Lydia’s Story

You may have already read my daughter’s story. If you haven’t, you can read that here. My nutrition career began due to my daughter’s digestive issues. It wasn’t until years later that I realized, learning how to help my daughter was just the warm up for a much scarier health crisis.

Jeff’s Story

My husband has been healthy for as long as I’ve known him. I mean he’s been down and out with a cold or maybe even the flu here and there but nothing that would have me categorize him as “sickly”.

He’s always been very successful in business. He’s a creative thinker and one of the smartest people I’ve had the pleasure of knowing. He’s always been very active, even competitive. He’s run 3 marathons and countless other shorter road races. He’s always been a cyclist and enjoyed hiking in the mountains.

That describes Jeff’s ‘norm’. That’s the Jeff I’ve always known. Things changed dramatically about 5 years ago.

Life Change

Jeff landed his dream job. Unfortunately, we were living in Chicago at this time and the dream job was in California. Our son was a senior in high school so I stayed in Chicago for the year while Jeff moved out to California to start his new job. One of us would commute about every third weekend. This wasn’t my favorite time in our life but it worked.

The Big Sick

Just before Jeff’s move he had a nagging cough that just wouldn’t quit. Somehow, this resulted in very invasive sinus surgery. He had the surgery and all was good. About 3 months after he moved to California his cough was back. We figured allergies. The area he moved to was known for causing bad allergy attacks. He got tested, surprisingly he wasn’t allergic to anything. Hmmm. By December, 6 months after his move he had another sinus surgery. This was 8 months after his first surgery.

For fear of this going on and on I’ll cut to the chase. He didn’t get better this time. In fact, he got worse. He couldn’t breath and no one could figure out what was wrong with him. He finally got a diagnosis of asthma. At 55 he’d develop asthma. Weird.

During all of this he was on course after course of prednisone, a very powerful steroid. This was the only thing that allowed him to function somewhat normally. Each time he tapered off the prednisone he’d be back to not being able to breath.

The Scary Part

When I say he couldn’t breath I mean I had to rush him to the emergency room where they would immediately hook him up to oxygen and admit him. These were the weekends I was visiting. Basically he didn’t move while he was alone so no trips to the ER.

We ended up seeing 6 different ‘specialists’ at U.C. Davis in Sacramento CA. Each one kept telling him he was and I quote, “the healthiest sick person” they’d ever seen. His blood work looked great so they really weren’t that interested. Big deal his blood work looked great, he couldn’t breath! He wasn’t getting any oxygen. He couldn’t think. This was affecting his work, he was contemplating taking a leave of absence from his new, dream job.

Failed by Western Medicine

Once again, I feel that we were failed by the medical community. My husband was sicker than anyone I’d ever know. I was terrified and so, so very sad. He wasn’t getting better, he was getting worse. There was no ‘fix’. We tried not to worry or think about what ‘not getting better’ really meant.

Leaky Gut

I finally realized that he was reacting to food. It appeared that he was reacting to ALL food. I ran a food sensitivity test. He WAS reacting to practically all food. He was the poster boy for Leaky Gut Syndrome. Basically, his gut lining was damage and food particles (still microscopic but much larger than what the body recognizes as ‘food’) among other things were slipping into his blood stream and causing a HUGE immune response. His body was in full attack mode.

The reason the prednisone helped was because it squashed the inflammation in the gut which gave the unrealistic impression that he was actually doing o.k. and maybe on the mend. It was a roller coaster of hope then dread.

Did I say this was a super scary time? It was SUPER scary!

I’m a Nutritionist

To this day, we think about what might have happened if I had not been in a position to help him. What if I/we didn’t know what we knew about food and health. I really felt like all my training had been leading me to this point in my life. My biggest regret is that I didn’t step up sooner. I think I was just too close and too far away at the same time. Being mostly in Chicago during this time made it extra hard. I wasn’t seeing clearly. Once I made the move to California and realized there wasn’t anyone who could help my focus returned and I knew it was up to me/us to heal him.

It took about 2 1/2 to 3 years to really get him back to his true active self. It was all about healing his gut and calming his immune system. Food sensitivities are tough, they’re sneaky. You can react to a food pretty quickly – intestinal cramping, runny nose, headache, laryngitis, coughing, heartburn etc.. It can also take 72 hours to react to a food.

Jeff was doing well. Feeling better, acting more like his old healthy self and then out of the blue he’d be back at the ER and on oxygen. These trips were much fewer and farther between but still WHY!? Turns out he was reacting to rice. It took 72 hours after he’d eat a bit of rice before he’d have an asthma attack. Once we figured this out and eliminated the rice no more trips to the ER.

Update

He’s doing really well. He’s back to endurance cycling and is training for a crazy ride this July. Over 100 miles and 16,000 feet of climbing all in one day. Gag! For some reason he thinks that kind of thing is fun.

Now that his gut is healthy and no longer leaky he can actually enjoy the foods that used to knock him down. He’s still sensitive enough that he can’t go crazy and eat plates of rice day after day but he can enjoy some rice as a side dish occasionally and not have an asthma attack. As for the other foods he was reacting to, same thing, occasionally without over doing it.

He knows what foods don’t work for him and for the most part he avoids them. He doesn’t crave them. He eats lots of vegetables, healthy animal proteins, fish, healthy fats and the occasional grain-free, sugar-free treats that I make. Have you seen tried this Chocolate-Walnut Torte?

Thank you for reading. Know, if you’re not feeling your best, start with your food. Make changes, go through an elimination diet. Trust me, this is far easier than having to live on countless prescription medications that just mask your symptoms and have other nasty side effects.

Be well