Mouth sores opening up

For the first time I have noticed the sores on my mouth opening up as it happens. I first noticed yesterday the tingling, almost burning sensation in the corners of my mouth that comes with eating fruit and/or acidic juicy foods when these sores (or rather, perhaps, the slightly broken skin) are opening up. Yesterday it was not yet complete, but today it has certainly worsened. Catching it as it occurs allows me, to some degree, to look at what I have been eating and to try and track back anything that has changed that might have led to these sores, which I am told, indicate vitamin B deficiency. More

Crunch time

I’m angry, restless, irritable. I picked up M____ in the car some time back and driving there I was thinking the end has to come soon. I have been so aware of being around her unable to think of anything to say, and today cleaning my room and counting down the time until I would have to pick her up I was so angry at the time I am wasting to her being around. Driving back too, she told me it would be a hard week because I would have to drop her off most mornings, including tomorrow, though she normally lets me off weekends (she is ill), and I thought about how that means that she won’t be working in the evenings and I will feel compelled to be with her, saying nothing and aware of my own failings, and that I will be unable to get down to anything productive.

Maybe it’s the Capryllic acid I’m taking at the moment. Maybe its ‘die off reactions’ but I feel awful, and can’t cope with this. I need my life back. This relationship is giving me so little compares to what it seems to take away. I have nothing to say to M____ and all I’m doing is forcing myself to be sociable so much. I can’t deal with it. I don’t want to let her down, but it shouldn’t be such a big deal. It’s only because she can’t cope on her own that I feel so guilty about thinking this.

But it’s late, and I have to be up in the morning!

East, West, Home is Best? *

I said I would leave this site alone and knew at the time I would go back on it. Maybe I have already done so, writing up on the locked-up G4 Mac upstairs something I could not upload but from another computer. Anyway, of course my not writing, or not writing so much for my blogs in no way cured me of my problems, freeing me up to finally write my novel since the flitfulness continues apace and I can still not settle down to any one thing but go round and round in circles. More

Reintroducing Yeast

Yeast this morning, stirred into a cup of water. Milk and cheese for three days had done nothing to ail me, and that was an anti-climax. It makes it so much more difficult to explain to people. And I feel self-conscious already eating my own food everyday and explaining what I’m doing. Today, as I think I often do, I was working from one of the workshops where a guy has a microwave with my warmed up food and thinking how I would deflect any questions about my diet and the symptoms of it.

   Borderline paranoia today. Maybe that is part of the problem. Feeling vulnerable and especially inarticulate, unready with words.

   But no chair-through-window moment of rage, no especial irritability. Just feeling gauche and idiotic.

   Went from work to get my hair cut. I was looking stupid, with my thin hair coming out of my head like those stereotypical mad professors in the films. I had been thinking how this is part of the way people react to me, the impression they get. And then after that I binged on sweets from the health food shop. All were gluten free. We’re talking coconut macaroons, coconut bars and fruit bars. Of course all were high in sugar. Now, since I have started the diet and aside from one slip while in Wales when I tried so hard, and had spent my Friday night cooking something that turned out tasting pretty awful (when eaten from cold at any rate), I have eaten absolutely nothing that isn’t allowed. And it has been a good few weeks now. Maybe it was a result of the yeast, with candida repopulating my stomach and making me crave this awful food, but more likely, I think, I was trying to sabotage this diet which was putting nothing my way. I have been thinking a lot about ADD over the last few days, how I am still suffering from it despite the diet and all the effort I’m putting into it. I’m a little self-conscious about it all. Also a little depressed. I know I was thinking at times that with all the work I did with probiotics and capryllic acid I may have done more to rectify my problem over the last few weeks than I ever have before, but also ensured from this that there would be no easy solution on reintroducing this and that.

