​So after taking a couple of months to regroup, having more ups and downs,  often losing the urge to really talk about my health endeavours, I finally feel like I’m coming out the other side and I feel like talking about stuff again. I’ve learnt some more important things along the way, one of the most important being that you can know certain things, and know that you know them,  but until you really ‘know’ those things then you don’t act on them properly. I’m aware that sounds crazy but I’ll elaborate a bit later on!

​It’s been a while since I wrote anything and earlier on in the year I had swapped my diet around to include rice instead of potatoes and I introduced fruit as a pudding. Things got a little better for a while but even when we had a few days away in May I didn’t feel particularly up to doing much, except relaxing, which I guess is okay for a holiday! Not long after that I managed to design and build (with help!) a 3D structure with shelves, a planted area and a door into the garden, so my kitties would have an outside area (they’re house cats). I was well chuffed with myself as it’s the biggest project I’ve ever taken on but after that I felt tired out and ill again. 

​I resigned myself to not doing much again until I felt better. Around and around I went with trying to keep orange juice/jelly in my diet and get enough calcium. Nope, too much orange juice or fruits other than peaches would give me anxiety again and it seemed that too much calcium would give me very dry skin. 

​At some point in July I ran out of my vit D/K2 drops and not being very well off I rummaged in my cupboard and found some vitamin K gel caps that I’d bought a while ago and decided to use them instead. After a couple of weeks my sleep was terrible again, my skin was very dry, I was getting a weird pain in my middle finger (like it was in the bone), and in my tooth, and I just didn’t feel great. I realised then that the gel caps had a much higher dose of vit K than the drops I’d been taking so thought perhaps they were affecting me. I stopped taking them and things calmed down.

​Having resolved to get a bit more sugar in my diet I had started to add in a few sweets here and there. One afternoon I was sitting on the couch playing Mario Kart with my daughter and I grabbed a small pack of M&S milk bottles to have as a snack. I was having fun and enjoying playing and snacking, but as I came to the end of the bag I got a pain in my face like nothing I’ve ever known before. It was everywhere and nowhere in particular at the same time. It was in the nerves and by god it zombified me!! I tried aspirin and other pain killers but they didn’t touch it. Over the next week it came and went, and I tried to function as best I could. I thought about going to the dentist but ruled it out because a. I didn’t want any more x-rays from them, and b. I couldn’t really see how they could help because the pain was coming from all over my face. I couldn’t narrow it down to one tooth or a particular problem so how could they possibly help? Then I realised that even though I’d stopped taking the gel caps, I hadn’t replaced the drops so I’d been taking no vit D/K2. These are essential for calcium metabolism, and as I’ve been having lots of trouble getting calcium back into my diet then I really need to take them. As soon as I got the vit D/K2 drops the pain started to calm down, and after about a week it was totally gone. Phew! Aside from the anxiety, that is absolutely one of the worst traumas I’ve ever had!!

​Things settled down for a couple of weeks but I was still bothered by how little calcium I was having in my diet and I was uninspired by the things I was eating. I saw a recipe for milk powder pancakes and thought I’d give them a go. I decided to throw caution to the wind as I was probably being too rigid about the things I ate and just tucked in. I squirted some golden syrup on top of my pancake and it was pretty delicious. I had a quarter of the pancake for tea and then a quarter later on for supper. The following day I had the other half, along with my usual 2 milky coffees. By supper time I was tucking into some lovely Haagen Dazs vanilla ice cream and I suddenly felt very sick. I mean proper, I’m going to throw up, sick! I sat there in a daze for a moment thinking about why I suddenly felt sick (I very rarely feel sick and I can’t remember the last time I threw up). Initially I blamed some mussels that I had eaten earlier on, although they had tasted fine. I pushed my bowl away and just about made it to the toilet on time! My god, I felt wretched! I got myself up to bed, still feeling awful, and lay there for a while before I knew I was going to be sick again. I was retching like never before. My hands and feet went freezing cold. Actually, if you like dark humour, then I laugh about the sheer awfulness of it all now. I was trying to stand up to throw up in the toilet, but every time I got up off the floor I went so light headed and dizzy that I had to lie down, then on top of that I got the worst cramps I have ever had in my calf muscles, but I couldn’t stand up to stretch them out as I got dizzy and light headed!! I spent most of the night lying on the bathroom floor feeling especially sorry for myself. 

​In the cold light of day, the next morning, it suddenly hit me that I had consumed around 4 times the amount of calcium that I usually had, and I knew that I had problems increasing it. Doh! What on earth was I thinking? I felt fine the next morning anyway, well I was tired, but not ill in anyway so I definitely think it was calcium overdose and not food poisoning. Sometimes I wonder what is wrong with me lol! So I went back to the small amount of calcium I was having and things settled down. I felt ok but not great. 

​I knew that I needed to get away from having so much rice (starch) and to add in more fruit for more vitamins and minerals. I tried again to have stewed apple as my sugars/carbs for a couple of meals but after a couple of meals the anxiety was back (just the same as when I tried to have orange juice/jelly), so back to rice I went. I bumbled along with rice and butternut squash, or rice and carrot & turnip as my main carb sources. I puzzled and puzzled about why I kept getting anxiety but just couldn’t come up with anything.  I decided to make some homemade spelt bread so I could have a change of carbohydrate. The first loaf was a bit of a soggy disaster but on the second attempt I had a lovely fresh loaf and the house smelt wonderful. It tasted divine and how bloody nice not to eat rice! Unfortunately my body didn’t think so and over the next 24 hours my stomach bloated so much that I joked I had alien babies trying to get out of me. It was very uncomfortable, so the bread was off the menu and I was very disappointed.

​Eventually in a fit of desperation I decided to email Dr Ray Peat and see if he could shed any light on it. They say there is no such thing as a stupid question but I think I probably managed it!! Ha! Right from the start, when I got my hair test analysis that showed low potassium, I’ve been kind of fixated with that. I assumed that eating potatoes had helped me for so long because I had low potassium, and who knows, maybe they did, but it may have been just that I was getting some vitamins and minerals eventually, or the fact that I was eating proteins, carbs and fats together at each meal. Anyway, orange juice has a good amount of potassium so I was convinced that that had something to do with the anxiety. Maybe I’d overloaded on potatoes and so much potassium that now I could barely handle any? The only fruit I could do was tinned peaches, which are fairly low in potassium, so it seemed to make sense to me!! I couldn’t come up with anything better so off went my email asking if it was possible to be so awash with potassium that you couldn’t handle very much? Anyway presumably Dr Ray Peat thought I should just sit and think about that for a while as he never answered me!! Haha! 

​My health was not getting better. I was tired and my digestion was not great. I just couldn’t understand how to make it better. I was pretty sure I was eating too much meat but didn’t know how else to get enough protein in. I was already eating eggs and fish, and a small amount of milk, but without more dairy I just couldn’t get enough if I didn’t eat meat. I was losing my appetite and was bored to death of the stuff I was eating but I still couldn’t see a way to make things better. 

​Finally, at the beginning of this week, I was getting ready to make my lunch when I just decided that I could not face another meal of rice and butternut squash, or carrot & turnip, or anything else starchy and unappealing. It had reached the stage where I would take some anxiety if it meant I could just EAT SOMETHING NICE! So I decided on some homemade orange jelly and Cheshire cheese, and to hell with whatever happened afterwards. I tucked in and it was like eating a little piece of heaven. Afterwards I went outside to sit in the sunshine and read my book, awaiting the anxiety that would surely come at me. Nothing happened! NOTHING! I’d had nice food and suffered no anxiety. Amazing! I was puzzled as to why that might be but I didn’t want to dwell on it too much. Some people still suggest it was psychological but I just don’t really buy that at all. I didn’t always work myself up into a state before I had orange juice!! I have had occasions before where I’ve drunk it (or eaten jelly) and nothing has happened, but always after a few times it would start to creep back. Finally after a week of eating this way I think I have cracked the puzzle. By luck, or by listening to my body (not sure which) my attempt at eating the orange jelly was with cheese, and I had no anxiety. Over the following couple of days, in my excitement (!), I added in the still lemonade and extra portions of orange jelly, and sure enough the anxiety started to creep back, plus my lips always start to crack and get sores on them. Instead of freaking out, I puzzled over it some more, and what I think is happening is that I cannot increase my vitamins and minerals from fruits without the extra calcium. So I lowered the amount of jelly & lemonade I was having and made sure to have them either with or after cheese or milk. Et voila! My anxiety has gone away again and my lips have gone back to normal! I guess my minerals are just all mixed up.

