I needed to disable self sign-ups because I’ve been getting too many spam-type accounts. Thanks.
Hello, background and some progress
Hi @concernedretinoid
First off, I want you to know that I empathize and agree with your comments about Dr. Smith.
Second, Since you also have read things on his forum, I wonder if you have heard about or investigated Karen Hurd. I think her findings are what reinforced Smith's use of beans in his recommendations (along with Grant's use of them, of course). You might want to take a look at the courses KH offers concerning (1) psoriasis and (2) ADHD -- there are testimonials shared at the bottom of each course page. She has been in practice for over 30 years. You can also email her with your questions, once you have purchased a course (which is NOT a subscription, but you have access to it forever, I think that is a great benefit). My 2 cents --
@kathy55wood I had seen her mentioned in a post here, and briefly looked at her website. I'll take another look at that when I have time thanks!
I think, and this is just an idea, that the body is craving certain nutrients its not getting from the chips that could be why you just want to keep eating.
I agree. It’s gotta be a factor.
After I started mixing activated charcoal and diatomaceous earth into my cat’s kibble a few months ago, her fur became softer, her energy levels increased, and she stopped the overeat-and-vomit cycle that had been worsening prior... And the weirdest part is, now she will beg for chicken and beef when we’re eating it! This cat is past middle age at this point, and never before could we get her to show any interest whatsoever in consuming meats, or even canned cat food. She’d sniff it and walk away in disgust. The change is totally nuts lol.
Apparently all it took for her appetite to become more normal was charcoal to limit her ability to absorb the vitamin A/D in the kibble, and diatomaceous earth to improve mineral balance. It boggles my mind.
Anyway, sounds like you’re off to a great start, man. 👍 Intuitively eating the macros your body seems to want is a solid approach, imo.
Quote from lil chick on March 22, 2023, 6:50 amMy rosacea never looks as good as when I have a fever! In my musings the VA is taken from the fat under the skin and shot at the entering virus particles "pew-pew-pew". ha!
Same for me (or after being sick). Maybe what we call flu is a mechanism for VA (and not only) detoxing ..
@puddleduck Thanks for the info on charcoal and your cats! I will try that and see how it goes. I don't know much about diatomaceous earth so I'll look into that one.
Just wanted to give a few unrelated updates as I am trying to improve diet and remove potential toxin sources:
- After being in the hospital yet again for pain in her abdomen and yet again the Dr's have no idea the cause, my wife is considering the low vA diet more. I showed her some recipes we can try and she sounds interested.
- Over the weekend I installed a reverse osmosis system in the kitchen. I checked our cities water toxicity and it is surprisingly bad. I need to run a line over to the fridge so the ice maker can run from the RO system as well. Hardest part of the install was drilling a hole in our granite counter, just have to go slow with a diamond dry cutting bit. I plan to order some water test kits to see how well the system actually performs and also test my shower head filters as well.
- I've never actually tried white carrots before but found some at Trader Joe's. Last night I made ribeyes with roasted carrots, roasted cauliflower and homemade roasted crinkle cut fries. The carrots were amazing, better than any typical orange carrot I've ever tried.
- I came up with a taco mix made with ground lamb, chopped cauliflower, red quinoa and pinto beans all mixed together after cooking and seasoned. I used some organic wheat tortillas and it turned out to be really good. I am not really a recipe person as pretty much season to taste, maybe I'll come up with something and post it eventually. It probably would taste better with beef, I think the lamb flavor is too distinctive but it was fine.
- I am still researching other sources of toxins like Teflon pans (I have a complete set of very nice Calphalon pans, so that stinks to have to replace them all, but I am still trying to determine how important that is), but I picked up a Crock Pot brand enameled cast iron pan and a Dutch oven to try out. I hate stainless as I have never been able to cook with it successfully the food always welds itself onto the pan and gets ruined, I've watched videos and read up on it a lot I still can't make it work. I got so mad at one point a few years ago I threw out a $100 pair of Calphalon stainless pains, which I now regret lol. The enameled pans aren't too hard to work with so far.
- I've been adding activated charcoal and diatomaceous earth to my cats food for several days, hopefully soon will see if its helping them or not. If anything my one cat who is often hungry may be even hungrier now but will have to see if that persists.
Hello! I wonder if she could be having the same sort of issues as me, was she nauseated? It's so harsh. I've heard it called "chronic vomiting syndrome" and it is considered a type of migraine, but really it was always about horrible nausea and gut pain and the runs and less about actually throwing up. The hallmark of it is that your gut works completely normally between episodes.
