Thinking about Changing Your Diet? Read This

After reading a few books on diets meant to help acne and inflammation, I was inspired to try a mostly vegan (cheating allowed at dinner and on Thanksgiving), nut- and oil-free diet for a month. I got the okay from my specialist, made a trip to Whole Foods, got a notebook to write down what I ate when, and told my parents (who were puzzled). I had some diarrhea the first few days but attributed it to excess fiber and my usual sensitive gut. A month later, I’m down to diarrhea once or twice a week but in just as much pain and with just as many zits as before. Plus, I’m irritable and spending too much time reading food labels and explaining my crazy-sounding experiment. The books say to wait at least six weeks for results, but frankly, I’ve had enough. I let nuts and eggs back into my diet on Sunday.

It really is true that there isn’t one diet that works for everyone. It is also true that you need to run diet changes by a physician first.

What I’m still wondering is whether all along my problem has been dairy, not oil, nuts, eggs, or meat. The diet books I read disagreed on whether you have to be a full vegan to see health benefits from your food, but all of them explained the harms of dairy. In short, cow’s milk has growth hormones meant for baby calves. Add too many of those hormones to a human body that has hormonal imbalance and system-wide inflammation (hey, that’s me!), and you get extra imbalance and extra inflammation. I’ll go into further detail in my next book review post.

For now, I’m going to do one last diet experiment on myself: I’m going to go dairy-free for two weeks in January. That’s still monumental for someone whose favorite food is milk chocolate and favorite drink is mocha.

Watch for my update next month! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Source: Theo Crazzolara, Flickr Creative Commons

Darla Nagel is a biomedical copy editor who has an invisible chronic illness. She wants to educate healthcare professionals and encourage patients. If you want to receive quarterly updates from her, email darla.nagel{a}gmail.com.