Thursday, November 5, 2009

Getting Off the Dairy

Yesterday, I posted a story about food allergies and how they may impact weight loss.

I found the article intriguing because of my own personal experience. A few years ago, I was a mess. I had put on quite a bit of weight. I had never had a weight problem before because I was always fairly active. I have exercised in one form or another every day for my entire life.

I was also very ill. I had bronchial problems and allergies for a number of years, and had a persistent post nasal drip and sinus congestion. Air born allergies to pollen, mold, animal fur, etc. also plagued me, and I was constantly taking anti-histamines and other products to deal with the allergies.

Worse, three years ago, within the period of six months I had pneumonia twice (I had also had pneumonia twice before). The steroids they put me on to treat the pneumonia caused me gain even more weight (I put on 25 pounds in six months), and the heavy duty anti-biotics caused me to have a systemic yeast infection.

Worse, even after the second bout and cure for the pneumonia, my lungs just never seemed to recover. A friend of mine recommended a naturalpathic physician, and since I was desperate to finally get better, I went.

The first thing the physician zeroed in on was my eating habits. I, at the time, consumed large quantities of dairy products. My standard breakfast was yogurt with fresh fruit in the morning, and I usually ate cheese at some point in the day.

The naturalpathic physician suggested that my nasal, lung and weight problems were all due to a dairy allergy, and suggested that I eliminate all dairy from my diet for a few weeks.

I was skeptical, but decided to give it a try. Well, within a week my nasal congestion and post nasal drip began to clear up, and were completely gone within three weeks. My bronchial issues also began to finally go away. Furthermore, I had begun to eliminate the dairy in May, a month in which I was usually miserable due to tree pollen, and that was the first May I didn't have to live on anti-histamines to get me through the month.

Best of all, the weight that I had been struggling to lose, finally began to show some inclination that it was willing to come off, and as the months went by with me not eating dairy, I finally shed pounds as opposed to just packing them on.

I still try to minimize my consumption of dairy products. I will have some cheese now and again, mostly because I just love it, but when I do I feel the effects. My sinuses become clogged for several days and I even now get head-aches from it.

So, in my experience, I found that there is some truth to the notion that some of our chronic conditions and weight gain may be from what are otherwise healthy foods. By eliminating dairy from my diet I cleared up a persistent problem that had plagued me for years. I spent God knows how much money on drugs to treat the symptoms of nasal congestion and allergies, when all I really needed to do was eliminate the cause of the symptoms--dairy products.

And, eliminating dairy also finally got me on the track to losing weight as opposed to just gaining it.

1 comment:

  1. If it counts... primates are designed to consume the milk of their own species during infancy. We are designed to outgrow our consumption of milk in favour of fruits, nuts, seed and for humans and chimpanzees, meats. We consume far too many grains-- the cultivation of grains was taken up when it got harder to move around (because of so many people), resources became less plentiful, and because it could be stored. Pastoralists went the other route, using animal energy in the form of milk, cheese, blood and meat because it too could be banked against further need. Our food allergies to glutens and milk products may well (but I'm an anthropology student, not a doctor)represent an ongoing difficulty for some to ingest these products. I am allergic to seafood-- is this because my background is from a nonmaritime area? Dunno, but it would be a tidy explanation. Peanut allergies? Again, I don't know if anyone has looked into it but it would be worth researching.

    To sum up, yes, I think that what we eat affects how we feel and if we feel awful then something has to change.

    Barb

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