Living with Myofascial Pain Syndrome

Dreamstime stock photo - source

I had a friend remind me last night that it's been a while since I've posted about my health.  (I just looked and my last post was in June of last year - yikes!)  So let me update you.

I went to my last visit with the Osteopathic doctor in Atlanta last August.  The only thing he did on that visit was upset me.  I told him that I did everything he said to do.  I ate gluten free.  I took the gobs of supplements he "prescribed" for me.  And I was still in pain.

His response?  "What pain?"

Um, hello!!  The pain that I've been having for 2 years.  The whole reason that I've traveled 5 hours, 3 different times to see you.  The reason I did $11,000 worth of testing at your office.

So, once again, I re-explained my pain to him.  His response?  "Oh that's just adhesions from your surgery.  There's nothing I can do about that."

At that point I was so mad I couldn't see straight.  So when he told me to keep doing all the same stuff and come back in the winter, I walked out of his office knowing I would not be back.

If a doctor can't remember, between visits, why I've come to see him and nonchalantly waves off a pain that has been majorly affecting my life over the past 2 years, then he doesn't deserve my business.

And for the record, I don't believe it's adhesions.  I believe it's Myofascial Pain Syndrome.  And unlike a lot of doctors (including the guy in Atlanta), I believe MPS is a real, specific condition.  I have done a lot of research on the condition and I find it to have recognizable symptoms that set it apart from other conditions.  Unfortunately there are no cures.  Different therapies have worked for different people.  And some people have had to live with the pain for the rest of their lives.  Not so uplifting, I know.

So who have I been seeing?  Since June I've been going to see a local chiropractor.  I get a massage every other week from her and on the "off" weeks I get a chiropractic adjustment.  She's convinced that she can get me better.  While I know the massages help, I'm still not sure about the adjustments.  What I do like is that, unlike other doctors, she remembers me from week to week and she seems willing to keep trying to figure out what is wrong with me.  She hasn't given up on me like my two physical therapists did.

However, it gets frustrating.  Some days, I feel like I'm starting to feel better and move better and then I try to do something that I haven't been able to do for 2 years.  Something crazy - like hold a baby or sit on the floor for 10 minutes to play with my child.  And then the pain comes back and I realize that I really haven't improved at all.

I might be more pessimistic than usual right now because it's been a bad week for me, pain-wise.  And the worst part is I don't know why.  I think I spend half of my life analyzing everything I've done to see what it was that caused my pain to flare up.  Did I move funny?  Sleep weird the night before?  Try to pick up one too many clothes baskets?  Maybe it was the extra trip I took to Walmart walking around, or the fact that it's 40 degrees colder (or hotter) than normal.

And the truth is...WHO KNOWS???????

I certainly can't figure it out.  What I do know for sure is that it's incredibly frustrating.  I shouldn't have to analyze every movement of every day.  Changes in temperature outside shouldn't affect my muscles like they do.  I shouldn't have to wonder if my side will start feeling like it's on fire halfway through the church service.  I should be able to live my life like a normal 35 year old woman.

But I can't.

It's frustrating to see everyone post on Facebook about the awesome workout that they had and how they lifted a gazillion pounds and did 5000 miles in cycling class.  I love exercising.  It used to be the best way for me to relieve stress.  But I haven't been able to do it in over 2 years.  I should be able to workout and enjoy the feeling of my body getting stronger.

But I can't.

It's frustrating when my children automatically run to pick up things I've dropped because they know I can't bend down well to pick them up.  It's frustrating when I know we are spending hundreds of dollars a month on prescriptions and doctor's visits for something we can't even see or really even diagnose well.

I don't want you to think that it's all bad and that I'm not able to enjoy anything.  I have developed coping mechanisms and, for the most part, have learned my limitations.  I am still able to do things with my kids, just not on the floor and nothing strenuous.  I am still able to have leadership positions within PTA and at my church.  They just have to be administrative positions and not hands-on positions.  I am still able to laugh and enjoy life, just with a more limited set of movements than before.