​This week has been amazing! I’ve had lots of orange jelly, Cheshire cheese, milky coffees, ice cream, fish, eggs, some beef and roast potatoes (cooked in coconut oil) and lots of gummy bears and marshmallows! Oh, and my new favourite, freshly squeezed still lemonade from M&S! It’s like nectar from the gods! I’ve literally never been happier. 

​Finally I am where I set out to be, about 4 years ago! Oh well, some things just take time I guess. So this is where I finally realised that you can know something and know that you know it but not really ‘know’ it. Even though I’ve known for a few years that I wanted to eat sugar and not starch, I didn’t truly ‘know’ it. It’s hard to explain exactly what I mean by that but it feels strange, naughty somehow, to be eating marshmallows or gummy bears. We have been told for so long, and so often, that sugar is bad and sweets are naughty, that eating them as a source of carbs (energy if you will) for the first couple of times seems wrong, like you are somehow cheating at something! Then it really clicked and I understood how your body needs glucose for energy and sugar provides it better than starch does. 

"Starch and glucose efficiently stimulate insulin secretion, and that accelerates the disposition of glucose, activating its conversion to glycogen and fat, as well as its oxidation. Fructose inhibits the stimulation of insulin by glucose, so this means that eating ordinary sugar, sucrose (a disaccharide, consisting of glucose and fructose), in place of starch, will reduce the tendency to store fat" (Dr. Ray Peat: ‘Glycemia, starch, and sugar in context”). 

​You can’t live on gummy bears and marshmallows alone though, haha, hence the orange jelly, fresh lemon juice, eggs, cheese and milk for nutrients.

​When I was suffering from a bloated belly last week (after the bread) I had momentarily forgotten about the carrot salad which would help with it. I was reading an article with lots of different ideas from Dr Ray Peat when I came across information about the raw carrot salad. I read it and then reread it, and then had an epiphany moment. The raw salad is so simple, so easy to prepare, and so totally awesome for helping to normalise progesterone, reduce the reabsorption of estrogen, and protect against bacterial endotoxin, and yet I still wasn’t making it a daily habit. It’s the natural equivalent of antibiotics. I felt really perplexed that I wasn’t making the time to eat this simple salad every day when it could make such a difference. And that is what I mean about really ‘knowing’ something. I’ve known about the carrot salad for a few years now and have eaten raw carrots sporadically, but only because I’d read they were good for you, not because I truly ‘knew’ how good they could be for you! You only really know something when you know it! Now I make sure I have not only a raw carrot, but the full carrot salad (grated carrot, white vinegar, coconut oil & salt) every single day, because finally it has become really important to me, an important tool for getting my health back, and I will use every tool I possibly can.

​So there we are, the last few months in a rambling nutshell!! I’ve been perplexed, I’ve been despairing, I’ve been banging my head on the table, and I’ve been sending emails!! Eventually my body led me there though, because I couldn’t stand to eat the stuff I’d been eating anymore, and there was nowhere left to go but towards the good stuff!!

​There’s still a way to go though, whilst my body adapts to more sugar and I slowly bring my dairy up so that a large percentage of protein comes from milk and cheese. This means that your calcium to phosphorus ratio will be much better, but that’s for a future blog post when things are starting to head in that direction. For right now, finally, I am happy that I am making the changes that I most wanted to make but for some reason haven’t been able to. I feel like this is where my health journey will really get interesting, so watch this space!

​As always, I hope you’ve enjoyed my ramblings. Listen to your body; it’s always talking to you. We just lose the ability to hear it as it becomes drowned out by the constant bombardment of ‘health’ messages we hear and the strange things we put our body through. The adjustments we make because we are told they are better for us, regardless of whether you actually like what you are eating, or whether it actually does make us feel better. Usually, if it doesn’t make us feel better then we’re on to the next thing that we’re told will ‘most definitely make us feel better’! And on and on we go, further and further away from what our body actually wants or needs. 

​Luckily I love puzzles. I’m happy to spend as long as it takes figuring things out. For this reason I’ve always loved maths. As Jo Boaler says “There are two versions of math in the lives of many Americans: the strange and boring subject that they encountered in classrooms and an interesting set of ideas that is the math of the world, and is curiously different and surprisingly engaging.” I’m pretty sure this goes for any country and not just Americans!! Being able to think about, and solve problems is such an awesome skill to have but you’re going to have to feed your brain well in order to think effectively! I’m so happy that my brain is coming back to life and I’m enjoying embarking on journeys to learn new things. Hopefully you guys will come along for the ride and you can see first-hand what a difference getting your diet spot on (with all the sugar, vitamins and minerals it needs) can make to your life. It’s probably going to be a bumpy ride but who cares!! 

​Thanks for reading! I continue to share my ups and downs in the hope that they help others untangle what might be going on with them. Listen to your body and not me! Remember this is just me ‘thinking out loud’.  Please feel free to share any thoughts, comments, stories down below – I always love to hear from you guys. Take care, Karen x

It’s been a while since I wrote anything. It’s been a crappy few months and nothing was flowing! I was struggling to get my anxiety under control at the beginning of February and then I was hit by the worst flu bug in a long time (or probably more likely I was just in a bad, run down, low thyroid place, and I was an easy target for a bug!). It totally knocked me off my feet for a couple of weeks and I was beginning to think (once again!) that I would never get better. But by the end of February I was starting to recover, although I was still having bits of anxiety, albeit a bit more manageable.

​I had to shift my diet around again as I had been eating a lot of melon, which I absolutely love, but I was getting cold feet/hands/nose and I just could not get my temperature to come up at all. Then my bladder started acting up (like a bladder infection) and I started peeing every half hour. I tried adding more salt to everything but it didn’t make much of a difference, I was still cold (although my anxiety was a bit more under control). So I pondered what to do (and had a few conversations with Sarah) and decided to add some starch back in. I started having a bit of rice with each meal but also having something sweet with each meal, such as tinned peaches and meringue nest, so that my carbs were coming half from starch and half from sugar. 

​I had to take it easy when adding in the sugar as too much would easily overwhelm me. I had terrible hypoglycemia and too much sugar would make my blood sugar swing all over the place, even though I always have protein and fat with my meals. If I overdid the sugar I would feel starving hungry an hour after eating, but it was a weird hunger and if I went with it and ate more then I just wouldn’t sleep at night. So I paced myself and made sure I ate roughly every 3 hours, even if I was starving after an hour! The feeling would pass, I assume when my blood sugar sorted itself out. So I started just by having a bit of fruit & sugar after meals. Then I started to add in the odd milky coffee with sugar. I made Billy’s ‘no flour chocolate cake’ and had that as a pudding sometimes. Gradually throughout March, things started to improve. One of the defining moments was when I went to the pictures with a friend to see ‘Hidden Figures’. I was wondering what to do about my eating schedule, as I was still having a bit of rice with each meal but didn’t want to take a full on meal to the pictures! So I decided to take some of my chocolate cake and some homemade orange jelly. Now, I’ve not been able to drink orange juice for quite some time as, for reasons unknown, it would just kick off my anxiety and I’d feel awful. However, I decided to make it into a jelly and see what happened! So I boldly took my cake and orange juice into the pictures with me and tucked into it whilst watching the best film I’ve seen in a long time! As I drove home I cried! I must’ve looked a right mess but I didn’t care, I was so happy! It probably seems ridiculous but it felt like such a defining moment to me. To have eaten cake & jelly, no potatoes or rice (!!) and had no anxiety at all was just fantastic! It felt like it was opening the doors to a sort of normality again, whereby I could eat snacks without cooking all the time or panicking about what I would eat.

​I’ve also started to keep a journal. It feels kind of weird at the moment as I don’t always feel like I have a lot of thoughts to write down! Lol! My mind has been awfully fuzzy for a while and it’s been hard to even think about things. Slowly though, my mind is coming back to life. I’m even starting to get back into my research so I can finish the paper I was writing last year! Even better, I feel excited by it again. I have a whole stack of books that I can’t wait to get through too! (I love trees!)

​Today I tidied because I felt like tidying! Over the last few months I’ve tidied because either someone is coming round, or because it’s felt so bad I feel like my house would be condemned!! Today I had energy. I also managed to do some gardening in the sunshine. Only for half an hour, then I stopped because I got tired, and I sat in the sun and relaxed (it was warm enough to put my bikini on!). I have to remind myself that there is no race to get things done. Even though I’m starting to feel better and gain energy, that energy gets used up quickly! Today I danced around my kitchen and sang along to ‘Play that funky music’ (hopefully I didn’t upset the neighbours!!) and I felt more alive than I have done in ages. I’ve not had any anxiety for a week or two now and my sleep has been consistently good as well!

