by Amanda Malachesky | Mar 4, 2019 | Chronic Illness, Digestion, Functional Nutrition, IBS, Inflammation, Symptoms
This week is Endometriosis Awareness Week, and as I had my own journey with Endometriosis (see my latest YouTube video where I talk about it HERE), I wanted to share what I learned about eating a proper endometriosis diet with you.
Endometriosis is a complex condition that is largely misunderstood. But like every complex health challenge, diet and lifestyle factors are significant contributors to your ability to manage and cope. In today’s blog, I’d like to share what I’ve learned about how to eat an endometriosis diet to minimize symptoms.
Endometriosis 101: What Is It?
Endometriosis is an inflammatory, possibly autoimmune disease, where tissue like the inner lining of your uterus, or endometrium, is found outside your uterus. The misplaced endometrial tissue responds to your monthly hormone cycle just like your uterus lining, and this causes inflammation, swelling, scar tissue build up, pain, and adhesions.
The most root-cause resolution approach for treating endometriosis is wide-excision surgery, which removes all of the visible endometriosis tissue with a wide margin of healthy looking tissue. Though there is some recurrence rate, it is much lower than more conventional laproscopic cauterization surgery, and is certainly far more effective than hormonal or other pharmaceutical treatments.
However, these treatments are only one side of the coin. Endometriosis, especially long-term endo, often causes secondary problems, which need to be addressed in addition to surgery for best long term success. Many of these secondary problems are manageable with diet and lifestyle. These include things like: IBS, SIBO, generalized gut dysbiois and leaky gut and the downstream nutrient deficiencies this can lead to, adrenal fatigue, underlying hormone imbalances, food sensitivities, interstitial cystitis or other bladder problems, and internal structural problems due to scar tissue.
Though it can be tempting to try to “attack” all these issues aggressively, the most real, lasting effects are gained by drawing your attention back to the basics, and to create a nourishing, supportive environment, where your body’s cells fundamentally get what they need.
What to Eat and What Not to Eat on an Endometriosis Diet
As with most other inflammatory conditions, an endometriosis diet template reduces or removes inflammatory foods like gluten, rancid vegetable oils, dairy, sugar, and processed foods as a starting place for eating. But here are few specific considerations that may help you find your way to the least symptom-tiggering endometriosis diet.
WHAT TO AVOID on your Endometriosis Diet
Dairy products
No matter whether your sensitivity or dairy source, all dairy products come from a lactating or pregnant cows, and therefore all contain hormones. Because endometriosis is generally hormonally mediated, naturally-occurring hormones from dairy can aggravate the mixed up hormonal messages your body is already experiencing or sending. Avoid dairy products or evaluate each type to see if they affect your symptoms.
Industrial Seed Oils and Trans-Fats
As Americans, we generally over consume industrial seed oils like canola, safflower, sunflower, soy, and cottonseed oils. These oils are easily oxidized, or turn rancid, and this rancidity causes inflammation in your body, especially when not balanced by an abundance of omega-3 fatty acids, like those from fish and seafood.
Reduce or eliminate these seed oils, and replace with olive, coconut, or avocado oil for cooking, and sesame or flax oils for cold uses. You can also increase your consumption of fatty fish or consume a fish oil supplement.
Red meat and Farm-Raised Fish
Many women with endometriosis find that red meat or farmed fish aggravates their endometriosis. For some people, red meat consumption increases inflammatory cytokines, which leads to more pain. Meanwhile, farm-raised fish is raised in toxic, chemical-laden ponds, and is often given antibiotics.
If you can, purchase organic, grass-fed or pasture-raised meat, and wild-caught seafood. Avoid seafood that accumulates toxins like mercury, such as mackerel, merlin, shark, tuna, bluefin, and orange roughy. Commonly farmed fish include tilapia, catfish, and salmon. Choose short-lived fish and seafood species such as wild-caught salmon, cod, shrimp, and pollock.
Oxalate Foods
Oxalic acids naturally occurs in some foods. With certain gut conditions, oxalic acid can deposit into any body tissues and form sharp, jagged crystals. Oxalate crystals are the most frequent cause of kidney stones, and can often be involved with body pain.
Some common foods high in oxalates include spinach, chard, sweet potatoes, chocolate, almonds, peanuts, wheat, chia, and rhubarb. But before you run out and remove all foods these foods (please don’t do this!) you need to know that if you suspect oxalates to be a contributor to your pain, you must slowly reduce the oxalate content of your diet over a period of weeks. This prevents an episode of oxalate dumping, which can lead to a major pain flare. If this is you, I suggest working closely with someone who can guide you through this process. You can start by downloading my Food-Symptom Diary and doing a little tracking to see if you notice a correlation between your symptoms and oxalate foods.
Caffeine and Alcohol
Both caffeine and alcohol can increase the severity and incidence of endometriosis pain, and they can also affect your estrogen metabolism, which is also involved with endometriosis. Reduce or eliminate these from your diet, except for an occasional treat. Green tea is a wonderful substitute for caffeine, and is generally anti-inflammatory.
Sugar
Sugar is generally an inflammatory food, and depletes your body of important nutrients, including magnesium, vitamin D, calcium, chromium (which helps your sugar metabolism), and vitamin C. Since several of these nutrients support your immune function, sugar reduces your healthy immune response. Eliminating sugar can make a significant difference in your level of endometriosis pain, and your body’s ability to manage the inflammation and swelling.
WHAT TO INCLUDE on your Endometriosis Diet
Though it’s easy to say what you should avoid, I also want to take a moment to share a few foods that may be helpful for you to include to modulate your endometriosis. These foods help balance hormones, support proper hormone detoxification, keep your balanced blood sugar, and reduce inflammation.
Green Tea
Green tea contains powerful antioxidants that help clean up inflammatory damage in your body. A cup or two of green tea per day, or using supplemental ECGC can help.
Red Veggies and Fruits
These contain lycopene, another naturally-occuring antioxidant, which may reduce adhesion formation.
Cruciferous veggies (Broccoli, Cauliflower, Brussels Sprouts, Kale, Collard Greens, Arugula, Radishes)
Cruciferous veggies contain a relatively high amount of sulfur compounds, which aid your liver in detoxing estrogens and other compounds.
Flaxseed
Flax has a reputation for being estrogenic, but it actually helps bind up the “bad” estrogens and eliminate them. Daily ground flax seeds are helpful to keep estrogen in check.
Fermented Foods
Sauerkraut, pickles, kombucha, and more are a wonderful source of beneficial and diverse good bacteria. Keep in mind that if you already struggle with IBS or SIBO, probiotic or fermented foods may not be the right thing until you handle this because increasing your intake of these foods may exacerbate your bloating or belly pain.
Evening Primrose Oil
This supplement may help with estrogen metabolism and to reduce pain.
Water
Drink plenty of clean, filtered water.
