mhmmm

And I thought it couldn't get better than my recent invention of "hot cocoa" made of vanilla protein powder, cocoa, cinnamon and heat. And a bit cream sometimes.
Well, it can: replace half the water with coconut milk (that's just how much i had in a jar). Add ground cloves.


heaven.

Fibromyalgia and Paleo

I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia about two and a half years ago. Looking back I've had it for at least ten years. So what is it?

From the National Fibromyalgia Association website:

Fibromyalgia (pronounced fy-bro-my-AL-ja) is a common and complex chronic pain disorder that affects people physically, mentally and socially. Fibromyalgia is a syndrome rather than a disease. Unlike a disease, which is a medical condition with a specific cause or causes and recognizable signs and symptoms, a syndrome is a collection of signs, symptoms, and medical problems that tend to occur together but are not related to a specific, identifiable cause.

Fibromyalgia, which has also been referred to as fibromyalgia syndrome, fibromyositis and fibrositis, is characterized by chronic widespread pain, multiple tender points, abnormal pain processing, sleep disturbances, fatigue and often psychological distress. For those with severe symptoms, fibromyalgia can be extremely debilitating and interfere with basic daily activities.

The most common way to diagnose someone with FB is check for tender points. There are up to 18 of them. You need to have at least 11 to be diagnosed. I have 16 I think.

That's very general. I want to focus on what FB looked like in my case. And I must admit, I have a very moderate level of symptoms, nothing like some other persons.

PAIN
All over. Everywhere, but you can't pin point it. Spreads through legs, belly, arms. Sometimes sits in one limb only, sometimes hits everything at once. You try changing positions, lift the legs, not move, move... nothing helps. You can just try to sit as comfortable as possible and wait till the worst is over. Then there is this "I have a flu with no fever" feeling. As if you were bruised on every inch of your body, every touch hurts. Putting on underwear hurts. Using bathroom hurts. Touching hair hurts, because your skin hurts. That usually holds for three days. Then there are joint pains. Sometimes random, sometimes as an outcome of long walk, standing for too long, wrong shoes, too hard surfaces or I don't eve know what.
When I finally started to do some workout over the summer (I am a teacher, so I had more time then), my knees would scream, not only during the workout but even in between. After a few days they were hurting all the time. My doctor told me that it is what it is, gotta get used to it.

FATIGUE
Not just tired... but the absolute physical and mental exhaustion. Too tired to prepare a meal, to clean the house, to make the bed. Too tired to visit friends or invited anyone over. Too tired to do shopping, check out a nice place or keep up with a hobby. Too tired to even begin about working out. Too tired to finish up some documents from work or even answer emails to friends.
I used to come back from work, and was sitting from around 5pm to 10pm in front of my laptop, not being able to do anything. I ate whatever I could find when I was so hungry it overcome the fatigue. I was so tired it was difficult to get up and get prepared for bed. Too tired to understand what I was reading on the internet, so I usually was surfing through home decor blogs - pictures only, easy. I was too tired to focus on a book or even watch a movie. I was vegetating.

SLEEP
I could sleep for ten hours and wake up tired. I wake up multiple times during the night for a split second. My body cannot fall deep enough to get into the most important, restorative phase of the sleep. Sometimes I fall asleep without any problems, sometimes I have a hard time with that. On free days I may also take a nap during a day. I aim for 7.5-8h during a weekday, 9h on weekends. If I sleep less than 6h I feel sick, have bad headache and simply remind a zombie.

OTHER
I did have problems with my bowels, and I am getting bad headaches, with occasional really severe ones. I have had problems with concentration, clear thinking and memory. I still struggle with depression and really bad anxiety.


TREATMENT
My rheumatologist has tried various meds and supplements. Nothing worked. No CoQ10, no lyrica, no other. He suggested stretching, exercising (promising that it was supposed to get better after a while of bad pain), and "healthy diet". To be honest, the only advice he gave me that worked, was getting a body pillow!

So why am I writing most of the symptoms in past tense? Well, because they are things of the past for me. Enter Paleo.

I've been eating low-carb since about January, almost-paleo since March-April. Completely gluten-free since July. Even without cutting all gluten the majority of FM symptoms either lessen or disappeared.