​To give you an idea of what I am eating and what supplements I’m taking, then a typical day might look something like:
Breakfast – 9am scrambled eggs & rice followed by tinned peaches, meringue nest and a little cream. Supplements: Vit D/K2 , thyroid
Dinner – 12 Beef casserole, butternut squash & rice, followed by apricots, meringue nest & cream, and a small cup of milky coffee. Supplements: Aspirin, B1, B3, thyroid
Afternoon snack – 3pm Chocolate cake & orange jelly. Supplements: thyroid
Tea – 6pm Prawns in a sauce with rice, followed by chocolate cake and ice cream, a small cup of milky coffee. Supplements: Thyroid, aspirin
Supper – 9pm Cod, rice and carrot & swede mash, followed by masa harina cookies. Supplements:  Thyroid, progesterone & vitamin E

​I aim to have around 2500 calories each day. If I’m thinking hard (about my research or anything else!) then I snack on foam lobsters or bananas from M&S!! Lol! People forget, or just don’t know/think about, how much glucose your brain will use in response to you using it!! Over time I hope to reduce the rice and increase the  simple sugars, such as fruits, juice, jelly etc.  and to increase  the amount of dairy/calcium I have. Slowly slowly!

​This works for me, for now! It may not work next week or for other people. You need to find what foods work best for you. Same with the supplements. I didn’t just start taking thyroid with each meal. I started having just a tiny bit with one meal and worked my way up from there. After a long time (and a lot of lessons! Lol!) I’ve realised it really is better to make small changes!

I’ve also had to try hard to change my thinking about food and the connection to anxiety. Just trying to eat a bigger variety of foods without worrying about triggering my anxiety was quite hard at first but I did it in baby steps!  Sarah also gave me some ideas to deal with the anxiety when it  appears, things like ‘ha breathing’ with have been very useful. Gradually I’ve been able to relax more. Working with Sarah is great as it gives me the opportunity to talk things out, and she helped me to realise that I’d been looking for a magic food to save me, which obviously wasn’t going to happen, and that no one meal is going to make or break my healing process. Honestly, the amount of strange ideas/thought patterns I had in my head was crazy, and I used to be constantly checking to see if the last meal had made my skin go shiny or if it looked like my water retention might have gone down a bit (it hadn’t!!). Just becoming aware of the things I was doing was a good first step, and since then I’ve been more and more successful at stopping, or at least calming down, some of those behaviours! I’m a work in progress! Sometimes I forget and I’ll catch myself checking again, then I remind myself to calm down, relax, and things will get better when they get better! Also, I remind myself that things are already so much brighter than they were just one month ago!

It's just so nice to feel like I'm joining the human race again! To feel like I'm not too tired to do things and to  be able to focus on books & research again. Hurrah! No doubt there'll be more ups & downs & setbacks along the way but for now I'll take the win!! The fact that my sleep has been better consistently and that my anxiety has pretty much gone tells me that I'm on the right track, for now at least.

As always, I hope you've enjoyed my ramblings! Your health is unique to you so you need to experiment until you find the things that work for you. It's taken me a long time to get to this point, but I've veered off the path a lot and learnt a lot of things along the way! It's not all about the nutrition either (although that plays a big part).  Learning to relax and not fear the anxiety has  been a big thing for me. I've often just sat at my table, not doing much, for fear of the anxiety coming back.  That's not a good place to be in! So I've learnt (am learning still!)  to  not let the anxiety  define me, and that I can acknowledge the feeling and still go about my day. Is it easy? No, definitely not. But can it be done? Absolutely!

"You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them."
Maya Angelou

If you have any questions, comments or stories to share, then pop them down below. I always love to hear from you. Take care, and remember this is just me 'thinking out loud'. x

It’s been 3 years, 10 months and 10 days since I crashed and burned following a low carb diet. Finally I feel I can say I’m on a path towards better health, and no, there aren’t any potatoes on that path!!! The fog has lifted and I can think clearly again (I may have got a few brain cells back!!), oh and I’m sleeping better, yippee!!

I’d left you whereby I could no longer eat potatoes and I was wondering what to eat next, so let’s pick up there. I started to try and eat a bigger variety of foods, like chilli con carne, risotto, stews etc. but things didn’t really improve. Bits of anxiety were coming back and I started to hate kidney beans or any veg that was in the stews! I knew I had to keep eating a reasonable amount but what to eat to keep the calories up? Well, I picked rice because it was nice and easy to eat, and goes with quite a few things. So for a few weeks I ate tons of rice with various meats & sauces and I didn’t feel too bad. My sleep was still a bit up and down but the anxiety calmed down.

Then I started to work with Billy again. He recommended thyroid and progesterone. Thyroid was my nemesis! Lol! The last time I tried it (over 2 years ago) it just produced more anxiety so I was a bit loathe to try it again. However, he explained that no one really recovers well without taking some thyroid so I decided to give it a go. It’s really important to start slow (yes I had to have a stern word with myself!! Haha!) and to make sure you’re eating enough calories when you’re taking thyroid. So I may have overdone it on the eating part! I think I was that worried that the anxiety was going to come back that I really ate loads and ended up going to bed with a stomach ache!! However, I slept through the night and got no anxiety, so I thought ‘YES, I’ve cracked it!’ I hadn’t though sadly!
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I continued to take a small amount of thyroid each day but my sleep was up and down and I felt tired and lethargic. I ordered the progesterone from Billy and hoped that would be ‘the thing’ that would turn things around.

Whilst I was waiting for the progesterone Christmas came and went. I was poorly again in the run up to Christmas, so it was a bit of an effort to cook Christmas dinner. It all came together though and we had a lovely day. Just after Christmas, on the 27th, we headed up to Findochty in the Scottish Highlands for a short break. It was fantastic! We saw reindeer, took the mountain train to the top of the Caingorms (where we finally found snow and my daughter snowballed me right in the mouth! That was a bit of a shock I can tell you & no, I haven’t forgotten!!), we saw Loch Ness (but not the monster!), went to the beautiful Lossiemouth beach, and the pièce de résistance, we saw the northern lights 2 minutes from our cottage, looking out from Findochty on New Year’s Eve! The only thing that blighted the trip was that I still felt so tired, more tired than I was last year, and I felt like I was going backwards.

Back home and the tiredness continued, the sleep got worse, brain fog had me in its grip and worst of all the anxiety started to come back. I just couldn’t understand what was causing it. I was trying my best to put all the pieces of the puzzle together but my brain was too fuzzy and I just couldn’t figure it out.
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I tried a new tactic. I contacted Sarah Kennard                                    (https://www.facebook.com/TheRevoltingDieter/) who has been trained by the master! (that’s Billy Craig for anyone who doesn’t know who ‘The master’ refers to!) I asked her a few strange questions (lol! nothing new for me!) because I just couldn’t understand why my body reacted so badly to anything containing calcium, or lately anything containing anything at all!! Sarah suggested that I eat more sweet things and not just rice, such as stewed apples and custard, fried banana in coconut oil with maple syrup, meringue nests with good quality lemon curd and other good stuff. This sounded fantastic so I thought I’d give it a go. I felt great all day, my hands and feet were warm and my skin got a bit of shine back to it, but that night my sleep was dreadful. I was up every couple of hours peeing. Sarah suggested this sounded like I had a problem with regulating blood sugar. I just felt like crap! We had a few more conversations about how much I was eating and what I felt like I could eat. I still clung to my rice idea (plus I was still throwing a few potatoes in to get some potassium, which I still thought was a key part in my problems). Things got worse the next day with tons of anxiety roaring around and I was badly bloated by the afternoon.  I was pretty upset, as I just can’t deal with that amount of anxiety at all. It freezes me in my tracks and stops me from functioning. So I messaged Sarah and she suggested trying the carrot salad again, doing some bag breathing, and best of all she made me laugh!! I calmed down a little bit and went to bed more hopeful.

​

​The next morning the progesterone arrived. Most people are drowning in estrogen, which is not a good thing, in fact it’s a very bad thing! I’d offer to write a blog piece on it but Sarah has done a very good one already, which you can find here: http://www.sarah-kennard.com/blog/2016/12/20/your-fisher-price-toy-guide-to-estrogen We’d agreed that I would just start with a few drops of progesterone before bed, as it’s quite prone to making you sleepy (happy enough with that!). So I did 3 drops of progesterone before bed and then had the strangest night!! This was my message to Sarah the following morning:
“Well, that was an experience! Took 3 drops at around 10pm & went to bed round 10.30/10.45. Read for a little then tried to sleep. Didn't happen for a while, then woke up at 1am. Felt very hot & sick. Then needed a bowel movement at 2am! Then was starving at 3am so got up & made food. Eventually slept from about 4 till 7, now I feel a mix of starving & sick and just had another bowel movement! What's going on?”