We have had a reverse osmosis system waiting to be installed for a couple of years haha. Yes, it is scary to drill that hole. Always some other chore seems much safer haha.
Ok, I know you are frustrated with the stainless but I have finally mastered it! I will illustrate by telling you my omelette method, but it's about the same for anything. First and foremost, you need to hear "Cush!" when the food goes into the pan. I have an electric stove so heating up the pan is even harder. When I arise to make our eggs I go right over and start the pan warming and go on to making coffee and feeding the cat. You can rush it by turning the pan on high for a minute but that can often result in problems and uneven warming. I instead would much rather heat the pan slowly on medium-low for a least 5 minutes. You can NOT skip the fat in the pan. But it doesn't have to be excessive. Once you put those beaten eggs in the pan, don't fuss with them. You created a non-stick surface between the egg and the pan (Cush sound), and every time you fiddle you are undoing it. Half way done? turn the omelette carefully over and cook on the other side. If a small area here or there is still sloppy, you can turn that particular area a third time. Plate up the eggs, shut down the stove. Before you leave the stove put a small amount of water into the pan. Come back later to do dishes and scrape the pan (if necessary) with a credit card. A quick wipe in a warm sink full of water is probably going to finish the job without any scrubbing.
I remember once watching Matt Stone (on video) cook potatoes in stainless with coconut oil and he said "don't fiddle with them like some sort of nube!" hahaha. Leaving food alone to do its thing in the pan is actually smart, it helps caramelization to form, it's yummy.
There is only one food that I now hate to cook because of the horror of cleaning the pan, and that is poached eggs. For that, you will need brillo pads. :')
Thanks, maybe I'll repurchase those nice Calphalon pans I threw out before and try again eventually lol. I do have a stainless wok but every time I've tried to use it, same problems so its just collecting dust until I feel like having my ambitions destroyed again.
Regarding my wife it might be useful to give a little more context on her medical problems as I mostly focused on our frustrations with healthcare, which are many.
- She has ankylosing spondylitis, which is a rheumatoid arthritis where your spine slowly fuses together
- She has a living donor liver transplant from her sister as a clot killed her liver in 2003
- 2 weeks ago she had to have a stint removed from her bile duct as it was in danger of closing up entirely, they found there was still a risk and placed a larger stint. The pain in her abdomen was around the area of the stint, but so far as they can tell nothing is wrong.
- She has pseudotumor cerebri, a condition where you constantly deal with unregulated (usually high) CSF pressure. They use a shunt to drain fluid out of the skull, for which she has had to have 37 surgeries over the years to revise or replace the shunt.
- She's an epileptic and has had many times where she was seizing multiple times per day, has been hospitalized and code blue multiple times due to severe seizures.
- She constantly deals with pain in her head for which doctors can do very little, no matter how much they open up the shunt setting she has high pressure.
- She's always nauseous to some extent and does frequently throw up.
- Shes always having inexplicable symptoms like either unable to urinate or can't stop urinating.
- Gastroparesis is a big issue for her as well, my guess is years of toxic medications have decimated her intestinal flora and that will be a big issue to resolve if we can do anything with her diet.
- She constantly has this feeling that her entire body is itching and nothing except Benadryl helps with it at all.
- She always has severe heartburn and has to take a large amount of famotidine for it
- She's prescribed at least 15 medications for her various conditions, I can't even keep track of what they are anymore. At one point I was keeping a detailed spreadsheet with exactly what and when she took each and I would print it out and take it with us to the emergency room and to doctors appointments so they couldn't accuse her of using her meds incorrectly, which is certainly a favorite thing dr's like to do in the face of something they can't explain.
I am sure there's a boatload of other stuff worth mentioning that I didn't think of. So you can see, if this approach can help her we will have to play it careful and its going to be a long road. I just know if I were her, I'd just stop taking my medications and wait for death, I would absolutely not want to live that way.
:'(. So parallel to me except 1000 times worse! I avoided the medical thing early on. You might want to check out my thoughts on clothing. (ie PPD is in elastic and in dark dyes and it is a horrible thing that many people react to). My sleep has been much deeper now that I'm not fighting constant baseline itchiness. The family is also glad that I don't keep a pasta server by the computer just for itching my back anymore LOL. I think they suspected that I used it in the kitchen too hahaha