My Wellness/Illness History re: Foods Causing Inflammation - Take an "Inflammation Vacation"!

I was born in 1960 in Denver, Colorado.  My father worked for the Gates Rubber Company, which I learned from them, was the FIRST HMO in the United States.  Kaiser says they are and I've not researched it.  The whole family got free or low-cost medical care at their clinic which was right across the street or parking lot from where my dad spent his days from the mid 1950s to retirement when I was in college around 1980.  (He was also a retired USAF officer.) I have written elsewhere in the 'head' forum about the difficult birth we had, and my resultant brain/head injury, which went undiagnosed and untherapized for several decades or longer; it's been a process.  Interestingly, it was partly due to the obstetrician having made a golf tee time for 3 pm for a beautiful spring Saturday I was born.  

I grew up hearing the stories in my family, of how I would sit in my high chair and grab/eat EVERYTHING that was being passed around the table. No having to encourage ME to put baby food into my mouth with FUN games, I just gobbled it down. My family was fortunate to have a movie camera so I have home movies which have helped me understand my medical history in ways that Gates' Medical Clinic and my parents/family never did.  They clearly show a little girl that looks like she had 'shaken baby syndrome' -- how nobody could have been concerned I do not know.  My mother DID take me to the clinic's pediatrician when I was a toddler with concerns that every morning I'd get up and go through the kitchen cabinets in the exact same order pulling out the pots and pans I could reach.  He told her 'she's getting something out of doing that she needs, just let her do it'.  Today, I would hope that a child in the United States would get referred to someone who might know why that was and FACILITATE the therapies needed.  

I became an extremely thin young girl, and I ran everywhere I went. I remember being at a horse show up in Pleasant Park which was over the mountain from my family's house, and one of the ranchers was standing with his foot up and leaning on the fence of the arena as I ran by and my little jeans wouldn't stay up, and he was laughing and teasing me in a neat way.  But it was embarrasssing! 

The first 'official' race I ran was at the Gates summer picnic, which I believe we only went to one time.  This was a major US/world corporation at the time and there were thousands of children there.  I was growing up in the mountains on essentially a hobby ranch and only had seen about 3 other kids my age/size, and they were ALL girls that my mother had gone out of her way to get me together with.  The summer I had just turned three, I believe, I recall a beautiful summer day and being on pavement with tons of people around and being kind of overwhelmed by it -- this is before the days of 'malls' and so I really had never been around a crowd. I was in the next group to go to the starting line for a "dash" of maybe 50 yards.  I might have been two, I have a very strange ability to recall way back into my childhood, even to being in my crib ("let me out" or "turn up the music louder, I want to DANCE".

I'd never seen a race, never been to a race, but I had been around a lot of dog training as that is what my mother 'did', and was even our area's 4H leader. So I was thinking it was going to be more like that kind of competition and I had started talking to the boy behind me.  But I was at the startling line and my parents were down at the end so nobody was with me telling me what to do.  BANG went a gun.  So I looked around and saw my parents at the end, mom crouched down, yelling for me to RUN.  And the boy said 'Go!' and gave me a little push.  OH, okay! So I just ran like always towards my parents and came in third! The prize was a REALLY cool stuffed animal!  The next time I ran a race it was the 100 yard dash in my elementary school's first grade field day at the end of the year. I got a blue ribbon for that one.

My athletic ability was always hindered increasingly as time went on.  Breathing difficulties in track when I went for intramural track one day at the pleading of my best friend.  I thought I had bone cancer my leg bones hurt so much; I'd never heard of 'growing pains' but I had them! Then in my 9th grade year, I was asked to show a new student around the school and so I recruited my gang of gal pals and they noticed she was limping and having a hard time with the hills of our hallways (mountain school, they had tiered the school rather than excavate the whole area or put in two levels).  Turns out she'd had bone cancer.  I was sure glad I didn't have bone cancer, but I never said anything to anyone about my internal concerns. I was not a 'complainer', I was a 'do-er'.  I have looked back and said 'why didn't I bring it up?' and realized that the things my parents were aware of which were significant, weren't really being addressed so just do your best to act like nothing is wrong.    