Sarah assured me that it was unlikely to be the progesterone causing the problems. In the midst of our conversation I made my breakfast (egg fried rice, with bacon and fried potatoes) and sat down to eat it but after a mouthful I just couldn’t carry on! It felt all big and starchy in my mouth and I just couldn’t swallow it! I happened to say to Sarah that I thought I wasn’t getting enough potassium because I had a thirst that I just couldn’t quench (goodness knows where I got that idea from) but her reply was that unquenchable thirst was, in her experience, blood sugar problems.
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As I sat there, looking at my bowl of food, the only thing that I wanted to eat was melon!! Honey dew melon! So I dropped my son at school and picked up melon on the way back. When I got home I devoured a couple of pieces and it felt soooo good!! I realise that I’m always going on about listening to your body but I haven’t really listened the whole time I’ve been trying to recover. I kind of listened when potatoes stopped my anxiety, but that was just from fear of it coming back. I quite liked eating potatoes and never felt like I was forcing myself, but if I’m honest I never actually ate them because I really, really, wanted them. I just really, really, did not want the anxiety to come back. Which it did in the end anyway! 

​So, slowly (with Sarah’s help) the penny dropped. Bad blood sugar regulation was, at least in part, causing my anxiety. After the melon, I had 2 fried eggs, and boy did they taste good too! Having some fat and protein with your carbs will help to keep blood sugar more stable. I pretty much kept it on an even keel all day. I drank chocolate milkshake and I made a crustless bannoffee pie! It was delicious! That night I slept like the dead. Brilliant! I didn’t get too excited though in case it didn’t last! It did last though. My sleep was getting much better. Then I had a setback on Saturday when some anxiety came back. I spent some time trying to figure out what was going on. I had added in stewed apples and custard as Sarah had suggested and when I had a second portion of them later that day my anxiety really flared up. I can only assume (because they had a ton of added sugar as well) that they were just a bit too much for me and sent my blood sugar too high, or actually, thinking about it, maybe the calcium from the custard? So I’m staying away from that mix at the moment!

Last Saturday night I slept for 10 (YES 10!!) hours uninterrupted! No peeing! Nothing! Just sleep! This is amazing! I haven’t slept for that long without having a wee for many years, probably since I was a kid. The problem was that I slept too long and by the morning my stress hormones had risen again (because of blood sugar regulation) and I felt like I spent most of the day playing catch up to sort it out and calm down the stress hormones.
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The following night I slept all night again but the night after I woke for a wee. I figured since I was up I would have a quick bite to eat (some melon and some yoghurt) to try and keep my blood sugar more stable. It worked and the following morning I didn’t feel any anxiety at all and I felt on an even keel all day.

​So, things are definitely looking up! My anxiety still flares up if things overwhelm me, such as getting over excited about drinking milkshakes! I love chocolate milkshakes but one day last week I got overexcited and had 2 or 3 of them (one at a time and with meals) but either it was too much liquid or my body didn’t like that much milk, and my anxiety came roaring back! I think maybe I still have some issues surrounding calcium which are causing me some problems so I'm going to try limiting the dairy a bit, but these days I love to eat plenty of fruit throughout the day along with  prawns, eggs,  some meats and other lovely home made desserts! 

I also take vitamin D to help with calcium metabolism. I've not had my vitamin D levels tested but given that I didn't spend too much time in the sun last year as it always caused me problems (lack of sleep, dry skin  etc) then I'm sure I could  use a boost.  I also take vitamin k2 and I have 1 mg of cyproheptadine  an hour or two before bed. Cyproheptadine is a anti histamine which just happens to lower serotonin, which is exactly what we want, and can help you to get a good nights sleep.

​I know I haven't suddenly miraculously  made myself better and some days are better than others. I still worry  that certain foods might trigger my anxiety. Sometimes I  worry that  I'll never be totally better - which actually to me just means having some energy to do things and to not suffer from crippling anxiety! In other words I'm still a work in progress! Lol! In the meantime I'm just extremely happy to be getting some sleep!

As always, I hope you've enjoyed my ramblings! Remember to  listen to your body & certainly not to me! Lol!  You're aiming for a nice high body temperature, warm hands and feet, and a nice calm feeling,  oh and a good nights' sleep!! Good luck xx

Well here we are again folks, at the end/beginning of another year. Where on earth does time go? Last year went wayyyyy too fast! Doesn’t seem a minute since this time last year when I was setting some goals (not New Years resolutions!!) for 2016. If you remember (or just go and re read the post!!) then you will know that I wanted to be able to do a handstand or the splits. Sadly the year hasn’t quite panned out as I wanted it to and I still have a way to go. All the health improvements that I had been experiencing seemed to grind to a halt mid-2016 and the rest of the year has been spent leading a merry dance trying to find the path to feeling better! I’m not sure I’m actually on that path yet but I’ve managed to carve out a small footpath where I don’t feel too bad.

​I’m slightly frustrated that a lot of the time I’ve been too tired or feeling too crappy to work on the stretches for my splits, but I’m not disappointed or beating myself up. I haven’t given up and tossed the idea aside with a ‘well it was a silly idea anyway’ kind of gesture, which I may have done in the past. The goal is still very much in my head but as I’ve said many times on my blog, I’m learning to have patience! Ha! Actually, I’m being forced to learn the art of patience! It doesn’t come easy to me I’m an all or nothing kind of gal and I don’t really see that changing in the near future. I will do the splits at some point, even if I’m in my eighties! Lol! Although I’d like to think it’d be before then! I’ve made a little progress and am more flexible than I was! (Just ignore the dirty feet! I like walking barefoot and this was at the end of summer)

 I dislike the idea of New Year resolutions. Grand gestures that don’t last or vague ideas that you think will improve your quality of life but rarely do they live up to the hype – that’s if they even last a week! The word resolution is a strange one, with its’ meaning being a firm decision to do or not to do something, or the quality of being determined or resolute. What I mean by strange is that, for me at least, it doesn’t conjure up the feeling of being determined, or of wanting a goal so badly that you can’t imagine not obtaining it. These are the qualities you need to feel about something if you really want to obtain it. A feeling of fire in your belly! This is how I feel about getting my health back, and doing the splits (and a handstand). I couldn’t explain to you why the splits/handstand are so important to me but that doesn’t really matter I guess, they are just goals, in my head, that one day I will reach!
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There will be no ‘new’ me in the New Year. What does that even mean anyway? That the me of now isn’t good enough? Good enough for what? I’m me! The me that dives into things whole heartedly (even when it ends in trouble), I’m silly, sometimes (often!) weird, I laugh at my own jokes, I talk out loud to myself all the time (sometimes in a Yorkshire accent (my parents were from Yorkshire!) as a joke), I have silly ideas, I like to travel (we take our cat too!!), I like to go out at 11pm if I think there is a chance we can see the northern lights (even though we usually end up staring into a dark sky, not seeing much!!) and a whole host of other things that just make me, well, me really!  

​The same goes for when people say to me ‘ah, I feel like we’re getting the old Karen back now’. No, you’re not! You can’t go back, ever! I’m only moving forward, ever evolving, ever changing, with newer, sometimes even sillier ideas! And that’s the way I like it. Maybe they just mean that I’m a bit less ill now and I function better than I did a few years ago (can’t believe it’s coming up to 4 years since I really crashed and burned) but even before that I was  heading downhill for several years, making myself ill, and losing my sense of humour. Anyway, even if I could, I would never choose to go back. It’s made me who I am today and I like me! So there!

Maybe, if you absolutely have to make New Year’s resolutions then you could make ones that include being kinder to yourself, not making yourself into a newer model, or learn a bit about cell physiology so you don’t fall for all the hype/baloney that the media constantly throws our way!
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Either way, thanks to everyone who’s read my blog posts and followed my journey throughout 2016. Here’s to 2017, may it be healthy (stay away from mainstream crap information!!) and happy for all of you! 

My 2017 is off to a fantastic start by seeing the northern lights whilst staying in Findochty. It’s going to be hard to top that but I’m going to try!! I’ll be putting all my latest trials and tribulations with regard to my health in a blog piece soon.

