30 miles!

Since I was off work this week and the weather was beautiful, I revolved my days around working out outside.  I worked out for the past 7 days straight!  I lifted weights four times and also ran, walked, and hiked 30 miles this week!  Mid-week, my legs were fairly sore since I hadn't run in a few weeks but I'm feeling so much better and look forward to my daily workouts.  I think I might take tomorrow off as I should give myself a rest day at some point.  I don't feel as though I need to rest but I've experienced workout burnout before and would like to avoid it as I am hitting a good stride right now.

I'm challenging myself to 30 miles in 6 days (Monday-Saturday) this week.  Unfortunately, it looks like the weather is going to be hot and humid here for the next week so it looks like I'll be hanging out on the hamster wheel (treadmill) if I can't get myself up and on the road early in the morning.  I am also planning another four days of lifting.

Yesterday, I took my annual trip to Door County with my mom.  We did a little shopping and completed an easy 7-mile hike in Newport State Park.  I will add a few photos at the end of this post from our hike.  It's so nice to get out in nature and get a good workout at the same time!   I was also excited to realize that my stamina has increased dramatically in the past few months.  Last summer, I did quite a few long hikes (9-12 miles) in the mountains but was just so dead by the end.  Granted, yesterday's hike was no mountain hike by a long shot, but I was really good to go afterwards.  I think I may have even uttered the words, "I could do that again easily!"

As always, we hit Door County Coffee & Tea first (my favorite!) and I picked up pumpkin coffee for this fall and a milk frother that I love!  For those gluten-freers out there, you'll be happy to know that there are quite a few restaurants in Door County that offer gluten free menus and options.  We ate lunch at Wild Tomato Pizza, which had wood fired (yum!) pizzas and gluten-free crusts.  We ate supper at The Cookery.  Coincidentally, we ate both lunch and supper in Fish Creek, but we were pretty hungry after our hike that we were just looking for a place that we knew we would like.  The Cookery had a pretty bad fire since the last time we were there and went from a country cafe to a funky restaurant but is still fantastic! 

Trumpeter Swans in Lake Michigan.  They may not look like it in the photo, but these things are huge!



Anyone notice the large amount of bumble bees this year?



Shell beach!  Literally, this entire beach was covered in a very thick (1 ft minimum) layer of shells!  So cool!



Door County is so beautiful!

Flowers near Lake Michigan.

Healing Through Food - Part II (The Later Years)

Last summer, all hell broke loose.  My hair starting falling out by the handful, my blood pressure was so low that nurses would joke that I was just about to head into a coma (real funny), and my digestive issues ruled my life.  I felt as though my mental capacity had gone down the toilet.  Students would ask a question and for the life of me, I could not come up with an answer even on the simplest of subjects.  I would look at a word and just stare at it thinking that I knew that word but it looked so wrongly spelled and I couldn't figure out what spelling was correct (and we are talking words like "water" - very simple for most people).  My fingers and toes would tingle constantly and I was always light headed.  My balance was off, my skin was breaking out, I would retain water and then spend all day in the bathroom resulting in weight losses and gains on the order of 10 pounds a DAY...you name it, it was going wrong!

When I finally got to the doctor, they tested me for everything under the sun and everything came back normal.  I had an ultrasound of my gall bladder and internal organs and everything looked good.  My doc gave me a bunch of different prescriptions and called it IBS.  The problem was that all those meds made everything worse!  It was not IBS or heart burn or anything else they could come up with.  At this point, you can bet that I was starting to feel a little crazy.  I mean, if every test always comes back normal, it must be in my head.

Except for one thing.   I was blood-tested for Celiac Disease and the tests came back showing that my body was producing antibodies but I didn't meet the requirements to say that I had Celiac.  From what I've read, blood tests for Celiac are notoriously inaccurate and you really need to have a biopsy of your small intestine to be positive.  If you have Celiac, the biopsy will show damage to your villi. 

My doctor told me I was fine, I could eat gluten without harming my body and to go make an appointment with a GI doc.  The soonest I could get in to see a GI was 2-3 months away and the guy was an 1.5 hour drive away.  All these tests took the majority of June and July and I was told this about a week before I was leaving to teach a 3-week field course out west.  This field course meant pit toilets, long hikes, sleeping in tents, and pretty much living in a van.  I couldn't imagine going on that trip the way I was feeling.

I made the decision that since I was producing some antibodies, something was going on.  I mean, your body isn't just suddenly going to start producing antibodies for no reason.  Think of it this way: if you aren't infected with chicken pox, you won't produce antibodies to fight it.  Since the GI doc appointment was so far away, I decided to try the only treatment for Celiac:  going gluten free.  I figure it would be no harm done if I didn't have Celiac and if I did, then maybe I'd make it through the field course in one piece.