Living with pain, taking 7 extra pills a day, vising the pain doctor once a month, and guarding my every move have now become a way of life for me.  I pray every day to be healed but if I am not, I will survive.  I don't want to let this thing beat me.

Guest Post: The Pros and Cons of Alternative Medicine

To go along with my recent series on Alternative Medicine and my experience with it, I have a guest post today from Tammy Mahan of Healthline.com.

Pros and Cons of Alternative Medicine

Balance is the basic principle behind a number of alternative medicine types. Various energy medicine forms, tai chi and acupuncture are used to bring balance back to the body. This can return health to normal in theory.

It is important to keep balance in mind when alternative medicine is being considered for yourself or a loved one. There are things that you should remain cautious of, even though alternative and complementary medicine has benefits. The pros and cons should be taken into consideration before beginning a therapy that is new.

Pros of Alternative Medicine

There are approximately thirty-eight percent of adults and twelve percent of children according to the NCCAM (National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine) are using a type of alternative medicine. The reasons are as follows:

Treatment of the entire person - There is a view in traditional medicine that the person is a different entity than the disease they are carrying. There have been a number of advances in treatment as the trend for medical specializations are increasing; physicians were previously distracted from the part of the patient that was still healthy. Care of the entire body is the focus in alternative medicine. The overall spiritual and emotional health of the patient is addressed by alternative medicine practitioners. Among the main reasons that there is a rise in alternative medicine is the increased interest in the holistic approach according to the Osher Center for Integrative Medicine.

Alternative medicine practitioners provide an increased amount of personal attention to patients because of the whole body care focus. Full waiting rooms, insurance companies pressuring them, and being strapped for time, occur with traditional physicians. One on one attention has an increased emphasis for those practicing alternative medicine because the fee structures and philosophies are different.

Prevention is focused on which is another attraction of alternative medicine. There is an encouragement for treatment on prevention of disease when you well in addition to when you are sick unlike with traditional medicine when the focus is only on being sick.

Cons of Alternative Medicine

There are key factors that should be kept in mind prior to attempting new types of alternative medicine. You should not be prevented from using alternative medicine by the concerns that follow. They provide additional information in the process of making a decision.

The scientific research has been limited. There has been an increase in the funding for alternative medicine research studies as the demand has increased. The evidence is limited and there are a lot of unanswered questions in comparison to methods in traditional medicine. There are a number of studies being done. To learn more about them, ask your healthcare provider or visit the NCCAM website and use the link for research. You can also inquire about online resources or scientific journals at your local library.

The herbal product or dietary supplement that you are considering taking is something that you should see what the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and National Institutes of Health, and other government agencies have to say about. The websites for the various agencies can provide alternative medicine reports.

You should think about balance when you consider alternative medicine. Your best option could be to take the best health care from each alternative.

Tammy Mahan is a certified natural health consultant. She enjoys writing articles about alternative therapies and shares her knowledge on Healthline.com .

Alternative Medicine: Chiropractors, are they worth trying?

Dreamstime stock photo - source

Other posts in this series:
What is an alternative medicine doctor and what do they do?
What testing do you get when you choose alternative medicine?

What is a detox diet and why do you do it?
What supplements and shakes do they recommend?
Results of the food sensitivities testing.
What kind of therapy did my osteopath recommend?

I kind of visited a new doctor yesterday.  I say, kind of, because I really went in to get a massage, not to get a medical consultation.

But let's go back to the beginning.

Since about September of last year, I have been getting regular medical massages every two or three weeks.  What that means is that I go and pay someone to press really hard on all the trigger points (muscle knots) that I have.  My pain condition, myofascial pain syndrome, causes me to have many, many of these spots.  They get so entrenched in my muscles and fascia that they cause my whole muscle to stay contracted.  When the muscle is contracted long enough, it starts to spasm.

