The last couple of months have been busy with holiday celebrations and work obligations and mentally preparing for the GAPS journey.
In August, my husband and I decided to start the GAPS protocol together, after the holidays. We decided to start on January 1st. Most of our holiday celebrations are complete, and starting at the top of a month/year makes it really easy to remember when you started and how many days you've been on each stage, etc.
So today's the first, and I wanted to get some things written down for my own personal journal of this experience. If it helps anyone else out there… bonus!
I started the MRT/LEAP diet on June 29th, 2013. Here's what I listed as my symptoms: "Main symptoms: Joint pain (specifically ring finger on my left hand, pointer fingers, ankles, knees), stiff ankles, mid-afternoon fatigue (took a brief nap), slight headache. I also experienced mid-severe intestinal/abdominal pain after dinner (beef roast with olive oil and salt, sweet potato)."
Whoa. Add to that ear pressure/pain, dry and itchy skin, and muscle aches, and it's almost identical to how I feel today.
Last night I made some plain chicken meat broth, using a chicken back and sea salt. We went to a friend's house last night to celebrate the New Year, so I took it along in case we needed something to tide us over in the morning before we left their house. We left pretty early, so we didn't have any until we got home.
We both had a cup of broth when we got home. Oh my gosh was it good! We've had chicken meat broth before, but for some reason this batch turned out perfectly! I know it sounds weird, but it tasted like a "clean" version of Campbell's Chicken Noodle Soup broth. We both LOVED it.
After our broth, DH took a nap and I rested. We didn't get much sleep last night, since we were having a lot of fun. :) While DH was napping, I had a couple more cups of broth. It was SO good. I was reading up on GAPS stuff when I started to get extra symptoms that I hadn't woken up with: headache, ear aches, dull nerve pain in my left arm, stomach/ab pains. And extreme sleepiness!
I fell asleep in my recliner with my computer on my lap. A bit later, my dog woke me up to go outside. So I woke up and I started reading again, and fell asleep AGAIN! Falling asleep mid-day is pretty unusual for me, and usually I can't be awoken for HOURS if I do end up sleeping. Once I'm woken up (for example, from a dog wanting something), I usually won't go back to sleep. So doing this twice in one day is quite odd for me, even with my reduced sleep schedule from last night (six hours or so).
Once DH woke up, I offered to make some Intro soup, but we were both content with just the broth. It felt good to both of us. So we just decided to finish out the day with broth only. We didn't plan to start this GAPS journey with a broth cleanse, but it feels right to do it today.
Since I had developed a headache and other symptoms, and also just because I wanted to get off to a good start, I did a coffee enema. I did two 2-cup "sessions". I felt like it went pretty well, except that I couldn't hold it very long. About six minutes the first time, and about nine minutes the second time. Despite that, my headache went away. My ear pressure/pain is down to just ear pressure (no pain), and I haven't noticed my nerve pain over the past couple of hours.
In the past hour or two, I've noticed a marked increase in itching around my neckline. I associate this with a candida rash I had awhile ago. I don't know if it really is, but that's my intuition.
DH has been very resistant to enemas. This is kind of weird, because we used to do home colonics all the time. (I haven't been very good about updating my health story, but it included colonics. We only got out of the habit because they are so time consuming, and they are very difficult to do in our current house.)
Last night was New Years Eve, and we went to a friends house. They had champagne for midnight, and DH ended up drinking about 3-4 glasses. He woke up today with a hangover, which has been pretty par for the course for the past year or two, whenever he has any amount of alcohol. Bummer.
He asked this morning what would help with his hangover, and I told him a coffee enema. He really didn't want to do it, so I dropped it. Then tonight after my detox bath, I asked if he wanted me to run a bath for him. He said yes, if I thought it would help him feel better (he is feeling pretty miserable). I thought about it and hesitated and then said yes, I think it will help. So I started to run the bath, but then I thought about it and I hate to lecture him, but at the same time I hate when he feels miserable, too! So I went back out to the living room to tell him that I do think it will help, it's just that an enema would be so much better. He agreed! He just came out to tell me it went pretty well. :)
Tomorrow we'll start introducing food. I think I'm going to start with the following foods:
- Chicken
- Lard
- Broccoli
- Carrots
- Cauliflower
- Leeks
- Onions
- Pumpkin
- Winter squash
- Chamomile tea
- Sauerkraut juice
Of course everything will be boiled until it's very well cooked.
Now that I see that list, I meant to add in 1 tsp of sauerkraut juice to our last cup of broth for tonight.
We didn't have any supplements today.
Foods ingested today:
- Chicken meat broth
- Sea salt
- Sauerkraut juice, 1 tsp
Additional protocols:
- Coffee enema (for me and DH)
- Detox bath (for me and DH)
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