After reading the book, I decided I would set aside a three week period to test this out. I would modify it, no I was not going to do the juicing because I did not have juicer, but the idea of my issues being related to food intolerance and three weeks to see what happens would be doable.
At first I stopped the dairy. I wistfully bypassed my brie and ice cream, telling myself, it is just for three weeks. I had discovered that the almond milk I was using in my coffee was not only delicious, it also had much less fat even with the amount I was using than cream. It also added some protein. After about 3 or 4 days, I noticed the bumps diminishing. This motivated me to go cold turkey on the wheat. About a week into it, I could feel my body detoxing the mucus build up. You really need to read the book to understand this, but I was amazed I could actually feel it happening. The idea is your body's reaction to a food allergy or intolerance is to coat it in mucus and store it in the body until it can destroy it later. If you are constantly digesting more of the offending food, your body does not find the time to get to the mucus covered invader. I developed a somewhat type of cold. The nasal, cough (from nasal drip), and slightly achy feeling but I was not tired, the clue that this was not really a cold. After another week, this subsided and I felt different. I noticed I could reduce my allergy meds, and this was in late summer/early fall when lots of people's allergies were going into over drive.
Then Karl's parents came to visit. I knew trying to stay on my new diet would be difficult, so I chose to jump off the band wagon and eat those things I was missing. The first night of their arrival, being a Friday, was pizza; bring on the wheat and layers of glorious cheese. For desert, homemade chocolate brownies and vanilla ice cream. Oh boy! What a mess I became. A few days of this bindging found me racing for all of the allergy meds I had abandoned, including my inhaler for those really bad time. This was the proof I needed. I was going to have to alter my diet permanently if I wanted to go off the many allergy meds I was given to control my symptoms, because these things never showed up on my allergy skin test but my histamine was over the top.
I began to search the library for books on converting to a wheat/gluten free/dairy free (GF/DF)life. Nearly every week since then, I have at least one cookbook to review. It took me a little bit before I started to branch out and actually cook with these new flours. After all I was subsiding fine on potatoes and rice. I did find a rice flour pasta that is really good, but I have to use the penne or spirals because the spaghetti falls apart. But now I needed to branch out because it was no fun making something different for me than my family every night, it was beginning to wear me out and my family was not ready to give up pot pies, tortillas, or cannelloni for me to make something the whole family could eat together. Then I came across this book at just the time in which I needed a good "swift kick in the butt" to motivate me to try.
This book also pointed out the damage caused to your system from constantly ingesting these intolerant foods; remember wheat is good for those who can tolerate it just not for those who's body thinks it is poison. Since the immune system sees it as a high level threat, it send out the "big dogs" of the white blood cells to attack. When these cells can not attack the food substances, it begins to attack different tissues like cartilages to cause arthritis, the pancreas to cause diabetes, the thyroid to cause both thyriodisms, etc. This was ammo I needed to commit to this new life.
One of the things I noticed also, when I was off the wheat and dairy, I had a significant decrease in migraine headaches. I had already reduced my stress load with daily exercise which helped, but the lack of intolerance in the foods was apparently the missing piece to the puzzle. Then I put on my jeans from last winter. Due to the loss of inflammation, the mucus build up from before, my jeans were uncomfortably loose, like four inches worth. I checked my weight, no real change, but the clothes do not lie.
Now we come to the kiddos. Anton had been complaining of being exhausted for weeks now. His eyes are swollen and tearing at the end of the day. I know he is growing and is dealing with hormone changes, but something else is going on. He is not sick, we were just at the doctor's office for a check up. However, I have been worried about his slightness for years. When I bring it up to their practitioners for years, they only say something to the effect that compared to their peers, Anton is smaller. His arms and legs are so skinny it looks like a stick. Karl claims he was that way until High School, but I have no real knowledge only the mommy worry. Isabella has tested sensitive to wheat before. So, I challenged the kiddos to go wheat free for awhile to see if it helps their health. I told them why I wanted them to try and gave them a list of things they could eat, Anton would die without his chips! I wish I could get him to go dairy free also, but they would take mountains to move. When Karl came home, after I had forewarned him when he called to say he was coming, the kids' reactions to the challenge surprised him. The first thing they said is, "We get to eat Mommy's special cookies now!" They have an affinity for Pamela's Double dark chocolate cookies which are gluten and dairy free. However their cost makes me hide them from the kiddos on the top shelf of the pantry.
We will see how it goes! I wish it was easier, but my own experiment on myself has shown otherwise. In the mean time, I need to find a good recipe for pie crust, biscuits, tortillas, and pancakes!
