A thousand other things

When an addict slips back into destructive old patterns they are said to have 'fallen off the wagon'. This creates an image of something sudden and dramatic which causes them to regress to old behaviours.


In the last month or so I have reverted back to my destructive health patterns. Not that I had made that much progress to begin with, but I was doing a little better. I can't claim that I've fallen off the wagon. There was no single event that caused me to plunge from the Vehicle of Good Health which was travelling on the Road to Good Living and fall into the cold wet gutter of good intentions gone bad. It didn't happen overnight but it was a series little knocks, plus a thousand other distractions that have taken my time and attention from where it should be.

Since I'm trying to get back on the Vehicle of Good Health (which is very difficult to catch up to, that thing moves very quickly and why they can't build in seatbelts so you can't fall off in the first place I'll never know) this is as a good a time as any to look at how I started to go 'wrong' and why this happened in the first place. I think my health is hampered by years of unhealthy habits and that it's helpful to look at where these habits began.

I think my IBS symptoms and my other health problems probably have their roots in my adolescent years. It was in these years and during puberty that I started to become a really anxious person. While I don't believe that IBS is psychosomatic or completely caused by anxiety or other mental afflictions, I do believe that it's a factor. I got into the habit of worrying too much and being constantly on edge.

In my late teens I also became a not very good vegetarian. I was good in the sense that I never ate meat but I was bad in the sense that I didn't take care of my nutrition. My mother used to refer to me as a vegetarian who didn't eat vegetables and I'm afraid that was very accurate. I'm ashamed to admit that even now I'm failing to get my recommended 5 portions a day. The habit of eating to satisfy sugar cravings rather than to nourish my body began then.

It was also during my schooling that I learnt to loath exercise. PE lessons were nearly always based around competitive sport which didn't suit me. I don't have much of a competitive nature, wasn't good at sport or interested in it so most of the lessons didn't suit me. Those that were based on physical fitness alone such as circuit training were far more demanding then I was able to cope with. None of the gentle exercise I suspect I really needed, such as Yoga or even just walking, were on offer. So I got into the habit of negative thinking about exercise. It began to represent boredom and exhaustion rather then something fulfilling and helpful.

So with these unhelpful habits I embarked on my adult life. The years between then and now have not been an unproductive waste land. I completed a degree, got jobs and got engaged. I never however tackled my health issues effectively. IBS became a daily fact of life and my unhealthy lifestyle caused me to slowly put on more and more weight. I went to the doctors from time to time to seek help with my IBS but I was given medications that didn’t work and told to lose weight without any really help or guidance on how to do it.

About six months ago I decided that I needed to do something about my weight. Now before you read the next bit of this story I need you to understand something. I'm not a fan of our stick thin is best culture. In fact I believe it's a load of rubbish, couldn't give a fig leaf for fashion and actually don't particularly care if I look fat or not. I'm not really sure how I managed to survive the indoctrination that our media imposes on most women, but somehow I've managed to get through with my self esteem about my weight fairly intact. However I reached a point where my weight was making me physically uncomfortable. I felt inflexible and literally heavy and weighed down by my own weight gain. I also decided that joining a weight loss group would be a lot cheaper than the new wardrobe I was going to have to buy to cope with my increasing size.

I joined a weight loss group and surprised myself with my own willpower and ability to stick to the diet carefully. I believed I was eating more healthily then I had in years and I began to saw results. I was initially disappointed that the change in diet had made no change in my IBS symptoms but I put that concern to one side as the weight began to slowly melt away.

Even though I wasn't feeling any healthier I had lost a significant amount of weight and I was pleased with this. Until the day I noticed that there was a lot more hair then usual on the floor of the shower. I began to notice that my hair was everywhere, strewn across my house. My office chair at work was covered in it and every time I ran my hands through it more would come out. There were no bald patches, just a constant sustained hair loss.

Like I always do when I have a health concern I made a panicked rush for Google. I know this is the worst thing you can do because you will always inevitably find ways to convince yourself that your symptoms are the result of some hideous and rare condition, but I'm already an anxious person and the internet wasn't going to come up with anything worse then what I was imagining.

I decided to consult my doctor who took blood tests. He then asked me to come back for more blood tests. Then another round of blood tests. As you can imagine this was somewhat stressful not to mention sore for my poor arm.

To cut a very long story short the test revealed that I have deficiencies in calcium, iron and probably vitamin D (although I still await the result of that test). I also have an elevated platelet count. None of this seemed to be related to my hair loss which fortunately seems to have tailed off now. I can only conclude that I had an episode of telogen effluvium . During this health scare I decided to give up the diet as my research had shown that hair loss had been shown to be related to dieting. I was also interested to note that telogen effluvium generally makes itself known three months after a stress or change to the body, which was about the same time that I’d begun dieting.

I had another appointment with my doctor to discuss these results. They were such a scare for me, it was clear that I’d been going badly wrong with my health and I felt that I desperately needed to make a change for the better. I prepared well for the appointment, wrote down a list of questions that I needed answers to and decided I wanted a referral to a professional nutritionist or dietician because I knew that I needed the help both to change my lifestyle and to lose weight in a healthier manner.