I want to do everything I can not to get to the spasm point.  Out of everything I've tried, massages are the most effective in getting rid of trigger points.  I guess I feel a little guilty at times about telling people that I get a massage every two weeks.  People tend to look at me as if I'm a little too pampered.  So I just wanted to get the background out there to let you know that these aren't "feel good" massages.  They are not relaxing.  They hurt and they continue to hurt for several days afterward.  But then I feel better and I can move better and I can function better, at least for a short time.

The guy that I was getting massages from was great.  He was a former biology teacher in Rwanda.  During their civil wars, he brought his family to the US and decided to go to massage school.  Both of those (biology and massage school) made him very knowledgeable in muscles, how they work and how they are connected.  I could just go in and tell him what was hurting the most and he would concentrate on the trigger points affecting those areas. He could help me be able to move again.  I do not think my shoulder would have gotten better as quickly as it did if it were not for him.

However, after going to the same massage therapist for 6 months, he decided to close his shop and move away in hopes of getting more business elsewhere.

So I had to find a new masseuse.

At the recommendation of a friend, I went to see her chiropractor, who is also a licensed massage therapist.  Even though I was scheduled for a massage, I still had to talk to the doctor about my condition beforehand.  Like a lot of medical professionals that I've met over the last year and a half, she spent most of the time trying to re-diagnose me from her point of view.  I say that because it seems like every specialist sees an issue according to their bias.  A GI doctor sees a digestive issue.  A osteopathic doctor sees a lifestyle issue.  A chiropractor sees a back issue.

Are there issues with my back?  Probably.  Will they fix all my pain?  Probably not.

The chiropractor was great at giving a massage.  She actually pressed harder and found more trigger points than my last guy.  That's a good thing.  But she also wants me to come back as a chiropractic patient and get adjustments.  I'm not sure how I feel about that.

It's hard to go to doctor after doctor and get re-diagnosed each time.  They say "Oh, this (one thing) is what is wrong with you.  All you have to do is this simple exercise/stretch/diet, etc. and you will be cured."  Then I get my hopes up and I do whatever it is they are asking.  And it doesn't help.  It never helps.  And I've just spent a lot of time and energy and money.  And I've been disappointed time and again.

I don't know if I can do that again with a new doctor.

What would you do if you were me?  Would you go try the chiropractor for a while?  

Alternative Medicine: Alternative Therapy

Dreamstime stock photo - source

Other posts in this series:
What is an alternative medicine doctor and what do they do?
What testing do you get when you choose alternative medicine?

What is a detox diet and why do you do it?
What supplements and shakes do they recommend?
Results of the food sensitivities testing.

It's now been about 6 weeks since I've (knowingly) eaten gluten.  And I haven't felt too much of a difference.  In general I feel like my digestion is a little bit easier, less of the "overly full" feeling after meals, but I'm also on digestive enzymes and tons of probiotics, so who's to say which of those things is making the difference.  And if I don't feel better does that mean I'm not finding the right combination of foods to cut out or does it mean that food isn't really my problem?  Argh!

But first let me tell you about the rest of my test results.

Gut Issues

As the doctor mentioned on my first visit, osteopathic doctors concentrate a lot on the gut.  80% of your immune response comes from your gut.  Some people call it your second brain.  So, obviously, a lot of my testing revolved around my gut.  Turns out I don't have enough good bacteria in my gut.  No surprise there.  Remember back in November when I had that C-diff infection?  Yeah, that really screwed everything up in there.

I also have too much yeast in my gut.  Those two things go together, not enough good bacteria to kill off yeast, so it overgrows.  Then when I have too much yeast, all the sugar and carbs that I eat just make the yeast grow (like when you activate yeast to use in a bread recipe).  So, even if the not eating gluten doesn't make me feel tons better, at least not eating it means I'm eating less carbs and it helps stop the yeast from growing.  In light of those results, they "prescribed" high doses of probiotics in these little packets of powder that I mix in with my shake every day.  Hopefully it will even everything out in my gut and get all the bacteria in the right amounts again.  The doctor also recommended I drink Kefir every day, which is like pourable yogurt.  So I've been putting that in my shake too.  Lots of stuff goes in that shake.

OK, so what else is wrong with me?