I had good grades -- but they were dropping as well as time went on.  I've written elsewhere about undiagnosed learning disabilities which I finally had diagnosed and treated at about age 30 and again age 40 when I was in Denver and found out about Lynn Hellerstein, one of the nation's top experts.  She provides information at Lumigrate, so look for it if you're interested. But part of it was ALSO the foods I was eating, the blood sugar problems that were leading to adrenal fatigue which I had symptoms of way back.  My father, whose jobs had always entailed higher mathematics, would help me with my algebra homework after dinner, and in high school when I got to trigonometry, he got up from the table and went over to 'the other side of the house' where my mother was getting ready for bed and I heard him say 'there's something wrong -- she'll be getting the equation and then it's like she just loses it'.  But then no interventions were made, and so I appealed to him to let me stop pushing toward higher mathematics and take the practical math class so that my grades looked good for getting into college.  

I got a really high score on my ACT for math/science (36), and I was in this nebulous 'area 99' on their grid related to recommended areas of study.  As my high school guidance counselor said to me "You can go in any direction -- medical, science, math, engineering, but it's all going to be a lot of work for you.  And I didn't score so well on other aspects and wonder now if it had to do with blood sugar/mental fatigue. I struggled in the swimming and sewing courses I opted to take my first two years of college, thinking they'd be 'easy As and good for me to get better at in life'.  I chose to study business at my father's 'shepherding' (process of elimination, none of my suggestions were agreed upon and so the next year I solved 100% of my financial needs without help from parents anymore, which was the first step to getting things 'turning around' for my well-being).   

Now, what does this have to do about food allergies?  I wasn't 'sickly' -- I appeared very HEALTHY! I'd had a VERY severe and hard to clear up ear infection at about six months which they also talked about because afterwards I was spoiled by being held all night by my mother or grandmother and wouldn't sleep in my crib like I did before.  So they did the tough-love thing that Dr Spock's book recommended and let me just have a fit and work it out on my own; I guess by the third night in I was back to 'normal'.  Yes, sometimes our theories that are in favor change; about how to treat babies, and I hope how to look at foods!  But working full time and taking a full load of classes didn't work and I'd always drop some and get down to 12 credits.  It was very depressing.  I felt like a failure and didn't know why -- I thought I was smart! I was in the top quarter of my graduating class at a high school we bussed into with students whose parents were overall quite well off financially. My first year of college I lived in the dorms and I just didn't eat that kind of food! We were encouraged to drink beer -- our student activities funds went to kegs of beer in the various floors to encourage my 'mixing' with the other 1,000+ students under my roof.  It was just not my scene. So I found a way to live like a pauper off campus in just over 200 ft2 with a roommate!  Luckily he was my long-time boyfriend and future husband so it wasn't ALL bad, but it was not ideal.  Located just under elevated railroad tracks which had heavy train traffic going by so close that it bounced and rattled us, and if a derailment occurred, which did occur once when I was home, we'd have been crushed if it rolled our way. That did not happen, but it was not good for the adrenals -- mind/body.  

So that paints the overall, and at this point I noticed I quit blacking out, which I now realize was blood pressure dropping.  If you study about the sequence of adrenal fatigue, blood pressure is one of the features that changes as adrenal fatigue changes.  When you get high energy at particular times of the day and troubles sleeping, it is also representative of things going on with the adrenal fatigue. At the time symptoms would get better, I'd think things were 'going away', whatever they were, when in fact it was really a worsening of things that were changing symptoms to be different and I just hadn't seen where things were going yet.  I know I put a lot of details into this, but it's like casting for fishing -- I'm really hoping that if the things I have experienced can help someone with similar but different issues, then having enought details might be what gets somone onto the hook and line to get reeled into finding solutions.  And hopefully be spared what I and so many others have gone through OR if you're already quite unwell, be helped by the things that are at Lumigrate which can help YOU too!

