Tuesday, July 03, 2007

Update and Book review: Cooking Without by Barbara Cousins

First things first. As I'm sure my regular readers must have noticed, I have been absent for several weeks. To cut a long story short, I haven't been very well recently (completely non Candida related!) and had to come home for some much needed R&R. Blogging hasn't been my top priority. And apart from anything else, I have - as a result of leaving Leicester - lost my super-fast broadband connection, to be replaced by an antiquated dial-up modem thingy. It's frustratingly slow. However, that doesn't mean that 'developments' on the Candida front haven't occurred.

I am now on new medication. In fact, the medication I was so concerned about taking before. For the first couple of weeks I really did struggle with the side-effects, which included nausea, complete loss of appetite, aches & pains and feelings of unreality, but since then I've felt increasingly great. And now I'm a super happy bunny - or at least I would be if it would stop raining for five seconds. But, here, we're not interested in that. We're bothered with Candida...

Surprisingly my thrush symptoms have all but disappeared. To reiterate, the symptoms I've had for the past THIRTEEN YEARS have disappeared. The constant itching and soreness - GONE (providing I make sure I drink plenty of fluid)! Ever since I started on the SSRI! Was my Candida problem simply an allergic reaction to stress hormones? I'm starting to think 'yes'. Since I started popping the happy pills I have been able to relax as I haven't been able to relax since, well, I don't know when. The low-level, generalised anxiety has gone. I've turned from a 'glass half empty' to a 'glass half full' kind of girl. IT'S A BLOODY MIRACLE!!! ;)

Oh, and did I mention that I haven't been taking my (extortionately priced) supplements (apart from the multivit and iron)? NO ANTI-FUNGALS at all! It's only been a month, so I'm not going to count my chickens quite yet. But, really, I have made SO much progress over the past month I'm delighted regardless. There's light at the end of that there tunnel. :)

Okay, now onto the main business of this post. The review (or more precisely a brief report) of Barbara Cousin's Cooking Without: Recipes free from added gluten, sugar, dairy products, yeast, salt, saturated fat. Eagle-eyed and sharp of mind regular readers might remember that I reviewed Barbara's similarly titled recipe book on vegetarian cooking 'without' last summer. I was pretty impressed with that (though I had a bit of trouble with some of the recipes), but this meat-friendly collection of recipes is even better. Especially the baking section. So far I've tried the Chewy Fruit Bars (p. 225) - which benefited from 10 mins in the oven - and the Apple, Date and Nut Muffins (p. 216) - which I had with apple juice-sweetened dried cranberries instead of the dates and raisins. Both delicious (relatively speaking!). Keen to make a start on working through the savoury recipes when I get back to student life.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

SSRI's are antifungal and can kill candida. Google it. That may be the reason its helping you. Alternatively, you could just go to sleep with candles at 7pm everynight...basically getting rid of all lights/emf's that would block your naturally melatonin production...and get a good 9-10 hours of pure emf/light-free darkness a night. combined with sunlight during the day, would do the same trick as the ssri. that was my experience.

Djinn said...

Interesting info about SSRIs BWDave. Hadn't heard that before. Sadly, I'm in the middle of a flare up at the moment - but I guess it's my first for a long, long while.

I would love to be able to go to bed at 7pm, but sadly it simply isn't practical. I know that I'm hyper-sensitive to the weather, and spend as much time out in the sun as possible. Sadly sunlight is at an absolute premium here at the moment. I'm planning my escape to sunnier climes...!

Anonymous said...

It seems SSRI's might simply work by being toxic to the GI tract...meaning they just sorta kill off lots of stuff and candida (or whatever bad things are in there) come with it. That is what I think. By sleeping more in sync with the seasons, it seems it really increases the immune system..and...and with a high immune system your immune system can work on tackling the bad yeasts/fungi/bacteria. Too bad you can't do that. check out lowbluelights.com for some good lights.. they really work. even trying to do that half the week might benefit you. Just my experience...good luck to you. Garlic is also another good anti-fungal, but it seems once again it just kills off lots of bacteria...seems just best to build your body so your body can work for you... and also try to eat/live in such a way that your not putting a strain on your immune system to begin with. Good luck!