I never read the "blood type diet" book. Although at some point I was informed that due to my blood type, I
should eat a vegan diet. I know that I do quite well on a vegan diet - I've probably gone as long as a month as a vegan. I don't know why, but I now feel the urge to point out that I wasn't trying to be a vegan - it just ended up that way.
About four years ago I got a weird pain in my foot that wasn't caused by anything. It just hurt - as if a golf ball lived in the middle of my foot. The swelling made it so that I could not get my toes to touch the ground. I used the age old techniques of whining and limping and eventually it went away.
About the fourth time it came back, some time with doctor google suggested it might be gout. So I ate cherries and reduced sugars and it went away. (NOTE! I now think that the solution had everything to do with the cherries, and nothing to do with the sugars. After all, fresh cherries contain natural sugars)
The next four times this "probably gout" came by, I was able to get it to go away in less than a day. Cherries!
Pain scale: zero to ten
Two years ago, I had never, in my adult life, been to a hospital. About a year and a half ago I had a bit of junk touching my spinal cord (cervical radiculopathy). And about three months ago, I learned way too much about gallstones. And a few weeks ago, I had the worst gout attack ever.
So, three things. Three trips to the hospital.
At the hospital, I am presented with this and asked to convey a number.
Fortunately, for me,
Allie Brosh, a fellow missoulian, who was probably presented the exact same scale, in the exact same hospital, maybe by the exact same person, bravely
explained this scale and modified it a bit to be a bit more helpful:
I have now been asked this so many times, and I have done so much self-evaluation to try to solve things for myself, I have figured out a few things ...
level 1: the pain level is annoying, but I can get my work done and I can sleep.
level 3: I cannot do work that requires concentration, and I cannot get proper sleep.
level 6.0: periodically making involuntary groaning sounds
Spinal cord thing: If I would lay on my back with my right arm straight out, the pain level would drop to a 3-4. Everything else would take it up to a 6-7.5.
Gallstone 1: 8.5 - I thought there was an 80% chance that I was going to die
Gallstone 2: 8
Gallstone 3: 9
Earlier gout: 1 to 5.5 (no moaning, but it was impacting my work and sleep)
Most recent two week long gout episode: 1 to 6.5
I was thinking I was quite the whiner. Probably spoiled by a lack of serious illnesses, broken bones, etc. So I looked up women that had gone through the gallstone thing and childbirth. It seemed unanimous that gallstone pain is much worse than childbirth. I even found one woman saying that she would rather give birth a thousand times than have one more gallstone event. I'm really glad I found that - I feel like less of a whiner now.
how a gallstone attack led to my worst ever gout attack
For the first stone, I went to the hospital. Once the stone was passed, I did a lot of reading and cut way back on a lot of things. And five days later had a second gallstone. So then I cut back even further. I did a lot more reading and saw more doctors ... After six weeks I thought I could then ease up a bit and .... I was wrong, so I had a third gallstone attack.
There is a mountain of conflicting information on what you should eat to avoid a gallstone attack. And the doctors I saw had conflicting information. Conventional stuff says "low fat". The doctor I like said that low carb is more important. And then there is a breakdown on what sorts of fats are okay. Grains and sugar are out, but some fruit is good.
In the end, it was pretty easy to just eat less of damn near everything - just to be sure. I mean, this is some pretty powerful pain. It's a bit like there is a loaded gun pointed at you for every meal and the more you eat, the more pressure is put on the trigger. Once you've been shot three times, you find it easy to say "no thank you" to fresh, new bullet pain.
About five days after the last stone my foot started to hurt. I ate cherries and my sugar consumption was already at zero. The cherries didn't work this time.
My doctor said that I wasn't eating
enough. Since I was dodging food, I was losing weight. And that was putting stuff into my blood that was causing the gout. Uric acid and other stuff.
