Digestive Wellness: Strengthen the Immune System and Prevent Disease Through Healthy Digestion, Fourth Edition (68 page)

Most people feel better and better each day during the allergy elimination diet. However, if you are used to using caffeine, you may get withdrawal symptoms the first few days, which may include headaches, fatigue, irritability, malaise, or increased hunger. If you find your energy lagging, you may need to eat frequently to stabilize your blood sugar levels (for thinking and energy). Be sure to drink plenty of water. If you lose too much weight on this diet, stop and find a clinician to help you troubleshoot.

Once you have completed two to three weeks on the elimination diet you can begin to add foods back into your diet.
Keep a journal of all foods eaten and all symptoms.
Be sure to add foods one at a time, one every four days. Be sure to test foods in a pure form: for example, test milk or cheese or wheat, but not macaroni and cheese that contains milk, cheese, and wheat! Eat the test food at least twice a day and in a fairly large amount. Often an offending food will provoke symptoms quickly—from 10 minutes to 12 hours. If this occurs, do not continue to eat the food. Many times you will eat a food one day and feel fine, but the second day you will notice that you are reacting to the food. Signs to look for include headache, itching, bloating, nausea, dizziness, fatigue, diarrhea, indigestion, anal itching, sleepy 30 minutes after a meal, flushing, and rapid heartbeat. If you are unsure, take the food back out of your diet for at least one week and try it again.

When you avoid symptom-provoking foods and take supportive supplements to restore gut integrity, most food allergies or sensitivities will resolve in four to six months. This means that in most cases you will then be able to again eat foods that formerly bothered you. In some cases, you will find that the allergy doesn’t go away. In this case either you must wait longer for it to heal or it is a “fixed” allergy that will remain lifelong.

It is advisable to return to your health practitioner for a follow-up visit to determine next steps. If you find allergies in too many foods, you may want to explore a four-day food rotation diet, described in
Chapter 14
.

You can find a more complete Elimination Diet with shopping lists and recipes at
http://www.digestivewellnessbook.com
.

“To the ego, the present moment hardly exists. Only past and future are considered important. This total reversal of the truth accounts for the fact that in the ego mode the mind is so dysfunctional. It is always concerned with keeping the past alive, because without it—who are you?”

—Eckhart Tolle,
The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment

“In Sri Lanka, we often compare human life to a river. When river water falls down the hills, it creates a beautiful waterfall. When it crashes on rocks, white foam is created, expressing its incredible hidden beauty. When the river silently flows through the valleys, it becomes mysterious and magical. These different things that happen to the river water along its path are all manifestations of its beauty. So, too, if we are to make meaning out of our odyssey as human beings on this planet, we have to accept that whatever happens on our way adds to life’s beauty.”

—Bhante Wimala,
Lessons of the Lotus: Practical Spiritual Teachings of a Travelling Buddhist Monk

It is the meaning we attach to our experiences that makes them stressful or stress-free. Last week we had torrential rain here in Asheville. I loved the rain. The sound of it reminded me of the heavy rains of my childhood in the Chicago suburbs. The creek below my house grew and I could hear it in the mornings from my bedroom. I settled in and took life a bit more slowly. The foliage developed a deep green hue that felt nurturing and satisfying. The land needed the rain. All of this fit my mood. But when I mentioned this to two people, the responses that I got were: “I hated the rain. I’m sensitive to mold and couldn’t breathe” and “It’s a good thing it stopped raining; otherwise we would have had flooding in a few days.” It is our perspective and beliefs that shape whether something is stressful or pleasurable. To
me, the rain was a delicious treat. To others, something dreaded. Our attitude can affect how severe our digestive issues are as well.

From the time we are small, we attach meaning to events. When you first spilled milk from your glass and got yelled at for it, you attached: “not good enough” or “less than” to that spill. This happens to all of us, and we carry these meanings and conditioning around as adults, deeply held even though we aren’t even aware of it. In my clients, I often find that I can go only so far by trying to balance biochemistry. Often, emotional and spiritual blockages prevent healing from occurring on a deep level. Once these are released, more healing takes place. Working with a therapist, co-counselor, coach, energetic healer, acupuncturist, bodyworker who incorporates emotional release, or others can help to facilitate release of the emotional issues that keep your healing stuck. One of my favorite of these personally was many years ago when I took a workshop called “The 12 Stages of Healing” with Dr. Donald Epstein. The second stage of healing is in releasing “stuck” energies in our bodies. When we found “stuck” places we shouted out “I’m stuck” to help release these. A group of crazy people to be sure, but we felt amazingly shifted after the weekend was over.

