Beyond the Paleo

"I make mistakes like the next man. In fact, being--forgive me--rather cleverer than most men, my mistakes tend to be correspondingly huger."
 - Albus Dumbledore in Harry Potter series by JK Rowling

My nutritionist recommended a book to me. As my gut makes tiny baby steps toward improvement, she thought I might be able to hasten the path of progress by going paleo.  I didn't know what this meant, so when I received the large Amazon box containing Practical Paleo (by Diane Sanfilippo) I dove right in to its 400+ pages. Turns out, going truly paleo means giving up ALL grains, not just gluten and corn as I have already.  In addition, no dairy or soy and only certain seeds and nuts, seed/nut oils. If the book didn't have such pretty pictures of delicious foods I would have given up right away.

But lured along by the tasty photos, I found the section entitled autoimmune diseases and then digestive illnesses, both of which apply to me. Ms. Sanfilippo says that my superfoods should be homemade bone broth and fermented cod liver oil along with ghee and liver. I had to google ghee and fermented cod liver oil as - surprise! - neither have come up in previous menus. I was pleased to find both available at the ultra health food store known as Amazon, and fortunately for me, the recipe for bone broth is included in my book. Now I just have to figure out how to get my hands on some appropriate bones.

The real kicker was the advice under the "what to avoid" heading. The foods I mentioned, of course, plus coffee, alcohol and caffeine. Also, pain medications, including aspirin, acetaminophen and ibuprofen.  And lastly, high intensity exercise such as high intensity interval training (HIIT) and "chronic cardiovascular exercise" as they might "provoke a stress response" (p 152). Since I spent the eighteen months prior to my illness training for a marathon, joining and then co-leading a HIIT bootcamp class and living off of caffeine and ibuprofen, I appear to have, er.......erred. A correspondingly huge set of mistakes.

At least I have a chance to remedy the situation. Progress TBD . . .