So back to the six months of age baby with the first known problem by the parents (ear infection). How many of you know of a baby who has had an ear infection? Perhaps the details of my story I am conveying here AND the solutions offered throughout Lumigrate.com can help others who identify.  In my way of looking at ear infections in a baby through 'functional medicine' terms which is getting to the underlying causes, and with an integrative medicine approach of body/mind/spirit would be foods first as a suspect.  Unfortunately, in my case I received formula, not human breast milk, but with my mothers lifestyle vices/habits perhaps that was not as big a detriment as it would be otherwise.  Perhaps I'd started to be given other things around that time to eat/drink.

I highly suspect that it might have occurred shortly after I received the first immunizations.  Possibly, my cranium's structures were still not aligned correctly from the birth/forceps plus without the foods that my body 'knew what to do with' to grow, and being negatively affected by having things I was likely allergic to, it affects the growth of things.  I've started studying this in the last year through the Weston Price Foundation website.  

I learned about them reading a notebook of their newsletters waiting to be seen by a cranial/holistic dentist. His office is right downstairs from the general dentist I have gone to since I arrived in Grand Junction so I walked past his office and wondered what he was about.  I'd heard him present about TMJ a few years prior and thought 'hmmmm, he's speaking to me', but I figured someone on my team would have suggested I seek him out if he could benefit me.  Well, finally, the second time I heard him speak, about childhood sleep apnea, I saw a feature in a photo of a child that reminded me of me, and so he said 'come on in for a screening', which was either no or low cost, I can't remember which.  He found I was appropriate for an assessment and so I did that and then he had me come back to go over what the xrays and his hands-on assessment found, and I was appropriate for treatment.  So I put my time/energy/money resources in that direction and am glad I did.

My cranium didn't expand/grow correctly 'for whatever variety of reasons' (which includes nutrition).  Can EVERYONE have someone like Jim Kennedy, DDS (who now provides content for Lumigrate, I'm pleased to say) work on their cranial vault? Unfortunately, not.  It's yet another thing insurances don't believe in paying for and so very few providers go into doing it.  But their training academy for the US does have a 'finder', so look for him on Lumigrate and the information is in his signature if you're interested.  And you might be able to get something similar to what he does, so I'm asking him to write on Lumigrate so you'll have things to offer YOUR provider system and hopefully the system will change to better provide for what we all need, with YOU pushing for it as a consumer (or other medical provider)!

Can everyone get tested to find out what their heavy metal burden being stored in their fat is?  Again, not paid for by insurance but it's a pretty easy test so if you have a few hundred clamshells you're not doing anything else with, you can have it done, plus a couple hundred other clamshells for the advise of a provider ... at the LEAST. Ideally, I hope people can eventually have these types of things done IF they want. It was so very helpful to me to visually see what my heavy metals were.  It made me listen to the naturopath who suggested I get the amalgam fillings removed, and, while I haven't had a true vacation since I got really ill in 1996 and became an OT and was afraid I'd not be able to work if I didn't, that's my value system as to how I believe my life is going to work out best in the long run.  If I'd done otherwise, I'd maybe have a FUN website about travel!   

BUT -- THE THING EVERYONE CAN DO is change how they eat!  And, while it's 'nice' to have food allergy testing done which might help you know what to avoid, it's a convenience.  You can figure it out by doing elimination and reintroduction.  

Just because the insurance/physician 'systems' have not accepted them as valid enough YET does not mean you shouldn't inquire with your insurance company. And if you have changed your eating and find your health is better, perhaps write something up and send it to them.  PRINT this out and write a note with it that says "I have benefitted from changing how I ate and it would have helped to have a simple food allergy test and advise from my provider and believe it would help reduce costs of you'd start covering it for people who wish to have it done.  