   I have been explaining to people that my problems are cumulative, and that diagnosing food intolerances isn’t always as simple as diagnosing allergic reactions which would certainly come up over a couple of days. I have been going through it all in my head. Milk could be a problem in any number of ways. Metabolites of casein could be a problem should candida proliferate in the intestinal lining making the membrane more permeable. This could occur, they say, with the presence of refined carbohydrates, and possibly with lactose itself. Additionally, should it be that the omega 6 fatty acids which are present in high quantities in milk and dairy produce are indeed problematic once they begin to supplant omega 3 fatty acids which are optimum for the passage of chemical messages in the brain and thus for optimum brain function, then this could be a further route by which milk could worsen the symptoms of ADD over time, but over a longer period than the two to three day reintroduction period. But then I am aware that this explanation probably makes it look as if I am rationalising. I have written before that I hate the idea that in pursuing this diet people would think that I am either a hypochondriact trying to medicate a vague malaise with vaguer ideas – like many of the people at work, it might be said – or that I am fussy about my food when nothing could be further from the truth. I cringe when I see books like This book could save your life by A.M. Holmes or characters like Fluff, or whatever she is called in Spaced who is immediately dismissed by her appearance (she claims to work in fashion and is a real airhead) but also because she vacilates over accepting a glass of wine because of the yeast. They seem so accurate (there are people who pick up on health fads, like all of Bill Clinton’s staff who turned out at Jamie Oliver’s restaurant demanding food from the South Beach Diet on one of his programmes) and yet are so utterly wrong.

I worry now. I have my deadline, with the possibility of giving up work in a few months time. But I worry if I will make it at all. If I will be medicated by then (I have decided over the last few days that I must push for this) or if I will even have got to the bottom of my food problems.

The Potato Blight

Actually I am being very facetious with my title. As my last post made clear, it cannot be certain what is causing my current malaise. What is clear is that I can’t concentrate, and that I am having a lot of reveries sat in front of a piece of paper trying to write a continuation of Nat’s story. My legs are restless too and I’m very antsy. 

As far as reveries go, I have been having discussions with students about being sexist, telling them (within earshot of certain people, as usual), that they will miss out on a hell of a lot in life if they exclude women, that yes (launching into one of my semi-manic comic monologues) women can take an utterly ordinary, insignificant event and turn it into a three or four hour conversation topic and do our heads in, but that on the flip side they can have far wider-ranging conversation; I have been cooking, filling in for the kitchen staff at work; I have been describing in one of the morning meetings a student’s problems with a subscription to an erotic website, jokily describing the website in such a way as makes clear my own familiarity with porn sites, but also arguing strongly that there should be no moral qualms about encouraging such a student to buy erotic magazines… And much more. 

Nothing remotely out of the ordinary, except that I could not simply shake my head and be rid of them. They were persistent and intrusive, which they have not been for a long while. 

There was not, as I wrote earlier, much potato in the curry I made. It was just hot. As far as testing goes it was really not ideal. Far too ambiguous. Perhaps I will have to stretch this one out beyond the few days I’ll be eating this curry. 

It is good though, after putting so much into the diet to see such a positive result, which presumeably will continue into tomorrow. I will have to watch too that it does, since it could be that today’s gym session was the problem. I shall have to watch out for the impact of demanding cardiovascular exercise on my symptoms. There may be some effect, and possibly a negative effect arising from the demand on the system made by toxins and the like. Mainly, though, I think there must be a problem with either starch or hot foods. (I did not in the end serve much rice at all with the curry either at lunch or dinner.) Nor did I eat more fruit than I have been on the diet. Indeed, less than most days with an apple after my millet porridge in the morning, and another after my dinner. 

Yes, these positive results will be a positive thing for me, I’m sure, after all the impatience with the constant demands of my time of my cooking and food shopping, even if I have to stick it all out a little longer. 

*** 

I should describe the reintroduction stage Here is the schedule: 

Tap Water       -  1-2 pints a day.Potatoes          -  Have 2 x 4oz portionsMilk                   -  1 pint a dayYeast                -  3 brewers yeast tablets or 2 teaspoons of fresh bakers yeast in water or fresh yeast spread on rice cakes. 