Within a couple of days after going gluten free, I was already feeling better!  I wasn't feeling perfect and many of the symptoms persisted but it was the first thing that had ever helped.  I have stuck with the gluten-free lifestyle for nearly 11 months now and here is how my life has changed:

• Blood pressure is back to the normal range
• Digestive issues have resolved for the most part, I no longer worry about teaching a 2+ hour class or doing such things like long hikes because of the worry that I would have to run out to the bathroom 1/2 way through
• The tingling in my hands and feet is mostly gone
• My hair is growing back and is much healthier and thicker
• I can build muscle with ease  :)
• I no longer take 2+ naps a day
• I'm not as irritable with my students
• My brain fog is starting to lift.  I noticed a huge difference in how I was able to respond to my students this past year.  I still have issues with slow thinking and not able to think of the right words here and there though.
• I don't retain water unless I go overboard on salt or I don't drink enough water
• I don't get sick after I eat!
• I don't catch all of the latest colds
• I had one sinus infection in the past year, compared to four during the 8 months before I stopped eating gluten
• My food allergies and lactose intolerance have lessened in severity.  I eat eggs nearly every morning now and I never get sick.
• The amount of headaches I get have gone down significantly

All this stuff has changed in 11 months...from one simple(?) dietary change.  I still get sick if I eat gluten or if I eat contaminated foods too many times in a row and the effects can last anywhere from a few days to a month.  I never got a confirmation biopsy or saw the GI doc - there were some issues with doctor changes, etc.  At this point, since my body has had time to heal, a biopsy would likely show up as normal-ish and I would have to go back to eating gluten for a while before I could have the biopsy done.  No thanks!  I do NOT want to go back to that!  I feel like the proof is in the pudding at this point. 

Maybe I have Celiac.  Maybe I have non-Celiac gluten sensitivity.  I don't really care what you really call it.  Because I had antibodies and because I obviously had vitamin deficiencies and neurological problems that resolved on a gluten free diet, I know there is something major going on.  

I realize that you are likely thinking, "Wow.  Longest.  Post.  Ever." and that's fine.  I haven't shared the whole story with many people beyond a few select in my life and now I have.  Now you know how I got here.  It wasn't a shot in the dark saying, "hmmm...gluten free is the latest diet trend, let's try it!"  It was me being proactive about my health and figuring things out when all my doctors told me for years that I was absolutely fine and looked at me like I was making everything up.

I really do think that we all need to stand up and take charge of our own health.  There are some absolutely wonderfully fabulous doctors out there, but they are human.  They can make mistakes.  Test results are never 100% accurate and how results are read aren't always accurate.  We know how our bodies feel, we know what's normal and what isn't.  There are too many doctors that just want to tell you how you feel and that everything is in your head.  The problem is that...sometimes it isn't.

The photo below was taken last August in the Tetons, three weeks after going gluten free.  I had just hiked a considerable distance straight up just to see the view.  I never would have been able to do this had I not taken control of my own health.  I was feeling so much healthier and stronger!

Healing Through Food - Part I (The Early Years)

Throughout the past year, the way I have thought about food has changed dramatically.  I have been looking at what food will actually do for me and, consequently, what food will do to me.  I've had a long history with food.  When I was 13ish, I came home from figure skating practice and when my mom opened a garage door, there was a skinned deer hanging from the garage ceiling.  My dad had gone hunting and brought that guy home.  I became a vegetarian very soon after that.  I have always been a "save the environment" type girl and this really fit with me.  My parents were very supportive and did their best to make sure I got the protein and nutrients I needed.  My dad has always been awesome at making two batches of supper - one with meat, one without.

That was really the first time I ever really thought about what I ate.  And it pretty much ended there - no meat.  I knew what types of food I needed to eat to be healthy but in junior high and high school, I didn't really care. 

Here's the deal though.  I have been sick on and off for as long as I remember.  From ages 15 (?) - 28, I would go months upon months where I would get sick every time I ate, then get a month off, and it would come back.  I have had recurrent sinus infections my entire life.  I had massive, debilitating migraines in high school.  I was always more tired than everyone else I knew.  I was achy, irritable, and always coming down with the latest cold or flu that was going around (I think I caught every single one!).  Above all, I had major digestive issues.  I gave up even trying to go to dance lessons in the latter part of high school because I had to miss class so much.  Same went for skating.

Early in my 20's, I noticed that dairy products were starting making me sick, so I stopped eating dairy for quite a while.  At some point, I developed an allergy to almonds and I would get sick from eating eggs.

Around the same time, I started noticing that I wasn't able to get enough protein to support myself.  I couldn't build muscles to save my life (something that had never been a problem for me) and my constant tiredness only got worse.  To remedy this, I started eating chicken, turkey, and fish and sadly had to ditch the vegetarian lifestyle (I still eat this way but refuse to touch pork and beef products).  This seemed to help for a little while but my hair was still thinning and I was still getting sick to my stomach every time I ate.

I broke bones easily.  I even broke my arm while out doing field work in Oregon and didn't know it until 6 months later when I had an x-ray to see why that arm was bothering me.  There was obvious remodelling of that break and a couple others that I didn't know about from when I was younger.  I have also broken both legs and several ribs in my life.

About five or six years ago, all these symptoms ramped up a notch, I felt horrible all the time!  I feel like I missed out on so much during this time because I was either sleeping, working, going to school, and/or sick.  When I'd go to the doctor, they always said I had IBS and sent me on my way.