Conclusion
Changing your diet and taking a few supplements won’t likely make your endo go away, but it can make your symptoms largely manageable, and make your other treatments or pain management more effective. And these same dietary changes can help you manage the conditions downstream of your endo as well. By working methodically to shift your life terrain, you can expect to find your cycles less painful, as well as improved pain management, sleep, moods, and immune function.
If you are feeling confused about how to navigate all these choices to manage your endometriosis, I encourage you to reach out to me and schedule a free 30-minute assessment session. I can help you set a course for success.
If you’re not ready for that yet, I invite you to download my free guide, Roadmap to Recovery, where I share the how you can make sense of what your body is telling you so you can experience relief from your most pressing symptoms.
by Amanda Malachesky | Feb 15, 2019 | Chronic Illness, Diet, Digestion, Functional Nutrition, IBS, Nutrition
If you struggle with IBS or IBS-like symptoms, you may have found your way to the low FODMAP diet or another therapeutic diet. In this blog post, I will help you understand how the low FODMAP diet fits into the context of your full IBS diet plan.
Making sure your IBS diet is low on aggravating foods is a key part of healing, and will dramatically improve your quality of life. But dietary intervention is rarely enough to help you resolve your IBS from the root cause level.
Because IBS is so frequently caused by dysbiosis, what you are really aiming to do with all of your interventions, is to support your body in shifting its gut microbiome.
So if you’re trying to resolve your IBS or IBS-like symptoms at their roots, what does this plan look like? And where does your IBS diet plan fit in?
Getting to the Right IBS Diet Plan
The first step in any plan is doing a proper assessment and finding which areas are ripe for easy action. These areas usually fall into a few different categories:
- choosing the right diet for your unique body.
- creating a foundation of health practices that supports you (sleep, stress management, exercise, balancing blood sugar, hydration, and supportive community).
- recharging nutrient deficiencies with proper food and supplementation.
So many people think that the diet part is all they need to do. But this is only one small piece of the journey.
Though tempting to skip these steps, finding your way to the right combination for you can often remove some of the root causes that are contributing to your current health challenges. This makes your bigger healing project easier and more efficient and effective.
By cleaning up these foundational pieces, you set yourself up for much greater success.
How to Create the Wrong IBS Diet Plan: Potential Pitfalls
I made a lot of mistakes using therapeutic diets before I was trained as nutrition coach, and I’ve seen countless others make the same mistakes.
Here is how my story went:
Like many of you, I had intermittent, but challenging digestive symptoms. They at times, but not always, had me staying close to a toilet, and feeling very puzzled. Sometimes my symptoms struck in the morning, sometimes it was the middle of the night. Either way, it was always unwelcome.
I have been a DIY health person since I was in college, when I succeeded in curing my recurrent bladder infections using herbs and homeopathy. So I started researching.
I learned about therapeutic and elimination diets, and tried them out. I stared with simple gluten, dairy, and sugar free. This one actually made a lot of difference, but I didn’t know I should stay on it for a while. I gradually slipped off after the initial month.
A few years later, still struggling, I learned about the ketogenic diet, and based on the testimonials of people who had been wildly successful with it, I dove in whole hog.
I felt a little better, but didn’t seem to access the profound energy that many keto advocates describe. Then, after several months, my digestion, hormone, and skin issues all started to get WAY worse.
I shifted back toward a more paleo template, and added more carbs back in, but cut dairy out. This helped, but by now, the issue had exploded, and was bothering me more days per month than not.
When adopting a diet template for digestive problems, I was missing a few very key pieces of information:
- Your Diet Highly Contributes to Your Microbiome: Extremely low carb diets like keto can dramatically shift the composition of the microbiome, and this isn’t always a positive thing.
Our good bacteria survive by consuming the natural fiber in plant based foods, such as fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, nuts, and seeds.
In my case, the keto diet removed most fruit, some high fiber vegetables such as beets, carrots, potatoes, and winter squash due to their carb content, legumes, and whole grains. Essentially, I starved my beneficial bacteria, which contributed to a lot of worsening mood and hormone symptoms.
When choosing a therapeutic diet, it’s important to be mindful of the varied effects it is likely to have on your microbiome, and to be sure to support it.
- Diet Templates Must Be Customized: Any diet template, for any health condition, needs to be customized to you to minimize the potential negative affects that widespread eliminations can produce.
You want to remove the foods that are causing a lot of inflammation or other problems, but minimize the number of removals so you don’t destabilize the microbiome, create nutrient deficiencies, and minimize the disruption your experience of eating.
In my case, eating a much higher fat and lower carb diet overburdened my already struggling digestion and elimination, and contributed to increased acne, anxiety, diarrhea, constipation, and hormone havoc. Had I been paying closer attention with diet tracking, I would have noticed that these changes were worsening my symptoms.
- Diet is ONLY ONE piece of a complex puzzle that may require multiple steps. I feel the diet shift is beneficial to do at first, to focus on providing symptomatic relief, as well as underlying inflammatory relief.
Once you have diet sorted out, then and only THEN should you focus in on resolving the other pieces of your puzzle, such as nutrient deficiencies, detox support, and hidden infections or pathology.
I think a lot of experts and authors sell a lot of people short here. Many people promote their therapeutic diet as the magic bullet or likely cure for an illness. For some people this is the case, but I believe it is the slim minority.
Most people require not only diet changes, but also habit realignment, customized supplementation, and sometimes, more significant protocols to shift the microbiome or even prescription medications. It’s a great disservice to tell people that diet will fix them when it’s not really the case.
Your IBS Diet Plan: Customized and In Context
The Low FODMAP diet is currently the only peer-reviewed diet proven to support IBS. The Specific Carbohydrate Diet is similar, but has not yet been proven scientifically to be effective. But since diet templates are simply a place to begin, this doesn’t really matter. You start where you need to start, and work from there.
In the basic FODMAP diet, you focus on removing high FODMAP foods, which are foods high in certain fermentable carbohydrates. These carbs and fibers feed bacteria in the gut and can contribute to gas and bloating, as well as the diarrhea or constipation that are hallmarks of IBS.
But the high FODMAPS list is really broad. It includes a lot of generally healthy foods, including (this list is not complete):
- asparagus
- artichokes
- garlic, onions, and leeks
- apples
- cherries
- figs
- mango
- agave
- high fructose corn syrup
- honey
- peas
- soybeans, black, fava, kidney, navy beans
- dates
- persimmon
- plums
- cauliflower
- mushrooms
- apricots
- blackberries
- carob
- chicory
- and more…
But here’s what you need to know about this list: it would be difficult to remove ALL those foods entirely, and you don’t need to. You likely have sensitivity to one or two TYPES of FODMAPS, but not necessarily ALL of them.
You might mostly have a problem with Fructo-saccharides, or fructose. By using detailed FODMAP lists of foods (check this really detailed one out) along with your Food-Symptom Diary (you can download yours here) properly to assess this, you may find that you don’t need to eliminate the segments of the list that pertain to other types of sugars.