​Happy New Year!
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Take care, Karen x

“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again & expecting different results” ~ Albert Einstein

Lately I have felt a bit like I’m going insane! My sleep has been getting worse and worse, my water retention is still no better, my energy has been on a downward slide and my back has been hurting again. Tiny bits of anxiety have been coming back and no matter how many potatoes I eat I just can’t seem to feel any better. Hence the Einstein quote above. I can’t keep on doing what I’m doing because it’s just not working for me anymore. In fact, thinking about it, it hasn’t been working for about the past 6 months. So I think people may be forgiven for thinking I’m pretty insane, especially considering about a couple of months ago I figured the problem was that I just wasn’t eating enough potatoes so I’d better eat more! Doh! Initially that did seem to be helping but not for long. I’ve been getting bugs galore and my lips were constantly dry and cracked and so were my elbows. Then a few days ago my feet went like lizard feet – really dry and scaly, and my toes were swelling up. Eek! Not good!

For a few days earlier this week I’ll admit I started to freak out a bit. I hadn’t quite got to the ‘perhaps I should eat something other than potatoes bit’ and I was failing to come up with a plan. Usually the thing that keeps me going is that I have a plan, something to try out, that might just be the thing my body needs, but I had nothing! Nada! And very little sleep either! The thing that panics me the most is ending up back where I started 3 years ago, with raging anxiety. That’s a dark place that I never want to return to. I guess some of you may be wondering why on earth I clung to the idea that eating so many potatoes every day was a good idea (which would be a reasonable question!). Aside from the fact that they cover a lot of bases in the vitamin and mineral department, they helped me get out of the hole I was in and the thing that scares me most is ending up back in that hole. I guess if you’re lucky enough to have never experienced raging anxiety that stops you from leaving the house and paralyses you from doing, well just about anything really, then you might not understand why I clung so hard and fast to potatoes. Potatoes were my version of a life raft for a drowning man!

Thinking back to my first visit to see Billy (when I was a mess) I am reminded that, although he would never tell anyone what to eat, some of his main advice was to just ‘eat a variety of foods’. Yes, seems I took that advice on board well! No wonder he thinks I’m a bit, what was it my sister said? Oh yes, ‘wacky’!!  Oh well, in my defence, I was in a bad place and clearly not thinking straight!

So potatoes are out and variety is in! Potatoes are so last week don’t cha know! This is a strange feeling that I don’t really know how to describe. Because I was so fixated on the ‘potatoes are fixing me’ I hadn’t realised just how strange that was. It was like I had created a weird ass prison for myself and I could go nowhere and do nothing without thinking about how I was going to eat potatoes. I wouldn’t have minded if that was really the best solution but it wasn’t! Balance is key. Variety means you are more likely to cover all nutrient bases, even if the one food you choose is fairly nutrient rich.

I always think you can tell when you’ve been doing something particularly weird when, afterwards, you have no idea how to proceed! I was suddenly free from potatoes but had no idea what to eat. How strange and a little bit sad. So I mooched around the supermarket wondering what I would actually like to eat and eventually settled on ingredients to make a prawn risotto, and a chili. I also picked up sourdough bread and some marmalade. For the first time in 2 ½ years I had something other than eggs and potatoes for breakfast! [Cue song: For the times they are a-changin’!!] I chowed down on boiled eggs with sort of soldiers (chunks of sourdough bread), some bread and marmalade and a cup of coffee. It was lovely!

I’m happy to say that I can still manage to cook things other than potatoes! My risotto and chili were both lovely but it was weird eating them. I still had a weird sense that eating something else would bring my anxiety back. Just goes to show how deeply fear can ingrain and entangle itself in your beliefs. I had no anxiety though for the main part, just a tiny weird feeling following some stewed apple, so I’ll just introduce fruit slowly. I’m doing better today and the fear is slowly subsiding. Hopefully I’m heading towards a more normal – pah! What’s that? – nay, a more balanced view of food and eating.

So, after a full day and a half with no potatoes already my feet, lips and elbows are less dry. I think I slept better last night – it’s hard to tell because I’m full of cold and was coughing quite a bit. I woke up twice to pee but on both occasions went straight back to sleep. Previously I was finding it harder and harder to get back to sleep and would be up for 2 or 3 hours in the night.

My blood sugar no longer feels like it is rolling around all over the place and I can go for longer than 2 or 3 hours without eating. Yesterday I had breakfast at around 9.30, lunch at 1.30, snack at 5.30 (got hungry whilst waiting for family to join us for tea!), tea at 7ish and supper at 11.30 (it got very late as we got distracted by Mario Kart on the Wii U!!)

I seem to be able to tolerate milk and coffee better now. I was finding that I wanted it less and less anyway when I was stuffing my face with potatoes, which is probably because my metabolism was slowing down with all the potatoes instead of speeding up!! Doh! Previously I couldn’t do coffee first thing because it just didn’t sit well with me and I never liked it. Now it’s absolutely fine and I thoroughly enjoy it :-)

My thirst and cravings for coke (coca cola – nothing more exotic than that!!) have totally gone away. I was craving so much coke before (maybe because my metabolism was struggling so much?) but then when I’d finished drinking it I would still be thirsty and no amount of drinking would quench my thirst. A definite sign of stress hormones rising.

Lastly, (and don’t read this if you’re squeamish about bodily functions!!) I noticed yesterday that my pee smelt really strongly of ammonia, like back to how it was 2 ½ years ago. Another confirmation of how stressed my body was getting.

I’m a little sad that even though I say all the time to ‘listen to your body’, I totally missed the signs. I was so ingrained in my potato eating that I was ducking and diving all over to find a solution of why things were going wrong, when the answer was so blinkin' obvious! But hey, that’s how I learn things. I’m a bit gung ho. I follow paths that I maybe shouldn’t follow, or that I should leave sooner than I do but hey, they are my paths! I learn lessons every single time  ;) Slowly, slowly I’m learning to trust my body again, and to trust that I don’t have to cling to any one food as my salvation! And I’m delighted that I can once again leave the house without worrying about potatoes and where I will find them every few hours!

As always, I hope you’ve enjoyed my ramblings, and that they have shown once again why you should listen only to your body and never to anyone else (and certainly not me! Haha!) There are many paths to good health. Thanks for reading and sharing my journey. Huge thanks to Briana who helped me realise that potatoes might not actually be the answer (in the most tactful way without even telling me I was being ridiculous!!), and answered all my panicked messages about things going wrong – she is a superstar and runs the Facebook group Health Recalibrated – so go join for some great discussions!

Feel free to share any comments, questions, stories (similar stories of foolishness especially welcome!!)-  I always love hearing from you. Sharing stories and connecting with others is a great way to share information. Take care x

One of the real problems about reclaiming your health is how to go about it when you don’t realise it’s slipping away from you again. It’s a real quandary! When things start to regress it affects your concentration and your ability to think properly, yet you need to be able to think about things properly or you miss the fact that you are regressing. So if you can’t see that things aren’t working for you then how do you put it right, when you don’t notice what it is that’s going wrong? I only knew that my mind was fuzzy and that I couldn’t concentrate well, i.e. when I was reading at night my mind would wander all over the place! This is unusual for me as I normally love reading. Hmmm!
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I puzzled and puzzled over it but initially didn’t get too far. My sleep was becoming increasingly disturbed and when I woke I was finding it nearly impossible to get back to sleep. I became horribly intolerant of milk (especially with my morning coffee) and I was running to the toilet often. I was getting small bursts of anxiety again and I just had hardly any energy. I felt like my mind was just going to sleep and I couldn’t think. That’s what led me to my doxycycline experiment (see my previous blog post).

​I took doxycycline for 26 days (1 per day) out of a packet of 35. I stopped for a couple of reasons – firstly, I just forgot to take it on day 27 (!), and then I was pretty sure it was contributing to my weird sleep patterns, i.e. sleeping for a few hours but then waking and being unable to get back to sleep, so I decided to have a rest from it. I initially took it to help with the issues I was having drinking milk, but I’d also heard that it could help with concentration and just help with feeling better in general. So, did it help? Well, I can indeed drink milk like a boss now with no side effects. It didn’t help with my sleep or my concentration though, and, as always, I think that there were other things complicating the picture!

​Firstly, I’m not sure that it was really the milk causing the problems. What? I know right! That’s why I took the doxy. I only ever really drank milk in my coffee (usually around 150 ml – so half coffee and half milk) so I just assumed it was the milk causing problems. The day after I’d finished taking the doxy I had a coffee and boom, I was straight back to the toilet. I was like ‘what on earth is going on?’ Just the day before I was fine with milk so surely one day hadn’t set me back like that? I turned it over and over in my mind (slowly! haha!) and eventually had an epiphany! Lol! What if it wasn’t the milk but the coffee instead? So a bit later I tried a chocolate milkshake instead and was absolutely fine. 

