My Soap Box in a quote!

The more I learn about food, the more I experience the effects of food, the more I come to respect how powerful it can be in our lives.  

I found this quote the other day and it perfectly summarizes all the ramblings of my food/health soapbox!!  

This I found and just love.. I think I'll plan to get a large print of this and put it in my kitchen somewhere! (Once I get my own kitchen again that is!!)

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You are what you eat.

I am now three weeks in on my own elimination diet.  I appreciate that the medical community may frown on my willfulness to ignore them, but I felt it was about time I figured out what was going on without the thousands of dollars they would ask me to spend.

What is going on??? Well, about 6 years ago I was diagnosed with celiac. It most likely was triggered with my last pregnancy, but since then I have had weight gain, and bizarre eczema and hand swelling issues. You might explain away the weight gain with my eating patterns, I do love food and I love to eat, but gaining 12+ lbs and not being able to loose any of it no matter how well I ate or tracked callories seemed odd.

My hands.. well that's a sad and confusing story as well.  My left hand is worse than my right, and oddly it's not all fingers that are affected.. my left hand, including my palm has had times of excruciating eczema and swelling. To the point that I can't use my hand, bend my fingers or even wear my ring (well that should be a given).. My wedding ring that used to fit comfortably and a little loose wont fit past my first nuckle. Weird right?!  My middle finger and thumb though don't seem to be affected.  On my right hand it's my ring finger, my pinky and at times my pointer.  That's all.  I've had times where I will find little white blisters that ooze puss, and itch like my hand was dipped in acid. That happens less now, instead I get red, angry looking rashes, tight skin and what looks like paper cuts all over my fingers.. again making life rather painful to experience with my hands!  My skin is so damaged that the feel of soft fabric feels like sandpaper or rather my hands are like sandpaper on fabric, and even my husband can feel the scratching when I rub his back or arm.   Not fun.

So enough was enough, and I decided to figure this out.  This past summer a friend saw my hand and suggested that it might be 'jungle fungus'. At least that's what it's called in Hawaii... so according to what she had heard and information I found on line, I soaked my hands in apple cider vinegar for about 15-30 minutes each night, let them air dry and then used coconut oil as a lotion several times during the day.  Since then, the blisters haven't come back which is a good thing.

  These were taken this summer after I soaked my hands in the vinegar. Yes they are a little more red from soaking, but not too different from what they sometimes looked like when I was having a bad flare up. You can see from the red, exactly where I have my issues. Ya it hurt!!!  It was like I was putting my hands in acid for a good 30 minutes. My hands burned and ached but I did it hoping it would help.  (and I agree, no amount of finger nail polish was going to help my hands look any better!)

 this is a shot of my hand after having soaked my hands every night for about a week. they really were doing better.

  

This is a shot past that - you can see the scabs around my nuckles from where the bumps were healing... This vinegar treatment really did help a lot!!!  Just not all the way - hence my goal to figure it out!

9 months later-ish... my hands still swell, get angry rashes and have the paper cuts so I figured it had to be allergy related. I spent a good deal of time looking up on line and reading what I could about food allergies.  I have celiac which means my digestive system is already somewhat compromised.  I had an allergy test about a year ago in response to my asking about my hand issues.. They ran a scratch test and said I was allergic to a lot of trees/pollens and normal things (if you have allergies like dust, etc.. )  and then my list of foods were green beans, sweet potatoes, carrots, pineapple, cinnamon and brazil nuts. Well I know I'm allergic to nuts. I actually have problems with a lot of nuts - brazil are the worst.  But the other foods???  That wasn't nice.  I ignored what they said since I didn't notice anything at the time and kept eating my vegetables.  But I decided it was time to figure this out - and see if maybe those foods are causing problems, or if other foods are to blame.  

I decided to eliminate all potential foods from my "allergy list" and the foods they were related too.  I came down to a list of okay foods to eat being chicken and broccoli.  After 1 week or gorging on chicken and broccoli, seasoned with olive oil, salt and pepper, my hands were soft, less swollen,  healed and happy!  I could wear my ring again. Huge since it's been about 5 years since I could wear my ring every day.  Another happy note - I lost 5+ lbs in that first week.  I've always hated the girls that say, "oh it just came off and I didn't try".. well, sadly that's what happened. Though I was doing something - severely limiting my food choices, but not the intake!! I was eating a lot of chicken and broccoli!  I credit the weight loss to water retention and inflamation weight - all tell tell signs of a food allergy problem.

this is my hand after the first week of my 'elimination diet'... my ring fits!!!  