My pain level went up and down over and over .... there were days when it was excruciating and I resorted to industrial strength pain killers to be able to get some sleep. And then there were days where I could limp around and get some work done in the office (even though my foot was huge). Jocelyn suggested going to the hospital several times, but I said "what are they going to do besides tell me to eat cherries?" A lot of
online stuff said that if you have had gout for four days, you should go to the hospital. After two weeks and a really rough night, I was in the middle of a rough morning and jocelyn was suggesting a trip to the hospital again. I said that I don't have the brain power to make a decision, so I am leaving it to her. So we went.
at the hospital for gout
One thing they did that helped was to inject me with some sort of goo that would reduce the inflammation. That did seem to help a lot. And they gave me a prescription for industrial strength prescription pain killers for when I need it (it turns out I have not touched those - but I will get to that later). They also x-rayed my foot and tested to make sure there wasn't some sort of blood clot thing. And they told me to eat cherries.
So, the moral of the story is that they did do more at the hospital than tell me to eat cherries.
figuring it out
For over nine years Jocelyn and I have talked at great length about how food ties to our health. One of the things that brought us together is that we both avoid a lot of the same foods.
Throughout the gallstone and gout stuff, conversations about foods and the connection to these ailments intensified. Jocelyn worked exceptionally hard at preparing foods that would, hopefully, solve these problems.
On the way to the hospital and while at the hospital, Jocelyn and I went over and over the different things I had been eating and what could we possibly try next.
I really like the doctor that I see now. I saw her once about 25 years ago, then moved away from missoula. And then when I came back to missoula, I emailed her and she said she wasn't practicing anymore. After the gallstone event, the planets aligned and weird things happened and ... she is helping me. She created a multi page document, just for me. It explained what I was going to eat and why. Her document lined up really well with a book on the subject that I like. And there was one big difference: in her document, she said that because of my blood type, she didn't want me to eat any
beef. Beef would be inflammatory for me, and right now I needed to keep inflammation to a minimum.
Because of my blood type.
She did not say that because of my blood type I should eat a vegan diet.
I have grown rather addicted to eating jocelyn's cooking. She loves to cook and it's damn good eatin! And it is well aligned with our food values. Of course, our food values come from organizations that seem to suggest that everybody should eat the same way. And there have been quite a few things I have learned about myself and what makes it so I get the most work done (zero
dairy, low sugar, high fat). At the same time, I have always advocated that different people thrive on different things. Some people thrive on being vegan and some people really suffer being vegan. I do fine on a vegan diet. I know that jocelyn does poorly on a vegan diet.
It seems a big part of gout comes from purines, which is found mostly in meat. And the cure for gout comes from Anthocyanin which comes mostly from fruit.
So while we are sitting around in the hospital while waiting for tests and stuff, I present to Jocelyn the idea of eating vegan to see if that helps. She is worried about not getting enough protein - which is where she struggles. But I don't seem to have cravings for protein like she does, so I propose that my dietary needs are different from hers. Next, she is worried that if I up my fruit intake that that would be too much sugar. I counter that not all sugars are the same. Further, this would be an experiment to see how things go.
Because of the gallstone stuff, I am already avoiding the vegan foods: grains, sugar, onions, potatoes, legumes, certain oils and nuts. Although I seem to do okay with small amounts of white rice, oats or corn. Based on all of my reading, I think that white rice is "less bad" than oats or corn, and the rest of the grains, especially wheat, are to be completely avoided.
Due to the high purine count in
mushrooms and yeasts, those were taken off my food list too.
So we left the hospital and bought some stuff to fit this very limited diet. The gout went away instantly and has not returned. It has been 16 days. No gallstone stuff since then either - but that's something that is measured in years rather than days.
what i have been eating for the last two weeks
I think this should be taken with a grain of salt. This is just me. And what works for me might not work for others. And there might be a bunch of stuff here that is really messed up and I will come up with something better later. Or it is messed up and I won't figure out something better.
cherries, apples, pineapple, grapes, blueberries, tomatoes, dried fruits, bananas, lemons, limes, grapefruit
avacado, greens (except spinach), carrots, radishes (especially daikon), peppers, celery, squash, sweet potatoes
coffee with
stevia and "
nutpods"
kim chi
coconut oil
mayo made from avacado oil
fermented pickles
water
chips made from veggies
cheese-like stuff made from almond
milk
fruit preserves sweetened with fruit juice
I like to get stuff to be more raw/fresh and less cooked.