​The other thing that I think was contributing to the problem was not eating enough. I knew that taking the doxy would increase my need for calories so I had tried to add in puddings as well as my meals. I was having some fruit with a meringue nest and some cream, plus a bit of added sugar as I find most fruit quite sour! This didn’t work out so well though. I started to have digestive issues again (quite painful) and I got my weird cough back. I also lost my appetite a bit and had cut back to 4 meals, which at the time I thought I felt fine on! As I already said, I was waking in the night and really struggling to get back to sleep, and I was waking with a blocked nose – definitely a sign that CO2 production is low (that needs a whole blog of its own!! Lol!) I just couldn’t understand what I should do next to try and get myself back on track. Why was I feeling so much better a year ago and now I’m feeling like I’m falling apart all over again?

Luckily, as I often do, I was skirting over some comments on a post in one of the groups I follow, and one of the comments really jumped out at me. It said something along the lines of ‘if you’re going to use fresh produce to get the bulk of your carbs/calorie needs, then you need to eat an awful lot of the fresh produce as there are not a huge amount of calories in it’. Bingo! When I really looked at what was going on I noticed that my portions of potatoes were getting smaller and I was trying to sort of cheat again by getting lots of my calories from sugar or butter (with my potatoes). I remember that was what I first started doing on my path to recovery (all about the carbs but forgot about the vitamins and minerals!) which led me to another bad place! I know that my potassium is low (or it was on my hair test) and I do much better with more potassium. The other thing about eating more potassium is that it seems to be closely tied to sodium, and when I eat more potassium then I can eat a lot more sodium. This is a good thing as sodium is wasted in hypothyroid people and you tend to need to eat a lot of it to feel better. The trouble is that without the potassium I just don’t like eating salt. It’s amazing how your body can let you know by taste whether or not you need something, or how much of something you need. I think the ratio between sodium and potassium is important.

Anyway, I drastically upped the amount of potatoes I ate. Initially it was hard because it felt like too much food and it was a bit uncomfortable. I felt like I might pop!! That only lasted a few days though and now I can eat potatoes like a boss! The amount of salt I can get on my potatoes now before I can taste it is quite phenomenal! Finally I also have my sleep back. Yes I sleep like a boss! I still wake in the night to pee but I go straight back to sleep, and I mean straight! I sleep pretty deep as well. The problem was that I think I had been starting to run on stress hormones again, so that when I shut them off I felt so tired that I felt I could sleep for a hundred years!

​Then a few days after that I started to feel crappy, like I had a bug or something. You know like when you finally relax in the holidays and sods law you get ill! My throat hurt a little and I ached a bit, and I just could not be bothered doing anything at all. So after a couple of days I thought, hmm, I still have the rest of those doxy tablets?? So I started taking them again a few days ago and not a single problem with sleeping now. I definitely wasn’t eating enough of the things that mattered the first time I took them. I also feel miles better, although I’m still sleepy, constantly sleepy! To give you an idea of just how sleepy I feel, this week I have tried to make a milkshake without putting the lid on and covered the kitchen in chocolate milk, and I have reversed my car into a lamp post turning the car round outside my house! Lol! I just need to sleep all day and all night, only waking for potatoes every few hours! 

I assume that because I had lowered the amount of potatoes I was eating (which I have no clue how that happened) then my body just didn’t like the coffee. Coffee acts to give your metabolism a boost but if all the carbs and necessary vitamins and minerals are not in place then it’s not always going to be a welcome boost!! It’s probably the same reason why I just can’t take thyroid without problems. I’ll probably try adding coffee back in to my life in a little while and hopefully it’ll be fine, but actually I’m not missing it at the moment. I’m totally and utterly addicted to chocolate milkshakes!!

​I just don’t know how I missed the fact that I was eating less and less potatoes. I would tell people I ate loads, and when I entered it in to Cronometer then it would seem like I was eating enough on the face of it. That’s the thing though I guess, you can enter what you like into Cronometer, it’s not going to actually make you eat it! I was leaving quite a bit of the portion on the side of my plate because I felt a bit full. Ultimately, although the goal is to eat intuitively, when you’re in a bit of a mess you often need to be a bit more structured in your approach to eating, just to make sure you don’t end up eating too little like I did! 

​So finally I feel like I’ve made some actual progress. I’ve been a few steps back and a few steps to the side, but hey, always learning and always trying to move forwards. I have no idea how to solve the quandary that I first mentioned but I guess the first place to start is to make sure I keep a check on whether I am actually eating enough. Once you start to lose the power of thought it’s so difficult to keep a check on what is actually happening. There are always so many factors to consider – like a big puzzle that you just can’t quite figure out! I’ll keep on trying though! I feel so much better now. My thoughts are clearer and I feel a bit more motivated, I just need a lot of sleep – then again I’ve missed quite a bit these last few weeks!

​The twisty turny journey to health continues! As always I hope you enjoyed my ramblings. Please remember that we are all different and that different things will help different people. I share my experiences and experiments in the hope that you can take something from it, just like the odd comment I read that can really inspire me to have ideas about my own journey to health. Thanks for reading and if you have any comments, thoughts, or questions then leave them down below. Always love to hear from you. Take care x

​It feels like ages since I’ve put any of my ramblings down on paper! I’ve been meaning to write something for a while but life has a habit of getting in the way. Also I was getting to the point where I was feeling pretty lethargic again and I just didn’t really feel like writing. I was also losing the ability to focus and I would find my mind wandering whenever I sat down to try and read something. Just as I was pondering what my next move should be, the worst thing happened and my milk tolerance began to get even worse. I was usually able to drink some milk with my coffee but suddenly even when I had a few sips I would find myself running to the bathroom. Not good! My teeth were also starting to hurt and I still had the weird metallic taste in my mouth. I knew that I wasn’t anywhere close to meeting my daily calcium needs, so what to do?

​In the midst of this I happened to have a conversation with a couple of people about my teeth and calcium, and they suggested trying vitamin K for the teeth sensitivity problems. I had forgotten all about vitamin K but as I had some in my kitchen cabinet I thought I would give it a go! They also suggested trying different types of dairy to try to get some calcium in, wondering if perhaps I might tolerate something different than milk.  

Before I had chance to buy anything different though (might have been the same day or the day after) I decided just to heck with it and I was going to have a glass of milk (with some milkshake mix) to see what happened. So I downed it and waited (brave I know!! Lol!) I got a bit of a tummy ache but then the weirdest thing happened: I just wanted to fall asleep in my seat, at the table! It was quite a nice day outside so I stumbled outside and slumped into one of the garden chairs, then promptly fell asleep! I never normally fall asleep in the daytime so it felt extremely bizarre. Then I remembered that the same thing happened a few weeks ago when we were camping. After I’d had my tea, followed by a milky coffee, I just felt myself nodding off in the uncomfortable camping chair, so moved to the blanket on the grass, and promptly fell asleep (and apparently starting snoring! Lol!) At the time I thought it was because I’d had a rough night the night before (daughter was sick over her airbed and sleeping bag at 2am! Just what you want when you are camping!) but even when I’ve had terrible nights in the past (and I’ve had plenty!!) I’ve never ever just felt that wave of sleepiness come over me and almost immediately fallen asleep. So I wondered if it was something to do with the calcium. 

​My tummy was quite up and down after the glass of milk so the following day I went out and bought some Skyr yoghurt to try. It’s very high protein and I had to add sugar to it to make it taste just right for me! I had some later on in the day after my tea. It seemed to be ok. I got a bit of bloating but nothing too horrendous. That night I had the most amazing night’s sleep. I slept for a solid 6 ½ hours! Yes, it could do with being a little bit longer than that but being used to normally getting up to pee after a few hours (and sometimes it could be after 1 hour!) then I’ll take it! I wondered if it was a one off but the next day I did the same (had some skyr yoghurt in the afternoon) and I slept through the night again (still around the same amount of time). I was also taking the vitamin K so this might have added to the effect as well? The next day I got a bit bolder and had some yoghurt in the morning (after breakfast) but very bad idea! Stomach was in bits and I was on and off the toilet. Grrr! 

What to do? I wanted to be able to tolerate dairy without problems. Milk is a great pro thyroid drink, plus I love chocolate milk, so I want to be able to drink it without worrying about consequences. Often tolerance of dairy can be lost in hypothyroidism and the way to get it back is to up your thyroid function. I’m pretty sure I need calcium though to get my thyroid function back up and running high enough to tolerate dairy! A proper conundrum! Lol! I’d heard that Danny Roddy (www.dannyroddy.com) got his tolerance to dairy back after taking antibiotics. Now I don’t mean that you can just rush out and get any antibiotics (all antibiotics are not created equal! Lol!), but the right antibiotics can help to remove endotoxin from the gut. I found this quote (which I think is from Dr Peat’s work) from an old Danny Roddy article:

"Bacterial overgrowth in the small intestine can be caused by hypothyroidism (Lauritano, et al., 2007), and the substances produced by these bacteria can damage the lining of the small intestine, causing the loss of lactase enzymes (Walshe, et al., 1990).