Heavy Metals

Well, I did a test that looked for heavy metals in my blood.  And they found some.  Lead and antimony.  I have no clue how they got there.  I look at the lists online of ways that you can get lead in your blood and nothing on the list seems to apply to me.  But it's there.

So how do you get rid of lead?  Depends on who you ask.  According to the doctor in Atlanta, I need to do a process called chelation, which is an IV therapy.  They inject you with a chelating agent which binds to the heavy metal and helps it find its way out of your body.  The downside?  Chelating also helps other minerals that you need, such as calcium find their way out of your body too.  People have died from losing too much calcium after doing chelation.  On the flip side, the same article says that there is a "low occurrence of side effects when used at the dose and infusion rates approved by the US FDA as a treatment for heavy metal poisoning."

OK.  Then I have a doctor (non-alternative, regular doctor) telling me that heavy metals are quickly excreted from the body and I don't have to do anything special to get them out.  But my osteopathic doctor and my research online tells me that heavy metals are only slowly excreted and that they build up over time because of this.  Meaning that I need to do something extra, like chelation, to help them out.  So which one is true?  I have no clue, but it's hard for me to believe that I was recently exposed to lead and that it just so happens that I had high levels of it at the time of the test.  I don't know where I would have been exposed to it in the past, but I feel like that's a more likely scenerio than current exposure.  Argh!  I hate it when the "experts" disagree.

Viral Load

Lastly, they tested my viral load, meaning how much of previous viruses that I have had are still lurking around in my system.  Two viruses stood out and they both make sense.  The Epstein Barr virus, the one that causes mono and chronic fatigue syndrome, is incredibly high.  I had mono in high school and I've heard that it never actually leaves your system.  A high level can cause fatigue and low energy, basically as if you have chronic mono. 

The other is the micoplasm, or walking pneumonia, virus.  Seeing as walking pneumonia is very common in East TN and I've had it half a dozen times over the last 10 years that I've lived here, I can believe that my levels are high.  Once again that can cause fatigue and low energy.

How do you fix that?  Well, according to a traditional doctor, you don't.  You just live with it and all the levels will go down in time.  Seeing as I had mono 18 years ago, I kind of doubt that one will go down in time.  According to an osteopathic doctor, you do more IV therapy - oxidative IV therapy.  The websites that I have found about oxidative IV therapy say that they inject your blood with hydrogen peroxide, that it's all natural and it's all good.  Yet, the state of TN doesn't allow people to give out the therapy here.  Why would the state not allow it if there are no side effects and only benefits?

So I guess in all this I'm left with more questions than answers.  Is not eating gluten really making a difference?  Should I be cutting out all grains instead of just gluten?  Should I really do the chelation?  What about the oxidative IV therapy?  To do that, I have to pay a lot and drive to Atlanta a lot.  And the biggest question of all, is any of this really going to make a difference in my pain?

I don't have any answer to any of this right now.  If any of you have any advice or any experience with this, I would love to hear what you have to say.

Alternative Medicine: Food Test Results

Dreamstime stock photo - source

Other posts in this series:
What is an alternative medicine doctor and what do they do?
What testing do you get when you choose alternative medicine?

What is a detox diet and why do you do it?
What supplements and shakes do they recommend?

Last Thursday was the big day - the day I got the results from all the bazillions of tests that I took at the alternative medicine clinic in Atlanta.  Tim went with me this time, which was good.  He took notes while the doctor talked and I tried to absorb it all.

The tests with the biggest impact on my life were the Food Sensitivity tests.  The first one, the IgG blood test tested over a hundred different foods to see what I am most sensitive to.  (IgG is some kind of antibody your body creates when it feels attacked by an outside agent, like a food. You can read more about it here if you are interested.)

The test showed different levels of sensitivities, from "no reaction" up to "severe reaction".  Only one food showed up as "severe" for me - pears.  That means I am not supposed to eat pears for 9 months.  Then after that I can eat them sparingly.  That's really OK.  I'm not a big pear eater.  Next up, in the "high reaction" category - peaches.  What is it with me and fruit?  OK, no peaches for 6 months.  All that is no problem.  I can easily live without peaches and pears.

