Reflecting on the bashing I've given my gut over the years, how much of this can you relate to?

When I was diagnosed as having Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth (SIBO) and a leaky gut (determined by live blood analysis and presenting symptoms) I looked mainly at my diet as the culprit.  I was eating a diet version of the Food Pyramid, the CSIRO diet, which, on reflection was too low in fat and too high in carbs (glucose) to sustain me. I was running on grain and sugar highs with massive crashes, mood swings, needed to nap for up to three hours daily and used caffeine and alcohol as my crutches. I was a good girl and went to the gym 3-5 times a week.  This lifestyle on top of having two children, moving to the country, building a house and my husband starting his own business was a recipe for adrenal burnout! It wasn't particularly stressful, it was actually an enjoyable time of my life, it was just super busy busy busy.  I was always (am still) on the go. I was tired but couldn't sleep well at night and I was pretty jumpy and sensitive. (Hello cortisol).

Over the past eight months or so, since I started this primal journey I have read lots about gut health and started to think about mine for the first time in my life, it's obvious to me now that the above lifestyle would wreck even the most stellar of guts but I am now starting to realise that the big crash probably slowly accumulated over the decades.  I want to take you back, way back, back into time... How much of this seemingly normal life can you relate to?

Heavy Grains and Sugar consumption
So I was born in 1975, natural birth and breast fed.  Well done Mam, I know they encouraged you not to. My parents are very healthy and have always eaten wholesome food cooked from scratch.  My babyfood was food my parents ate and then zizzed up to baby texture.  Both parents worked but still prepared a family meal every night -  that's when I ate at home or when I didn't turn my nose up and proclaim 'yuk! Why do you eat such weird food?'  Since around the 1950's chemicals were put into our foods for the first time.  My Dad used to work at a chemical plant and came home and marvelled to my Mam that they had made a yoghurt taste like strawberry that didn't contain any strawberry - such progress!  My Mam's wise intuition told her 'that's not right' and she steered from that in the supermarket but even with all the good will in the world I remember my eating habits from school age as being less than great.  I remember eating a Mars Bar three times a day, I drank fruit juice, ate museli bars, ate processed meats like Corn Beef, drank 2L of diet caffeine coca cola daily, ate chemical cocktails like Angel Delight (a packet mouse) not to mention the white toast with treacle on.  When I left for Uni my diet revolved mainly around bread, lots of bread, it's healthy right? 8-10 serves of healthy bread a day.

Antibiotics
When I was teenager I started to get bad zits.  It was mild acne really but it made me self conscious and the spots started to leave scars.  The Dr prescribed an antibiotic called Oxytetracycline which works by interfering with the ability of bacteria to produce essential proteins, without these proteins, the bacteria can not grow.  Oxytetracycline is active against the bacteria on the skin that causes the acne. I took this antibiotic for YEARS. I can't remember how many years it was but I just got repeat prescriptions and I took it faithfully.  I can't remember any other antibiotics that I took but I remember going with Mam to the Dr whenever I was ill (tonsillitis was a regular one) and always coming away with a prescription for something to 'fix it'.

Contraceptive Pill
I thankfully, only had a brief period of time taking the contraceptive pill.  Again it was prescribed for acne.  I took Dianette for an unremembered short time in my life but long enough to remember it's name.  Maybe from 19-21 years old.  I Googled Dianette to check I had the correct spelling and it brought up these searches "Dianette: My beautiful cheerleader daughter dies in agony..." "Dianette and Polycystic Ovary Syndrome..." "Dianette...linked to the deaths of seven British women..." and my stomach fell.  I feel like our generation has been a serious guinea pig to not only new strangisms like the pill, but also antibiotics, GMOs, chemicals, pesticides, herbicides. 

I remember a few girlfriends at the time would keep taking the pill even when they were due to have a bleed (lets not pretend it was a period) as it was an inconvenient time.  Maybe they had a night out planned, or were travelling, anyway, it was easier not to have the hassle of a regular normal part of being a woman.  That seemed very strange to me and I am glad I listened to my intuition and didn't do that.  I came off the pill because it made me feel 'weird'.  I was at Uni and wanted to do well, travel the world et cetera and the pill made me want to quit Uni and have babies.  *what a thought*.  Recent research shows that the contraceptive pill affects the gut in the same was as antibiotics, that is destroys it.

