Unexpected Health

The stories I could tell you about growing up with a body that just didn’t work right. Like how I was a part-time “bubble boy” several weeks every year due to my inability to stop moving (i.e. running, climbing, football in the yard, playing in the lilac bushes) and severe allergies (not to running, but to grass and trees and lilac bushes, and to pretty much every plant and furry or feather animal on the planet) and severe allergy-induced asthma.

Or how, at thirteen, while on a bed of ice, my body actually blistering from the heat it was generating (my temp was 105° for over a week) the doctor told my mother and my grandmother, right there in front of me, that I was going to die.

I didn’t. Just in case you were wondering.

I could tell you how I went from taking four pills every day, and from pumping four doses of nasal spray into each nostril every day, and from taking a puff or two on my inhaler for much of my life, not to mention the weekly allergy injections I got for over two decades, to taking NO medication at all for the past two years. And I live with two cats.

I have endured migraines ever since I was an infant (about four decades now). When I was seven and eight, I would walk the few blocks to and from school and there were many days I couldn’t finish the walk home because  I had to lay my head on the cold, hard side of the road and wait for my mom to find me.

Two years ago, I was having migraines a few times a week, which makes a job difficult to do and delving into the depths of your imagination in order to write nearly impossible. Cathy suggested I try cutting back on dairy and gluten. Not cutting them out completely. Just cutting back. So I cut back  about 85% on dairy and gluten.

The only other change? I ate one salad every day for lunch or for dinner. Just one! And I usually ate something with the salad, like  fish or chicken and rice or a turkey burger, if it was my dinner. I didn’t set out to lose weight or to change my entire life. Just to stop those migraines if possible and to eat a bit healthier – that daily salad was as close as I had gotten to veggies in years.

Way up top are photos of me from the time I started with those three simple changes to my eating habits until nine months later. I had been working out three to five days a week before all this, so that didn’t change. Everything else did.

I lost 35 pounds in about five months without setting out to do so. But the best result? My allergies got better. And like I said way up top, I have been off those medications for two years. None. Nada. Zilch! I’ve had about six migraines in the past year. Total! I even live with two cats (and I’m allergic to pretty much every animal on the planet). Taking small steps to improve my health totally changed my life.

Talk about the unexpected being awesome!

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