I intended to go a full 3 weeks with the food restrictions before adding foods in, but I felt better than I had in a long time, so I started adding foods... To date, this is what I've found out
1. Rice and onions are not tollerated well by me.  I don't have an allergy issue - but I take about 2 days to digest them fully. So during those two days, I bloat about 2" out in my stomach and feel constipated and sluggish. - not fun.
2. Asparagus, cauliflower and cabbage are okay from what I can tell.
3. Poatoes - not so sure about. I ate them and then felt tired and run down and irriatable the next day. All signs of an allergy if you google around online.  But I'm going to try them again anyway - I need my potato chips and potatoes are a vital ingredient there.  I am sick this week, so my symptoms may have been me just getting sick. Though my hand did get some swelling and paper cuts so I'm back to chicken and brocolli until that clears up and I feel better.
4. Eggs - oh those wonderful and versatile things... I'm allergic.  I watched my hand swell and turn red while eating the eggs.  I should try them again as well, but I'm a little scared and think I will wait for a while before I try them again.
5. I think I'm okay with most meats,  but cheap meat is not my friend... serious stomach aches from too much fat!
6. Carrots are a question, I haven't eaten them.. but pealed twice and each time my hand iched or was swollen that day and the next.?????

Today is a full 3 weeks and I've lost 10 lbs from when I started keeping track, but a full 13 lbs from my high point when I started thinking about all this (3 weeks ago).   The weight has slowed down as it comes off, so now it could be calorie restriction, even though I don't feel like I'm restricting - I just eat until I'm full.  Broccoli is good for that I guess!  But I'm encouraged every day that I see that I'm loosing a little bit more weight and that my ring fits - all day long!   I still have some swelling when I first wake up, but I wonder if that is something to do with my really low blood preasure, and poor circulation??/ Question for the dr. at my next visit I guess.

This is my hand the day I ate eggs!... I'm a little scared to try them again. They were worse than that the next day, so swollen my ring didn't fit for about 3 days.. and the cuts and tight skin were horrible... 

This is a week and 2 days after the "egg" day.   My ring fits again and the painful, red, rashy tight skin is gone!

And this is my hand today.. less swollen even since a few days ago and doing so much better. I still feel a little tight and have a few cuts (maybe from the potatoes???)  but I'm happy with what I have!

Anyway - That is my update!  I've been told I'm crazy. I've been told this is not a good thing to do.  I've been given the look of "oh wow, that's not safe to loose that much weight". But since I feel better now than I have in years (apart from have a little cold), and the weight is coming off without me being hungry, I have energy to exercise and get things done - all of which I haven't before. So I don't think this is bad. I'm also not feeling like I'm walking around in a daze or fog.. I feel happier and less lethargic in general.

The more foods I eat and find that I can eat without gaining weird amounts of weight or having my hand swell and hurt.... the more I am encouraged and want to keep going! This week, I'm adding yams (apparently different family than sweet potatoes - but I don't like sweet potatos as well as yams so I don't care!), green beans, and garlic!  I'll give my hand a week of feeling good before I add potatoes back in.. But I'm missing chips, so I hope it's soon!

With this change... wouldn't you want to figure it out!

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Young Scholars' interpretation of Christmas

I meant to post this earlier, but had a lot of technical difficulties when I tried to post the videos. yes, they are user errors, thank goodness John is here to rescue me!

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For a few reasons John and I decided to enroll our kids into a charter school in Pennsylvania. Probably the most valid reason was that since we are just renting we wanted to put the kids into a school that they could stay in next year too so we didn't have to move them, yet again, into a different elementary school. Young Scholars of Central PA or YSCP is the school we found and for the most part really like it. It is very culturally diverse and academically on par or above the countries average standards.  All students take Chinese and Spanish everyday and most of the faculty was born and raised outside of the US for most of their youth... all good things in my book.  But like most schools there are a few things that I don't agree with or appreciate, but for now the scales are tipping on the good end.