[Reverie of looking tired in a morning meeting and being told that I should go to bed earlier. Me responding that I did go to bed early, but that doesn’t much help when you don’t fall asleep until seven hours later. Describing my exclusion diet and how I had reintroduced yeast the night before, smashed up a cupboard, gone out for a walk and come upon some guys kicking a hedgehog around, and that I kicked hell out of them; then describing my condition and a similar situation to the girls in the kitchen; then, again, in a morning meeting.] 

Tea                    -  Drink at least 6 cups.Rye                    -  Test 5 Ryvita or 2 slices of Rye bread (check the bread is not a mixture of wheat and rye). Only test rye as bread if the yeast was negative.Beef                  -   2 x 3oz portions. 

[Popped to the toilet and to make some fruit tea. Reverie first of doing my usual rant against homeopathy, talking about water having not only to have a memory, but also be a discerning memory, to be essentially sentient [reverie about flow forms, something the people at work go mad about, and dismissing them, saying I can appreciate the beauty of water but rarely feel the need to verbalise it, etc etc., a whole other rant here] saying how is water supposed to diagnose the person it commes into contact with, and remember the specific molecules it was adjacent to at one point in its history, and discard all others, such as, for example, fish piss and, say, even homeopathic remedies for other individuals which have subsequently been passed out as urine and diluted several times in the water treatment works, something which should, if homeopathy’s logic is to be pursued, make it stronger… talking to the mother of one student I believe could be helped by a G/F C/F diet having shared my lunch with him for a couple of months (this because another student expressed an interest in my lunch today), describing to her the improvement in his condition. Oh, and the first, telling the managers at work that one of their light switches was arcing, being put down by one of them “yes, thank you, when we need you’re electrical advice we’ll ask for it” before challenging them…] 

Butter         -  Test at least 2oz during the day.Onions      -  Have 2 x 1oz portions.Eggs          -  Have 2 during the day.Oats           -  Test as porridge oats, have two servings.Coffee       -   Test coffee beans and instant coffee - have at least 6 cups.Chocolate -  Plain or cocoa.Barley        -  Can be tested as pearl barley, 2 x 2oz portions (cooked weight) or barley flakes.Citrus Fruit  - Have at least 2 fruits or 2 glasses of fruit juice.White Wine - Have two glasses.Corn             - Test cornflour or corn on the cob.Yoghurt        - Ordinary yoghurt made with cow’s milk, test 2 small cartons.Wheat          -  Test as 5 slices of bread if yeast is okay, or wheat breakfast cereals or pasta.Saccharin   -  Test as saccharin tablets.Shellfish     -  Have 2 x 2oz portions.Nuts            -   Any kind, have 2 x 1oz portions.Preservatives  - Try fruit squashes, tinned foods, sausages, smoked fish etc. 

I have a couple of reservations, including that white wine is a strange choice being as it contains both yeast and alcohol, and would like to reintroduce a few extra things, including, as of today, also spicy foods on their own, mushrooms, sugar and vodka. On the whole though, I am glad I can see the end of this thing in sight, and that I soon might come to a time when just excluding gluten and dairy, say, may seem like a doddle, and it will be much easier mentally because of the consistency that should come from having conducted an exclusion diet and narrowed things down. We’ll see.

Tap water reintroduced

I started drinking tap water a couple of days back as the first stage of the various reintroductions I’ll be going through over the next few weeks. No effect. Still feel great from the diet. It’ll be potatoes from today, so I cooked up a curry last night with a couple of the now-sprouted potatoes I had been keeping hidden away underneath a tea towel away from the light in one of the kitchen cupboards. Most had gone a little soft so I just put a few in.

One of the things I find with ADD is that the saying “out of sight, out of mind” is completely accurate. I once left some potatoes in the celophane wrapper they had come in stowed away on an overflowing shelf in a flat I lived in for perhaps a year and a half in Prague. Eventually they spilled over and the rancid liquid that is produced when you leave potatoes for this long flooded all over the carpet, leaving my long-suffering housemate on her knees all day. The trouble was the kitchen was in the room of my other housemate, and he was one of these with whom I never got beyond the awkward stage and so I didn’t feel I could go in to his room - the door was most often closed - and cook. Of course this was a massive problem.

