Today marks the beginning of our all natural eating - with no cheating at all for at least 4-6 weeks. I am trying to see if eating drastically better helps with my symptoms. My withdrawal from the topical steroids has been pretty consistent so far. Currently I am in a break period - these last for only 5-7 days max, but I am extremely grateful to have them. I worked yesterday and that sort of increased the itching and swelling a bit, but my skin still feels better than it did last week by miles! My breaks do not include any clearing of the skin - just a diminishing of the itch and redness and swelling. I am praying that by eating all natural foods, I will decrease substances in my body that add to inflammation, therefore decreasing the severity of my withdrawal symptoms. Of course there is the possibility of what I call a cleansing reaction instead - where I will actually get worse because my skin goes through a rapid healing phase because it has the nutrients it needs to heal the skin. Either way, I think I will benefit greatly from this change.
So here is what we are doing - it is called the Maker's Diet - a 4-6 week plan of eating very specific foods. The maintenance diet is similar to the Weston A. Price Foundation dietary guidelines. The beginning focuses on eliminating certain foods in order to decrease insulin surges, inflammation, and infection. The first 4 weeks are similar to paleo. No dairy, wheat, or sugar. The only natural sugar you can have is in strawberries, grapefruit, and cherries - something to do with the type of sugar in them does not cause inflammation like other fruit sugars, Milk is a natural inflammatory product. So all milk products are out. What is left...all meats - organic only and beef is grass fed only beef. No pork products. Wild caught fish only. No shellfish. Organic eggs. Fruit mentioned above, Most vegetables except potatoes and corn. Homemade salad dressing. There are a few other things I think I am leaving out, but that about sums up the first 2 weeks. The nest 2 weeks have you include a few more things like beans and a few more fruits and veggies. By week 4 dairy and wheat can be introduced. I will be taking our time with those foods though. I will start off with homemade raw milk yogurt first and see how everyone handles it. By then our taste buds will have gone back to a sense of normalcy. Eating off the diet will not only cause GI problems, but may not taste as good as it once did. We did this once before years ago and I couldn't eat bakery goods for awhile because they were way too sweet for my taste buds. That changed over time, but I am hoping to go back to that time!
The kids are none too pleased to do this, but they know it is important not only for my health but for theirs as well. I have 2 kids with athlete's foot - not bad, but it is a chronic issue for them. I have one child with OCD tendencies. They went away when we did this diet before, so I am looking forward to it helping her again. And one child has an issue with stomach problems - again this went away last time in this special diet. Processed foods are just bad for us, regardless of what problems we may have.
So far today there has been little drama....2 of the kids complained about scrambled eggs. They love ketchup with their eggs and ketchup is off limits. Oh well! I am sure there will be worse drama to come! Once the detox from sugar starts, there will be extreme drama. Day 3 I believe was the worst and it continued until about day 7 or 8 from what I remember.
I will do my best to chronicle any changes in my skin. I know food does not directly cause specific flares according to Dr. Rapaport but I believe food has a lot to do with the overall healing process.
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