Sometimes, if I have a wobbly day and start to get impatient about ever fully recovering, I find it helps to look back at just how far I’ve come in the process already. I know I’ve already spoken about the main problems I was having (anxiety, insomnia, being too hot or too cold, very thin hair, no energy etc.) but I thought I’d look back again and try to talk through just how many problems I was having, and take stock of where I am now.
So, if I cast my mind way, way back (lol! By a couple of years) then I remember it was hard to even get out of bed in the morning. I had to sit on the edge of the bed to will myself to move. When I stood up, everything hurt. My back was the worst; it hurt so much in the curve of my back. I just felt so heavy and achy, and I would stumble around! I could barely walk a few steps without my back hurting so badly that I had to sit down. If I was cooking then I would usually end up sitting on a chair in the kitchen or leaning against the worktop. When I went out to do the shopping (which was just about the only thing I went out for) I would lean against the trolley the whole way round the shop. Everything was such an effort and I would be so grateful to get into bed at the end of every day.
So, if I cast my mind way, way back (lol! By a couple of years) then I remember it was hard to even get out of bed in the morning. I had to sit on the edge of the bed to will myself to move. When I stood up, everything hurt. My back was the worst; it hurt so much in the curve of my back. I just felt so heavy and achy, and I would stumble around! I could barely walk a few steps without my back hurting so badly that I had to sit down. If I was cooking then I would usually end up sitting on a chair in the kitchen or leaning against the worktop. When I went out to do the shopping (which was just about the only thing I went out for) I would lean against the trolley the whole way round the shop. Everything was such an effort and I would be so grateful to get into bed at the end of every day.
Something else that persisted for a long time was a pain in my right foot and ankle. It was so bad that I would often limp round the local shop. I frequently parked in the disabled spaces nearer the shop as I just couldn’t walk very far. Then I would think that people would think I was putting on a limp just to park in a disabled space (which always reminds me of Michael McIntyre talking about when disabled people park in those spaces and we expect them to fall out of their cars flat on their faces!! Hahaha!) Anyway, I didn’t have a disability badge but I really struggled to walk on my right foot, so I did steal a disabled spot now and again!
One of the weirdest things I had was a persistent cough. It’s hard to describe though because it wasn’t like a normal cough, it was literally like something was stuck in my throat and I was sort of retching and coughing. The feeling that I needed to cough would just suddenly come upon me (it wasn’t necessarily after eating or anything) and I would have to cough really hard but like it encompassed a retching motion too. Like I said – weird! That still happens to me every now and again. I think it is my body’s way of saying it is overwhelmed or is lacking in something it desperately needs. After I had been eating my frequent potato meals for a while I decided I would try adding in some liver, so I bought some and had very small portions with mash potato (just once a day for a few days) and my cough mostly went away (thank goodness!). Now I try to have some liver every couple of weeks.
My water retention was pretty bad too. I struggled to bend over and I couldn’t kneel down. Being puffy all over just sucks! It’s got a bit better now and I can kneel down and move around a bit easier, but I still have some. It was suggested to me that I could try some Niacinamide (vitamin B3) to help with my water retention so I bought some and took a small dose. I then proceeded to wake up and pee every 2 hours in the night, which is a stress response (that I didn’t really appreciate!). This was well over a year ago but I haven’t tried taking it since then.
I suffered from indigestion pretty much every time I ate. I had a burning sensation that made me want to rip my insides out!
I had tingling in the ends of my fingers for a while that was very strange. It started to get a bit better as I started to eat lots of potatoes but then I had a short period of mixing things up and eating rice with some meals, or having sandwiches instead, and the tingling returned. I can only assume it was something to do with a lack of potassium, or my body just prefers potatoes (!), as when I went back to eating potatoes at every meal it slowly disappeared after a few weeks.
My skin was very dry. I don’t mean dry like cracked and rough to the touch dry (apart from on my elbows), I mean it had no shine to it. That might sound strange if you’ve never really noticed that good skin has a nice shine to it (which, to be honest, I have never considered my skin too much before! Lol!) but my skin was very dull and a little flaky on my legs. It’s been interesting watching it come back to life. I just one day noticed that there was a slight sheen to the skin running down the front of my legs and on the top of my feet, but not around my ankle section or on the back of my legs! Then another day I noticed that the skin on the back of my hands had a slight shine, followed by the skin on the underside of my arms but the tops of my arms are still dull! I wonder how long it will take for it to all come back to life? Also, some of my toes had dry creases right across them but they have now healed up totally. My elbows are mostly shiny and soft now, although I have the odd day where they will go just slightly dry again before healing up (usually if I’m tired or stressed).
That’s all (!) I can think of for now, although it was plenty at the time, trust me! Along with the anxiety that paralysed me and the insomnia that stopped me getting more than 4 hours sleep a night, it was quite enough!
Along the way I have tried various things to hasten the recovery process. One of the first things I tried, after a few months of eating potatoes, was a tiny bit of T3 (thyroid). My anxiety came back almost immediately so I binned that idea! I had a hair mineral test done that showed I had fairly high calcium and very low potassium. I tried to supplement potassium but that gave me stomach cramps and impromptu (read: unpleasant) bathroom visits, so that was binned as well!
Something that I was happy to try was bone broth. I had read good things about bone broth so I figured it couldn’t possibly do any harm to try it. I went to the local butchers and got chicken carcasses and pig’s trotters to throw into my slow cooker. I made beautiful gelatinous broth! It tasted delicious with a little butter and salt added to it, so I started drinking a mug of it in the morning and then in the evening. Around the same time I started losing my appetite, which was really weird. Since I had managed to get my appetite back I was hungry every day for every single potato (!) meal! Then my anxiety started coming back which made me really start to worry. No way did I ever want that to come back. It took me a couple of days to even think it might be the bone broth as it never occurred to me that that could cause a problem. A couple of days after stopping the bone broth everything went back to normal; my hunger returned and the anxiety faded away again. In hindsight I think I probably just had too much bone broth. It’s always the same for me. If something is good for you then more must be better! Lol!