Another hormonal condition that probably contributes to lactase deficiency is progesterone deficiency, since a synthetic progestin has been found to increase the enzyme (Nagpaul, et al., 1990). The particular progestin they used lacks many of progesterone's effects, but it does protect against some kinds of stress, including high estrogen and cortisol. This suggests that stress, with its increased ratio of estrogen and cortisol to progesterone, might commonly cause the enzyme to decrease."

He goes on to add:

Once these issues are overcome, the addition of small amounts of milk can provoke the intestine to once again secrete the lactase enzyme:
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"When a group of lactase deficient people have been given some milk every day for a few weeks, they have adapted, for example with tests showing that much less hydrogen gas was produced from lactose by intestinal bacteria after they had adapted (Pribila, et al., 2000)."

I’m guessing that I am still hypothyroid (given that I still have lots of water retention and problems to overcome!) so I probably have bacterial overgrowth and a progesterone deficiency, making it harder to overcome my lactose problems. So, enter the antibiotics!
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A week and a bit ago I chose doxycycline from the tetracycline group of antibiotics. I started by taking 1 per day, in the evening, after food. The first evening, after taking 1 capsule, I felt pretty weird! Hard to pinpoint why (and I’m often pretty weird anyway!) but I just felt weird. I slept pretty well (all night again for approx. 6 ½ hours) but felt very sick the following morning. Yuk! I was maybe guessing that I just didn’t eat enough whilst taking it so I endeavoured to eat more the next day. I had lost a large chunk of my calories from not having coffee anymore (as I just couldn’t tolerate the milk and I didn’t like coffee without it!) so I needed to add something sweet after my meals. I decided to go for meringue nests, strawberries, sugar and cream! Yum! I added this after 2 or 3 of my meals and by that evening I was feeling much better. I had no bowel movement that day (probably because I’d had such a rough day the day before, after my yoghurt shenanigans, and I don’t think there was much left inside!!!) I took another antibiotic that evening (in for a penny and all that!) but was fine the next morning. I had a great, pleasantly firm bowel movement after breakfast, and felt pretty pleased with life!! Haha!

​The following day I added milky coffee back into my regime without any problems. This then led to some over excitement on my part, and when my daughter was having a milkshake later that afternoon I also decided to participate. I only intended to have a couple of sips but it was so good that I downed half the glass! Half an hour later I was doubled over and back in the bathroom! Yuk! I noticed though that I had a horrible after taste from the milkshake and wondered if it was actually the milkshake mix that was causing me some problems? I don’t know as I haven’t tested it out again. The after taste was enough that I don’t actually want to use it again. It was the Crusha mix that I used to love as a kid! Mind you, thinking back, it always gave me stomach ache as a kid too!! Lol!

​So I’ve taken one doxycycline tablet each day for just over a week. I take it in the evening after I’ve had plenty of food. Today I had a small glass of chocolate milk – no reaction whatsoever! Whoop whoop! I’ve also had coffee each day, along with sterling bowel movements! Lol! I sleep right through the night every night; albeit still only around 6 ½ hours (I’m hoping that will start to improve soon!) and my teeth are absolutely fine now, with no sensitivity at all. My gums also used to bleed a bit when I brushed them but now that has stopped. My nails have started growing faster again and they are not breaking as easily. I’m feeling more focused and have more energy. My only question is, why didn’t I do this months ago? 

​As always, I hope you have enjoyed my ramblings and that you get something out of them. Please remember that what works for me might not work for someone else, and that everybody is different. Do your own research and go at your own pace. I’ve been cautious about taking things, mainly because until now supplements and whatnot have always caused me problems of some sort, so I took some time to think about whether I wanted to try antibiotics or not. That’s actually another thing to note, that throughout this experiment I have had not one single twinge of anxiety! Even though I was mostly free of it before, I would still get the odd bit now and again. Life is definitely looking up! A couple of weeks ago I felt I was in the middle of a huge step back in my recovery, now I feel like I’ve actually made a few cautious steps forward! Hurrah!

Big thanks to Billy (www.billycraig.co.uk) who is a never ending source of fantastic help and advice when I pester him about trying something new in a bid to move forwards!
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Feel free to add any comments, thoughts, questions, stories, whathaveyou (!) down below. I always love hearing from others. I really believe that through sharing our stories we get to move forward in ways that we wouldn’t necessarily think of just by ourselves. Take care x

I was just going to update my page with a few comments about eating liver but it got a bit long! Lol! So I thought I’d put a quick blog piece together for you and that way I can answer some of the questions I’ve been asked.
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If you’re new to this blog or can’t remember what I did then here is a quick recollection: I was getting dry skin again, my lips had gone very dry and cracked, my appetite was a bit blunted, and my sleep wasn’t great. All signs that things were taking a big step backwards, especially after I spent a day in the sunshine (a lovely, relaxing day) and then barely slept at night. Before I messed with stupid diets and ruined my health I would get the best night’s sleep after being in the fresh air and sunshine all day! I pondered what might be going on and decided I would add in some liver (as I’d not had any in a while and it ticks a lot of nutritional boxes!) So I had a small amount with mash, just for one meal, for a few days on the run (3 I think). Then I started to feel a bit strange and had a tiny, uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach. So I stopped eating it. After a couple of days my sleep was still a bit off so I decided I must need more liver!! Probably wasn’t the best idea I’ve ever had (but then again not the worst either! Lol!)

I started to get bursts of anxiety coming back. I felt jittery and unmotivated. My sleep was all over the place and I would wake often in the night to pee. I had a weird metallic taste in my mouth and my gums would just suddenly start bleeding. All very strange and not particularly pleasant!

It took about a week to feel normal again (whatever that is! Lol!) My normal is feeling relaxed, pretty motivated (if sometimes a little distracted!), being able to come up with good ideas, mostly get stuff done, and have a reasonably good night’s sleep.
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I just want to stress at this point that I don’t believe liver causes anxiety per se. I don’t believe any food causes anxiety as a blanket statement but I do believe you can overwhelm your body with some foods or you can become slightly intolerant of foods for various reasons. I puzzled over what was going on for a little bit and the liver (or the nutrients contained within the liver) definitely overwhelmed my body. It took a week for the small bursts of anxiety to calm down. I also had small bursts of anxiety after eating steak, lamb, and eggs (all with potatoes of course!) at various times during that week so for a few days I just ate foods like sausage, beans and mash, which my body seems to like a lot! Eating steak and chips doesn’t normally cause me any anxiety so I can only assume that the steak had too much of some particular nutrient, on top of whatever was in the liver. I thought it might be to do with vitamin A to start with but after checking out the nutrient profiles of these foods then I’m leaning more towards it being something to do with an overload of B vitamins (or one of them!) I’ll never know for certain though so I’m not making a big thing of it. It’s all calmed down now so I can eat steak (or lamb, or eggs!) and chips with no negative symptoms.

Just after it had started to calm down I had a strange afternoon where I was putting some ice cream out for one of the kids and I suddenly really fancied some. I guess that isn’t really so strange but I haven’t been bothered about eating ice cream for ages and when I last tried eating it, it dropped my temperature like a stone!! No idea why but as I wasn’t that bothered about eating it then it was no big drama. Anyway as I suddenly wanted some I decided to give it a go. So I grabbed a spoon and the tub and sat down to enjoy it! It was cookie dough and it was delicious, so I carried on eating it! Haha! I think I nearly ate half the tub in the end! Yum! Happily it did not drop my temperature this time. Then the strangest thing happened – I was starving about an hour later. So I ate more food. That night I slept really well and I thought ‘My God! I’ve cracked it!’ Ha! Well no, as in all things health related, nothing is ever that straight forward hey! The following day I was pretty hungry again (think I added in an extra meal each day, plus quite a lot of ice cream) and then the weirdest thing happened to me: I felt starving and really full at the same time. I’ve heard of this happening to people but never had it happen to me before. I carried on as normal for a bit but then began to feel really bloated and by the end of the day I felt like I could not eat another thing ever again. I then had a pants night sleep! So much for that! The next day I just felt a bit sick and a bit weird (again!!), so I stopped the ice cream (I didn’t fancy it anymore anyway!) and went back to the usual small meals (again! I can see a pattern forming here! Lol!). I felt a bit out of it and a bit cross for a day or two and then normality returned! Again!