Then comes the biggie, the "moderate reaction" category.  Two foods showed up on there - chicken and tomatoes.  Um, that's a little harder to handle.  So now I'm not supposed to eat chicken or tomatoes for 3-4 months.  That means no pizza, no marinara, no salsa, no ketchup, and no barbecue sauce.  As for chicken, well, I eat it in probably half of all my meals now.  And that's all I eat at a fast food restaurant.  Cutting it out for 4 months does not make me happy.

In the "mild reaction" category were tons of food, such as all berries, carrots, cinnamon, lemons, plums, pumpkin and tea.  (Clearly I have issues with fruit, which is bad, because I love fruit.)  These items I can eat, but I need to limit them to 1-2 times a week.

Then comes the IgA test results.  IgA is another type of antibody that your body can create, this time in response to eating gluten.  These results came from my adrenal stress test.  I got to chew on a cotton plug 4 times during one day.  I put those spit-filled cotton ball things into a test tube and wrote the time of day on them and mailed them off to be tested.  Besides showing low adrenal function, i.e. no energy, it also showed my Gliadin IgA results.  I am highly gluten sensitive.  Normal ranges are 1.0-25.0 ug/mL.  Mine was 78.0, over 3 times the top end of the scale.  What does that mean?  I should not eat gluten any more. :(

The good news is that I am NOT sensitive to eggs, peanuts or dairy, which means I can add them back in.  Adding in eggs makes finding gluten-free items much easier.  And I just love cheese, so being able to add that back in is a relief as well.

I had some other results that I will tell you about in another post.  Right now I'm just trying to fully grasp what no gluten, no chicken and no tomatoes means for me.  Literally, that is every food I love and 3/4 of my current diet.  Just trying to figure out what I could have at a fast food restaurant is daunting right now - nothing with a bun, no chicken.  That pretty much only leaves fries...  Even fast food salads have chicken on them and they are premade so asking for something special to be left off doesn't always work.

Just like the last time I went to the clinic when they put me on the detox diet, I think after a week or two and some research, I will be fine.  But right now, I'm overwhelmed.

Any resources or recipes that you know of that are gluten, tomato and chicken free would be great!

Alternative Medicine: Supplements and Shakes

Dreamstime stock photo - source

Other posts in this series:
What is an alternative medicine doctor and what do they do?
What testing do you get when you choose alternative medicine?

What is a detox diet and why do you do it?

So what do you do when you are eating a very limited diet and you need more nutrition than you can get through food?  You add in a whole bunch of nutritional supplements.

Besides giving me a new diet, the Naturopathic doctor also "prescribed" nutritional supplements for me.  I say "prescribed" in quotes because she wrote them down as if they were prescriptions, but they are all over-the-counter items and they are all natural, non-synthetic vitamins, minerals and amino acids that are normally found in your body.  There is really no prescription needed.

The first set of items I mix up together in a shake every morning:

• Foundation Gut Enhancement - Remember how I said 80% of your immune response comes from your gut? This mixture of vitamins, minerals, protein and plant extracts is to help repair damage in your digestive tract.
• Glutamine - An amino acid given to people on a limited diet.  Heavy duty weight-lifters use this one as well.  Also helps with gut repair.
• Pro-biotic - Helps increase the amount of good bacteria in your intestines.  Helps especially with people who are on antibiotics a lot or who have been on them a lot in their lifetime.

Thankfully, on my way home from Atlanta, I stopped off at a good friend's house in Chattanooga.  She sells Advocare products and is much more wise about nutritional supplements than I am.  I had her look through all my stuff to make sure it was normal, non-quacky products.  She assured me that it was.  