I tried a few other supplements along the way. I had a bath with Epsom salts, as I’d been getting just a few small leg cramps at night, so I figured I might need more magnesium. I used a relatively small amount but my body obviously wasn’t that pleased as I was up every 2 hours peeing again! I tried aspirin (with food) but that seemed to clear my bowels out! So I had more or less decided to stop anything extra and just keep on keeping on with food. After all, I was feeling much better anyway.
Then, a couple of months ago, I was reading some of Ray Peat’s stuff (as I often do!) and I was reminded about his carrot salad idea. I’ve tried it previously but got bored of (a) grating carrots every day, and (b) trying to chew grated carrot every day. So this time I decided that I would peel them and then just chop them into batons. This was much easier and it seemed to feel pretty good so what did I decide to do? Yes, I decided more would be better, so I had one in the morning and one in the afternoon! Now whilst I was in the throes of eating 2 raw carrots a day I had started getting headaches, well actually it was one long continuous headache, and I never normally suffer from headaches. This went on for almost a week and it was the worst headache I have ever had. I had more or less convinced myself that I was dying of a brain tumour, when I started to think about anything I had changed. The carrots!! Once I stopped the raw carrots the headache went away and never returned. No idea what caused that reaction? Raw carrots are supposed to be pretty good at cleansing your insides and I ate them away from food. Needless to say, that idea has been binned too! Gah! It’s back to just food for me now – until the next time! Lol!
I don’t know why I keep mincing with things. I feel pretty good now so really just having patience should do the trick. It would be nice to have the water retention go away though I guess so perhaps that’s why I keep trying the odd thing. It has been suggested to me that all the side effects I keep having are in my head, and that it’s my anxiety surrounding them that causes the problems. I’m not too sure about this. Mainly I only try things that I’m totally happy with and then I usually don’t give it too much thought, like with the raw carrot and the bone broth it had never occurred to me that they might cause a problem for me.
All the problems that I’ve spoken about here (apart from the water retention) have sorted themselves out, and that has happened just through eating food (because no supplements have ever worked/helped me! Lol!). I now have quite a bit of energy and manage to get plenty of things done in a day! At the moment I’m painting my conservatory (something I wouldn’t have even considered a year ago!), helping my mum take care of her ill partner, getting things ready to start a new business, home schooling my daughter, plus all the usual cooking, shopping, cleaning etc. I do have to be careful not to overdo it though (and to eat enough food) or I can end up very tired again very easily!
My back almost never hurts now (only when I get very tired when I have overdone things) and I’ve suffered with pain in my lower back most of my life (although not to the extent I had it a year or two ago). This is a major triumph! I never have to sit down because of back pain now and quite often choose to stand instead of sitting. I no longer have to loll on the trolley when I’m doing my shopping either! Lol!
I never get indigestion any more (well maybe the odd occasion – again when I’m tired or stressed), I barely ever cough, and quite a bit of my skin has a shine to it (although still not the tops of my legs or the tops of my arms).
All of these things took at least a year to sort themselves out, and I think my back took probably closer to 2 years. Funnily enough I didn’t notice exactly when my right foot/ankle stopped hurting, I just suddenly thought ‘wow, that hasn’t hurt for a while now’. I find that often happens, that I don’t register things all the time, I will just suddenly think ‘hmm, that doesn’t hurt anymore’ or ‘it doesn’t happen anymore’.
Something else that I’ve noticed recently is that my head is pretty much always calm. I’ve never really taken much notice of this but the other day I was following a yoga video and the girl doing it was telling us to relax, breathe, all the usual stuff you expect from a yoga video. Then she said to quieten your mind, to try to let all the chitter chatter stop for the day (it was an evening routine apparently!) and to not take too much notice of all the thoughts. I realised that I didn’t really have any annoying chitter chatter going on, and that I can relax very easily. When I go to bed I fall asleep really easily, within a few minutes, yet it used to take me quite a while to drop off.
So there we are, take from that what you will! I like to think that the couple of years it has taken me to get to this point (since first seeing Billy) have been full of triumphs with only a few setbacks. Sometimes it can feel like two steps forward and a big step back. When this happens, the voice in my head just tells me to keep on keeping on and things always get better again!
As always, thanks for reading and I hope you’ve enjoyed my ramblings! Some of the supplements and ideas I’ve mentioned here can really help some people so always do your own reading and make up your own minds about things. I don’t know why they don’t work so well with me but hey, I like to think that’s quite a good thing and it gives people hope that you can get better just by using food alone. Maybe my body just doesn’t like to be forced to do things quicker than it wants to do them. I don’t like to be forced to do things either! So my best advice is to relax and only do things you are really happy to do. If you decide that a supplement might be really good for you but then you stress about it the whole time, then the stress is likely to negate any good stuff that might happen anyway! Maybe subconsciously I worry about taking supplements or doing things outside my potato meal plan, who knows? I just think the most important thing is to be able to relax and not worry too much. I don’t want to spend time worrying that I might worry subconsciously, lol, that would be silly! So I just go at my own pace and trust that I’ll get there (somewhere!) in the end.
Remember this is just me ‘thinking out loud’ and that your body might be completely different, so it’s always important to check in with how you feel. I think it’s easier on your body and mind if you only make small changes at a time. I always love to hear other people’s stories and experiences, so feel free to leave any thoughts or comments below. Take care x
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