Lullaby, and Good Night, you shouldn't eat egg whites

It never fails. Even though I've learned to watch the kids closely for food reactions and document their reactions so I don't forget, as soon as I get 2-3 weeks out from an adverse reaction, I start to doubt what I observed. I start thinking, "Maybe it was a coincidence. Food can't do that. Maybe I made a mountain out of a molehill and the symptoms weren't as bad as I thought. Maybe I imagined it all." But then I reintroduce the food, the symptoms return, and I develop renewed faith in my observational abilities. 

Most recently this happened when I fed the Hobbit some egg whites. I had introduced egg whites to the hobbit about 1 week into our GAPS intro diet (she was already eating the yolks reaction-free). The next day she woke up before 5 and screamed until it was time to get up even though I was there trying to comfort her the entire time. Her naps were also destroyed, running anywhere from 30-45 minutes. After removing the egg white from her diet and giving them a couple of days to get out of her system, she went back to sleeping until about 6:30 and taking an adequate nap. I had noticed a similar disrupted sleep pattern in both kids a couple of weeks before when I had tried giving them peanut butter, and was all too familiar with the potential for food to disrupt sleep due to Grendel waking up daily at 4 am for 3 years until we removed gluten from her diet and she started sleeping in until 6. 

Last week I decided since the Hobbit had been egg white free for a few weeks, and since we had all been undergoing extreme gut healing during this time (more on that later), that it was the perfect time to try an egg white diet challenge. Grendel had been asking for weeks when they could finally have GAPS pancakes. I had been putting it off since one of the ingredients was eggs. But I figured the Hobbit might be able to handle egg whites and that making omelettes or scrambled eggs might ease my cooking load a bit. I set out over the next few days to feed us all pancakes, omelettes, scrambled eggs, and eggs cooked into the middle of stuffed peppers. At first she didn't seem to react. Then again, for the first couple of days she would eat the other foods on her plate and would leave the eggs untouched. Around the third day she finally got extra excited about eggs and ate way too many, and the next morning she woke up at 4:30 screaming. That afternoon she took a 30 minute nap. She continued with this sleep pattern the rest of the week. She was constantly tired and cranky. I was tired and cranky as I was only getting 4-5 hours of sleep since I was staying up late to cook after getting the kids into bed. Grendel was tired, cranky, and somewhat monstrous since she was being woken up each morning by a very loud and very angry toddler. 

Finally, after a few days, the eggs were out of the Hobbit's system and she started sleeping until 6. She started taking 1.5 hour naps. Grendel started sleeping enough again because she wasn't being woken rudely and prematurely. I started sleeping more since I wasn't dealing with two cranky kids. Needless to say, this is a much happier household this week and I plan to wait a very long time before reintroducing egg whites.  

Oops I Did It Again: The Flu Take 2

Maybe I'm a glutton for punishment. Maybe I'm a Bear of Very Little Brain. Maybe I just needed more material to fill my blog. Whatever the reason, I decided to try the sprinkle-the-probiotic-directly-on-your-tongue experiment again last night. (Okay, it's none of those reasons. It's because the intense die-off reaction that I experienced last week was an indicator that I do, indeed, have an imbalance of flora in my upper GI tract, and that I do need to work at correcting that imbalance.) 

I was much more conservative in my approach, however. Instead of sprinkling approximately 10 billion microbes onto my tongue, I only used about 1-2 billion. That may seem like a huge number, but I swallow between 40 and 60 billion microbes from commercial probiotic supplements daily, and I consume water kefir, Kombucha, sauerkraut juice, and another raw probiotic juice tonic from a local sauerkraut maker. So 1-2 billion microbes should be next to nothing. It sure doesn't feel like next to nothing. 

I brushed my teeth for bed and then sprinkled the probiotic on my tongue so it would inoculate my mouth, nasal passages, and esophagus without having to worry about it being washed away with food or drink. Before I fell asleep last night, my nose started running and I started coughing. When I woke up this morning, I had reflux, a double ear ache, and laryngitis. My throat hurts whenever I swallow. I've been feeling a bit feverish, but I'm hoping that I don't once again develop a full blown fever. I don't think I will since this dose was much smaller and my symptoms have been less severe, but maybe I should be a bit more conservative next time. 

I'm going to cut the dose in half again and press on. This is a good indication that what I am doing is effective. I just need the symptoms to be a little milder so I can do all the things that I need to do without constantly feeling sick. 

It's actually kind of nice, in a weird way, to have a milder version of the "flu" die off reaction that I had last week. I was sure while I was experiencing it that it was die off. But the farther away I got from it the more I began to second guess myself. Maybe my symptoms were just a random illness? Maybe it had nothing to do with my probiotic? Maybe I coincidentally suffered from a fever inducing infection, severe reflux, and an entire mouth tooth ache all at the same time? But this second illness, also starting within an hour of taking my probiotic, reaffirms my previous suspicions. And just to think, these fever inducing pathogenic microbes are hanging out in my body ready to multiply unchecked since I have too many of the bad guys and not enough of the good guys. It's time to bring things back into balance. 