And even within one sub-segment of the FODMAP list, you may find that some of the foods on that list bother you, while others are just fine and don’t contribute to your symptoms.
So while anyone can read a list, and decide to remove everything on it, the true benefit of the list is to use it as a tool to know WHERE TO LOOK for your unique sensitivities. Then you do the elimination work to discover what specifically is true for you.
Once you have THAT information, you can move ahead with confidence, knowing that you won’t be triggering your symptoms while you address whatever other underlying causes are contributing. Ideally, you’ll be able to discover the specific dysbiosis or other mechanisms that are creating the conditions that make your IBS happen, and you can work through the process of resolving them. (To read more about how to use Gut Microbiome Testing to resolve IBS, read Gut Microbiome Testing for IBS).
Conclusion
Healing from a chronic illness like IBS is really a transformative experience, and requires context. Transforming your practices and habits sets you up for a lifetime of not only improved health, but the ability to deal with and successfully face any future health challenge that comes our way because you will have learned how to work WITH your body. What you learn about your body never deserts you. It becomes something you build on as you move forward.
Now you know how to use the Low FODMAP Diet in the proper context to create your IBS diet plan, but what about the other steps along your Roadmap to Recovery? Grab your free copy here.
And if you’re feeling confused about how to wade through all those FODMAP food lists, and you’re ready for some support with diet and supplement customization in your pursuit of your personal remission, schedule a free 30 minute Assessment session with me right here.
by Amanda Malachesky | Nov 24, 2018 | Chronic Illness, Diet, Digestion, Food Intolerance
It can feel difficult to choose healthy foods during the winter holidays when you are facing food sensitivities or other digestive troubles.
Maybe you’ve successfully eliminated some of the big six foods (gluten, dairy, sugar, soy, eggs, and corn) or other foods that trigger symptoms for you, and you’re doing great! Or you’re even rocking a more involved elimination diet, like Autoimmune Paleo. Congratulations!
Or maybe you’re just working on maintaining your weight.
But enter the WINTER HOLIDAYS.
Thanksgiving, the holiday centered around overeating.
And then comes the Christmas season, with it’s parade of company parties, school events, advent calendars, community events, and candy bowls. Solstice, Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa, and New Year’s (not to mention this author’s birthday!)
Each holiday comes with a lot of opportunities to feel tempted to eat foods you are choosing to avoid for health reasons because, you know, “tradition!” Or, “I don’t want to miss out!” Plus, you might be feeling stressed, overwhelmed, or tired, which always makes it harder to stay the course.
Most of us have been programmed from a very young age to associate celebration with eating with others to celebrate. It can feel empty and lonely to abstain from the treat your grandma makes every year, or eggnog that makes your company Christmas party feel tolerable. These are some of the things that help the season feel special.
So this week, I wanted to share a few tips and tricks I’ve picked up through my years with food sensitivities and digestive challenges to help keep you on track through your winter holidays. So you can come through without symptom flares, weight gain, or any other loss and hit the ground running in the new year.
#1. Reframe Your Holiday Eating Perspective
It’s tempting to descend into sadness or a fear of missing out, or even have a downright tantrum about not getting to have foods you have always loved. During special occasions, you might feel especially sensitive about having to go without what everyone else is enjoying.
In these situations, I coach my clients to return to their why. Why are you making the food and lifestyle choices you’ve made? Maybe it’s because your symptoms are disrupting your job, or your ability to parent, or simply your ability to enjoy something you love.
Remind yourself of what you are working to achieve with your food choices, and especially ask yourself the question, “So I can do WHAT?”
For example, I avoid the foods that don’t work for me because the consequences of eating them result in more uncomfortable time in the bathroom, severe back pain, and a grumpy mood. When I feel this way, I am a grumpy mom, and can’t keep up with everything in my life that needs doing. I choose this way of eating so I can be a competent mom to my beautiful kids, and so I can enjoy time outdoors working in my garden or hiking.
Getting crystal clear on this for yourself, and reminding yourself frequently, can help you stay committed, in spite of feeling the sadness and grief about missing out on sharing certain foods.
#2. Get a Holiday Eating Buddy or Accountability Partner
If you really struggle to stay on track with your food plan, you may have an easier time if you enlist a buddy to go to events with you, or to check in with daily during the holiday season. Together, you can preemptively think about what situations might trigger you to go off plan and think ahead of time about how you would deal with them, and then create a codeword, or alternative action to take when you feel like you want to cheat.
#3. Low-Carb Holiday Eating
So many of the delicious holiday foods you want to eat are high carb: baked goods with included sugar and alcoholic drinks. And the traditional holiday meals are also relatively high-carb. Think of the stuffing, mashed potatoes, cranberry dressing, along with the desserts and drinks.
Many people groan about the high fat holiday treats, or think they are blowing their diets by overeating. But ultimately, the extra weight gain that shows up by the end of the holidays likely has to do with all the extra carb helpings and sweets. You know, the cookies, cakes, pies, candy, and so on. And don’t forget the drinks.
If you can simply focus on keeping each meal and snack low-carb, and making sure you get protein, fat, and fiber at each meal, you’ll likely feel more satiated, and you won’t have gained much if anything by the turn of the year. You’ll also keep your blood sugar stable, which will reduce the possibility of bloating, a flare of bacterial overgrowth, or an autoimmune flare.
#4. Minimize Holiday Drinking
Alcohol, though delicious, is nothing more than empty calories that destabilize your blood sugar. This can lead to sudden blood sugar drops, which leads to craving and overeating.
If you really like sipping a beverage with your friends and family, make your own delicious mocktails with bitters, bubbly water, herbs, and 100% fruit juice, or bring sparkling apple cider, like Martinelli’s. Or give these more fancy mocktails a try.
If you can’t don’t want to avoid ALL alcohol, consider following these rules to minimize the effects of alcohol:
- Never drink on an empty stomach
- Drink a glass of water or other non-alcoholic beverage between your drinks
- Limit yourself to 1-2 drinks.
#5. Bring Your Own Healthy Holiday Eating Dessert
If the party is a potluck, offer to bring a dessert, and make something on plan: a gluten free, low sugar, treat, like these Nakayummies, for example, or these Cardamon Thumbprint Cookies, or this Dairy Free Coconut Chocolate Fudge. Then you can both enjoy dessert and not feel left out, but also let people see how delightful it can be to take good care of yourself while you’re at it.
#6. Minimize Holiday Late-Nights
All the holiday parties really can eat into your needed rest time. If you are struggling with digestive or autoimmune health problems, it’s always important to get a good 7-8 hours of sleep.
One reason this is important is because not getting enough sleep reduces the hormone that helps us control our appetite. Have you ever noticed that when you don’t sleep well, you experience more cravings and appetite the next day? In this way, not getting enough sleep can lead to overeating, especially if we use this moment to binge on foods we would be better off avoiding.
