*** This blog is not to be prescriptive nor give you advice, merely to show you my way of navigating true health in a jungle of advice and pharmaceutical pressure. Please do your own research, ask your own specialists or contact those I have used if you wish to find out more about your personal condition and symptoms. To your very best health. ***
This week is all about starting a two week liver flush.
The liver and thyroid are inextricably linked and the poor health of the liver will have an impact on the thyroid. Janie identified that my liver was struggling when she did my blood analysis and as such this is phase two of her input into my health improvement.
For 14 days I need to do this each day:
First thing in the morning, crush one clove of garlic, juice one large lemon and add some black cumin seed oil. Then down it. That’s my breakfast, nothing else for two hours when I can eat fruit or citrus, but not citrus mixed with other fruits.
Yes, this is like drinking salad dressing and for a week I’ve been apologising for smelling of garlic. I’m not sure if I do, but it’s worth a warning. It’s been useful that Dale has been away as I’ve been doing this as I am sure it would be quite ripe being near me at the moment.
All these ingredients are said to help clean the liver and help it to eliminate toxins.
As I am drinking this stuff I also need to make a tea that includes a peppermint teabag and various other spices and ginger. This steeps all day and you go to it throughout the day and drink as a tea, to help the after effects of detoxing.
I think I’ve been lucky. I’ve not had any real signs of detoxification. I am sure if I’d still been in my coffee habit it would have been a lot worse. But apart from a little tired I’ve been functioning as I was.
In addition to this I also need to take a digestive stimulant twice a day to make sure that what is cleared out gets passed out, to stop all supplements and to eat ‘lightly’.
The eating lightly has been the biggest challenge.
As you know, if you’ve been reading a while, my previous diet has been very animal protein and vegetable focused. My notes told me to keep meat and eggs to a minimum and so for the first few days I had fish at each meal and the occasional egg or two.
On Tuesday, some 4 days in, I had a Skype update with Janie to see how the first two phases of her plan had been going. She recommended eating less fish and keeping foods very plant based and simple, if I tolerated pulses well she’d have encouraged me to eat those too, but I find them very hard to digest and they disagree somewhat. So I found myself resorting to vegetables and salad but with what?
I decided upon soaked nuts. If you soak nuts overnight in water and then drain them they become easier to digest and utilise the nutrients they contain. I felt pretty chuffed that I’d thought of something. I mentioned it to Janie on the follow up email.
The reply came back, ‘if you can limit nuts too that will help’… ooo-kkaayyy.
It was at this point that I had to remember what I was doing this for. This is the liver flush, it’s less about getting the diet right for the autoimmunity, but more for immediate results with the the liver, so my current plan from Dr Datis couldn’t be followed fully. If it was, I’d be eating green veg and that’s all, I wasn’t prepared to do that as I didn’t think it was entirely necessary.
So my meals, after my citrus breakfasts, have mainly been avocado salads and stir frys with either rice noodles or oyster mushrooms. It’s fine, it’s not exciting. I’ve snuck in some nuts, rice and illegal tasters of baked things I’ve made at times, but all in all I’ve been 90% if not 95% on it for the week.
The energy spike still eludes me. I had really hoped that declogging the liver would help, but not yet.
My new vegetarian lifestyle and flush has produced a weight loss over the week. I am not doing this for weight loss, I hope you know me well enough now to know that isn’t important. But I am curious as to how my body works, and so losing 1.5kg in a week was significant I thought.
The sleep continues to be inconsistent.
I am now managing more interval style sleeping with frequent wakings in the night but going back to sleep more easily. The morning walks have stopped for now as I’ve taken advantage of getting extra sleep where I can.
The ongoing common thyroid symptoms persist with a general coldness about me. My hands and feet still suffering somewhat and I have been having to apologise to massage clients as my hands are very chilled. Good job they have all known me a long while.
Losing memory is also a sign of low thyroid function and my once excellent memory is not what it was. I find this one of the most frustrating pieces of all this. I forget a lot. I forget I’ve even done things. And I forget where I put stuff.
I came to the end of a pack of thyroid meds this week and went to get the new ones and they weren’t there. I was quite confused. They should be there as it was 4 weeks since I got them and I have an 8 week supply. I scoured the house and concluded that I only got 4 weeks worth and I’d need to get a new prescription.
I missed a day of meds and went off to the GP to put the prescription request in. As I was driving home, out of nowhere I remembered exactly where the tablets were. In my undies drawer.
Who puts them there? I’ve never put them there before, but obviously that’s where they now go. Very annoying indeed.
The next phase of this foundation work with Janie is to remove the parasites we saw in my blood. I ordered the kit this week and it’s arrived. I do wonder quite how big these parasites are!
I’ll be starting this in about 10 days time.
Other things of note this week…
I’ve been going to the chiropractor for 8 weeks now and we had a review session to see how I have progressed. It was fascinating. Kelly went through the tests she did on me at the very beginning which gave her the areas to work on.
Almost all of the tests that were out of normal range, and most of them were, were now normal. I have a few that have improved but are still a bit sluggish or lazy or quiet in their responses, but overall it was fascinating to see what changes can be made in such a short time.
- The weight distribution between my left and right legs (one foot each on a weighing scale) had dropped from a 2kg difference to a less than 1kg difference.
- My excitable reflexes in my arms had calmed down.
- My quiet reflexes in my ankles had woken up (left one still needs some work)
- My eyes were much more focused and moved smoothly when focusing.
- My balance was solid.
- My smell was a little improved, not significantly.
- Cerebellum improvements.
- Range of movement improvements in neck and spine.
This was all very lovely, but I wanted to know how I would see a difference. I was never in any pain, and so these changes haven’t impacted me, that I’ve noticed. Kelly was pleased that nerve function was improving and said that because I was already coping I may not see the improvements directly. But I really needed something tangible.
As it happened the next day I was in Manchester with my dad at a concert at Old Trafford. We were back row and the seats were awful with no space between your knees and the seat in front, so we stood for the whole 2.5 hours or so.
It wasn’t until we got back the car that I realised that my back wasn’t stiff or aching, a reoccurring problem if I stood still for much longer than 30 minutes at a time. I was moving completely normally, no stiffness, no desire to sit down slowly to ease the ache. That’s my evidence! I’ve had that for as long as I can remember and to not have even a twinge was fabulous!
I had a bit of a moment in a network meeting this week that took me by surprise. Whilst talking about the benefits of networking and what it has done for me I found myself crying and overwhelmed by emotion. I am not a public crier so this took me, and the group by surprise. I am sure it’s all related.
I am consistently getting stronger each week in my strength training session. (This one thing has kept me sane this year)
So in summary, I am one week into a 2 week liver flush, parasite busting next for 2 weeks then repopulating the good stuff back in.
In that time I am off to see a lady about food sensitivity and intolerance to speed up my diagnosis of what’s working for me and what’s not. Yes I am inpatient and yes, its probably the lesson I need to learn from this.
I’ve realised that once you open the door to the possibility that you can help yourself you can never go back. I’ve had lots of people ask why I’m bothering, why put myself through all this like it’s some kind of torture.
Once you’re through the door you can’t go back, infact the door is blocked up. If I choose to not help myself now I do so with all the knowledge I’ve gained and consciously decide to do nothing with it.
I can’t do that.
It’s still about full health, it’s still about being as healthy as I can for as long as possible so that my family don’t need to look after me when I am old. It might take an investment in time and money now, but I am going to be the 90 year old who still does aqua aerobics, who volunteers to help ‘the old ones’ and drives about independently.
I need that goal.
