My #2 DifferenceM@ker

Thank you for finding your way back to my blog J I sincerely hope that you are enjoying my posts, and I welcome your thoughts and contributions!

In my last post, I talked about the impact I felt therapy had for me personally in my journey along the shadowy paths of CFS/ME. I realize that I chose to touch on one of the touchiest topics in the CFS/ME world straight up – but I did so with honesty and sincerity. We all deserve a better life than what CFS/ME offers, and if the same treatment route is able to help even one other person to gain back a little of their territory, then I will be eternally grateful for the opportunity to express my thoughts.

Without wasting too much time, I wanted to get into details of what I feel has been the #2 DifferenceM@ker in my CFS/ME recovery journey…

My #2 DifferenceM@ker – Gluten/Dairy Free. It was a slow and gradual journey which turned me towards focusing on my dietary options, and to be honest, the reasons I have chosen this lifestyle now goes far beyond what I imagined it would at first. Firstly, if I look back I can see that I always had some problems – specifically with highly processed foods like breads and full cream dairy products. I tended to avoid them about 60-70% of the time purely because they were uncomfortable for me, but I never really paid too much attention to it.

Along with my CFS symptoms, I was consistently experiencing gut troubles and felt a tremendous amount of pain and inflammation in my body. I had frequent fevers, and my body often felt swollen and ‘hot’ on the inside. I apologise if that doesn’t make any sense, but it’s the best words I can put to it. Some days the pain would be to a degree that I felt barely able to move, and I would be teary at even trying to walk or turn my head. It was a truly awful, debilitating feeling that persisted for months on end. I was at a point where I was reliant upon painkillers every day – and even then it didn’t remove the pain, it just made it barely tolerable. I had resigned myself to the fact that I would always feel that awful, that it was my ‘lot’ in life - I highly doubt I will ever forget that feeling.

It was around this time that I began searching away on the internet to try to find a way to ‘treat’ my pain naturally. I did not like that I was reliant upon painkillers, and I did not want to continue on that path. My research led me to the Paleo diet. I won’t go into details of this diet in this post, but it was touted to be especially effective for those with autoimmune disorders and inflammation in the body. I was in enough agony on a daily basis to be willing to give it a try – after all, it couldn’t possibly get much worse in my mind.

I read up as much as I could and began to eliminate processed foods and dairy products. I chose not to go 100% hardcore (my personal experience is if you do this, you set yourself up for failure), but rather to stick to around an 80:20 ratio. In my eyes, there were very few times in my life that I could do things like go out and socialize with others and perhaps have dinner or a movie or something, or even a coffee date. There was no way I was going to limit those times by denying myself whatever I wanted at the time. Within 2 months, I was taking pain killers approximately ½ of the time I was prior to. Furthermore, after attending a social gathering and exposing myself to those foods again, I suffered so badly and saw the effect for days afterwards, that I was pretty much converted. I began planning to cut out processed foods and dairy 100%.

Sadly, Christmas crept up on me, and the lure of those once a year yummies like Christmas Pudding and Rum Balls, pulled me away from my Paleo efforts. I suffered for the month of Christmas – although I did still stick to probably around 60% Paleo, so the inflammation and pain remained slightly more manageable. It wasn’t until early in 2013 that I saw a new GP who suggested I be tested for Coeliac. I learnt that coeliac disease is on a sliding scale/continuum. I had always believed you either were near death from having gluten, or you weren’t coeliac. Apparently this is not true. Sure enough, I fit onto the sliding scale…

THE POINT OF THE LONG STORY… Once I began to adhere more strictly to a gluten and dairy free diet, I saw quite a significant change in my CFS/ME symptoms. It has been around 3-4 months, and I have just begun exercising once again. We’re not talking Olympic standard workouts – just regular, gentle exercise (I have been walking 3-4 times a week and once a week doing a short spell of very light jogs intervalled with recovery walking). But I’ve now maintained this for 3 weeks without crashing – a record! (former record = 1 session, then crash & burn). Taking painkillers is now an occasional thing, rather than the daily requirement it had come to be, I’m waking up a little better, getting a better quality sleep, and emotionally feeling a lot stronger. And of course, the sunshine, fresh air, and endorphins are helping to pick me up and keep me going on my pathway to greatness!

A word of warning with respect to exercise. We all know it, we’ve all heard it a thousand times before – that exercise has great benefits. It does. But I had SO many people, in their efforts to tell me what was wrong with me and how to get better, say “you just need to do some exercise and then you’ll feel better”. I can honestly say, with all the love and respect to those people that I can muster, that they have NO CLUE about CFS/ME. Pushing yourself beyond your limit does NOT give you the positive benefits – it pushes you down, likely for longer. Don’t listen to those people – accept their heart and intent of their message, but not their advice. If I’d taken the well-meaning advice of these people, I’d be crashing and burning and still sick like I was 3 years ago.

I’ve likened my recovery thus far to walking up a set of stairs. But each step has a little gate with a key. First you have to find the right key to open the gate and only THEN can you take the next step – and each step higher that you take creates a little ‘snowball effect’ that gives you enough to keep pressing through the next gate. For me (and I imagine for most CFS/ME sufferers), exercise is on a much higher step. There are more important things first. I had no idea that my diet (which I never considered to be ‘bad’ in the first place) was one of those steps, but I am so glad that found that key! Some other ‘steps’ on my staircase have included:

* emotional support – building it, and maintaining it

* self-development & self-discovery

* pacing

* sleep quality

* taming my perfectionistic side

* mastering more efficient ways to get things done

* reducing my stress, and my tendency to ACCEPT stress

* deciding what is important to me, and making wise decisions about my commitments

What about you? I’d love for you to share your thoughts and opinions J

To You In Good Health xx