PAIN
I have very rarely the "random" muscle or joint pain. I do still have aches, especially after running long errands and/or having to stand for a longer time. The recovery still takes a while.
I am working out, strength, sprints etc., with no joint pain whatsoever! I do lunges, squats and my knees sing the songs of praise.
I still wake up stiff in the morning sometimes, but it takes less time to get moving.

FATIGUE
Gone. Can you believe it? I am a new woman! I come back from work and I have still energy and will to do stuff. I do workout or cook dinner and/or lunches for work, I clean around the house and whatever else I feel like doing. I am able to read and understand what I am reading even after 6pm. I have my life back. It's unbelievable. I think this part of the recover is the most beneficial. I do cook more on Paleo - but now I have time to do it!

SLEEP
Still working to get it better.

OTHER
Can't remember when was the last time I had any GI issues. My focus, ability to concentrate on a task and general mental ability improved dramatically. Anxiety and depression got better, but they need more time for full recovery. I take medicine for both of them.

All of it only thanks to cutting grain, sugar, processed foods, vegetable oils and other crap of that kind. I eat a lot of animal protein of many varieties, fish, good fats like coconut oil and butter, a little bit of cream or cheese, some green veggies and occasional fruit or chocolate. That's it. That's all the medicine I needed!

This post is part of "Paleo Rodeo" @ Modern Paleo!

Fasting and paleo

When I was on my old way of eating (high-carb), I had extremely difficult time with any kind of fasting. When I tried to fast a whole day (for religious reasons, like Yom Kippur), it was a nightmare. Very soon after waking up I would already start to feel bad. A few hours later I would have no energy, had problems with moving my legs fast, my head would feel as if made of lead with pounding pain. Toward the end of the day I would be lightheaded, dizzy and sometimes close to fainting. I thought it was just my nature...

On Monday we had "Back to School Night" about which I completely forgot. It meant that instead of going home before 5pm I made it at 9pm. With no extra food, on some eggs, coffee with cream and protein shake. Hardly any hunger, no headache, energy and full mental attention.
I used to say how I simply couldn't not eat a breakfast. I would be sick and nauseated with this deep, painful need to eat at that right moment. Nothing like that anymore - when I am hungry, it's a normal signal, no attack from inside. It's fascinating to me how all of that has changed.

Yesterday I did my "refeed" dinner. And I had too much. I see on other blogs how people make these humongous meals, sometimes calling them variations of "refeeds". How do they do it? I tried three beef sausages, three eggs with two extra yolks and a bit of veggies (broccoli, green beans, mushrooms). I felt full one third in. I wasn't sure if I should just stop or try and force to eat more. I decided to try and it more, because I don't want my body to think I am starving it, so it would go into starvation mode or something.

Each day this week I came back late from work, so no workout yet. And tomorrow I will be even later... Friday it will be, then. And maybe Saturday as well. I have to do a good strength workout and practice more on pull up bar. I am beginning to being able to do pull up! I have big problems with that... I try with support, and it gets better. chin ups get better as well, now I can do 3-4, and same with parallel chin ups.

Perfect timing

A friend linked me to an article, which included the following short movie:





I still can't believe that there is so much sanity, reason and positive attitude coming from Surgeon General of the US. Instead of shaming the fattis into lean bodies, pressuring masses to take on risky fad diets, there is a message that we can be healthy at any size.

you go girl!

body image, modern society and paleo

I am glad that I see some good entries on body size around the paleo bloggers. It is much more common to see entries ridiculing bigger sizes.

I won't pretend I don't want to "look good naked". I want to have athletic body (well,  not like real athletes, but on the sporty side), firm, strong and healthy. With the emphasis on "healthy". Sometimes I think there is a cult of athletic, ripped body in paleo world. I see the dehumanizing pictures of obese decapitated individuals (as if being obese is so horrible we don't want to humiliate them by showing their faces) next to many entries.

Many people come to paleo being obese or overweight. I really understand that they might want and need to reduce their body fat. But too many times I see people in panic because they paused in their weight loose, as if bodies were machines.