Her husband was also invaluable because he showed me how to mix all this up into a good tasting shake.  Personally, I had never made a protein kind of shake in my life.  But, thanks to Jon, I can now whip up a shake every morning for breakfast.  The secret?  Add frozen strawberries and some honey.  Makes it super yummy.  The Foundation Gut Enhancement itself is vanilla flavored and would probably taste OK without the strawberries, but it is yellow and all I can think about when I see it is that it looks like I'm drinking pollen.  I just can't stomach it by itself.  So I add the strawberries to make it pink and I put it in a dark glass.  Then I can't see the pollen looking yellowy parts as much.

Also on my list to take are a bunch of supplements in pill form:

• Ultrazyme - A digestive enzyme to take with each meal.  It just helps the food to be digested easier and for the digestive tract to get a little break.
• Liver pills - Integrates vitamins and minerals to improve liver function.  Your liver helps detox your body from any drugs you may be taking.  Since I am taking a lot, my liver has been working overtime.  So she prescribed several things to aid liver function.
• Pro-adrenal - Helps provide support for your adrenal gland, the infamous stress hormone gland.

There are, in total, 12 pills to take every day.  It's a lot to remember.  I have 3 pills containers now - one for breakfast, one for lunch, and one for dinner.

The last set of supplements are those I take at bedtime.  I have been on sleeping pills for over a year now and have been having a hard time weaning myself off of them.  In light of that the doctor prescribed me something to help me feel sleepy more naturally:

• MaxRelax - A mixture of several amino acids.  This causes you to relax and keeps your mind from racing when you are trying to go to sleep.
• Natural Calm Magnesium - Magnesium is used for a lot of things, but in this case, it is used for liver repair.

These two are both dissolved in water.  The MaxRelax is cherry flavored and, by itself, just wasn't very good.  So instead of having 2 glasses of water for 2 different things, I decided to just mix them together.  The magnesium is raspberry-lemon flavored and together, they are much better.

This list is very overwhelming to add to my daily regiment.  To make it easier, instead of adding them in all at once, I added them in slowly over a few weeks.  I started with the Foundation Gut Repair and added in a new item from the list every 2 days.  That allowed me to see any adverse effects from any of the products.  For instance, the glutamine taken in the recommended doses made my stomach hurt, so I had to play around with a lower dose of that until I could handle it.

I also made up a chart to put on the fridge to tell me what to take at each meal. And, as I told you already, I found 3 separate weekly pill boxes to use, one for each meal.

I didn't like the fact that the appointment ended with them ushering you into their store.  They make sure to tell you that you can buy your supplements from anywhere, but they, conveniently, provide a store on site and knowledgeable sales people to aide you with your purchases.  At that point, I had been there for almost 4 hours.  I was hungry and tired and I just wanted to be finished.  So I handed the list over to their saleslady and she went and collected everything on it.  $300 later, I was ready to go.  Yes, $300 for a one month supply.

The good news is that, since then, I have had time to look around at other places that sell this stuff and I am more knowledgeable for next time.  I can have a list of other prices and other ingredients with me to compare and decide where to buy anything that I need to continue on.

As you can see this was a BIG doctor visit for me.  I'm sorry for the long posts, but I process things by blogging about them and it took me about 3 weeks to process everything.  I just finished my last take-home test.  Hallelujah!  Fingers are crossed that all the results will be ready for my next visit on May 16.  I'd really like to find some answers and a treatment plan that will work well for my pain.

I've provided links to each product that I bought so you can see the ingredients.  I am not being compensated in any way for those links. 

Alternative Medicine: One Month Detox Diet

Dreamstime stock photo - source

Other posts in this series:
What is an alternative medicine doctor and what do they do?
What testing do you get when you choose alternative medicine?

After talking to the Osteopathic doctor, deciding to go forward with testing and getting way too much blood taken at the lab...

Finally, all my testing was done (at least all the testing they do there in the office).  Next on the agenda was talking to the Naturopathic doctor.  I really liked that doctor.  She was down to earth and she asked some great questions.  She asked about my eating habits, my sleeping habits, how much energy I had at different times during the day and how I felt at different times during the day.  She really delved deep into what a typical day was like for me.