Typically, the foods we've eaten a lot of in the 'western/American diet' are not historically what 'our people' we have descended from have eaten.  I'm going to provide a link here to a topic at Lumigrate from a recent medical seminar I went to titled "Nutrition and Chronic Disease", which was given by an insurance-based conventional medicine specialist/pulmonologist after a LOT of research on his part.  Inflammation = Chronic Disease was one of his slides in the presentation. While he does NOT venture into testing which insurance does not pay for, nor into 'food allergies', he gave a VERY strong case about foods and it's an excellent piece to provide allopaths/conventional medicine providers to bring them to this level of information.  And on the parts where I disagreed or have more to add, we're including that and linking out to our content on Lumigrate from our GRATE providers.  So it's a VERY informative piece which should change a lot of provider's treatment and a lot of consumers treatment of themselves as well.  www.lumigrate.com/forum/nutrition-and-chronic-disease-presentation-jimmy-thompson-md [1] 

The first time I had testing for food allergies which was not the insurance-based IgE type was in 1995. My neurologist had figured I did not have MS based on lumbar puncture and I asked if it could be food allergies, since, as I said at the top of this piece, my family of origin ALL had severe food allergies and required ongoing treatment. So I had IgG testing with nothing discovered, but I had so many symptoms.. headaches/migraines, and etc.  (I had fibromyalgia but my GP and this neurologist/specialist did not know what that was, apparently, nor did I, though I'd already recovered from a very bad case of chronic fatigue syndrome five years earlier). 

I'd started my quest about my health problems by going to an acupuncturiest who had suggested I 'reduce' eating wheat and dairy, which I'd done without seeing any changes.  In my case, I now believe I was so far into chronically ill from well, that I just needed a full elimination.  That testing showed my body reacted as extremely as the test indicates for dairy, and very high with wheat and eggs. I immediately quite ALL and thought maybe in a month I'd see a bit of improvement.  HA!  The body has an amazing ability be well/survive and it takes a lot to get going into illness, so within a few days I saw a BIG change, at a week it was LOTS better and in a month everything was really getting back on track!  I was THRILLED.  And considering I'd had a long wait in the MRI when they saw lesions on the first brain scan, while they got the IV nurse to give contrast and 'light up' what they saw, I'd done my 'bargaining' --- "please, if this is not MS, I'll do whatever I need to do."  So giving up things I love just as much as anybody has, was 'in perspective' due to that.  

I tested again in late 2006 after eating NO wheat and dairy for many years, then rotating it back in, and it showed lower but still elevated reaction to wheat, dairy, eggs and additionally beans, yeast, and, of all things, amaranth!  Go figure! I presumed it was because I had eaten a LOT of Mexican food since the first testing -- I even 'invented' the term 'naked burrito', I believe, for the Chipotle in Denver I frequented in 1996, which had to make me special burritos without tortillas and they'd use foil in their red plastic baskets as they didn't have a takeout container for burritos yet.  Their workers were being hired from an area of Mexico and they spoke no English and I don't speak much Spanish so I'd say 'burrito nakedo'.   And I think I have them !

For those who are interested about learning about food allergies by attending a one hour seminar, virtually, there's a full hour video about IgG food allergies at the videos tab at Lumigrate.  Provided by Christopher Lepisto, ND, it's FREE and an hour of your time/energy, and not difficult to download if THAT's what's holding you back.  Progress in tests has occurred, and he's said that now they're looking for other markers on other tests which he prefers to use as it's less expensive and more accurate.  Importanly, the concepts are the same about how it is most of us are having illness from inflammation in our bodies from foods we don't know we're allergic/sensitive to.  

Note: this is VERY different than the type that most people think of, which are tested for with skin scratch testing or injections just under the skin typically; those are looking for IgE reactions. I have repeatedly been tested that way and have never once been diagnosed 'allergic' to ANY food or inhaled pollen, dander, etc.). The rest of my family of origin had that testing done at Gates Clinic, and received weekly shots for years and years, but I wasn't even tested because nobody suspected I had any food allergies! I seemed healthy! I wasn't stuffed up, didn't have skin problems, headaches .... I was not sleeping well at all but nobody thought THAT could have anything to do with foods in those days.  In my teens I had horrible menstrual issues once a month.  EVERY time I stood up ALL month long, I'd black out and sometimes I'd feel my chin throb.  I was taken to the Gates Clinic physician, same one my dad went to, and he ordered a three hour glucose tolerance test to check the sugar in my blood.  It shot up and then started coming down after the first half hour and at hour three it was at 60, which was the bottom of the line "normal" and at 59 was deemed 'hypoglycemia'.  

