Food as medicine. Food sensitivities, too.

Food and diet has been critically important to my healing journey. I intend to write more about food sensitivities as I move forward. I’m working on developing language around how they work as a liaison to the psyche. They are profound teachers that humble me again and again and teach me all manner of things about the nature of being human. I am finding more and more people who understand them in this way. What we are finding is that there is some spiritual significance in the very real (and sometimes potentially deadly) physical, biological and physiological reactions that so many people on the planet are experiencing with foods that used to be safe to eat. Of course there is also environmental significance to the phenomena. There is a lot of evidence that the very poor care of the food supply has made these issues worse for many people. This is why eating whole real food that has been sustainably farmed becomes so important for so many of us. It doesn’t completely get rid of the issues but it helps minimize them. Once again we see that everything matters and that it’s all connected.

In my quest to language this experience as I move forward I hope to help us be able to help each other more and more. I’m grateful to all the many people I’ve learned from already as we’ve engaged in this process in various chronic illness and food sensitivities forums online. We are all coming together synergistically, informing one another that we might help each other heal. What a time to be alive that this can happen with such dynamism.

UPDATE: I’m updating this post with a little post that actually started this trajectory. I was talking about my gluten issues in a food healing group I’m part of…this way you can see my process of learning too:

I mentioned in a comment somewhere on here the other day that I didn’t really know if I was gluten intolerant or not because I never had a clear improvement when I cut out gluten nor have I ever ingested gluten since I cut it out and got better so I simply didn’t know for sure but hadn’t tested it yet.

Well, I’ve tested it now…not really on purpose but I was confronted with something I wanted in the store that had some barley malt in it…otherwise the ingredients were clean and all things I’ve safely eaten so I went ahead and got it. I’ve had a pretty severe reaction from ingesting just about 2 oz of the drink with the barley malt in it…so, alas, I am, now, officially gluten intolerant. (I happen to have celiac genes as well, but having the genes isn’t definitive –think epigenetics, genes are not determinant in and of themselves — and I know others in my family have them and do not have celiac…by the time I could have been tested for celiac I had been gluten free for too long). Hoping the reaction will be gone by tomorrow…I’m 36 hours out and it’s a bit better but I’m tired of it.

this was originally a comment in response to one of my fellow gluten sensitive friends in the thread with the above post:

Gluten: I don’t miss bread enough to care all that much. But I do resist the idea that it’s unsafe for me to eat ANYTHING…It angers me that I have to feel unsafe around food at all. And I still sometimes simply cannot believe what happens when I eat certain foods…it remains mind-boggling to me. Food sensitivities are intense teachers. Bottom line it’s a teaching in humility … and no one likes that. (see here)

Above I am making a complaint, but I will say, that I am also healing and many of my sensitivities have eased as well. The other day, in fact, I was feeling rather cheered when I shared a post about once again preparing fermented foods. In that post I said:

(note: for anyone dealing with histamine issues, I couldn’t tolerate any cultured or fermented foods for several years. This capacity is a new one that I’m thrilled about. As we heal, we can add more foods. I didn’t actually expect to ever tolerate fermented foods again given what we’re often told in histamine intolerance circles, but many of us are finding out that as we heal the sky is the limit. Trust your body always, above and beyond what anyone tells you. We are resilient healing machines. (read more)

And, so, that too is true. There is room for both frustration and hope in this journey.