I also learned a lot of things from her.  80% of your immune response, including your inflammatory response, comes from your gut, your digestive tract.  If there are problems in your gut, there will most likely be problems in other places in your body as well.  So for a holistic doctor, their first order of business is to get your gut in good working condition.

She also said that eating a food today could affect you 5-7 days later.  So you could eat a piece of cheese today and 5 days later have a headache.  That headache could have been caused in some way because you ate that cheese, but because the response is so delayed, you wouldn't necessarily associate those two things together.

You could also have a response to a food because you eat too much of it or you eat it too often.  For example, you could be just fine with eggs, but if you eat an egg every morning for breakfast, it could start to bother you just because you are eating it every day.

In light of all those things, they decided to put me on a very restricted diet for a month.  I am on a gluten-free, egg-free, dairy-free, peanut-free diet.  This accomplishes two things.  First it cuts out the 4 foods that are the top allergic foods.  More people have food allergies to these 4 foods then to any other foods out there.  If my body has an allergy or an intolerance to these foods, then I am giving my gut a chance to relax and to get all of that out of its system.  Its kind of a detox for the digestive system.

Second, it gives me a baseline to go by.  Once the month goes by, I go back to the clinic and we get the results of all the tests.  Some of those tests might reveal food allergies that I didn't know I had.  But even if they don't, I can do some testing on my own.  I can add those 4 foods back in one by one and see if there is a change in the way I'm feeling.  If, after giving my gut a break for a month, I add a food back in and my gut goes crazy, then I know I'm intolerant to that food.

I'm sure the question you are wondering right now is, what in the world will I eat for a month?  That was my first question too, because I really don't like to be hungry.

My last stop of the day was to the dietitian.  She was great too - friendly, willing to answer questions and just full of knowledge.  She gave me lists of things not to eat and lists of things to substitute instead.  She also gave me ideas on where to find foods to eat.  On the list to eat is any kind of meat, vegetable or fruit.  Whew!  No fake meat for me :).

Dairy-free:  There are a few dairy alternatives out there, but they don't recommend patients replace dairy with soy products.  Instead of cow's milk, there is almond milk or coconut milk.  Instead of cow's milk cheese, there is a cheese-like alternative used for melting (a brand called Daiya) or there is cheese made from goat's milk, sheep's milk or buffalo's milk (I'd hate to be the person who had to milk a buffalo!).  My mom and I visited an Earth Fare grocery store earlier this milk and found some great tasting sheep's milk cheese.  It was crazy expensive...but it's good and for this cheese lover, it's making all my food taste, oh so much better!

Gluten-free:  Ah, there's the biggie.  Gluten is in almost everything - breads, bakery products, cereals, soups, sauces...the list goes on.  The dietitian recommended Kroger for gluten-free products.  They have a lot and they are all grouped together which is very helpful.  I found gluten-free pasta there and GF bread.  At Earth Fare, I got GF barbecue sauce and GF teriyaki sauce.  I was amazed that those things have gluten in them, but apparently wheat is a cheap filler.  Rice and potatoes are naturally GF, so I have been eating a lot of those as well.

Egg-free:  Gluten-free is hard but this is the one that really got me.  Gluten holds foods together and when you take out the gluten, you have to use something else to hold it together.  Guess what you use?  Yup, eggs.  So finding GF products that did not have eggs in them was tricky, but I did find one brand of bread that was GF and egg free.  And, surprisingly, I found one brand or frozen pizza that was GF, egg-free and dairy-free and it didn't taste too bad either.  "Vegan" is a key word to look for if you are eating egg-free and dairy-free.

Peanut-free:  No biggie.  I just can't eat peanuts or peanut butter.  I did buy sunflower seed butter to use on my GF bread or my corn cakes (turns out rice cakes are off the list - don't remember if they have gluten or eggs, but they are not on the diet).

