DAIRY FREE SEPTEMBER

Although I've blogged about this before, it was some time ago and I cant easily link to it so for those who know this already, my apologies, I'll keep the background brief.

 

Several years ago I had a very bad bout of psoriasis that required attention from a 'special skin specialist' (because of where it was located.) I had a biopsy which showed no nasties except that the specialist sent me away with a long list of rules on how to manage it over the years to come. Aaargh, what a cramped lifestyle that would have been and one that really had no appeal so I sought a second opinion from a naturopath that I had seen recently (back then) for other reasons.

 

Boy, did he know his stuff!! His naturopathic advice was really simple:

 

1. Cut out white flour.

2. Cut out dairy.

3. Cut out sugar (as much as possible).

4. Cut right down on alcohol (perhaps he could tell that 'cut out alcohol' was going to be a certain fail LOL)

5. Increase intake of oily fish.

 

Well, all that was quite doable so off I went to see what these changes would do. I was amazed at how well and how quickly the psoriasis cleared up (and trust me, it was a BAD bout). Ever since then I've sworn by these simple rules when my skin looks like its going off the rails. They work for me.

 

Chapter 2

 

For several months I've been croaky, coughing and phlegmy. Its bad in winter and eases off in the warmer weather but never seems to go away completely. A year ago my GP said I probably had a wierd strain of virus that was hanging around from the usual winter lurgies. Odd, as I hadnt had a winter lurgy for something to remain and hang around from. Plus it hung around for months, eased off in summer and then as soon as it got cold again this year, it was back.

 

Well I didnt think my GP had it right so Google became my medical adviser except I found the Chinese medicine sites to be the most informative. Reading up about mucus (because I had been coughing it up) became my new pass-time. What I gleaned from several sources was an interesting (yet not surprising) opinion of  what were mucus forming foods. And voila, there was dairy at the top of the list (like I said, not surprising.) I filed the article for future reference and am thinking now just might be the time to trial 'dairy free' and see what effect it has on my phlegminess.

 

So my aim is to have a dairy free September (with maybe a little exception on Peter's birthday as I suspect he'll ask mum for her delicious cheese pastries for his birthday cake.) But I can handle soy coffees and cut out the little other dairy that I have. There were other mucus forming foods listed which I'll revisit, but dairy was number one.

 

When your general health is good, I believe the little things that arent quite right can be self-healed by tweaking diet, lifestyle etc. The older I get the better I am at reading my body and know that the small changes can make big differences.

 

:-) M