So I began eating more carbs, and slowly my health problems returned. They returned with a vengeance. Since eliminating all carbs helped me before, I tried it again out of desperation, but my condition worsened with this second attempt. I couldn’t digest anything, I couldn’t focus, and often I felt so bad I didn’t want to interact with other people. My heart would race and my brain would fog after every meal I ate. My lymphatic system was clogged up to the point of pain. I’m sure I was on my way to ulcerative colitis. With every diet I tried and every rule I followed, low-carb or high-carb or whatever, my health worsened, aside from temporary improvements in some areas. I lost all trust in my mental ideas about health and diet because each one failed me miserably, and certainly, no external authority could tell me how to get healthy.
So what was the alternative? I abandoned everything I thought I knew about nutrition. I started to listen to my body and only my body 100% of the time. I really had no choice. That was the first time in my life I ever did that. It’s not that I never listened to my body before; if I was thirsty I would drink water. Duh! But until that point I was always operating within the
framework of some dietary dogma I created for myself. It was quite something to let go of all
that mental garbage, and learn to actually trust myself. To trust that my body knew exactly what it needed. Everything that went into my mouth was judged, not based on what I read was “good” or “bad”, but how it reacted in my body and what my body was craving. Since I made that change, it’s been a slow, but steady healing process. All of my health problems have vastly improved. I’m hardly in a state of robust health, but I’m no longer on a downward spiral of disease. Not quite a fairy tale ending. My guess is it will take at least as long to regain my health as it did to lose it.
At one point, I thought I knew a lot about nutrition. I knew what caused disease and what
created health. I fanatically pursued those practices for many years in an extremist fashion.
And then life kicked me in the nuts. If there is one thing I do know, it’s that no food or
macronutrient is inherently good or bad. The “goodness” or “badness” of any food can only be determined in relationship to the body of the person that is consuming that food. Dietary rules are static, the body is not. Health has nothing to do with the amount of “good” foods you consume and the amount of “bad” foods you avoid; it has everything to do with how your body uses those foods, which is based on a long list of variables entirely unique to you. Give me any “good” food or any “healthy” habit, and I’ll give you a protocol to ruin your health with it. That includes vegetables, water, grass-fed organic animal products, raw butter from Jersey
cows, exercise, fasting, or a low-carb paleo diet.
Dental health is one area where the “there are no inherently good or bad foods” holds true. At one time I had a list of foods that I thought were good for my teeth:
- Cod liver oil, skate liver oil
- Liver
- Cultured milk
- Cheese
- Butter, butter oil
- Bone marrow
– Bone broth/stock
– Fish stock
– Kelp and other sea veggies
– Vegetable juice
– Molasses
– Fish eggs (look for discarded carcasses at fish markets)
– Raw cream
– Mustard and tomalley (innards of crab and lobster)
– Animal glands
– Brains
– Intestines
– Blood
– Fish (raw or fermented), especially eyes and head
– Oysters and clams (raw)
– Raw milk
– Supplements
– Ca, Mg
– Clays
– Si, S, Mn, Cu, Zn, B (mixed forms like chelates) (3-6 mg/day)
– Vit-C
And things that I thought were “bad” for my teeth:
– Unsoaked, unsprouted grains, nuts, and seeds
– Sugar, fruit
I adhered to this list pretty religiously, eating huge amounts of grass-fed raw butter, butter oil, skate liver oil, organ meats, bone marrow, fish head stock, and high-mineral foods and
supplements. I also avoided nearly all fruit, processed foods, and grains. I binged on nuts
occasionally (it was an allowed food).
The result? My teeth stopped getting worse, but never really healed. And when I did eat fruit,
say three oranges, my teeth would hurt! I should have had teeth of steel but instead they hurt when I ate a couple pieces of fruit! Another factor was that my sleep was so fucked up that I was grinding my teeth every night.
It’s not that those foods aren’t important for the teeth, but only in context with the individual’s body. My teeth are feeling much better now, even with all the evil sugar in fruit and ice cream and with eating starch with every meal.
The Healthy Food and Diet Blog 