Self-healing diet

Two months ago, I had confirmation from a doctor of oriental medicine that I have some kind of imbalance - energetic or otherwise - with my gallbladder and liver. Western tests and ideas about how the body functions revealed nothing amiss. Two ultrasounds showed no gallstones and my blood work proved to be at normal levels, except for a slight vitamin D deficiency. 

The cure she suggested includes Chinese herbs (Free and Easy Wanderer, to deal with liver chi function), along with a strict adherence to a low fat, especially minimal saturated fats, vegan diet, which I have followed from day #3 after the visit. This information precipitated a few days’ panicked binge, and I ate several pints of Vermont ice cream, movie theater jumbo sized quantities of buttered popcorn and at least one burger with fries before I acquiesced to reality. 

The first week challenged me to create meals, snacks and even beverage options that complied with the guidelines I found in Healing with Whole Foods by Paul Pitchford. During the transition from content omnivore to healing myself vegan I understood I would probably feel better if I ate in a different way but occasional temper tantrums erupted about having to make such a radical shift. Still, the desire to be free of constant pain kept me moving forward, reminded me that I had 10 years of vegetarian cooking under my belt, and led me to find recipes online, cookbooks at the library and on my own shelves. 

One of those books is The Self-Healing Cookbook by Kristina Turner, based on macrobiotic principles. The inscription, dated February 2001 and written in my own hand, says “Sara Jane, heal thyself. Love to you and scrumptious food.” I reclaimed this book, which I had gifted my sister Sara, the horrible day my mom, sister, brothers and I cleaned out her apartment, post her funeral in November 2005. 

During the long years she struggled with addiction, depression, mental illness and a thorough lack of hope that she might someday shed some of the burdens and scars she’d collected over the years, I maintained hope that something might lead her to recovery. However, I doubt she glanced through its pages once: her relationship with food was tumultuous, from a childhood as a “picky eater,” to an adulthood when picky became anorexic, compounded by insulin dependent diabetes.

I share this because the struggles of one reflect the struggles of all, even though it manifests in a different way from one person to another. I know that the pain I’ve felt for four years is diet related, but it’s also the result of years of unprocessed emotions and high levels of stress. Chinese medicine attributes the negative emotions of anger, lack of courage, and indecisiveness to dysfunction of the liver and gallbladder. I tend toward road rage and jaw clenched intensity, I’ve wanted to be a writer for forever and feared to do so, and I have lost count of how many times I’ve said “I don’t know what to do” since emotions became physical symptoms.  

The book I gave my sister to heal her body has become a tool to heal my own. I eat to transform my health and in two months I have had a 50% reduction in pain and shed 20 pounds, so now I’m moving into the second and third components of this healing mission. Stress, anxiety and anger are on the out and I am focused on calm, cool, quiet mind and peaceful heart. I have rescue remedy in the car and I’ve started riding my bike around town, which is almost as fast travel as driving and great exercise, another de-stresser. This aspect of transformation challenges me, just as altering my diet has, just as will part three: forgiveness of myself and others who contributed to my imbalance. 

Vegan, revisited

During high school I learned about the the dire environmental costs from and brutal treatment of animals on factory farms, and this marked the first time I tried to become a vegetarian. Fifteen years on the planet, oldest of five children, working class parents and resident of a small rural community - none of these contributed to success in weaning meat from my diet. For six months I ate whatever had never had eyes, excluding virile potatoes, and that generally meant an endless selection of iceberg lettuce salads, canned corn and the blessing of the farmer stand and tomatoes, cucumbers and Ohio sweet corn once June arrived.

Six months later, I left to live in Belgium for my junior year and bid au revoir to the moral high ground in order to be able to integrate with my host families without reservation. That year I ate whatever was offered, and took comfort in knowing that the cows and rabbits I consumed had lived their days in fields and bush rather than feed lots and pens.

It wouldn't be until I lived in a college dorm that I shifted my diet to vegetarian again. At the ultra liberal Antioch College that I attended for a year, I found a plethora of like minded folk who included lacto-ovo veggies like me -I ate eggs and ice cream with gusto - along with vegans who eschewed any products of the labor or life of animals. A year after I dropped out of that school I moved to an organic farm in Newburg, Maryland for the duration of a growing season, April to November.

On the farm, part of the worker's wage included all the food you cared to eat, essential since there was no minimum wage for farm hands then or now and we made $4.25/ hour. We lived communally, simplest after 10 and 12 hour days in the sun and doing the kind of physical labor that sculpts your body into a lean mean working machine. Each day one of the crew was responsible for preparing lunch and dinner, and since half of the people there were vegan I became one by default (except for pints of New York Super Fudge Chunk hidden in the recess of the freezer and eggs benedict during trips off the farm). My body leaned out, my mind cleared and despite the exhausting work this marked the healthiest period of my life.

I remained a vegetarian until I was 26 and playing rugby in another incarnation as a college student in New Mexico. I started craving meat; the oddity of having my taste buds aroused by the scent of blood after almost a decade of revulsion toward factory farming could not stop the need. So, I ate meat, and still do, choosing sources I know have been raised locally, humanely and organic whenever possible, with the assumption that I'd stop again some day. That time has arrived.

I have this mysterious abdominal pain that has taken up residence under the lower ribs of my right side, where liver and gallbladder do their digestive work. Western medicine hasn't revealed the culprit, not through several ultrasounds and blood work, but a DOM (Doctor of Oriental medicine, who uses acupuncture and herbs to heal) identified stagnation and imbalances corresponding with the loci of suffering, my unhappy liver and gallbladder. Last week, I gave notice to the pain and started taking Free and Easy Wanderer (anti stagnation), quaffing cleavers and chamomile tea, and eliminated as much saturated fat from my diet as I can manage. The easiest way to do the latter is to eat a vegan diet - no meat, dairy and eggs - and one that excludes the fattier elements, such as coconut, nuts and chocolate. No toxins, either, so goodbye to beer, wine and tequila.

The upsides to the 'deprivation,' as I sometimes call this minimum two month commitment? I feel better, clear mind, emotionally balanced, and the extra padding I've been collecting for the past few years is diminishing. The pain in my side is more intermittent than constant, and that is a relief, as chronic pain wears you down near to misery.

Best of all, I'm relearning how to cook food beyond meat and carb fare. I already love to spend time in the kitchen, and now I eat almost exclusively from what I've prepared myself. Already I've made cauliflower and millet mashers, roasted beet and sweet potato chickpea burgers, chips from beet and radish greens, and spiced and unsweetened breakfast cookies with carrots and gingery applesauce. Today's culinary agenda includes empanadas and a pinto and plantain stew garnished with roasted parsnip slivers.

Temporary vegan life means fun with cookbooks, raw ingredients and well-being.

Posted with Blogsy