Moo-hoo. And other thoughts on being dairy-free.

Dairy causes my migraines. There, I said it. It also causes my blood sugar to be completely wacky. Who knows what other random symptoms it causes, too.

I always thought that butter was my friend, even if I knew I couldn't tolerate cheese, yogurt, and other former lovers. Not so, not so. I finally started to make the connection between butter and my migraines when I tried SCD yogurt again. A half teaspoon of yogurt couldn't possibly hurt, right? Think of all those awesome probiotics!

Unfortunately, I was looking more for GI symptoms as an indicator of whether yogurt was ok, or even brain fog and fatigue. Not migraines. So it took me awhile for it to finally gel.

(A special thanks to Terri at the HSD for mentioning headaches and dairy in the same sentence. I'm forever in your debt!)

I went without any dairy, including butter, for about a week. No migraines. I made some ghee on a Sunday night. Ate it on Monday. Felt weird, like woozy from the blood sugar roller coaster, on Monday night. Migraine aura started Tuesday morning. Sigh.

I hadn't had any migraines for quite awhile until last summer. I had an aura for the first time in years while I was a few months pregnant and hadn't eaten enough that day. I had a few while my daughter was a baby, especially in the hospital and when we first came home, and I attributed those to hormones. And maybe decaf coffee withdrawal. Yes, that really can happen, I promise you. That 3% of leftover caffeine still did a number on me.

They started getting really bad and frequent once I stopped breastfeeding. Again, I thought my hormones were wacky. But it just kept happening, month after month. I felt like I spent every weekend recovering from a horrid headache, many of which started on a Saturday morning. I would get them around my period, but then be baffled when they would randomly start in the middle of the month, too.

It felt a lot like a blood sugar problem. I could usually feel it the night before as I went to bed, and I would go eat a bedtime snack to try and avoid the coming blood sugar crash. It didn't often help. I felt so clueless as to what to do.

I went to the chiropractor weekly. That was affordable... though it did seem to help somewhat.

I tried supplementing magnesium in many forms. Citrate (which seemed to make it much worse), oxide, malate, Epsom salt baths, mag chloride spray. Not all at the same time, of course, I'm not that dumb. (Not like a patient I once had who overdosed on magnesium laxatives and almost killed himself. His wife found him on the floor of the bathroom, bradycardic in the 30s. His potassium level was in the 7s. No one thought to get a mag level til later in the game after I found out he had taken so much, though I wish I could have known what it was! Anywho...)

The mag actually seemed to make the blood sugar part of things even worse. I felt like I had to constantly be eating so that I wouldn't feel lightheaded and weird.

I did notice that I sometimes felt that way after eating peas. Little did I know that it was the BUTTER, not the peas. Sorry, peas, for blaming you.

I miss dairy. But I don't miss having migraines every few days.

Sayonara, butter.
SC



 

Your kid has Celiac, too? Poor thing!

I've heard that more times than I care to remember.

I'm never sure whether to set people straight about why I choose to feed my daughter the way I do, or whether I should just escape from that particular line of conversation as quickly as possible. Gosh, we sure have had a lot of snow already this year, huh?!

The hard part is explaining that my kid doesn't have Celiac because she doesn't eat gluten. And that she would have to eat gluten to to develop symptoms. And that damage to her duodenum would have to occur in order to inflict said symptoms. And that I'm just not willing to do that at this point. Knowing what I know now about how difficult it is to heal gut damage and leakiness, there is no way I would subject my child to the possibility of all the symptoms and comorbidities of Celiac Disease just to "find out if she has it."

It's not like I thought I was dying or anything before I was diagnosed...

We look at the whole idea of "having" a disease in such a black and white way, that it would be impossible to explain to someone (especially someone on the SAD) that there are gray shades of gut trouble. That things could be progressing to having leaky gut, absorption problems, digestion issues, and/or flora imbalances, but not technically cause any symptoms or obvious damage that would lead to a diagnosis.

So I pretty much just avoid talking about it and sometimes make it seem like I do know that she is Celiac and therefore needs to eat like I do, just to make it easier.

I kind of feel like a liar.

The other part of this that really gets to me is the "Oh, poor thing!" type statement. Does it look like my child doesn't eat enough?? Sure, she has always been on the skinny side, but she looks healthy. Anyone who has been with her at a normal meal sees that she eats plenty (unless she is sick, like she is now, and I end up with 14 sliced bananas in my freezer that she begged me for and then didn't touch...).

I remember someone lamenting at a family holiday that she couldn't eat all the good food they were having and had to settle for what I brought. They were eating such delicacies as mashed potatoes out of a box mixed with spreadable plastic, sorry, margarine, and some kind of fluorescent Jello salad. Whoever started calling that type of recipe a "salad" needs their head examined. We were eating salmon, sweet potatoes, asparagus, and pumpkin pie. Hardly a meal to feel sorry for...

I try to just let it roll off my back, but what's going to happen once she gets old enough to realize what they are really saying? How in the world do I navigate the world of a kid who needs to eat a certain way, but doesn't technically "have" to by status quo standards??

SC

Staying up late doesn't help with adrenal fatigue.

FYI: In case adrenal fatigue does exist, and I am pretty much the poster child for it, it doesn't help you to continue to stay up late. Pretty much every night.

It makes sense that we would be night owls. After all, even though we are totally exhausted by the end of the day, we get kind of a second wind at night. Not that I'm not tired, I totally am, but I finally feel like getting stuff done. Plus, the toddler is in bed, so getting things done is actually feasible. Thus, I usually do "stuff" until I fall into bed.

It's my own fault. There's always more to do. Laundry, dishes, picking up the toy avalanche in my living room who am I kidding-- the whole house, planning my grocery list and looking at the online ads and coupons, reading paleo/SCD/GAPS blogs, creating a comparatively small and useless blog, finding new recipes that I may or may not ever use, uploading all the pictures on my phone that I am terrified of losing, much less doing anything I actually enjoy as a hobby.

Did you know that I once was very interested in pursuing a career in music? Yeah, I forgot about that person, too. Maybe someday I will get around to doing something musical again.

Off to bed. I'll probably wake up tired no matter when I go to bed. Plus, my kid is snotty and coughing (again) and waking herself up every hour. Poor thing. I'm so thankful that she doesn't get super sick when she is sick, but it seems to be an alternating week thing here lately. Just when we start to be better, we get hit by another stupid bug.

Oy vey. I've got to infuse my life with some positivity. I've been such a Debbie Downer lately. Great SNL sketch, not so great in real life. After all, feline AIDS is the number one killer of domestic cats.

Sorry,
SC

I'm working on it.

I promised you my story.

What I didn't realize was that once I started typing, I wouldn't stop until I included every minute detail I could possibly remember.

So I'm still working on it. I haven't even finished it, much less gone through it to edit. It's boring, too. I'd love to make it funnier or more interesting, but I'll probably have to settle for the facts.

Maybe you can read it if you are suffering from insomnia :)

or I can sell it as a new insomnia cure for only 2 easy payments of $24.95. As an eBook, perhaps?

It is coming, for real. Be forewarned. You will learn more about me than you ever, ever wanted to know!