Consequences of The Daily Home-Baked Goods

I am amazed at what my sneaky, hidden food sensitivities put me through.  Though there were other contributing factors to my challenges, I've found that what I was eating was a major cause.  So what did my daily dose of whole grains do to me?  Well, the worst of it would have to be suffering from Bipolar I disorder.  Gluten sensitivities don't just cause swelling in the intestines (celiac's disease) but also in the brain, which spells "mental illness" among other things.
Although I wasn't officially diagnosed with Bipolar I disorder until I was 23, I most definitely was suffering from it even at the age of 13.  For those that don't know, Bipolar I disorder is the most severe form of bipolar consisting of severe and prolonged mania and severe depression.  At the age of 13 I swung between both extremes, though there were long periods of relative normal balance.  Both my parents and I chalked it all up to the precarious hormonal changes happening in a young teenager, thus, nothing was done.
At the age of 16 I began to talk about and try to work through some major childhood trauma that I'd experienced and had begun to think was the cause of my depression.  Though I do think that suffering this trauma was a contributing factor, I'm sure now that it wasn't the main culprit.  In college, I sought counseling to work through these issues and I made a lot of progress and, honestly, became a totally different, more confident and secure person.  However, the bipolar was getting worse, not better.  I was beginning to suffer from psychosis (delusions, hallucinations) during my manic phases and eventually, during my last semester of my senior year, landed in the hospital.
Ending up in the psych ward was devastating and finally forced me to face the possibility of a mental illness, a possibility that I didn't think I could live with.  I became seriously suicidal at this point, especially after my parents came to get me and take me home.  The most forward thought in my mind was how useless I now must be, I could not comprehend how God could use me with my horrific mental illness and if I wasn't to be useful, if I was only to be a burden to everyone, then why should I live.  These were dark days, not only did I not get to graduate college when I had intended, I was facing what was to me the end of my life, the destruction of all the hopes and dreams I had.  Even if I didn't take my own life, even if I lived to be a hundred, my life was over.
Thus began my saga into the psychotropic drug world, I was put on this and then that and then taken off (per my request) and then suffered more major episodes and put on something else.  I hated the drugs almost more than I hated bipolar and sometimes I'd take myself off of my medication because I couldn't stand them.  Nothing helped me feel normal, most of the medications only made me feel like a zombie, completely dead inside.  On top of that, these medications were causing some serious weight gain.  I was miserable, nothing was working the way I needed it to.
The good news in all this, I went back to school to finish my last semester and get my degree and just guess who was now attending my school for his first semester.  Yep, I met the man who would, a few years later, be my husband.  Had I not had to leave school half-way through my last semester and come back to finish the next year, I never would've met Jeremy, we never would've fallen in love. God has a funny way of working things out, and I'm thankful.
Let me take a rabbit trail here and brag on my husband, we'll finish looking at the rest of the "consequences" in a part two post.  When I first told Jeremy about my mental illness he responded in way that no one else had and it blew me over, knocked my socks off.  We were just friends at the time and had only known each other for about 8 or 9 months.  When I told him about having bipolar, he just looked at me for a while, and then  said, "I can't pretend to understand what you're going through, how painful it must be, but I know it must be hard.  You know I'm here for you".  You have to understand, the responses I'd been getting up to this point were not at all that compassionate and sympathetic.  The best responses had been acceptance when no real acknowledgement of what I must be going through personally.  Other people's responses were more focused on how my illness would effect them, "is she gonna blow-up any moment now"?, "better keep my distance".  I was floored  that he would even consider that  I might not like having bipolar, that I might be experiencing a lot of pain from the fact.  Ever since he has been one of my biggest supporters.  Thank you, my wonderful husband!

"Are You Fer Stinkin' Serious"!

I'll begin my story in the middle at what we might call the climax.  It was the moment I got what I consider to be some of the worst, though not THE worst, news in my life.  Yep, bad news, fun's over, life will be different, more challenges ahead.  At least, that's how it seemed, but, as you will see in some blog posts to come, it was actually some of the best, most helpful news of my life.
I was having a nutritional done, part of which included being tested for food sensitivities and allergies.  My doctor was using a muscle-strength based test to see what foods weakened me, what didn't weaken me, and what foods make me stronger.  Our bodies are electro-chemical and are very sensitive to whatever we put in our system, the things we eat, or even just touch, can either sap our energy or support our energy and stamina.  He was testing all kinds of foods on me, including eggs, soy, corn - -ZAP!  All muscle strength gone with the corn.  Oh no!  There goes my healthy home-made popcorn meals where I pop it myself on the stove, spray it with canola or olive oil and sprinkle with a little salt, nutritional yeast, onion powder, chili powder, whatever suits my fancy.  There goes my cornbread (I'm a southern girl), corn muffins, corn on the cob, and not to mention anything that has corn syrup or high-fructose corn syrup (which I was already trying to avoid).
Next up, testing dairy, POW, energy knocked out, no more dairy.  I'm a Sasscer by birth and that goes hand in hand with being an "ice cream-o-holic", done!  Bye-bye cheese, yogurt and the new experimentation with making my own kiefer.  Ouch!  Alright, then we have the gluten testing, you can probably guess the results of that one, GEEZ LOU-EEZ!  No more. . .ummm, okay, what doesn't have gluten in it?  The good news is, I was good to go on chocolate, in fact, I'm pretty sure it made me ten times stronger, that's great nutrients for strength.  Had I failed that one I think I would've croaked.
The real kicker with all this is that I was three months pregnant, that's a huge diet change to make in the middle of a pregnancy.  I took to eating a lot of brown rice and sweet potatoes (it turns out that my daughter, who I was pregnant with at the time, absolutely loves sweet potatoes, funny).  I started experimenting with gluten free flours (can you say expensive) and I discovered almond milk, which has made me really dislike the taste of regular milk on the occasions that I do cheat on my new restritions.  Now guess what!  Cutting these foods from my diet has turned out to be the good old "one-two" total knock-out for my health challenges, including a mental-illness (more to be written on this later, when we go to the beginning of my story).  Also, I a had very healthy pregnancy and labor and delivery went very well and very quickly (we're talking under three hours) and it resulted in a very healthy, happy baby girl (she came out a 10 on the APGAR).
You know what else!  I've learned a lot through it all and I've begun creating my own, cost effective and delicious recipes, which I will be sharing on this blog.

Here's to the Good Stuff

"Lord, please bless Nacho with the nutrients and the strength. . ." (Escalato praying for Nacho before a wrestling match in a scene from "Nacho Libre").  This line has been a running joke between me and some of my friends ever since we saw the movie.  We end letters with it "may you have plenty of nutrients and strength", we make inquiries in our greetings, "hi, how's it going, do you have plenty of nutrients and strength", and we poke fun at each other's silly slip ups, "I guess you didn't have the proper nutrients and the strength for that".  Now I'm basing my whole blog on it because I've found what a huge difference nutrients can make for strength, and not just physical strength but also mental and emotional strength and wellness.
On this blog I'm going to share about my own journey through poor health and mental illness to a new discovery and awareness that has changed my life, helping me to exchange "good nutrition, miserable life" for "best nutrition" and the best all around health I've yet known.  I hope you'll find some good information here, some good encouragement and maybe even an entry into a more effective plan for wellness.  I'll post recipes, research and links to sites with more of this and then some.  Let's get started!