Not only that , but in the depth of winter, our bodies naturally want to snuggle in and get more sleep. The days are short, and it can start to feel like a push to keep burning the candle at both ends.
Honor your body by making sleep a non-negotiable. Your immune system and brain will thank you.
#7. Continue Your Normal Stress Reduction Plan
More and more, stress has become a normal part of the holidays. There are a lot of extra events to attend, shopping to complete, planning for family visits, or THE family visit itself.
If you have a regular stress reduction routine, like getting a massage, going to yoga or exercise class, or meditation, DON’T stop during the holidays. It’s at this time that you need it more than ever!
If you don’t already have a stress reduction routine, now might be a good time to invite this practice into your life!
#8. Plan Ahead for Healthy Holiday Eating
If you’ll be hosting holiday meals, make sure to plan ahead. Especially if you are new to your diet plan, you may need extra time to adapt your favorite holiday recipes, or to find suitable replacements. You may also need to test out those recipes.
One year, I wanted to adapt the pumpkin pie so I could eat it. I made one a week before Thanksgiving, and boy was I glad I did. The filling came out totally rubbery, and wouldn’t have been very attractive on Thanksgiving day. I was able to adjust the recipe to have it tasting and feeling good in the mouth by the time my aunt, who is a phenomenal cook, tried it.
Planning ahead doesn’t just need to be for food. It’s proactive and empowered to imagine the moments that might be a problem for you, and to create an alternative plan. For example, if you know your mother-in-law doesn’t “get” how gluten can impact your and will offer you Christmas cookies that you will want to eat, it’s often easier to follow through with your intention if you’ve visualized it ahead of time. What will you say? Do yourself the favor of thinking about it ahead of time.
#9. Do Your Holiday Eating at Home (Eat Before You Go), or Bring Your Own
If you know that you’re going to a party where there will lots of tempting foods, eat a full meal before you go, so that you’ll be less hungry and less likely to stand by the cheese and cracker plate or the dessert spread all night.
I often find that I literally can’t eat anything at a party, except maybe some sliced bell peppers or carrot sticks. If I showed up at a party hungry for a meal, I’d likely be in trouble, both mood and energy wise in a hurry. Not all of you will have diets as limited as mine, but I just bring my own food. I pack a dinner, like a lunch, and eat it with all the guests. It’s a little weird, and I do sometimes feel a little awkward letting the host know that I brought my own food.
But I’m far more willing to do this than to suffer with painful digestion, back pain, joint pain, or bloating and gas because I was afraid of feeling awkward, or was feeling shy about my diet choices.
Wear it proud! You deserve to be well cared for.
These tips are great for navigating the holiday in the short term, but I would like to see you not need to make these adaptations in the future. How are you working to resolve your symptoms so that these modifications aren’t necessary?
Sometimes, you need a little professional support crafting your plan for being out in the world and facing these kinds of challenges. If you’ve had a hard time making meaningful progress with your symptoms, it might be time to get a little help. Download your Roadmap to Recovery, a guide to the 7-step process that can help you create your plan to get to remission or an effective long-term management plan. Or, Schedule your FREE Assessment Session here, and I’ll help you see your next best steps to feel better.
by Amanda Malachesky | Nov 9, 2018 | Chronic Illness, Functional Nutrition, Symptoms
One of my personal missions with Confluence Nutrition is to help you become your own health care hero. By this, I mean that you are 100% in charge of your health. And one of the most important ways you can do this is by learning how to be an effective symptom tracker.
Symptoms are your body’s S.O.S. signal. I’m not talking about the kind of symptoms you have when you’re sick with a virus. I’m talking about persistent symptoms that continue, month after month. These are your built-in warning system that something isn’t right, and needs attention.
But figuring out which symptoms to pay attention to and how to organize this information can be confusing. This is especially so if you have A LOT of symptoms. In this blog, I want to share what to note on your symptom tracker, what to use for your symptom tracker, and some of the results that are possible with effective symptom tracking.
My Own Symptom Tracker Story
Years ago, I first reached out to my doctor because I was concerned about my lower abdominal pain. By the time I made the appointment, I was having pain a few days every month, and saw the symptoms getting worse.
I went in for an ultrasound, and it showed I had ovarian cysts. No follow up was recommended.
My symptoms paused while I was pregnant with my second child, but my symptoms returned with a vengeance with the hormonal changes that happened when I weaned him. At this point in my life, I only had 5-7 good days each month. The other days, I had some combination of pain, anxiety, digestive problems, insomnia, acne, and more.
The first important piece of information I gathered from my loose symptom tracking was that my symptoms were obviously getting worse. Over months and years. And this rightfully concerned me.
Symptoms that are worsening over time are a clear sign from your body that it is time to pay attention and seek some help.
From my perspective as a Functional Nutrition Practitioner, your symptoms are pure gold. Even if your doctor seems unconcerned with your symptoms, I want to teach you what symptoms I believe are important to track, how you can track them, and why you would want to.
How to Start Being A Symptom Tracker
For me, the purpose of tracking symptoms isn’t only to note them, it’s to begin to ask WHY they are happening. Because I am working to help resolve problems at their roots, I want to place your symptoms in a context.
For example, if you have a headache, I want to know what you ate earlier that day, how much liquid you had to drink, how your stress level was, how well you slept the night before, and so on.
But to have this information feel useful, it’s necessary to organize it on a day-to-day basis, and to connect food intake, symptoms, stool changes, hydration data, and sleep. It’s best to write down your observations at least once a day, as it can be hard to remember the details much beyond that.
The tool I prefer to help my clients keep track of everything and become a master symptom tracker is a Food-Symptom Diary (You can download your copy here). This tracks food, symptoms, and stool frequency and consistency. If my client needs to track other layers, I will have them note the results on this same form, for consistency and organization.
You could also use a calendar, an app, or any other method you like to collect your information. Just make sure that you can easily see what you’re trying to look at, and generally keep your results to one page per day.
What to Track on a Symptom Tracker
So what kind of symptoms am I talking about here? Well, just about any symptom you can experience is important, though severely uncomfortable symptoms are the most obvious.
Certainly, if your symptoms feel potentially life threatening, like shortness of breath, you should get yourself checked as soon as possible by a qualified medical person.
But if you’ve been checked, and your provider can’t see anything “wrong” on the surface, this doesn’t mean your symptoms should be ignored. On the contrary, this is an invitation to see what you can learn from them.
You will want to track things like:
- headaches
- migraines
- pain in the muscles or joints
- digestive symptoms like diarrhea, constipation, gas, nausea, vomiting, or heartburn
- brain fog
- itching
- skin breakouts of acne, eczema, psoriasis, or other rashes
- fatigue
- insomnia
- shortness of breath
- rapid heartbeat
- anxiety attacks
- mood symptoms, like irritability, anger, sadness, anxiety, frustration, or depression
- frequent illnesses
There are, of course, many more possible symptoms. This is just a partial list. Note the ones that are most present for you.