Anyway, my curry tastes fantastic. I’m getting back into making curry with all the usual spices, cardamon, cumin seed, mustard seed first into the hot oil, and then onions (though on this diet it has to be just finally chopped peppers). It was a base of coconut cream, then potatoes and parsnips, chicken and cabbage. It’s a little grey, and very hot, perhaps from all the spices I added which cooked in as the veg and chicken cooked in the sauce, but possibly also from the paprika which I added and which I suspect was a hot Hungarian Paprika or some such rather than the mildly flavoured spice the package suggested (I had been using a different container and also thought it was fairly old).

It’s not ideal to reintroduce something whilst also making such a hot curry which I’ll be having over the few days of potatoes - it’s said hot spices can exacerbate a problem with an excessively permeable intestinal lining. And I have brought in rice this time as well, as much for aesthetic purposes - so people don’t see me eating this aromatic but grey schlop - which also ups the carbs at a time when I am reintroducing starchy potatoes. Still, if I find there is a problem there is a second reintroduction stage when I can more carefully monitor these other factors.

I haven’t been very good at doing my food diary. I must keep on top of that.

Sores Gone*

The sores on the corners of my mouth have heeled up some time during my exclusion diet. Over the last couple of weeks I have supplemented friendly bacteria, even over the last few days, going so far as to make fermented cabbage juice which I have read contains beneficial bacteria. This is cabbage liquidised up with filtered or distilled water and left for a few days for the bacteria naturally present in the cabbage leaves to proliferate. It makes for pretty bad breath, and noticeably cabbagey farts but apparently does some good. I don’t know whether this, with my supplementation of caprylic acid every day has made a difference - I did once supplement with this for a period about six months ago and did experience both the “die-off reactions” that some writers speak about, and also soe benefits, so this may be connected. Whatever it is, it does demonstrate yet again that my problems must be linked to some nutritional deficiencies. My pharmacist in the village down the road from Black Herd Mews - who has apparently upped and left overnight since - told me that these sores were evidence of a lack of vitamin B. I bought some from him which I never then took because it did not say it did not contain yeast, but supplementation of vitamin B on its own never made a difference, something that would not surprise Patrick Halford and others at the Institute of Optimum Nutrition who highlight the interdependency of all vitamin systems, and the necessity of looking at any such deficits as a whole rather than singularly, but only now can I see how true it is that some of us may have imbalances which demonstrate an impaired ability to take on certain vitamins.

Trip

I’ve been on another trip with students, and I’ve come back much more settled, and looking forward to my move to new accomodation. I’ve been jokey with M____ again, playing around, and she has sensed that I am looking forward to the move. This could perhaps be taken as proof conclusive of how I am sensitive to changes in my routine.

By and large I was ok there. I took a lot of food with me and for the first time really anticipated the difficulties I would have with food and compliance to my diet. After all, I am away a lot, and came to feel that I was using trips and birthdays and celebrations and the like as excuses for non-compliance. Especially a problem, I am coming to see, was that I was using non-compliance in one often less avoidable sense as an excuse for non-compliance elsewhere, particularly with smoking and caffeine: I am tired from not sleeping from eating cheese and drinking beer, so I need nicotine or caffeine to perk myself up. This despite having proved this logic flawed again and again.

I did have a little caffeine over there, but not as much as I have elsewhere. I had batter with fish, and black pudding which contained oats and wheat flour. And I had flapjacks most days. But otherwise I did better than I often do, and didn’t feel myself drifting off quite so much as I have in the past.

I have been back a couple of days now and I have fallen into the old rationalisations. Yesterday I had a decaf coffee, telling myself I fancied the taste. I had it with sugar, because I had sugar a couple of times in Wales and didn’t feel any real ill-effects (before I have noticed that the effects of sugar are cumulative). I then had another, unconsciously (as I admitted to myself once or twice before repressing it) wanting the caffeine.  This morning I woke very tired, as I tend to do once this caffeine vicious spiral has taken off, and eventualy succumbed to a full-strength coffee with sugar. Soon after (and no less tired) I began to feel that I was drifting while reading Bleak House, I can’t recall the reveries, but they were there.

