Dealing With Cancer AND Severe Food Sensitivities At The Same Timefeatured

“Let food be thy medicine, and medicine be thy food”a quote from Hippocrates (father of medicine, BC 431)

I totally agree with my Greek friend Hippocrates!

I really do believe that you are what you eat. In a perfect world we would all have clean, affordable (not like the crazy priced organic stuff we are offered to spare ourselves harmful pesticides) vitamin and mineral rich foods that we could eat each day to nourish our bodies and in turn maintain our health.

But for the last 4 years or so, I have had the unfortunate pleasure of dealing with severe food sensitivities…..which has forced me to see and experience food in a whole new way.

Most notably…I’ve had to give up bread, pasta and anything with gluten in it. I’ve also given up dairy…..so no cheese, yogurt, or milk products as well as soy!!!

Can you believe that a few years ago I was in Italy for 1 month, but never ate a pizza or any pasta??? It should be a crime, I know! 🙁

On top of all that……I’ve had to give up many healthy veggies and fruits that for whatever reason, my body will NOT tolerate anymore…..like broccoli, mushrooms, eggplant, apples, peaches, avocados and tomatoes. I used to LIVE on this stuff and ate them every single day! But these are foods that fall under the Nightshade family or are categorized as high FODMAP foods, which can cause reactions in some people. Sadly, I’m one of those people.

If I eat these foods by accident (or on purpose), I will quickly feel the wrath and havoc that they bring on me. I can be doubled over in horrible abdominal pains, my throat can start swelling and ALMOST close, I can get blood blisters in my mouth, face terrible bloating, awful gas, as well as joint pain (fingers and knees, sometimes wrists and elbows) and EXTREME exhaustion for several days. Phewwww.

Take for example an incident that happened to me just a few months ago. I cooked myself some lamb stew and made the BIG mistake of adding peas in it. I forgot that peas are high FODMAP …and within an hour after eating a large bowl of my dinner, I was lying in bed with bad stomach cramps, aching finger joints and knees, a rash on my hips….and ended up having absolutely no energy for about 1 week. All because of some peas!  Geeesh!

As a result, I don’t really take that much pleasure in food anymore. I see it just as a way to feed my body in order to stay alive. In fact, I’m anxious to eat out at restaurants because I am just not sure what is in the dish and what it will do to me.

Some (like my mother) think I’m on some kind of BIZARRE diet….but I swear I am not doing this on purpose! Who would do such a thing?

All of these food issues really began after I had food poisoning while on a business trip in Colombia. I ate a hamburger that made me very sick for a few days. While I recovered from that food poisoning in just a few days……I guess the bad bacteria that was inside started to cause lots of damage and slowly tear away at my insides. This is just MY theory, but nobody wearing a white coat has been able to figure out EXACTLY what is wrong with me and why I am so sensitive to soooooo many foods.

My functional medicine doctor in Michigan has told me that I have something called “leaky gut” and it has something to do with all of this.

Leaky gut is an auto-immune issue that lets undigested food particles get into your blood stream because of holes in your intestines, and then causes all kind of problems when your immune system starts to attack the different food proteins. Here is a good video that briefly discusses this subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wdgp_d6Iu2M

I have done so much research on leaky gut over these last few years, and did you know that there is a protein in gluten that mimics a thyroid hormone? It’s called molecular mimicry. So, if you have leaky gut and still eat gluten it can cause thyroid issues. I thought that was really interesting and just shows how complex this issue really is. A good resource to check out is Dr. Tom O’Bryan who has dedicated his life to raising awareness on the dangers of gluten, inflammatory foods, and leaky gut issues. Here is an interesting video he did called “The Top Ten Foods Not to Eat”  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSuUnOXb0mE

This is his website for more information if you want it: http://thedr.com/

One of my goals for getting the colonoscopy in December 2017 that led to my tumor being identified and my cancer diagnosed was to see if I had Ulcerative Colitis or Crohns disease. These diseases (If I had them) maybe could explain why my gut is so messed up and why I can’t eat much, but we didn’t get to finish the exam because my tumor was blocking the way. 🙁

As you can imagine, managing these food issues AND cancer at the same time is a big handful.

This is because there are some diets that are advantageous when you have cancer……such as avoiding all animal protein, but since I can’t eat almost ANYTHING…….I haven’t been able to implement these strategies. After all, what the heck would happen to me if I had to take out all animal products? I would wither away to nothing!

Another thing I have to be very careful with is to make sure that any drugs or products to manage my cancer treatment side effects do NOT contain any of the stuff I can’t tolerate.

For example, I had to get a different type of anesthesia during my colonoscopy other than Propofol, because Propofol contains soy! Why in the world would this drug have soy in it????

Also, I got really HORRIBLE stomach pains and my throat starting swelling/closing really badly (to the point that I thought I was going to have to go to the emergency room) after I ate a ginger candy (called gin-gins) to help soothe my nauseous stomach from chemo and radiation which contained an ingredient called glucose syrup. WELL……it turns out glucose syrup is High Fructose Corn Syrup! I can’t tolerate this crap, so there you are.  I then found another version of the gin-gins that was made with real sugar, so I was able to use those afterwards with no problem.

It is soooooooooo sneaky of these food manufacturers to use these different names for things! THAT should not be allowed.

My rule of thumb now is to only buy a packaged food if it has less than 8 ingredients and I know what all the ingredients are.

There was also a cream that I was given by the cancer center wound healing department to help with my radiation burns that had corn syrup in it! How ridiculous is THAT???? Why do you need to sweeten a body cream!!!!!!

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If any of you reading this blog are suffering from exhaustion, joint pain, memory issues, gas and bloating (or know someone who is)…….I would highly recommend trying an elimination diet for one month. As a reference, I would suggest using MONASH University’s list of Low, Medium and High FODMAP foods. They are apparently the authority figure on the subject of FODMAP foods.  They even have an APP for your phone to download so you can easily look stuff up.

My extreme version of an elimination diet would be to strip everything in your diet down to just water, leafy greens, cucumber and carrot and clean fish/lean beef (grass fed hormone free of course) and berries for an entire month and see how you feel.

Yes it will be hard. Yes, you will crave bread and cookies. Yes….you will have a caffeine withdrawal headache. But after a week, I think you may be surprised how good you feel.

Then start bringing back your favorite foods one at a time and see how your body reacts. Keep a food journal to track changes.

You may be surprised what happens!

As for me, I have not been able to bring back any foods yet. I try every so often to bring in things, but usually end up with gas, bloating and fatigue….so I have to stop it.

Oh well. Maybe someday I’ll be able to have a pizza again……in Italy!