Depression and feeling not that great
All through my teen years and into my 20's I had periods of feeling utterly flat, what's the point, can't be bothered.  It wasn't a constant depression but it came and went and was often lurking for me in the background.  I remember spending most of my six month exchange at a Uni in The Netherlands crying endlessly.  I could never pin point what the cause was and never took an anti depressants other than a few Health Shop off the shelf numbers such as St Johns Wort.  I just assumed there was something wrong with me and I had to pull myself together.  I wish I could take this gut knowledge to my then 19 year old self.  Poor Helen Of The Past!  The depression and mood issues which to me are now so obviously linked to impaired gut health were a blessing in disguise as my well meaning Mam would send me Self Help Books, prescribe hot baths and early nights and have I tried yoga, meditation and deep breathing, all of which are wonderful assets in my life now.  Thanks Mam.

Toxins
I remember my dressing table as a teenager: deodorant, body spray, hairspray, hair moose, gel, perfume, body lotion, face lotion, hand lotion, make up oh the list goes on, all chemical shit storms applied daily until I was about 30.  I was living in Australia by now and a work colleague Tania who is now studying to be a Naturopath told me about Sodium Laurel Sulphate. I thought it was criminal that they could make something so harmless as soap out of this shit and sell it to us without us knowing. From then I cleaned up all of our personal and cleaning products to less endocrine disrupting stuff.  The toxic load doesn't end there though, I was smoking cigarettes during my 20's, drinking more than my fair share of alcohol, drinking chlorinated water (kills the bacteria in the water and in your gut) and lets not forget about my Diet Coke habit.

NSAIDs
Ah my good old Ibuprofen pal Nurofen.  I have always had Nurofen in the bathroom cabinet for as long as I can remember.  Nurofen was there for me when I had drank to much wine the night before, worked too hard at the gym, worked too hard in the office, had my numerous headaches, tooth ache or period pain.  I wasn't addicted to them but I definitely took too many of them.  I have cleared my chronic head ache issues through ditching Gluten and excess alcohol and healing my gut. Taking nonsteroidal drugs like Advil, aspirin, Motrin and Nurofen on a regular basis damage the gut lining allowing microbes, partially digested food particales and toxins to enter the blood stream (leaky gut). NSAIDs block pain by blocking eicosanoids and cytokines that promote inflammation but they also block the ones that also promote healing.  By doing this the body doesn't allow for the health maintenance growth and repair of gut cells.  If you have chronic headaches it's better to look at the root cause.

Other factors that have affected my gut health over the years include lack of and inadequate sleep, overtraining and not including enough time for pleasure in my day - a sleep when I'm dead sort of attitude.  Tsk.  It's the accumulation of the chronic stressors in our lifestyle and environment that can damage our health.  The gut is vulnerable to the presence of stress and demonstrates stress induced changes.  But really stress and gut health is in itself a whole nother blog post!

Thanks for listening, can you relate?  How did the way you lived your earlier decades contribute to your health today?  Let me know in the comments below or email me at primalsoapbox@gmail.com

My no gym experiment

If you are a follower of this blog then you'll know that I am gym goer of, forever.  25 years of continuous gym going and even some instructing too.  There are a myriad of benefits to exercise but weight loss is not one of them.  Shocking I know but true.  80% of your body composition is determined by what you put into your mouth.  The other 20% is a mixed of genetics, how you manage stress, your sleep quality and how much sun you get.  Yes, really.  I know, it definitely gave me the permission to stop exhausting myself trying to make the gym classes.

Every day life is busy enough
I think exercise is a daily necessity, we are not genetically used to sitting at a desk all day we are used to moving around all day at a moderate pace.  Well, I was doing that but feeling guilty for doing it, feeling bad for rushing from one thing to the next, not taking any 'time out' to relax. But the list of things to do never ends!  There are kids to feed, clean up from, then feed again repeat a million times, there is washing to do and hang out and sort and put away, cooking, baking, shopping, feeding all of the animals, tending to weeds in the veggie patch, plus random house projects such as painting bits of furniture, clearing out the kids drawers, cleaning the house, vacuuming, mopping end and repeat.  Right? I know you relate.  Whether you are a guy or a gal, your list of jobs is never ending. So I decided to view this as activity, therefore a good thing.  My Grandma was busy like this with her three kids and I bet the woman before me in my line had similar chores to do.  It's physical.  It's enough. 