In addition to this list of signs or symptoms, there are additional metrics I like to encourage my clients to track, depending on the situation. These include:
- blood sugar throughout the day
- medications and supplements
- menstrual cycle and related symptoms for my female clients
- seasonal and moon cycles
- daily waking temperature (basal body temperature)
Other metrics people sometimes look at include activity levels, as with a FitBit or similar device, or heart-rate variability and sleep cycles, as with the Oura Ring.
To get the most value out of this tracking, use the Food Symptom Diary or similar log, and note foods along side symptoms and poop type. The longer you can track this data, the better your results. A good place to start is with one week of tracking.
Here are 5 additional metrics you can add to your symptom tracker to try and make connections about WHY your symptoms are happening.
Blood Sugar Levels
A high percentage of symptoms people experience are rooted in food sensitivities, or eating a combination of macronutrients (protein, fat, and carbs) that leads to blood sugar swings.
Paying attention to this one single piece can truly rebalance many many symptoms. Keeping your blood sugar stable keeps your moods and energy levels constant.
If you are eating too many carbs, or are skipping meals, you may feel more stressed, anxious, tired, irritable, or angry, and you may experience energy slumps, as well as difficulty sleeping. And this can lead to hormonal imbalances downstream. So just by tracking blood sugar and the relative balance of protein, fats, and carbs in your meals, we’ve addressed sleep, moods, fatigue, and hormones.
If you’re not sure if blood sugar is an issue, you can track this too with an at-home glucometer. You can buy one at your drugstore or over on Amazon (make sure you buy test strips too.) You want to check your values at :
• Immediately after waking, first thing in the morning (functional range: 78-88 mg/dL)
• 40 minutes after breakfast (functional range: <135 mg/dL)
• 40 minutes after lunch (functional range: <135 mg/dL)
• 20 minutes before dinner (functional range, if >2 hours since last food: 78-88 mg/dL)
• Just before bed (functional range, if > 2 hours since last food: 78-88 mg/dL)
Add these values to your food-symptom diary or other tracking tool.
If your sugars are higher than the suggested values, begin to track that backwards to your previous meal or two. Which foods may be triggering your elevated blood sugar?
(To read more about blood sugar, you can read Balancing Blood Sugar 101: How and Why)
Medications or Supplements
Make sure that you are taking note of your medications and supplements on your tracking sheet as well, as their side effects can be responsible for symptoms.
Menstrual Cycle Symptoms and Rhythms
If you are a woman, tracking your monthly menstrual cycle can also be important and can shed some light on your symptoms. Do your headaches correlate? How long are your cycles? Do any of your symptoms connect to your ovulation, or your bleeding time?
In Toni Weschler’s book Taking Charge of Your Fertility, she explains the method of tracking your monthly cycle, either for pregnancy achievement or avoidance. She uses a method of tracking daily waking temperature (basal body temperature) and cervical fluid quality.
I used this method to plan both my kids’ births, and avoid pregnancy until my hysterectomy during the first 15 years I was married.
Seasonal and Moon Cycles
Another interesting data layer to add to the equation is moon cycles and seasonal cycles if you have noticed changes during the month or year. Tracking these may be best done on an annual or monthly calendar.
Basal Body Temperature
Basal body temperature can be useful not only for tracking menstrual cycles, but also for tracking thyroid function. A basal body temperature of 97.1 or less can indicate an underactive thyroid gland, and would suggest a need to investigate.
For more information on interpreting this, check out the Take Your Temperature page on Stop The Thyroid Madness.
Symptom Tracker Results
The biggest trick is putting all your symptom tracker data together. This is why shorter periods of tracking with one sheet of data per day is what I recommend.
After you have a collection of days, you can look back over your record and take note of when your symptoms appeared. Can you see any patterns connected to the foods you ate? Did your acne flare after eating a particular food, or after you stayed up really late? Does your afternoon fatigue relate to what you ate for breakfast? Review your data and begin asking questions.
So often, the symptoms or clusters of signs you are experiencing are a consequence of one or more of your behaviors or choices, and you can make good headway against them by changing your behaviors.
Tracking this way has helped me solve many of my health mysteries. One story I like to tell involves my previously chronic constipation.
Though there were many actions I took to help resolve this problem, when I started using a food-symptom diary, I finally figured out that broccoli was a significant constipation trigger for me. Every time I ate broccoli (one of my favorite vegetables), I would stop pooping 1-2 days later, for a day or two. It was an easy enough thing to forego broccoli temporarily while I sorted out the other factors (which included SIBO, but that’s another story!).
A few years later, I was confused after my partial hysterectomy. Because I was no longer bleeding, I couldn’t exactly tell what my cycle was doing. I knew that I needed some hormonal support, but my other symptoms didn’t make it clear.
By taking my basal body temperature, I found that I WAS still cycling, but that my cycles had become irregular. So I learned that I was entering peri-menopause, which helped me craft my best support strategy. It also helped me understand some symptoms I was seeing on the outside, like acne flares.
I had a client who was able to figure out that the reason they had chronic, daily diarrhea was because of a melatonin supplement they were taking in order to help with sleep.
I had another client who learned through food-symptom tracking that tomatoes, a high histamine food, were contributing to their frequent hives.
One more client could clearly see that gluten and dairy were causing her bloating and extra morning trips to the bathroom.
Conclusion
Sometimes the solutions to your health problems don’t involve fancy protocols or pills, just some common sense changes that address what’s true for your very own body. If you are willing to take the time to look a little deeper, and learn to be a symptom tracker, you may find the root causes, which save us a life of worsening symptoms and increasing medical costs.
Now it’s your turn…if you’re confused about the source of your symptoms, download the Food-Symptom Diary and try your hand at tracking your symptoms. See what new information you can learn about your symptoms.
Tracking your symptoms to learn about your body’s non-negotiables is only one stop on the Road to Recovery. To see what else is needed to find your way to your personal remission or long-term plan, grab your free copy of Roadmap to Recovery here.
If you find you have more questions than answers after completing your Food-Symptom Diary, I invite you to schedule a free 30-minute Assessment Session with me, and I’ll help you make sense of what you found.
by Amanda Malachesky | Oct 26, 2018 | Chronic Illness, Digestion, Food Intolerance, Functional Nutrition, Nutrition, Symptoms
If you’ve been exploring an elimination diet for your persistent symptoms, you may be overwhelmed with all the conflicting advice. Some advocate for removing the top 6 allergens. Others say you should give up grains, legumes, and the big six. Some say it’s certain kinds of starches that are the problem.
I’ve heard from many of you who ask, “Which one is the right one?”, or “What do you think about the carnivore diet, is that a good one to try?”