We experience stress on four levels: physical, environmental, mental/emotional, and spiritual. In preceding chapters we’ve talked a lot about physical and environmental stress, so here we will focus on the mental, emotional, and spiritual aspects. We all have stressful periods in our lives. Most of us have overly busy lives with to-do lists that can never be completed. We can’t eliminate stress, but we can learn to flow more easily. It’s finding peace in “what is” rather than looking outside to find peace.

From the moment we are born, we begin to change, and this continues until we take our last breath. Our body changes; our ideas change; our desires change. This is the nature of life. And all changes around us too. People come and go; jobs come and go; babies are born; loved ones die; we travel; we move houses; we leave for college; we retire; and so on.

Fear of change motivates behavior in some people. To keep life steady and predictable we often box ourselves in so that we have control. This is an illusion. No matter how hard we try to protect ourselves from change, change happens. (See
Figure 16.1
.) No matter how hard we try to control our lives, change happens. We’d be just as likely to control the seasons.

Figure 16.1
How transitions happen.

Change often happens in an instant. We’re moving along and suddenly our life gets derailed by losing our job, getting sick, finding out our spouse is having an affair, an earthquake, planes crashing into the World Trade Towers, finding out that you’ll be doing another tour of duty in the military, having a traffic accident, finding out that company is coming, and so forth. When we live in the present moment and accept what is, we are relieved of a great burden. Think of yourself flowing down a river toward the ocean. Sometimes you’ll meander; sometimes you’ll work hard to keep your head above water because the flow is so quick. Other times you’ll be stuck in an eddy, going nowhere. Our lives are exactly this way. We are just flowing down the river of life. We don’t control the river’s flow. We just bob along trying to keep our head above water and enjoying the scenery.

Though we mainly think of stress as a negative thing, it does have a positive side. The stress of going to college, getting married, having children, or earning a promotion provides opportunities and challenges that force us to change, grow, and strive to fulfill our potential. When I was younger I took a self-defense course to become more streetwise living in Chicago. My instructor said a very wise thing: “If you have enough time to be afraid, you have enough time to think about solutions.” This statement has rung true for me many times in my life. Rather than spending my thoughts on fear or worry, I can be creative to see what solutions are available. And not to be Pollyanna-ish but sometimes what appears as the very worst thing possible at the moment, in retrospect seems like one of the best things that could have happened.

ANYTIME ABDOMINAL BREATHING EXERCISE

Take 10 deep breaths through your nose. As you inhale, feel your belly expand; feel the inhalation spread until it fills your lungs to the top. Exhale by letting your lungs gently deflate. Notice how you feel. If you’re calmer, remember this tool and use it as needed.

But even positive stress can overwhelm us, causing distress. When we bite off more than we can chew, we feel stressed out. In many instances, we have little control over stressors, like illness, loss of a job, financial worries, and death. But even in these circumstances we have control over our thoughts and behavior. This is where stress management offers many benefits. Studies have shown that people who have emotional hardiness handle distress more easily than people with less resilience. Hardy people take on a challenge, make a commitment, take control, and see what happens. If success comes their way, it encourages them to try new things. If they fail, they pick themselves up and try again, recognizing that experience gained from “failure” adds to life’s perspective. Fortunately, it’s possible for anyone to learn hardiness skills.

Mental stress is one of the greatest challenges to our immune systems, putting pressure on nearly every organ and system in the body. When we feel stressed out, our bodies react with an increased heartbeat, shallow and rapid breathing, a release of adrenaline, and raised blood sugar levels and oxygen rates. Our muscles tense so we can move quickly. An increased blood supply is sent to our brain and major muscles, with decreased blood flow to our extremities. Even our pupils dilate and we sweat more. Our bodies react this way because our minds tell us there is a dangerous situation that requires quick thinking and movement. Historically, this might have been a bear on our path, a forest fire, or the exhilaration of the hunt. Today, it can be anything from a near car collision, to three phone lines ringing at once, to burnt toast! Because our first reaction is to unconsciously hold our breath and breathe shallowly, deep-breathing exercises are an excellent stress-management tool. Breathing deeply brings more oxygen to our tissues while waste products are excreted. It slows us down, so we feel more balanced and centered and can make clearer decisions. Deep abdominal breathing is something you can do anywhere, and no one can tell!

How do you know when you’re under too much stress? Your body will usually tell you before your mind does. You may get a neck ache, backache, or headache, a sick feeling in your stomach, hives, fatigue, or a myriad of other symptoms. But even though your body is telling you to stop, you keep on going. Our culture rewards this type of behavior. But we owe it to ourselves to listen to our own needs more carefully
and to respond to them in kind. Pain and discomfort is our body’s way of asking us to pay attention, now!

SIGNALS OF STRESS