Thursday, July 24, 2014

Another reason to change my diet, no more YOLO

I like food.  I use it for comfort at times.  I also believe that hey, I can eat that strawberry shortcake because today might be the last day I live so I should go right on ahead and eat the whole shortcake myself.  Sounds good to me.  That was until I noticed I have been feeling off.  Feeling fatter than I am was a big clue that something is off.  I went to the doctor and asked him to draw blood and put that under a microscope or whatever they do with it and tell me what the heck is wrong.  The diagnosis today, Candida.  Now, I have heard that word before and I've heard people make fun of it.  Is it one of those made up diseases to let the pharmaceutical companies have their way with me.  Is it like I'm allergic to gluten or something that sounds asinine like that?  I looked it up and it makes sense.  I eat horrible things all the time.  My YOLO diet is making me sick.
(YOLO is the acronym for "You only live once" if you didn't already know that)

Last weekend I ran into a healthy friend who has a dark secret, he has HIV.  He doesn't know that I know that.  I told him about my PVNS and he exclaimed that it must be my diet that contributes to my suffering and a bunch of other shamanistic talk about what is good like a juice cleanse.  He invited me over to share in his juice experience.  So I went over and had a lovely beet, apple, basil, celery, kale and I think there was celantro and cucumber.  It was delicious.  He talked about how he looked forward to getting up in the morning and making his juice knowing it would make him feel great.  He also reminded me that we are creatures of habit and that all I need to do was to get into a routine.

Before I got the call from the doctor I was already at the store buying up vegetables to put into my own juice.  Then came the big challenge, I had a dinner meeting.  Off to a swanky restaurant where I would have probably ordered some meat dish with rice or noodles or some kind of carbohydrate.  I was also offered a drink.  I usually drink wine with a nice dinner to bring out the flavor but after reading up on why I have full blown Candida, alcohol is not in the picture.  I declined and sipped the tea instead.  I ordered a salad and it was amazing.  Even the girl sitting at the table next to me said, "What are you eating?"

However, last night after a fine morning of productive eating healthy I went full on YOLO and got dinner from Ezelles Famous Chicken complete with fries, mashed potatoes and gravy and their yummy buttery rolls.  That is going to have to be my last YOLO meal for real.  So now I'm back on to my experiment that I set out to do after my surgery over a year ago.  Today my routine was started right even though I ate pasta during lunch because that was before the Candida revelation.  Now with my new diagnosis I will be strictly juicing and eating salads and other really ultra healthy foods.  I will be cutting out sugar, refined carbs, alcohol, and kim chi.  I like kim chi but the candida diet says to stay off the probiotics.  I will have to fight the craving of sugar which is a symptom of Candida.  I can't and probably won't give up coffee.  That's an addiction I might need a 12 step program for.

2 comments:

  1. Hi Holly,
    As a fellow PVNS sufferer, I thoroughly enjoyed your blog. I'm a 32 yr old female who has been a runner my entire life. I had keyhole surgery to remove local pvns from my right knee about two months ago. It's devastating to not be able to do my favorite exercise any more. Yoga and cycling are my two new best friends. Something that you said really struck me. You mentioned that you have Candida. How did you discover that? I ask because yesterday I found a nail fungus growing under my thumb nail after I removed nail polish from a manicure. I have never had fungus on my fingernails before and it caused me to think that perhaps there's a correlation between fungal infections and PVNS. For the last hour I have been scouring the internet to find a connection. In fact, I looked up candida after another site suggested that there's a connection between nail fungus and candida. Then, somewhat randomly, I googled PVNS and suppressed immune system, which led me to your blog. If there's any chance that there's a connection, it's worth looking into. Do you have any thought on this?
    Thanks!

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  2. Thank you for reading my blog. I went to 2 doctors for testing. One of them claimed I had candida after sending "samples" to the lab. I always ask my doctor to screen for EVERYTHING. Obviously they don't always if one discovered Candida and the other didn't. But it was through lab testing of blood and tissue samples. But with researching Candida it made a lot of sense that my diet is a huge contributing factor to what caused it. And yes, the toenail fungus can be caused by internal Candida overgrowth. So can athletes foot. Although I don't have either of those. But my juice friend claims that PVNS can also potentially grow because of my diet. Just as cancer can be starved so can PVNS? That's his claim anyways. However, Candida aside I know many PVNS sufferers have complained of Thyroid issues. I also had thyroid issues that I believe were caused by or are in connection with PVNS. I'm trying really hard to stick to a better diet and keep away from carbs and refined foods. Most days I do pretty good, other days I go YOLO. I can absolutely relate to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeP6mkkNjYg

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