Sometimes in small amounts:
white rice
corn
macadamia nuts
Zero:
potatoes, onions, asparagus, cole crops, spinach
wheat,
beans, peas, lentils, soy
dairy
meat or fish
eggs
mushrooms
nuts (except a few macadamia nuts)
what I was eating during the two weeks of horrific gout
I was trying to keep from triggering a gallstone and get the gout to go away. Because of the gout restrictions, I already ate zero pork and zero beef.
What I am eating now (without gout) is remarkably similar to what I was eating during the two weeks of brutal gout paing. But here is the complete list of stuff that I cut out:
poultry
fish
eggs
mushrooms
nutritional yeast
spinach
cole crops
Jocelyn might chime in to clarify some stuff.
the cheegan diet
I just made this up. Mostly because I like making stuff up like this. Fun people think this is fun. Which is fun to please the fun people. Icky people get angry that I make up stuff like this. Which, somehow feeds my humor need to see icky people get pissed off over something so stupid. NEENER NEENER ICKY PEOPLE!
This diet is really a subset of the vegan diet. But it always bothered me that some people thought of themselves as "vegan" but their diet was mostly diet coke and oreos. I am not making this shit up.
So "the cheegan diet" contains zero aspartame and zero products made by nabisco (which includes oreos). Everything in the cheegan diet is organic or better.
I wanted to invent a word that means "a subset of the vegan diet" and came up with "cherries + vegan = cheegan." And since I am making it up, I get to spell it however I want.
The stuff in the cheegan diet is all the stuff I listed above that I am eating now. All in an effort to dodge gallstone stuff and gout stuff.
I don't think I will stay on the cheegan diet forever. But I am worried enough about absurd pain that i am willing to stay on it a long time. I suspect that a few months from now, I will be doing the cheegan diet 95% of the time instead of 100%.
Right now, a piece of huckleberry pie looks like extreme pain. But jocelyn made a sort of
apple pie a few days ago that was made entirely out of stuff of on the safe list. So I think that some day I might be able to have a piece of huckleberry pie that is made "the right way".
doodle-ly-doo doodle-ly-doo
After such a roller coaster of pain, I was just relieved to get away from the pain. And my first thought was to do all my other stuff for a while and spend less time trying to figure out all the best stuff to eat, not eat, whatever. This morning I just had the urge to write down what i could think of. For reasons. I want to make it clear, I have not discovered anything here, not even just for me. I am saying that I got out of a tight spot, and this is probably the beginning of something much more significant. But this is just the beginning for me, and I am hoping it will draw in the expertise of others that are far wiser than i am on this stuff.
Here are a few things about supplements that i am sharing because I am a bit on the
fence.
One, is that a lot of sources desperately want both gout and gallstone folks to consume two tablespoons of
organic raw apple cider vinegar three times a day, just before eating. That was fine for a few days, but it got old. And it got disgusting. And downright unacceptable. And then I switched to this stuff:
http://amzn.to/2hYZEg4
A hundred times easier. Although I'm not sure how long I want to stick to it. It is suggested that if I stick to it for a couple of years, the gallstones I'm still packing will dissolve.
Next up, when struggling with gout and the cherries weren't working, I found a lot of gout sufferers got immediate relief from this stuff:
http://amzn.to/2iJBraO
The top ingredients are cherry extract and celery seed extract. It did nothing for me. Or, maybe I would have been in even more pain if I wasn't taking it. I can't tell.
Two super short videos. The first one played a huge role in me moving toward trying the cheegan diet. Especially the part where he mentions cooked foods:
In this one he talks about people fasting. And while I wasn't fasting, I wasn't eating much. But the big thing is where he mentions "potassium citrate"
http://amzn.to/2zhoafI
I got it and .... once again, I was still in insane pain. Maybe my pain would have been worse without it, I can't tell. But it does seem like a lot of folks are heading in this general direction.
the big question
If you know your blood type, I would like to hear what sort of stuff you eat and if you have had gout and or gallstones. My blood type is A+. And I wonder if there is a connection between my blood type, and eating a non-vegan diet and getting the gallstones and gout. But more importantly, what is YOUR story. Even if you have never had gout or gallstones, but you know your blood type, I would like to hear about it.