That time when I gave myself the flu from a probiotic capsule

Okay, so it wasn't actually the flu, as in influenza virus. But I've been experiencing flu like symptoms for 48 hours and generally feel like I was hit by a truck. 

It all started 2 days ago when I was reading about resolution of upper GI symptoms. I've had reflux since I was 10 years old and have had some dysphagia (food gets "stuck" in my esophagus, sometimes so badly that I have to throw up since it won't go into my stomach; I have even had two episodes in the last year where the spasming was so bad that it cut off my airway for several seconds) and regurgitation for almost that long. The GAPS information that I was reading suggested opening the probiotic capsule and sprinkling the powder onto the back of your tongue. This made sense to me! By swallowing capsules and sending them straight to my stomach, I was skipping healing a large and problematic portion of my GI tract. I decided to give it a shot!

I thought it would be most beneficial to do this right before bed so the microbes could work their magic and not be washed away while I was sleeping. I opened the capsule and dumped half into my mouth. It tasted a little funny, but seemed like a manageable nightly ritual. 

Dr. Dad and I sat down to watch a little TV before bed,and that's when I figured out that something was going terribly wrong. Within 30 minutes, my nose started draining uncontrollably. I also developed a sudden cough. I woke up several times throughout the night with a gunky throat that was making it more difficult to breathe. 

I powered through yesterday morning, with my cold symptoms gradually worsening. I also began to suffer from severe reflux. As the day progressed, my sinus pressure got bad enough to cause a headache, both of my ears hurt like they did when I last had an ear infection, I intermittently lost my voice, and all of my teeth began to ache (which I can say has never happened to me before). 

Last night my symptoms had gotten so bad that I had to end a moms night out that I was hosting. My reflux had gotten to the point that I thought I was going to vomit (which I did do a few times after my guests left). I also felt feverish. I laid in bed in agony for about an hour cursing myself for throwing out all the tums 2 days before because they were GAPS illegal. Thankfully, I finally remembered that I could drink a glass of baking soda water, and Dr. Dad was kind enough to mix one up for me at 11:30. I finally was able to find enough relief to go to sleep. 

I woke up this morning with my reflux nearly gone again. My sinus pressure had diminished. My teeth only ached a little, my joints ached a little more. Dr. Dad stayed home an extra 15 minutes this morning so he could watch the kids while I took an uninterrupted Epsom salt bath. I felt much better, but still had a low grade fever for much of the morning. 

As today has progressed, my runny nose has slowed, my fever has disappeared, my teeth and ears no longer hurt, and my joints feel better. I now feel like I have a head cold and a little reflux rather than the flu. 

I actually count this as good news (I probably wouldn't have said that last night while vomiting, however). In order to understand why, let's revisit die off. The theory is that my nagging health problems are caused by an imbalance of gut flora: I have too many pathogenic microbes and not enough beneficial microbes due to overuse of antibiotics, poor diet over the years, and a generally toxic environment. These pathogenic bugs secrete low levels of toxins at all times leading to low level symptoms. But when you do something to kill the pathogenic bugs, for example pouring 10 billion beneficial microbes directly onto your tongue, the pathogenic microbes release all of their toxins at once when they die leading to a much greater toxic load. This, unfortunately, means much more severe symptoms temporarily.  The toxins even have the power to induce fever. 

So why is this good news? All of the symptoms I developed in the past 48 hours point to pathogenic bug death and thereby a part of my body that needs its flora rebalanced. I had worsening of GI symptoms with reflux, regurgitation, and difficulty swallowing. I experienced inflammation of my nasal and respiratory passages. I developed a migraine. My cavity prone teeth ached. These are all areas that will likely improve as I progress in correcting my flora over the next couple of years. I also had a sore throat and ear pain, and if I can increase my beneficial flora in those areas I will be less likely to develop ear infections and step throat in the future. 

While it has been a miserable 2 days, I am encouraged by this experience. I will continue with my mouth powder probiotic, albeit at a much lower dose.  I will never view a probiotic as an innocuous little capsule ever again now that I've experienced the power of these little bugs. 

Sara and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

It appears we are going through another round of die off. I'm exhausted. I'm irritable. I've yelled at the kids today more than once. Grendel is hand flapping and in an overall worse mood than normal. The Hobbit just spent the last 30 minutes shrieking on my lap because she couldn't figure out how to fall asleep. So today is terrible. But I see changes and know that if we can stick with this the days will be less terrible and we will all be healthier. Unfortunately we will get worse before we get better, but the important thing is that we will get better. 

Smelly Cat, Smelly Cat, What are they feeding you?

I never realized how deep and insightful the lyrics to Smelly Cat are. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, either click here or go watch the entire Friends series now because it is really excellent. I'll wait for you to finish. Okay, done?


