I just found this amazing website called Go Dairy Free while looking for dairy free pumpkin pie recipes.
Go Dairy Free also has some resources for gluten free and soy free living.
Enjoy, and do drop a line if you find something good there!
Here’s a quick article I picked up from the Eating Rules Facebook feed today, positing explanations for the rise in gluten intolerance, which make a lot of sense.
I often feel like the science around gluten tolerance is SO not up-to-speed that it is often difficult to read articles such as these. The old medical definition of gluten was based on observations, not science, and so only includes barley, wheat and rye, instead of all “true grains” which contain gluten.
How do I make sense of all of this information (or lack of it) for my own personal use? Well, I followed the standard definition of a gluten free diet like it was the law for 10 years, and I got better for awhile, but not all the way, and then started to get worse again – allergies, food intolerances, feeling run down, and abdominal pain and bloating creeping back in. I had to decide to become my own authority on the subject and stop letting anyone else’s opinion be more important than the feedback I was getting from my own body.
Then I found Peter Osborne’s info about gluten being in all grains including corn and rice, and about dairy cross-reactions, tried to exclude them, became overwhelmed, and went back to rice, corn, and dairy. Found some more information from Dr. Aukerman, added magnesium, b complex, and enough fish oil to balance omega 6 intake 1-1. Found info on arsenic content of rice, and backed the hell off rice intake. Got the hot-off-the-press article last month from Aukerman citing clear gluten reactions to corn and finally stopped eating corn (mostly), even though I already knew it was causing me problems. Found the info on metabolism and fluid intake from Matt Stone, and here I am.
It’s not all fixed, but a lot of it is heading in the right direction, and I know it won’t be fixed overnight. The waiting is the hardest part – how long to do something before deciding it isn’t working – I don’t really have an answer for that. The periodic blood tests are a big help there because it seems you can often see numbers heading in the right direction before you feel them.
In the meantime, I use British WWII propaganda to get me through the day 🙂
Image from Wikimedia Commons http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Scan-of-original-poster-1939-300px.jpg
When that isn’t working well enough, I try one or more of these things:
If you have suggestions for others who might be struggling with food intolerances or allergies, please share below.
When people first become interested in mindfulness practice or meditation, it’s usually for stress relief or relaxation. The problem with this is that after the immediate reason for practice is alleviated, the motivation to practice wanes, until the next bout of stress, depression, anxiety or insomnia. The real benefits usually occur with some kind of regular practice. Even the most minimal and half-hearted attempts at regular practice yield benefits (ask me how I know!!!).
For this reason, I try to share information (kind of like a broken record) on all of the benefits of meditation documented by science with my clients and students.
Recently, I’ve started to notice some extraordinary effects in my own life, and thought perhaps it would also be helpful to others if I start to share what I am experiencing. I think it helps provide additional motivations to practice, and hearing about other’s experiences also makes reasons for practice seem more real. I can’t say for sure meditation is solely responsible for all of the change I see in myself, but I sure can say meditation and mindfulness practice has been a major and crucial part of it.
What I have noticed recently, and in a really big way this week, is what seems like a new response to life that is more calm, balanced, and unable to overreact to anything that is going on. In case you’re wondering, the things I am suddenly unable to panic or get excited about this week are: the only car in our single car family is suddenly unsafe to drive on the highway with no real funds or time to purchase another, and requires new tires just to be allowed to creep to work and back on side streets for the two weeks left of its life; mortgage broker trying to pressure us into refinance and appraisal of a house in need of repairs; unfinished, unanticipated, unavoidable paperwork that drags my rate of pay down to near minimum wage, husband’s job load and stress continues to grow, the paint I purchase for touching up the living room walls is actually the color of the family room and I don’t discover it before I begin painting; and one of my trips to the paint store finds me there without my purse. Add to this a new business startup that I never seem to have time to devote to, and the nagging pressure on my throat that is somewhat like being mildly choked all day long and caused by I don’t know what.
For the former version of myself, even half of this would be quite enough to send me under the covers into a quivering ball of tears. Just ask my spouse.
For some reason, this week it’s been quite easy to witness the internal movement that starts to try to get bent about what’s happening, and then just dies mid-stream. Then, there’s this new movement that seems to takes over without any real effort on my part that just meets whatever is in front of me without taking it personally, unable to make it a problem, neither latching on to it nor pushing it away. It’s like I can’t get it up to be upset about anything.
I couldn’t be more shocked that I find myself in this place. I’ve wanted it, wished and hoped for it, and then completely gave up on ever knowing it, and suddenly, here it is. It’s nearly impossible to describe, but here’s my stab at it:
You know that “waiting for the weekend” feeling? I’ve become very intimate with it over the last few years. And it seems completely meaningless right now. It’s like it’s all weekend now, or all workweek, but it doesn’t matter which. I think this might be the freedom all the spiritual teachers talk about. Just FYI, it’s nothing like what you imagine AND it’s better than anything you can imagine.
G’nite!
Having spent a great deal of my life trying to cope with everything from allergies, to headaches, stomachaches, gluten intolerance, and now Hashimoto’s, I’ve read and searched a great deal about health – pretty much ever since there’s been an internet. I’ve learned a bunch of stuff, unlearned a bunch of stuff, and here’s the big truth that I found (are you ready?):
The desperate search for health answers outside of myself can be summed up as efforts to control. It goes back to the Pema Chodron quote I tweeted recently about “the dream of constant okayness”.
It’s about this human thing we all do where we try really hard to reduce uncertainty, all aimed at securing our own personal comfort, pretty much at the expense of everything else, and to our own detriment. It literally makes us miserable, working so hard trying to ensure happiness. This occurred to me in a big way recently while I’ve been trying to figure out how to make the discomfort in my throat that is likely a symptom of my thyroid issue go away.