It’s wonderful that so many people are becoming aware that their food choices have a huge impact on how they’re feeling. But many of you are falling into one of the traps I see a lot: the magic pill trap. It seems like if you can just figure out which elimination diet is the RIGHT one, then all your health problems will magically fade away.
The truth is, an elimination diet is only only ONE tool in a large box of many needed to resolve your symptoms. To get the best benefit from elimination diets, you have to choose the right one, AND use it properly to see the benefits.
What is an Elimination Diet, and Why Should You Use One?
An elimination diet is simply a diet where you remove certain foods to evaluate their effect on your body. If your symptoms improve while you have removed those foods, you can now tell that you have a sensitivity to them, and you can choose to remove them for a longer term while you work on finding your upstream causes of your sensitivity.
So often, your chronic symptoms are partly a result of eating foods you may not realize you are sensitive to. Trying a methodical elimination diet can help make sense out of all those symptoms, and help show you what is a problem for you.
But I so often see people make mistakes when they try to do elimination diets. And one of the frequent mistakes I see is choosing the wrong elimination diet for the situation.
Not only that, but diet templates are always a starting place, and must be customized. Because in Functional Nutrition and Medicine, what matters is not what has worked for everyone else, but what works for YOU.
How to Choose the Right Elimination Diet and How to Use It
The best way to choose the right elimination diet for you and your body is to begin with considering what kinds of symptoms you are experiencing. Are your symptoms primarily digestive in nature, are they more related to your immune health, or maybe you have a lot of hormone or neurotransmitter symptoms. (If you need help mapping these symptoms out, please read How to Use These 2 Functional Medicine Tools to Clarify Your Path to Healing).
There are literally hundreds of diets and dietary theories out there, but many of them fall into 6 main categories of elimination diets. Choosing the right one is important, because you don’t want to introduce too many drastic changes to your diet at once, or become deficient in important nutrients.
So choosing partly depends on symptoms. What follows is a summary of the different types of elimination diets, and when you might use them.
The basic elimination diet method is to remove (or reduce in some cases) the suspected foods for 3-4 weeks. During this time, your body has a chance to take a rest from these foods, and calm down and heal any inflammation that might be related to them.
Once the elimination period is over, you introduce the foods you removed (if desired) to test whether they have an affect, and what those affects are. This is the part that many people don’t take advantage of, but it’s one of the most important benefits of the elimination they just went through. The key is to ONLY introduce ONE food at a time and carefully observe any change in symptoms by using a tracking method. Next, you wait for 3-4 days until the next test.
If there is no change at all, then that food is not a problem. If symptoms show up, then that food may need to be eliminated for a while longer, while you work to resolve the sensitivity.
As a general rule, if you are someone struggling with persistent symptoms, I recommend removing gluten, dairy, and sugar. (You can read 6 Reasons to Quit Gluten if you Have a Chronic Illness here). These three foods are highly likely to be involved in your symptoms.
And also as a general rule, you will want to eat a real-food diet, full of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, and pastured, organic meat, free of hydrogenated fats, industrial seed oils (canola, soy, cottonseed, and safflower oils), and artificial ingredients you can’t pronounce. Avoid conventional produce to reduce your exposure to pesticides and herbicides.
The Basic Elimination Diet:
The basic elimination diet, recommended widely by Functional and Integrative practitioners everywhere, is to remove gluten, dairy, sugar (including alcohol). These three foods are the top triggers of food-related symptoms. The three right behind are corn, soy, and eggs. So the basic elimination diet involves removing these potential food allergens, to assess their affects.
The basic elimination diet is best used if your symptoms are mild but persistent. Symptoms like fatigue, sleep problems, mild digestive trouble, mild anxiety or depression, or skin symptoms would be a good indicator to try removing these 3-6 basic foods.
You should of course also continue to avoid any foods that you KNOW are a problem for you.
If you are struggling with arthritis, you may want to include nightshades in your basic elimination program. These include:
- tomatoes
- potatoes
- peppers
- eggplant
- okra
- tomatillos
- cayenne pepper
- paprika
If your symptoms or health condition is more specific, for example, to the digestive system, or you have an autoimmune diagnosis, you may need a more specific elimination diet.
Specific Carbohydrate Diets (SCD)
A Specific Carbohydrate elimination diet is primarily useful if you seem to react to lots of vegetables and fruits, or have a lot of digestive symptoms or diagnoses such as Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth (SIBO), IBS, or IBD. There are 5 types of starches in plant-based foods, and some people are sensitive to some or all of them. They are collectively referred to as FODMAPs, which stands for Fructo-, Oligo-, Di-, Mono-Saccharides, and Polyols.
If you experience a lot of bloating, pain, distention, gas, and discomfort from eating what you might think are “healthy” foods, high FODMAP foods may be the culprits.
There are two different variations on specific carbohydrate diets. One is a low-FODMAP diet, and another is the Specific Carbohydrate Diet (SCD). They are similar, but they differ by which specific carbohydrates they eliminate. A low-FODMAP diet is designed to help IBS-sufferers identify trigger foods, while SCD is a more long-term strategy of avoidance of certain kinds of carbs.
As elimination diets go, low FODMAP is probably the way to help you distinguish which types of carbohydrates trigger your symptoms. You can find resources about how to give this elimination diet a try here.
Paleo and Ancestral Elimination Diet
You have probably been living under a rock if you haven’t heard of the Paleo diet. The concept of the Paleo elimination diet is to only eat foods that were available to humans before the advent of grain and dairy farming.
The Paleo diet relies heavily on animal protein, healthy fats, and lots of fresh vegetables. It eliminates not only grains, and dairy products, but sugar, industrial seed oils, alcohol, and legumes as well. Because of these omissions, this diet is also much lower in simple carbohydrates than most Americans eat.
The Paleo diet has been popularized by Chris Kresser, in his book The Paleo Cure, and the Melissa Hartwig’s Whole 30.
Many people have found significant relief from their symptoms by adopting a Paleo diet, especially those with heart disease, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, and autoimmune conditions. Because it combines the basic elimination diet with elimination of grains, it’s a good template to try if you don’t have drastic health problems, but know aren’t in your best shape.
There are some caveats for the Paleo diet. Many people worry about the high fat advocated in the Paleo diet. The science is in on this topic, and it clearly shows that there isn’t an association between cardiovascular events and dietary fat intake. But if you increase your fat intake without making sure that your gall bladder and bowel can tolerate it, you may make digestive or other symptoms worse.
Also, the Paleo diet includes many high-oxalate foods (see Specialty Elimination Diets below), such as spinach, chard, sweet potatoes, almonds (especially as almond flour), chia, peanuts, and chocolate. Some people react to oxalates with increased body pain, or urinary tract problems, such as kidney stones.
If you’re a lot sicker, with one or more autoimmune diagnoses, you may want to consider the more specific autoimmune paleo template. (See below).