I have wondered whether I should ditch the idea of full food diaries and simply record days of compliance. Ie. caffeine - 3 days, gluten 4, dairy, 7, beer 3, spirits 5, nicotine 24. This would then simplify the record and all slips would be regarded as such with neither decaf coffee nor flapjacks regarded as somehow borderline cases. It would also help me in interpreting the evidence since I rarely/never look over old diaries and am only able, therefore, to interpret a single day’s reactions. I am sure there could be a good calculation too to record the resultant mood and concentration, perhaps involving the day’s results plus some fraction of the preceeding days. Some months ago I became possessed with the idea of trying to input into Microsoft [reveries of playing guitar for everyone at work, triggered by Blind Melon’s No Rain, but continuing from regular soundchecking reverie] Excel. I couldn’t manage it, and it became just one of the many hundreds of structures I have attempted to impose on my life that have fallen by the wayside, along with the transparencies I was hoping to draw graphs and pictagrams on and all the rest of it. This blog is the most successful so far!

One thing I noticed from Wales was that the sores in the corners of my mouth completely cleared up.

But I’m still rather out of it. I’ve just been reading an interesting article on M.E. and food intolerance http://www.ldmeg.org.uk/jb/food.htm which I found after looking up caffeine intolerance, wondering how much of my problems may stem from this. I intend to follow the writer’s advice regarding sprouted seeds, indeed I’ve just ordered a book she suggests, The Sprouters Handbook by Edward Cairney from E-Bay and I may go and buy a couple of things in a health food shop later when I’ll be dragged to Mardy Hell by M____. Now though, I think I should go and write an article in my other blog that I’ve been meaning o write for a while.

Oh, one piece of news: I have decided to go for a position at work which I’m led to believe would involve cooking with students.

Decaf? You’re having a laugh!

I’ve been sleeping much better of late but today I’m “spiked,” my word for being unable to switch off. And having been very careful today, it looks like decaf coffee is again to blame. Now, I didn’t have any of the reveries I was subject to the other day following my half nescafe, half decaf mix, but still I cannot sleep, and I’m just lying there cuddling up to my life size doggie having sexual fantasies of secretaries in publishing houses and cellists (which I must, incidentally, write up one day).

The rationalisation? That it was something I enjoyed. Fair enough, except that this rationalisation came at the exact time that I was tired, meaning that it related not to the taste at all but to the effects of the little caffeine that remains in decaf coffee (if you have two or three cups it is the same as one ordinary strength coffee, making decaf, in effect, far stronger relatively, than non-alcoholic beer is to the ordinary stuff, and for this reason in many ways quite misleading). I admitted this to myself briefly before repressing the fact. And besides, even though it is important for me to enjoy my food, in and of itself, and because this aids conformity to the diet, which as I have proved again and again is very important for my health and wellbeing, I know that  caffeine, whether it is decaf or not is bad for me and so, should avoid it.

Just as with the struggle to give up smoking, I find that conforming to this diet is as much an intellectual struggle as a battle of will power. Only in anticipating, catching and arguing against these rationalisations can we make it. And of course, with problems such as ADD, this struggle is made much more difficult because of the tendency to impulsivity and obsession; but the more you conform, the more easy it is to conform, not only because you gain habits and knowledge, but because this impulsivity starts to recede.

Still, there will be slips, and through them we learn. Important too, though, not to punish ourselves for them.

No coffee, ctd.

My head is feeling pretty clear today so far, and I should note that with all the negativity of the last few posts, because I have had no coffee for a couple of days, and I think I am feeling the effects of that. The upheavals of the last few weeks may have been having their effect but perhaps there is room for a lot of positivity over this diet when followed correctly; it is just that I haven’t been doing much of that, and one of the rationalisations that keeps coming up, and I must learn to contend with, is that if I am unable to follow the diet in one respect, I can let it go in others and treat it as a way of documenting reactions. Really, this is nothing more than defeatism.

08:30 breakfast of GF toast and peanut butter, water and Vit B6/Zinc

Nothing since so far. Clear head. Able to talk. Not restless or angry and no reveries that I can recall.