But what if I get weak?
The other area I wanted to focus on was strength.  Mark Sisson in The Primal Blueprint suggests this as the recipe for optimal health and fitness, (among other Primal Blueprint Laws)

• Move frequently at a slow pace
• Lift heavy things
• Sprint once in a while
• Get adequate sunlight
• Play
• Get adequate sleep

Yoga & au revoir back pain
Ok so I am nailing the first one. Lift Heavy things, Sisson suggested that these four exercises encompass them all: push ups, squats, plank and pull ups.  I did start by just reps of the four but found it SO BORING.  I love yoga but never really classify it as 'real exercise' (I know, what a fool) but figured that yoga encompasses all of those moves and decided to commit to doing 20-30mins per day on the lawn.  I use the Yoga Download app on my phone, it's free and I get to do whatever class I feel like on that day.  I am loving it and so is my back.  I have suffered with facet joint syndrome for years, bloody agonising lower back pain.  Reducing the inflammation in my body by eating primal has all but eliminated the joint problem and the millions of forward bends and ragdoll poses I have been doing has brought an end to my back problems.  Man, that alone would have been reason for me to go primal. The gym classes made my neck and shoulders tight, as did the stress of being exhausted from the class, the rushing to get there, plus all of the moving around at a slow pace ON TOP of gym work. I was stressed, it was too much for my system.

How getting adequate sleep and sunlight turned my world around
My sleep was pretty rubbish.  Hard to get to sleep, slept lightly, woke regularly, struggled to get back to sleep.  I read that getting outdoors in blue and green space and seeing white light early in the day can help you sleep at night by setting your circadian rhythm.  I thought that sounds good, lets give it a whirl. Yoga on the lawn, followed by a beach walk with sprints on the days I felt energetic enough, followed by a dip in the ocean is my personal recipe for world peace! Tick tick tickety tick.  I felt on top of the world all day after this little routine and by evening I was winding down all yawny and looking forward to beddies. How could you get more sunlight into your life?  Maybe a walk in the morning before work, or at lunchtime, get your arms and legs exposed and be careful not to burn. 

A note on play
Pre the experiment I was too tired, busy and stressed to really get down to some serious play with the kids.  I know you can relate.  Anyway, Dad's are good at that right?  But I had never considered play as prescriptive to overall awesome health and hey if my idol Mark Sisson suggests it as Primal Blueprint Law Number 7, lets give it a bash.  So, because my beachy yoga workouts didn't take as long as a drive to the gym, hour class, shower, drive home (3hrs), I had more time to do my jobs as outlined above and more time for play!  I was in a better mood too and not stressed and shouty.  So a bounce on the tramp, a kick of the footy, frizbee, bike ride races, Uno, monopoly, snakes n ladders etc etc have come into our family life, as well as just some simple tickles, or my fave tickle maths (I ask a maths question to Sam and tickle him til he answers it correctly!) It. Felt. Cool!  Such a good stress reliever and chance to connect with my kids.  Feels good.

Neck pain relief
I have chronic neck pain.  I've got the right pillows, I have massage, I see the chiro and we have decided that it's my mindset that creates the neck pain.  That stressed out feeling, that busy busy busy.  I cancelled my scheduled chiro appointment yesterday as my neck is way looser than before my experiment.  Hoorah to that.  It is still a bit tight, so I'm just off to do some chair neck yoga.

My take away message
Our lives are so busy, most of us are active enough, strenuous gym workouts add to the stress on the body.  Most of us are over stressed as it is, some with adrenal fatigue.  There is a simpler more pleasant way to get the benefits and be fit and strong without knackering yourself!!! I didn't get weak or unfit!  I am just as fit as before, but less stressed!

As Mark Sisson puts it,  "Overexercising is a common scenario when you consider how our active population has such a strong focus, dedication, and willpower to push through signs of fatigue.  Our bodies are simply not adapted to benefit from chronic aerobic exercise at intense or even mildly uncomfortable heart rates nor to slog through exhausting circuits of resistance machines several days a week.  The mild to severe difficulty of these Chronic Cardio or strength workouts overtaxes the stress response (commonly referred to the fight or flight response) in your body.  Here, your pituitary gland tells your adrenal glands to release cortisol into your bloodstream. Cortisol is a powerful stress hormone that is critical to a variety of physical functions and energy production.  The spike of cortisol in the bloodstream from a stressful event increases respiration, heart rate, blood circulation and mental focus and even converts muscles tissue into glucose for quick energy.  This is a great example of how we abuse a system that was genetically designed to respond to emergencies, such as Grok facing a predator."



What do you think?  I love to hear your comments.