Their Christmas program though was a good reminder of just what kind of school we are sending our kids too.  Sadly they are so desperate to work on acadmeics that their cultural programs may be suffering, and as hard as they try to be culturally and religiously diverse and accepting, they have taken any meaning out of Christmas and made it a nothing holiday. Better yet a "winter break".  I was looking forward to songs from different cultures or religions or something with character and meaning, but what we got was pretty vanilla and boring.  The school is still a good school, regardless of how they celebrate but I am no longer certain we'll be staying after we move into our permanent residence.  Though giving up the language classes may be hard, and Weston and Tyler get to take fencing after school so that's pretty cool too!!

Anyway - for your listening pleasure and/or dis pleasure... here are highlights from the Winter/Christmas concert.

I laugh at how out of sync most of the class is, especially Elayna (front and center pink shirt with pink Girraffe!)  What you can't hear is how the entire class is off by a half to an entire beat from the music being played as background accompaniment!

This was just funny... I couldn't understand anything! The parts I did understand were pretty bad! But the kids had fun, and I guess that is what matters..

So John put all the videos together into one, not sure why, but it's done... and he had to mess with fixing it in the fist place since I couldn't load the videos before. So I'm leaving it.

There is a song by Elayna's class, where no one is together or on beat!  The school butchered one of the most beloved songs of Christmas... "We wish you a Merry Christmas" which was performed by each of the groups, and never got any better. All in the name of cultural and religious acceptance. Such a sad commentary on our society today.  Tyler's class and other 2nd grade with their recorders. Yup, practicing hour at home was always fun!!!  I love that the teacher off to the right (Tyler's teacher - LOVE her) is laughing too! And then Weston's class. No one is looking too joyful for such a 'joyful' song!  But they are all grown up and in 5th grade, so I guess they feel too cool to sing in an assembly or something like that. And yup - he's still so little compared to everyone else. I really hope he starts to grow soon, but I just don't see him growing very tall at all. oh well!

So For what it's worth... Merry Christmas. Merry CHRISTmas.  MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!  There is a reason for the season, and I think we should always remember Him even if we don't all want to believe in Christianity.

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Snow Day - AGAIN

You'd think snow days were a good thing. My kids still think they are, but as I explained to someone yesterday it is a completely selfish reason that I don't want snow days..... I just don't want my kids home!  You might think I'm a horrible, selfish soul - BUT - we haven't had a single week uninterrupted by snow days, late starts or early releases since we started back from Christmas break.  It's become excessive and so disruptive to our schedule at home, sleep schedules and not to mention their learning at school.

I got a call at 5:30 this morning with a recording saying school was canceled and a nice little song "do you want to build a snowman" sung with slightly different words by the wonderful and cheery School Person.  I honestly don't know her title. I call her Leslie, or Mrs. Leslie, but she's in charge of everything I think... anyway, I loved the songs new lyrics that went something like this....

Do you want to build a snowman?  Do you want another snow day?  Something, something, something, something, something, something.  Just ask the weather man, okay, goodbye!

So I missed most of the middle, but in all fairness I was mostly asleep. At least until the song ended and then I was awake for the next hour trying to remember or figure out what she had sung in the middle of that little song.

I might have to have her send me the recording - it was really cute. Even at 5:30 in the morning!

So this is our day - and our backyard!  We are told we'll get a good 3-5" today, but it's 12:00, and we've already had another 3" or more, and it's still coming down strong. It's supposed to snow until 6 or 7:00 this evening, so I'm guessing their prediction of 5" is on the low end.  And that's just topping to the already 6"+ that was already frozen everywhere!

Do I want to build a snow man??? NO, I want to make it all go away!  At least we'll have a beautifully green spring to look forward to!

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Hello 2014

I have no resolutions old or new to reveal or feel guilty about!  I'm looking forward to another year with the hopes of making it through, hopefully with a few points of transition come to an end! On that matter I guess we'll see in due time!

We took a trip to Columbus just before the New Year it was a short but nice visit to see friends and John was able to work with his previous advisor to get some work done on a paper.

The big event of the trip was that Weston got horribly sick and after a week of being sick and taking a trip to the doctor, we decided that it was gluten related. So since then we've cracked down on any gluten consumtption for him and loosened it for Tyler.  So far so good on the new regiment!

And so we welcome in a new year, Here's to 2014!

Elayna and I were driving by their old elementary school and she was so anxious to see the turtle. Apparently her favorite part of the school! So we just had to stop by and get a picture!

State College has a full day for First Night around town. It was ridiculously cold, but we ventured out  anyway and were able to watch some fairly awesome ice sculptures being constructed!  We thought they were awesome! I scored an awesome wool hat so it was a great day for me too!

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