Autoimmune Paleo Elimination Diet (AIP)
The Autoimmune Paleo elimination has a lot of the same basic template factors as regular Paleo, but it removes many more potential autoimmune and symptom triggers in the initial removal phase. It is one of the most strict elimination diets. In addition to removing foods on the Paleo diet, foods to remove includes:
- eggs
- legumes
- grains
- many spices and herbs
- nuts and seeds
- nightshades
The AIP should generally only be considered for serious, autoimmune health problems, and ideally should be taken on with at least some guidance. And though it can take some time to work through the elimination and reintroductions, AIP isn’t meant to be a long-term diet solution, because the lack of diversity can lead to nutrient deficiencies of zinc, selenium, B vitamins, and the omega 3:6 balance. Not only this, but it can be very hard to adhere to, because eating outside of your home becomes very difficult.
But if you have food sensitivities or autoimmune issues that have been unresolved with a basic elimination diet, AIP may be the way to go for you.
If you want more support with the Autoimmune Paleo protocol, I recommend checking out Mickey Trescott and Angie Alt’s website Autoimmune Wellness.
Ketogenic Elimination Diet
A ketogenic diet is an very low carb, moderate protein, and high fat diet designed to bring the body into nutritional ketosis. This means that your body relies on burning fats for fuel, instead of the usual carbs and sugars.
The ketogenic elimination diet is similar to the Paleo template, but it also removes or reduces starchy vegetables, like potatoes, beets, carrots, and winter squash, and most fruit.
A ketogenic diet is most beneficial for people with metabolic problems like obesity, syndrome X, and diabetes, who are wanting to reset their metabolism for weight loss and maintenance. It’s also valuable for people who have severe brain issues, like epilepsy, brain injuries, certain types of cancer, autism, or neurological disorders like Alzheimer’s, Multiple sclerosis, Parkinsons, and ALS. This is because sugar is inflammatory for the brain and cancer cells, and the high fat, low sugar template can help reduce inflammation.
People on a ketogenic diet may become deficient in potassium, and will need to adjust the carbohydrate content of their diet to their unique tolerance.
Because keto diets are very high in fat, it’s important to assess the strength of your fat digestion before diving in. You aren’t necessarily what you eat, but what you can do with what you eat. Especially exercise caution if you have had your gall bladder removed, or already know that your fat digestion is compromised.
Specialty Elimination Diets: Glutamates, Oxalates, Salicylates, and Amines, Oh My!
Sometimes, the problem is a category of foods. These include foods high in glutamates, oxalates, salicylates, and amines, like histamine.
These eliminations typically are something to look into if you haven’t gotten relief with the more basic elimination trials. For some of you, certain chemical elements of different kinds of foods may overwhelm your body’s ability to break them down.
You’ve likely heard of people reacting to MSG (monosodium glutamate). MSG is a high-glutamate food. Glutamate is a brain-stimulating chemical that naturally occurs in cured meats and cheeses, MSG, soy sauce, fish sauce, corn starch, corn syrup, seaweed, bone broths, L-glutamine supplements, gelatin, and protein isolates.
Glutamate is broken down in the liver. If you happen to be deficient in nutrients your liver uses to break down glutamates, or if you have a genetic variation that inhibits your ability to successfully break them down, you may experience symptoms when you ingest too much of them. If you eat more than your body can handle in one meal, hello symptoms.
With Specialty eliminations diets, it’s generally not possible to completely remove them from your diet. The food chemicals are often present in many common plant foods. The goal is to identify which ones are the worst offenders for YOU, and then work to eliminate those ones in particular, or to find your level of tolerance. But don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Specialty eliminations are best done with the support of a nutrition professional who can help you determine where to look, and how to track the eliminations and trials.
A Food-Symptom tracking diary or app can help.
Conclusion
Food is such an important piece of how we feel, but we need to be smart about how we work to understand what we need to change to feel our best. We don’t want to open up our bodies to nutrient deficiencies, or take on undue hardship with restrictions.
Getting to the heart of YOUR unique sensitivities, so you can remove that stress from your body’s energy field is important, but you want to do it right, with the least amount of upheaval for the greatest benefit.
When you’re ready for some support in digging through the weeds, I would be happy to sit down with you and map out an elimination diet plan in the context of all your signs and symptoms. Schedule your Free Assessment Session right here, and I’ll let you know where I think you might best focus your efforts.
With any complex health issue, food is only one part of the strategy that will bring you relief. To find out more about the strategy I use to help my clients find remission or a successful long-term management plan for their symptoms, download your copy of Roadmap to Recovery: How to Move Beyond Your Symptoms and Create a Personalized Plan to Restore Your Health.
by Amanda Malachesky | Sep 10, 2018 | Chronic Illness, Functional Nutrition
DISCLAIMER: The content of this article does not constitute medical advice. Before adding any nutritional vitamins or supplements, consult with an appropriate professional.
Vitamins and supplements are a multi-million dollar industry, and it seems like most people use at least basic supplements. I’d like to illuminate how the RIGHT vitamins and supplements can support your journey back to health, as well as how to figure out which ones are right for YOU.
You’re likely aware that taking vitamins and supplements can be helpful, but you may not know all that much about them or how they work. Biochemistry was the class my science-friends all feared in school!
But when you’re dealing with a health condition, biochemistry is your friend.
What if one of the obstacles in the way of your body getting well is simply the lack of enough of a certain nutrient? Wouldn’t you want to correct that ASAP?
Why You Need Vitamins and Supplements
Your body needs various raw materials to do its jobs. Imagine trying to run your car without gasoline, or transmission fluid. You won’t get very far without these essential components!
Your body is continuously performing chemical reactions, and it uses vitamins, minerals, and enzymes to make them happen.
For example, your liver requires many different vitamins and mineral co-factors to successfully detoxify your blood, including vitamins A, C, E, certain B vitamins, vitamin D, magnesium, calcium, amino acids such as glycine, glutamine, taurine, and cysteine, sulfur, and glutathione (the master antioxidant).
Generally, your body does a pretty good job of automatically maintaining function. If you’re in good health and you eat a nutrient-dense diet, you are probably able to get most of the vitamins, minerals, and enzymes you need from your food.
But once you begin to present with symptoms, your body is telling you its needs aren’t being met. By the time you have a diagnosis, organs, tissues, or functions may be damaged, and need support.
A major part of the process of restoring health is bringing these deficiencies to sufficiency, so that your body can take care of itself with ease. This is Step 4 on my Roadmap to Recovery (If you haven’t gotten your copy yet you can download it here).
Deficiencies are common, and can be created by:
- A damaged digestive system, from infections, medication side effects, food sensitivities, or radiation exposure, which can compromise your ability to absorb nutrients.
- A diet full of nutrient-poor or processed food.
- Genetics, which may compromise your ability to create or absorb enough of a nutrient.