Our society worships the skinny, not the healthy. Often we can see people making fun of female athletes that they look "male" (because only men are athletes?), allowing a few chosen ones to be "curvy", which often is still quite slim.
We know about the term "skinny fat" - often common to people who are skinny, but still have quite surprisingly high body fat, their body work is really bad, they eat crap, they hardly exercise and have any muscle strength... but they are still perceived as more "healthy" than a bigger, fatter person. We tend to watch what fat people eat assuming they are lazy gluttons, and somehow looking for proof that we are "right", they they brought it all on themselves. When we see the skinny junk food eating instead of worrying about their triglyceride levels we are jealous, and the person is made to believe she/he somehow reached some kind of moral achievement.

I am a strong supporter of the "Healthy at Any Size" movement. Health should be the emphasis, not size. There are people considered "overweight" who are stronger, more energetic and healthier, than many "skinny" ones. We don't really know exactly what our ancestors looked like. They were probably very strong and healthy... but it might be that they have occasional fat cushions, especially before winter. Women naturally need more fat, and I think a lot of them had more than the minimum necessary in preparation for pregnancy and breast feeding. Still, they were very active, moving around, gathering and hunting. Somehow I can't see any of these very skinny models go and hunt down anything or even gather wood for fire. They simply wouldn't survive. I also don't think it's that much of a coincidence that they are hardly every smiling. In contrast to the lovely ladies on the left.
We need more acceptance of various body types, with emphasis on health, performance, satisfaction. I want to see more photos of ladies looking like that being the models for us and young girls:

just look at these muscles! I am pretty sure she would do as well running around woods or escaping some nasty critter as she does on court!

Now that's my look goal, I would love to work my back and arms to look that way (more push ups in my future!). But I do realize that it's as well, the result of modern society's body image, even if healthier than the skinny one.

And especially as we age, we should work on accepting our changing bodies. These ladies, for example, are called "The strong women's choir".

Not only by... meat you live. Evolutionary psychology and sociology.

I love the idea of paleolithic diet, I buy into the evolutionary arguments and modern scientific explanation. I have never been a big science fan, I like to know the basic and understand how things work, but it's not my thing. What does interest me more is the social and psychological aspect of everything. I believe that what we eat is only one part of the picture, and the way we live, react and interact with others are extremely important parts of the mosaic.

I have had a discussion some time ago about what is actually "healthy" for our psyche from evolutionary point of view.
Modern life and expectations push us to have hundreds of friends (Facebook anyone?), to be relaxed and enthusiastic when encountering strangers, to run extremely busy and stressful lives. We should be ready for any challenge, and ready to face it alone in many cases. Our familial ties relax very early on, and most of what we learn, we do from strangers at various institutions.

What is anxiety? What is social phobia? Are these disorders or maybe natural responses of our paleolithic psyches not prepared for the neolithic societies? Do hunter-gatherers suffer from anxiety or depression? Food disorders? Schizophrenia?

Our ancestors lived in small groups. A clan made of a few dozens people, never more than a 100 individuals. That made sense - the nature can support you, you are able to support each other, you can easily move to another location, and you can have groups of people with variety of skills, knowledge and life experience. Children learned naturally, almost by osmosis, always among their own. We are told by modern researchers (as opposed to biased anthropologists from extremely sexist and patriarchal society in the beginning of such studies) that members of these early communities were quite equal to each other in terms of gender. Each one was bringing important skills and probably all were contributing in making decisions. Age might have been much more respected than gender. We, as species, evolved with the ability of speech and high intellectual capabilities. The nurturing, supportive clans were extremely important in developing these.

So are my anxiety and social phobia so unnatural? Or maybe my psyche warns me against something unnatural? How often did a caveman interact with strangers? Had to make a speech? Had a stressful job interview? Had to spend most of early life away from family in an institution run by strangers?

I don't think we can go back to the paleolithic reality. But maybe we should go easy on ourselves when we don't exactly fit the expectations of our society. Psychologists that humans cannot create meaningful relationships with more than 300 people. We are flooded by people over the years of our lives. With how many are we really close? Close enough to nurture and support? To teach and to learn from each other's experiences?

After these kind of musings I feel better about being shy, often anxious and stressed about meeting new people. My psyche simply tries to protect each other from unnatural, neolithic reality.

This post is part of Fight Back Friday @Food Renegade.