My desperate search for a cure, I realized, is partly resistance to the fact of my illness, a refusal to accept anything less than “perfect” that doesn’t fit my idea of how I expected life to be. The very idea that I might search forever and still not succeed in completely curing myself only occurred to me recently and was at first met with flat out disgust and rejection. The idea was just plain unacceptable. I would not accept any such possibility. Period. It just doesn’t fit with my idea of who I am, so I refused to acknowledge it. Meanwhile, the lump in my throat is ever present, squeezing, choking, threatening to become my newest, unwanted best friend and closest companion, as I grow still more desperate to fix it. How in the hell can I make friends with this? Tolerate this? Allow this?
The evolution of my spiritual path has included surrendering egoic control in many areas of life – career, identity, relationships, money – and yet, here’s this one thing, this one area, my health, that I still make endless and desperate attempts to predict and control.
So, in the face of this massive resistance welling up in my chest like a giant wall of glue and knots and nails, a twisted ball of NO!, I ask myself the magic meditation question suggested by Adya (what would it be like?), just like I’ve done for other instances of difficulty letting go.
What would it be like if I let go of the idea that the perfect solution to my complex health dilemma is out there somewhere? I might simply rely less on “common sense” advice and more on the information my body and intuition provide (which I often ignore) as a guide to what is good for me. I might stop expecting any piece of information to be THE one. I might be less devastated every time I discover that what we think we know about health changes. I might have more compassion for health professionals struggling to live up to our expectations. I might relax a little more and try to enjoy the present a little more rather than waiting for a future state of perfect health. I might be more tolerant of imperfection in myself and others.
And, all of these things might lead to less stress and better decisions, and ultimately, more free time and money, and better health. The evidence continues to mount for stress as a significant factor in health problems. Hmmmm. Could someone please remind me – what I thought I was resisting ?
I wanted to share this info because I have recently discovered that I have a blooming thyroid issue, and I have recently induced some positive changes by following simple advice from Matt Stone – “ditch the drinking”. This is based on a connection he has made between fluid intake and hypothyroid symptoms. This means stopping excessive water intake, as well as diuretic fluids like coffee, tea and alcohol.
I accidentally figured out that I was creating health problems for myself with fluid intake when my measured magnesium levels actually dropped after 3 months of tripling my magnesium intake. The only answer I could come up with was that sipping ginger green tea or water all day long was flushing it out of my system. I was constantly thirsty, and constantly peeing.
A couple of weeks of intentionally restricting my fluid intake, and suddenly I am not thirsty, and as a bonus, I feel warmer most of the time. This is very exciting to me, as I’ve been freezing cold for most of my life, it seems. We’ll see how the bloodwork looks in December from this new approach.
Much like the “cross training” myth used to sell more shoes for that purpose, the “8 cups of water per day” myth is unsubstantiated public health advice that we all just accept, to our own detriment. This one little thing could be ruining your health way more than junk food or not exercising. Caffeine and alcohol can also induce this effect, as they are diuretic and cause thirst to increase. Increased thirst can have the paradoxical effect of making us more dehydrated!
I highly recommend reading about it here, and I also found many of the comments helpful. Do you have a “drinking problem”? I did, and I can’t believe I just blindly followed someone’s orders to drink more water, and it had even become a habit that I tried to force on others. I can’t believe I did that! Like, do you think the settlers or cavemen were sipping all day long? It makes a hell of a lot more sense that we evolved to survive without a water iv drip all day long.
Upcoming video series by Rick Hanson – see the session agendas and sign up here.
It’s called “The Compassionate Brain: Activating the Neural Circuits of Kindness, Caring, and Love – Practical Neuroscience for Transformation” and it’s a 7 part series.
This FREE Online Event Series begins Monday, October 8, 2012, from 8–9 pm Eastern Time (GMT –4).
Mark your calendar – there’s another free Adyashanti radio broadcast this Wednesday, 9pm EST.
Just go to the broadcast page before 9 to listen.
I plan to tune in. I’ve only ever gotten to call in once, but I’m always glad I listened in. It seems like there’s always something helpful or profound to appreciate.
I heard about this earlier this summer, and now it’s been verified by Consumer Reports, who tested 200 rice products: there’s arsenic at alarming levels in our rice, even some organic rice, and farmers feed it to chickens – on purpose!!!
You gotta read it to believe it:
Current recommendations are to limit rice intake to 2 servings per week for adults, 1.25 servings per week for children.
I think what was even more surprising to me was that this is primarily an issue caused by U.S. farming practices.
Just uploaded the first guided meditation recording from the beginners meditation class I facilitate – get it here: http://youtu.be/phyLGxSFKKc.
I hope it is the first of many, and that I will be able to include recordings of the entire class in time.
Let me know what you think!
Pema’s weekly quote today discusses just what we were talking about in meditation meeting last night, so I had to share…
Your Fixed Identity
In Buddhism we call the notion of a fixed identity “ego clinging.” It’s how we try to put solid ground under our feet in an ever-shifting world. Meditation practice starts to erode that fixed identity. As you sit, you begin to see yourself with more clarity, and you notice how attached you are to your opinions about yourself. Often the first blow to the fixed identity is precipitated by a crisis. When things fall apart in your life, you feel as if your whole world is crumbling. But actually it’s your fixed identity that’s crumbling. And as Chögyam Trungpa used to tell us, that’s cause for celebration.
The quote is from her new book Living Beautifully With Uncertainty and Change and you can get an excerpt here.
Mind|Body|Spirit Academy 