My typical food for this month:

• Breakfast - protein shake (tell you all about that later), piece of GF bread with real butter (that is on the diet, margarine is not)
• Snack - GF pretzels, fruit
• Lunch - salad with Vinaigrette salad dressing (ranch, etc, has eggs), a couple slices of lunch meat, a piece of fruit
• Snack - corn chips and salsa or corn cake with sunflower seed butter
• Dinner - meat with GF BBQ sauce or GF teriyaki sauce, veggie, and rice, potato or GF pasta
• Snack - GF cereal or GF waffle

I'm happy to report I am not going hungry.  The first few days of the diet, I was very hungry, but now that I know more what I can eat, I'm doing good.

Stay tuned.  I'll tell you all about the dietary supplements they have "prescribed" for me.

Alternative Medicine: Testing

Dreamstime stock photo - source

I always thought that if I went to an alternative medicine practitioner, the testing they did on me would be something weird - like finding the amount of chi in my body or something.  I never thought they would be testing something normal, like hormones and food allergies.  But that's just what they did.

When I first got to the clinic in Atlanta, I went in to talk with the Osteopathic doctor.  He took a full medical history.  Now keep in mind those principles I told you about in the last post.  This doctor is looking at me holistically, meaning he looks at everything that is wrong with me, not just at abdominal pain.  So, literally, we talked about every medical condition I have had as well as all surgeries I've had and the current problems I am having.  He also did a brief exam, but he was focused more on the history than the exam.

After all that (about 45 minutes), he determined a whole bunch of tests that he wanted to run - thyroid function, adrenal function, food allergy panel, heavy metal screening, etc.  There were a lot.  In true doctor fashion, he said he had no clue how much any of that would cost me, he "just orders" them.

Then comes the fun part...they send in their financial advocate.  She tells me the whopping total for all those tests the doctor "just orders" - $11,000.  (Mouth drops open.)  Yeah, that was my response too.  But...after my insurance comes into play...and after the "special deal" they offer to their patients...the total came down to a much more reasonable amount.  Still a lot, but doable.  Because, believe me, $11,000 is NOT doable.

Tim and I talked and agreed to go ahead with the testing.  So they sent me to the lab to drain me of all my blood.  Not really, but they took over 10 vials of blood.  They kept having to retie the tourniquet tighter to keep it flowing.  I had to fast for this visit and this was about lunchtime, so I was starving and having all my blood taken out...I wasn't very nice.  You probably didn't want to be around me at that point.

Then they did this test to see what my stomach acid levels were like.  They had me swallow this capsule with a little camera-like thing on it.  They put a big box on my stomach that hung around my neck.  The box talked to the computer and to the little capsule which was measuring my stomach acid levels.  Next was the fun part.  I got to swallow a squirt of baking soda and water - tasted nasty!  Why baking soda?  As the tech told me (the tech who had a thick accent and sounded just like Count Dracula), they know the ph of baking soda so they can easily measure the ph in my stomach and see how long it takes it to bring the ph back to normal.

As if that wasn't enough, after that test was done they loaded me up with take home tests - everything from saliva tests to urine collection to stool samples (and yes, I think this is the first time in my life I have typed out the word "urine").  All those fun things get to be done at home and mailed back to a lab.  They want to use those to measure levels over time.  For instance, for the saliva test, they measure adrenal function and hormone levels over the course of a day.  Four times during the day from the time I wake up until 11 at night, I chew on a cotton plug then put it back in a test tube with the time written on it.  Then I stick all 4 tubes in an envelope and mail those back.  Some of the other tests are a lot more detailed and a lot more gross, so I won't go into detail here.  Needless to say, you need to be glad you aren't doing them.  They aren't fun.

We are hoping and praying that all of this extensive testing will give us some answers.  I have been impressed with the detail this clinic has shown.  No other doctor has ever looked at my hormone levels or my vitamin levels.  No other doctor has spent 45 minutes in the same room as me.  Yes, some of these tests are high up there on the ick scale but when we are done we should have a very detailed look at my biochemistry.  If there are things out of whack that we can fix, then maybe it will make me feel better.  That's the goal anyway.

Later I'll tell you about the diet (not for weight loss) and the nutritional supplement portion of the visit.  Stay tuned.

Did you miss the first post in this series?  You can  find it here.