Now, you tell me -- doesn't it seem you might wanted to have insisted on having a LONGER test done?  But in their infinite wisdom, my parents decided to just presume it went lower and to have me start eating the same restrictive diet my dad ate for his hypoglycemia.  (He had all the symptoms of fibromyalgia at this time and lived to just shy of his 89th birthday and was NEVER diagnosed).  And I was totally compliant!  I ate no more than ONE piece of bread (made of wheat), I'd have a few eggs a week for protein, as you always wanted to have protein with carbs, and fats so that it slowed the carbohydrates breaking down which would shoot the blood sugar up.  I drank a small can of vegetable juice mid morning and mid afternooon at school. So my dad finally said 'go out of network and take her to a doctor in our mountain town' who ordered a five hour test, which showed my blood sugar got to 37 at hour #5. It still wasn't done dropping, who knows how low it would get.  

Was this all from food allergies?  No, that was from 'adrenal fatigue' (which you can learn about here at Lumigrate as well, Search on it at our search bar. ) But what had fatigued my adrenals?  EVERYTHING on the body/mind/spirit if you look at things from an integrative medicine perspective.  Body burdens had to do with the effects of eating foods I was allergic to, having immunizations in the 1960s which had a lot of mercury derivatives in them; mind -- there was much dysfunction in my family of origin which lasted through the end of my parents lives and beyond and has been a huge factor in my wellness/illness over the years, though I do my best to deal with it as best I can for me and for the system overall.  My father was chronically ill, as I said, above and that puts pressure on everyone else; my mother came out of college with an alcohol problem which just got more and more problematic so by the time I was the only child at home and they were in their 50s, as they were late 30s when I was born, it was not a 'good situation'.  

Her cigarette smoke inside our small, poorly ventilated mountain house contributed to her dying at age 62 in 1987, and I was essentially around very little secondhand smoke otherwise and since. (Her mother, who also smoked, was living in her small, adjoining house until I was 4, so I got a double dose.  Can you picture a six month old baby being rocked all night with chain smoking women in rooms that were never bigger than most p people's master bedrooms today.  When Dr Spurlock looked at my heavy metals challenge testing results from 2005 -- decades into my chronic illness and after being cooped up with their toxic 'smokes' -- the cadium and lead that was shown was at significant levels (trumped only by mercury which was mostly from immunizations and is another story which I've documented in the forums for others to learn from as well if you wish to read about it, Search!)  

My hopes and intentions with these topics I prepare about the things I've experienced and what I've done to 'peel the onion' about my illness/wellness is so those who find it will be able to, without spending $1, but with spending their energy and time resources, get the track of their illness/wellness going towards wellness OR having it stay there and get further into that 'zone'. 

Related to food allergies, which I bring up EVERY time someone has an ache in a joint and says it's osteoarthritis, or other more complicated problems, the response frequently is 'but I love ____________ and I'm not giving that up' and so they throw the baby out with the bathwater!  Maybe figure out how to reduce ALL the other things you're also allergic to and be able to keep ____________.  (Frequently it is 'bread' or 'cheese'.)  Hey, it's your life, I'm just the messenger, so don't shoot me and I'll not shoot you for not wanting to make changes in your life!  We all are creating our realities with our wellness, that, to me, at a spiritual level is part of the purpose of our being on Earth living, learning, and teaching/sharing with others. 

So I hope you find this beneficial and respect the reasons I have provided it. Live and Learn.  Learn and Live Better!  ~~ Mardy