So Phoebe sings a silly song about a poor cat who is smelly because of his diet. I guess I always assumed that smelly cat was smelly because he was gassy because how else would your diet make you smelly?


Here's the crazy thing: my diet was making me smelly and I had no idea! I mean, I had an idea that I was smelly, of course, I just had no idea that it was from my food.


The smelly saga started a few years ago. I had read about how terrible antiperspirants containing aluminum are for you. Switching to an aluminum free variety seemed like such an easy thing to change! So I went out and bought a tube of Toms and happily applied it. As I went throughout my day, however, I became less happy with my choice as I began to sweat and give off a stench. I called off the whole experiment and went back to my terrible aluminum containing antiperspirant.


A couple of years later I was reading about natural deodorants again and read that it can take your body a couple of weeks to adjust to being off of antiperspirant. The aluminum in antiperspirant prevents you from sweating, but your body still feels the need to sweat and up regulates sweat production. So when you stop using the antiperspirant, you are producing more smelly sweat than you did before you started. I decided to try again.  However, after a couple of weeks my body had not yet down regulated the smelly sweat and my natural deodorant was doing almost nothing to deodorize me.

At this point I was committed to no longer regularly use aluminum containing antiperspirant. I had an emergency tube of it in the medicine cabinet for emergency stinky situations, but decided to use it only if the need was dire. So for the last several months I have kept a tube of natural deodorant in the medicine cabinet, in the guest bathroom, in my desk, and in my car.  I always had a tube nearby in case of deodorant failure.  Unfortunately, deodorant failure was occurring an unacceptable amount of the time, and even my nearby tubes were unable to bail me out of stinky situations.  In desperation, after reading a blog that suggested that you detox your pits to reset your body, I rubbed bentonite clay under my arms.  20 minutes later I washed it off, and guess what?  My pits still smelled. 


I was getting to the point of believing that I might just have to embrace my au natural scent for the rest of my life, until this past week when I cut out all sugars, even the natural ones in fruit, in an attempt to get my gut flora back into a healthy balance.  After going through a week of pretty significant die-off symptoms, I finally started recovering and returned to my recent baseline.  But one thing was different and was way better than baseline.  I completely forgot to apply deodorant and realized that I was magically odor free!  Since then, I have been obsessively smelling my arm pits (and sticking my arm pit into Dr. Dad's face and saying way too enthusiastically, "Smell my arm pit!"), and I am essentially stank free.


In a different part of the smelly spectrum, I have noticed that my breath tends to be nice and fresh pretty much all of the time, except when I consume my less than 1 tsp of honey daily.  Immediately after consuming honey I now have to go brush my teeth because my breath gets smelly in a hurry. 


This all makes so much scent!  (Okay, that joke stinks.  Haha!  I promise, I'm done now.)  My flora was messed up inside and out.  The abnormal flora in my gut was causing digestive and immune problems.  The abnormal flora on my skin was causing me to break out and was making my arm pits smell bad.  And the abnormal flora in my mouth was causing my breath to smell bad if I didn't brush after eating sugar. 


Smelly cat: you are a visionary.  I salute you.

GAPS Intro Day 5 Stages 1 and 2 Update

I have never seen two kids so happy to eat eggs as mine were this morning. Yesterday we were GI symptom free, so we decided to move forward from stage 1 of the intro diet to stage 2 (meaning we can have poached or soft boiled eggs on top of soup). The kids did great today: Grendel had no tummy aches, burping, or regurgitation. I, however, did not. As soon as I ate my eggs this morning, I could feel a fullness in the top of my stomach and into my throat. The best way I know to explain this, as it is not reflux but is a feeling I get that lets me know that reflux is coming, is that I have a reflux aura (like some people get auras before getting a migraine). I thought I had dodged a bullet when I made it through the entire morning asymptomatic, but then had reflux randomly in the afternoon. I had more eggs at dinner and had reflux again after dinner. All that being said, I only had reflux for a total of 2 minutes today and it went away on its own. That's a major improvement. Unfortunately, it also means that I'm being bumped back to stage 1 for another day or two. 

We entered this diet with a motto of "no man left behind," and while no one will be progressing to stage 3 without me they've tasted the goodness of eggs and I won't shake their world again by forcing them to go back to stage 1 with me. I do enjoy soup and have been doing okay eating soup for every meal for several days, but there was something satisfying about eating off of a plate with a fork. 

As for Dr. Dad? Thankfully he has me to guide his way. Last night I caught him getting a glass of wine. I told him to put it away because wine is not allowed right now. He told me that it's liquid and that wine should be allowed on a liquid diet. 

Me: It's not a liquid diet. Am I feeding you broth alone or is there stuff in your soup. 

Dr. Dad: There are meat and vegetable chunks. 

Me: Are those liquid?

Dr. Dad: No.

Me: Why would you think that with everything that we've had to cut out that wine would be the one weird thing that's okay?

Dr. Dad: Because you didn't specifically tell me that I couldn't have it. 

😶