake up only after touch down.
On several occasions in my life I have had blackouts where I do not remember not a thing. I once woke up covered in blood and asleep fully clothed on the floor of my home. My last memory was of being in a bar in London. How I came home (some 40 miles and a cab ride/ train ride/cab ride - away) I have no idea. The blood was later found to belong to a girl friend who had cut her hand. I remember nothing and I knew I had drunk no more than a glass of wine…
As long as I stick to my diet I usually do not get sudden sleep. (I have not yet tried flying since changing diet.) I know that if I stray off my diet then this symptom returns with vengeance.
(via mysteriouslives)
How I tried to view my getting ill. It certainly taught me patience x
(via rawrtess)
Just one of my symptoms with this condition. I could be boiling hot but my fingers and toes would be white with cold. This has receded quite a lot in recent months…
Before I changed my diet I regularly used to wake up with a jolt not being able to breathe. It felt like I had choked in my sleep on my own saliva. I used to sit up in bed in a panic and try to unchoke myself, desperately gasping for breath. Each time I thought I had breathed my last. I saw doctors about this and was told I did not have sleep apnea or asthma and that it was “just sensitive throat” and I would have to live with it. One doctor implied that it was hysteria and said that if I fell unconscious my throat would open again. I got worse and worse until it was a nightly occurrence.
I found out finally that I was suffering from a form of anaphylaxis due to the foods I was eating (especially milk products seemed to bring it on) and the whole thing cleared up when I changed my diet. I was reminded of how bad it was recently when I started to choke from eating a couple of potato crisps that I thoughtlessly took from a try bowl in a shop. I had forgotten what my throat can do to me.
I found the recent MRI scan on my frozen shoulder very scary as I realised that if I choked I could not sit up immediately - for years this was my worse nightmare.