I can only assume that the extra ice cream and the extra food served to try and increase my metabolism and, similar to everything else that has tried to do that, overwhelmed my body, which I think does not like to be rushed! Haha! All in good time I guess. It’s more important to me that I feel nice and relaxed and in control of my life, not stressed, anxious, and cross, whilst trying to get my metabolic rate higher!

Anyway, as always I hope that you have enjoyed my ramblings and that they might be of use to some people. Remember that they are just my ramblings and my mini experiments to see what works for me, but everybody is different. I just think it’s good to talk about our experiences! Follow your intuition and ponder about things – it’s amazing where a bit of pondering will lead you. Take care xx

​This post is in response to the messages we are bombarded with on a daily basis: that to have an acceptable bikini body you must look a certain way. Actually, it’s not even just about having a bikini body! We are constantly told that we must look a certain way to be accepted and to be worthy. Here’s just a sample (of the thousands) of magazines that encourage you to have a bikini body:

Gwyneth is apparently ‘crazy fit’ (whatever that means?) and ‘totally uncensored’! Well, erm, good for her! Can’t beat a bit of uncensoring!!?
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When I first started eating proper meals again (including a healthy dose of carbs) my weight shot up by a massive 80 lbs in 6 months. It was pretty horrifying to be honest. I’ve been a size 8-10 all my life so to suddenly find myself with a sort of pregnant looking stomach, water retention all over, and buying size 18 clothes was like torture. I was no longer acceptable. I started lifting weights because I knew building muscle could help your metabolism and I wanted the weight to come off. Alas though, my stress  hormones were still too high and my metabolism was barely doing anything, so all that happened was that I made myself feel ill as well as being fat. I bought stretchy clothes and tried not to think about it! My relationship didn’t help as that was falling apart due to my ex not liking the way I looked anymore.

I didn’t really start to feel comfortable until I started feeling better, and by better I mean that the anxiety had mostly gone and I had some of my energy back. This took me about 18 months. Then 6 months after that, when I moved into my own home, and had no one judging me or watching me, I started to relax.

Now that I feel a million times better, my energy is getting much better, and my head is in a really good place, I don’t give a flying monkey’s butt about my weight or what I look like! When the sun comes out (which is a monumental occasion in the UK!!) then I want to be able to enjoy it, not cover up as if I’m something to be ashamed of. So the other day, when the sun was shining brightly and the sky was beautifully blue, I donned my new bikini (a nice little bargain from Figleaves!) and spent plenty of time outside with my daughter. We snapped some pics to share with you, to show that having a ‘bikini body’ only requires a bikini and a body and an ability to ignore all the noise that comes from people protesting about the ‘fat’ or ‘inappropriately dressed' people, usually under the guise of worrying about their health!! Which makes me laugh as you can’t tell a damn thing from people’s health just by looking! Also, I haven’t asked anybody to worry about my health on my behalf thank you very much! 

I can't tell you just how freeing  it is to not  be  bothered about how you look in a bikini and to just enjoy the  day, and the feel of the sun on your skin!  If you're repulsed by  the look or shape of my belly then just don't look at it I guess! Lol!  It's just a part of me at the moment, and it's not a part  that I'm willing to let define me.  We had a fab day  in the sunshine, laughing and joking.  Life is short so I feel time is best spent  with people you love, doing things you enjoy - not worrying about  chasing a  'perfect figure' goal that is mostly unattainable. 

Anyway, that's  my  rambling over with for the day! Lol! I just hope to join in spreading the message that  people are all worthy no matter how they look and should be able to wear a bikini without worrying  :-)  

So  enjoy your day, enjoy  life and enjoying wearing a bikini  if you damn well want to!  Feel free to share some positivity  in the comments  if you like  - I always love to hear from people. Perhaps we can start a bikini gallery?  Hope you enjoyed my ramblings! Take care x

After pondering what I thought might be a useful blog post I decided that I would say a little bit about temperature and pulse, and take my temperature at different times throughout the day. Then I could share with you how my temperature goes up after meals, which means things are working as they should be!

“Metabolism is the sum of chemical processes that occur in an organism in order to maintain life. Life depends upon the continual conversion of fuel substrates into chemical energy, allowing cells to perform biological work. Heat is produced by these cellular metabolic processes so the resting metabolic rate can be predicted accurately by the rate of heat production.

A simple way to monitor the intensity of your resting metabolism (i.e. how well you are making energy/heat) is to track the resting oral temperature and pulse rate. Collect this data upon waking while lying in bed, ~40 minutes after breakfast, and between 1 and 3 pm in the afternoon.

Upon waking, an ideal temperature is between 97.8-98.6F [36.5-37C] and a pulse rate between 75-85 beats per minute (BPM). Other readings during the day should fall within these parameters as well with temperatures being closer to 98.6F than 97.8F. Data points below the optimal are a sign of a slowed metabolic rate.”

– FPS (Functional Performance Systems)

​So I got my thermometer out and then promptly forgot to take my temperatures that day! Lol! And the next day! Finally I had a day where I remembered to record some readings. The problem was my temperature was all over the place – not at all what I intended to show you! This was a great nudge for me though. I realised that I actually hadn’t been sleeping that great, that my appetite had become a bit blunted (I was still eating but it wasn’t the oh happy days I’m starving, let me enjoy my food kind of feeling!), my skin was becoming a bit drier (and my lips had been quite chapped for a little while), and my head felt quite woolly headed and unfocused! I suppose each thing by itself is only small but definitely not right and together they add up to something being a little off!

​So you can see that on Fri my temp was 36.7 when I woke up. It’s usually a bit lower than that and I didn’t feel like my health had suddenly improved to the point of having a better morning temp! Especially as I haven’t been sleeping that well lately. I also felt weirdly hot in the morning, so it definitely seems like stress hormones were at work. Even though having breakfast didn’t initially drop my temp, you can see that by 11am it had dropped to a more normal (for me) reading. Later on in the day my temp had risen before eating again and dropped afterwards. It wasn’t until the last meal of the day that my temp rose in response to food. That’s not exactly what I want to be happening!
So I pondered what might be going on. I know that if I sit in a hot bath for a while, or out in the sun, my skin goes drier and I seem to have a hard time sleeping. Billy (Craig) suggests about heat:

 “It's like a thyroid surrogate (same as exercise), does increase metabolism and therefore the need for other things which leaves the potential for a stress response”

A couple of weekends ago  (when we had glorious weather in the UK!) I spent all day in the garden and it was fabulous, but my sleep that night was terrible. I woke at 2am and was awake for about 3 hours! Nothing helped, not sugar, not salt, and not food! By 3.30am I had tried them all! Eventually I nodded off again but this is not the kind of thing I want to be experiencing! I think that I’m low in vitamin A (dry skin and dry lips) which can definitely interfere with sleep, and I remember Billy once suggesting that I try B3 (niacinamide) to help with my water retention. Then I remembered that I haven’t had any liver in quite some time, and liver ticks most nutritional boxes! So I bought liver and ate a small amount for the next few days. It certainly seems to have done the trick. My temps are back to being lower in the morning and rising after food. After another day of tracking temps, I remembered to track my pulse as well so you can see what happens to that. It’s lower before food and rises after food. I’m back on the right track after veering around a bit!

​I had a good idea that after a few days of eating liver my body would tell me it had had enough for now. Sure enough, this morning I felt the tinges of not anxiety exactly, but the starting of a tingly feeling in my stomach. Also my appetite was a bit supressed and I felt a bit sick. So I haven’t had any today and I’ll probably go back to eating it once or twice a week (no need to get over excited hey!). My appetite is now back and once again it’s enjoyable to tuck into each and every meal I have.
I’ve been sleeping much better again and even though I still wake up once in the night to pee, I go straight back to sleep. I also haven’t been as hot when I wake up. I had been getting so hot it was ridiculous and I’d had to throw all covers off and stand by the window for a bit. Stress hormones will do that! My skin is also less dry again and my lips have almost completely healed up.
Dealing with your health is a bit like doing a puzzle and fitting all the pieces together! I’m not sure how well my pieces fit yet but I feel like I’m getting closer. My head has been less woolly today and I’ve been more productive, which can only be a good thing!
As always, I hope you have enjoyed my ramblings and that you find them useful. Measuring your temperature and pulse is such an easy thing to do and can tell you whether you are on the right track or not. A useful tool for establishing where your puzzle is up to! If you have any comments, questions or stories to share then please add them below. I always love to hear from you guys. Take care x