Hello, Let’s Talk About Gut Health Part Two

The more troubling concerns that have recently been striking

We moved to the Pacific Northwest. HELLLOOO vegan junk food! For the past little while I’ve been eating a lot of refined carbohydrates and sugars. I still believe I’ve had a really good balance of healthy vegan foods thrown in there, so I do believe my gut problems are a long-awaited accumulation of past health concerns going ignored.

Diet aside, the past few months have been really taxing on my body. Starting in the late summer with crippling, excruciating menstrual cramps. When I was younger I’d get them so bad I’d black out and feel sick but for most of my life Mother Nature has been pretty easy on me. These recent cramps were so awful I could just mark a couple straight days off the calendar for feeling like vomiting from pain. Until I researched what I know now, I was pretty worried it was endometriosis.

The 2019 New Year is really when I was really hit hard with other symptoms. Of course like a normal American I drank the New Year away and was sick immediately afterward with what I thought was a hangover, but was also confused about because I never got hangovers from drinking the amount I did. I was never actually able to GET sick, either. It was like my stomach was constipated, honestly! It was like reaching to point where you know you’d feel better if you could just throw up and expel whatever is poisoning you, but not being able to do it.

I believe it was just a couple weeks later I was hit with what met all the criteria of being e-coli. This seemed to last a really, really long time but in reality was probably only a handful of days, followed by feeling off for another few days. Again, I was unable to follow through with my feelings of upset stomach, no matter how hard I tried to force it. My stomach was stiff and my instinct was telling me everything inside me was incredibly inflamed.

There were multiple occasions that I’d have to drive Bo an hour to his vet appointment and didn’t know if I’d make it, which was terrifying to me because his well-being is a top priority. It really wouldn’t have been OK to let his health problems go untreated because I was feeling sick. I knew I had to get him in ASAP when he had an enlarged prostate, and on top of being sick the roads were icy at the time. I took a puke bag or bucket, a water bottle, located all the restrooms along the route, and made a very very slow trek to the veterinarian.

From then on, I would have one excruciating menstrual cycle + one or two bouts of the stomach bug every month. Diarrhea was also common through the entire period of not feeling well. There are quite a few other small symptoms from brain fog to acne to depression to fatigue to migraines to more personal ailments we won’t talk about here right now. UUUUUUUUGH I felt completely useless and angry with myself for potentially being an absolute baby. I would remind myself that Griffin isn’t sick, and we essentially share food and an environment, and I was probably just handling these feelings with too much empathy.

Then I got to a point where mind over matter was not even SLIGHTLY working, and I started researching who could help. I believe western medicine only masks the problem or makes it worse, and seeing a doctor with only a handful of nutrition study hours and no focus on holistic practices was the last thing I wanted to do. I’d gotten to multiple points where I just wanted an ambulance to come pick me up, though LOL. I spent quite some time locating the nearest holistic practitioners, vegan doctors, etc. I was actually surprised to find my inner reassurance that a vegan doctor was only a phone call away here in the PNW was a little off. I could only find ONE holistic and ONE vegan doctor in my area, and only found another one or two when I expanded my search criteria to include all of the state, and my best option didn’t appear to accept my insurance. At one point I actually tried making an appointment with one of them and after multiple voicemails they never got back to me.

I would also like to throw in here, for those who may be wondering, I did try many many other solutions. I thought I was allergic to soy, wheat or tomatoes and tested that theory. I thought I had sensitivities to fatty foods like nuts, oils, and avocados and tested that theory. I thought going raw would be my solution (actually quite the opposite!). I thought it was something in my tap water or the new dry climate we moved to or mold exposure or from petting my cat and dogs or being in contact with the cows on the ex-dairy farm we live on (ironic, I know).

Just recently I decided it was time I handle this and address my beliefs and intuition about what it could be.

Go to part three here