- Inflammation, which can use up stores of important nutrients to repair the damage.
- Certain disease processes. For example, the heavy bleeding common with fibroids or endometriosis can lead to iron deficiency.
- Missing co-factors for absorption. For example, adequate stomach acid is necessary to absorb Vitamin B12 and iron.
While you are investigating your health challenges and seeking answers, it’s important to get clear on where your deficiencies are likely to be, and to work to bring them to sufficiency.
How to Determine Nutrient Deficiencies
Many modern people are deficient in several common nutrients, especially if they are eating a standard American diet. These include Magnesium, omega-3 fatty acids and short-chain fatty acids, B vitamins, and antioxidants, like vitamin A, E, and C. Vitamin D deficiency is also very common, which can be an underlying cause of immune challenge if you are struggling with your health.
Figuring out which basic vitamins and supplements you need to support your body in regaining sufficiency and recovering is quite simple. A standard blood chemistry test (Complete Blood Count and Metabolic Panel) as well as some symptom clues can give you good direction. You can also monitor particular nutrients via direct testing, as with Vitamin 25-OH D.
Functional Medicine and Functional Nutrition practitioners read these tests within a narrower range than your standard MD might. I am looking for optimal function, as opposed to a severe disease state.
For example, on the CBC, there are several markers that note the condition of the red blood cells, and are used to monitor anemia. Values of these markers can indicate not only problems with iron and anemia, but also your status of Vitamin B6 and B12, Vitamin C, and stomach acid.
Markers on your metabolic panel can also give us good indicators about B vitamins, zinc status, micronutrients like molybdenum, as well as your digestive status, helping you understand whether you need additional support in that area.
Beyond blood chemistry testing, there are other functional tests available that can help illuminate what’s going on. Organic Acids testing can show your status of vitamins, antioxidants like CoQ10 and glutathione, and neurotransmitters like dopamine and serotonin.
But though these fancy tests can be useful, there is no substitute for looking at the basics, and supporting the body in performing its normal function. Sometimes, with some minor dietary changes and the addition of supportive nutrients, people experience a really dramatic shift for the better.
A recent client came to me with frequent stomachaches, pain, fatigue, and stress. As part of my assessment, it appeared that vitamin B12 and B6, magnesium, and omega-3s were likely deficient. Their digestive function appeared to need support, as well.
They carefully included these basic vitamin and supplement supports to their routine, and within a few weeks had significant relief from their stomachaches and fatigue. They were feeling better, so they stopped the supports, only to find the symptoms returned.
Sometimes, small changes provide that little nudge of support that can make the difference between symptoms and no symptoms.
Start Vitamins and Supplements One At A Time
Equally important to including vitamins and supplements to plug nutrient leaks and bring deficiency to sufficiency is working to carefully observe whether or not they are helping or hurting and to adjust accordingly.
You may have decided you needed certain vitamins or supplements, or been told you should use certain types by your health provider. Many people in this situation buy a big order of supplements, and just start taking them all at once.
I don’t do this in my practice, and you shouldn’t either. It’s best to start vitamins and supplements one at a time. This is especially true if you are already someone who has a lot of food sensitivities.
The reason is two fold. You want to be able to carefully work up to the right dose for your body, AND be aware of any adverse reactions. If you take five new supplements on the same day and then develop a headache or nausea, you won’t know which vitamin or supplement is responsible.
I have tried a lot of supplements over these last several years, and there are many I have found that I couldn’t tolerate. I wait to incorporate something new until I know my body isn’t reacting to anything, and then test it. If I consistently experience a negative symptom, I stop for a few days, and then try it one more time.
Not only does this help you understand which supplements are best left out of your routine, it gives you more information about your case. Is there an additive in the supplement or vitamin you react to? Is the form of the supplement difficult for your body to absorb? Is it the dose the problem? Answering these questions helps you learn more about your body’s unique biochemistry and the best way to support it.
For example, I had a doctor prescribe me a high-potency Vitamin B12 supplement with SAMe (an enzyme). I was concerned about the high dose of B12 because I had experienced anxiety from too high of a dose of B12, and voiced my concern. But the doctor said she thought the reason I had had trouble before with B12 was because I wasn’t taking it with SAMe.
When I started the supplement, I didn’t experience anxiety, but I started having really pressing headaches, like I had a heavy bowling ball sitting on my brain between my eyes. I tried reducing the dose to a half capsule, but that didn’t work either. So I stopped using it, and the headaches went away.
Maybe for MOST of this doctor’s patients, they did fine with a high B12 dose with SAMe, but for me, it didn’t work. We need to listen to our bodies.
More Isn’t Always Better
More isn’t always better! Because every body is unique and different, dosage is bioindividual. A recommended dosage on a bottle of vitamins or supplements is a generalization. I recommend clients start at a small, low dose, and gradually increase, if they don’t experience any symptoms or side effects. This not only helps you see those side effects more clearly, but also helps you find YOUR body’s best therapeutic dose.
Using these two guiding principles will help you make the most beneficial use of your vitamins and supplements.
Why Vitamin and Supplement Quality Matters
Many people want to cut costs and buy cheap vitamins and supplements from suppliers like WalMart and Costco. While this is understandable, using quality, medical-grade supplements is a much better idea to support the best outcome.
Many inexpensive brands of supplements are cheap because they are mostly fillers, or in some documented cases, are actually not what is advertised.
Fillers can often be a problem for people dealing with challenging health issues, if they are unlabeled allergens. Many of the clients who come through my office are sensitive to gluten, dairy, eggs, and other common allergens. But many low-end supplements have ingredients with these sources. Despite the needed nutrients, these ingredients may set clients back.
I always source gluten-, dairy-, soy-, nut-, egg, shellfish-free supplements for my clients, and even choose specific supplements for them depending on their known or suspected sensitivities. For example, I’m sensitive to corn, so I can’t use any supplements that have corn sourced ingredients. This may include things like dextrose, a common additive in many supplements.
Though they may be more expensive, choosing supplements free of ingredients that may harm your forward progress on your road to recovery, or that truly contain what you are hoping to buy, is worth the investment.
Reputable vitamin and supplement companies often provide 3rd-party verification of stated ingredients, as well as certification that their products are free from allergens, such as gluten, dairy, soy, and so on.
Here is a partial list of supplement suppliers that provide high-quality, therapeutic grade supplements include:
Conclusion
Supporting your body with the right nutrients to restore function is an important part of walking your road to recovery. Provided you correctly identify the vitamins and supplements your body needs help with and you use them properly, they can be an essential support during your healing process.
Supplementation is only ONE part of a multi-faceted approach I use to support my clients in getting well. If you are ready to learn more about what nutrients your body may need in the context of YOUR Road to Recovery, I invite you to download your copy of Road to Recovery: How to Move Beyond Your Symptoms and Create a Personalized Plan to Restore Your Health HERE. I look forward to connecting with you.