Unfortunately my doctor didn’t entirely agree. He agreed that I’d been doing it all wrong and that my diet group was more counterproductive then helpful. He agreed that I needed to change my lifestyle not just my diet. He also agreed that I needed to lose weight in a healthy sustained way.

He didn’t agree that I needed the help of a professional. His advice was to eat more whole foods and get out in the sun more. He told me that my nutritional deficiencies while present were not uncommon. He told me to take a course of iron supplements and that was pretty much it.

I left the appointment feeling pretty deflated. I understand that NHS resources are stretched but how ill do I have to be before I get some help? Isn’t it better to nip my health issues in the bud now while I’m still young and can hopefully be set on the right path? I hear scare stories almost every day about how bad diets are causing serious health issues that cost the NHS thousands, and yet when I ask for help I’m pretty much denied. Surely we’d all save money if people like me got the help before things got worse not better?

I realised that I’d have to tackle this alone. I got myself down to the health food shop and I bought the supplements for my mineral deficiencies as well as psyllium husks and probiotic capsules to deal with my IBS. I stuck to my regime of tablets (which is pretty difficult, more on that story later) and looked to the future.

The future was about three days away. The whole thing went wrong when I developed some sort of nasty stomach issue. Let’s just refer to it as IBS max plus nausea. I felt physically and emotionally lousy. So I gave up.

I told myself that I’d have a rest for a few days and that I’d get back to focusing on my health and my new lifestyle later. I swore that I’d update this blog tomorrow. I promised that I’d start exercising next week.

Of course I didn’t keep those promises. A thousand little things got in my way. I was working on a big event, then I was job seeking, then I had to phone someone, do some work, clean something, make something, read something. The thousands of little things pulled me away from where I was trying to get to.

I could have overcome the thousand little things if I wasn’t lacking the one big thing, a firm belief that change is possible. My failure to get the help I believe I need has robbed me of that belief. I have a huge challenge to overcome. I have to change the habits of more than ten years and get to a better place, all while feeling tired, anxious and confused about the right path to take.

Right now I don’t know which way this is going to go. If I’m going to make these changes I need help, but I don’t know where to seek it from, who to trust or if I can afford the right sort of professional help when I find it.

There is an old proverb often wheeled out on occasions like this which says a journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. I know that this is going to be true of my journey and that I’m going to have to forget about the fast route and catching up with the Vehicle of Good Health and just walk to Good Living myself. I’m hanging onto the hope that while I’m searching I’ll be able to find some people or resources that can at least point me to walking in the right direction.

Cystitis - more suffering hidden by embarrassment

I can really sympathise with this article posted on 'The F Word' although I think broadly speaking IBS sufferers get a better time of it. Perhaps this is because it is an illness which effects men (although it mostly seems to target women).

I understand the frustration of going to a doctor and having your condition dismissed as non serious or trivial. Luckily the doctors at my current practice are much more sympathetic and are taking the time to help me work through my difficulties with IBS. I also understand the pain of cystitis, having once rather unfortunately been forced to resort to visiting accident and emergency because of it. 

I'd suffered from the infection in the past and at the time had been told by my doctor to drink cranberry juice to stop it happening again. Some time later I found that I had a minor infection again and tried to get an appointment at my doctors to get some antibiotics. My doctor couldn't see me that day and probably not the day after that. With no where to turn to, I drank cranberry juice in the hope that this natural remedy would sort me out.

I woke up in the middle of that night with the most agonising pain both in my urninary tract and in my kidneys. I didn't really know where my kidneys were before that night, but right then they were so red hot with pain that I could have surgically removed them myself.

Barely able to move, I had to get my friend to take me to the local A+E. I remember sitting there with a large bowl for fear that I'd be sick. I was taken into triage by a male nurse who had a slightly dismissive attitude when I told him my complaint. To be fair to him, I'm not the sort of person who roles around in pain making a fuss so perhaps I didn't look as bad as I felt.

What frustrates me about the whole incident is what happens next. I provided a urine sample, he used one of those dip tests. I watched him do it and I can remember him almost starting back with shock when he saw the result, after which his attitude was totally different. He told me that I had a 'raging' infection and ushured me through to one of the waiting rooms. I had blood tests to see if it had entered my kidneys which apparently it hadn't. To this day I'm not pursuaded of that, why they hurt so much if they weren't infected is beyond me.

The doctor who eventually saw me asked me what I'd been drinking and I told her I'd had a lot of cranberry juice. She told me it was the worst thing I could have done and that drinking sugary drinks makes the infection worse!

I still feel that a little minor but permenant damage was done that day. What irritates me is that it could have been avoided if I'd been able to see a Doctor straight away or see someone else who could deal with the problem.. Why if cystitis is so easy to diagnose can the test and antibiotics not be offered by nurses working in GPs practises? The infection moves so quickly and becomes unmanagble so quickly that early intervention is crucial. In these times where GPs are more stretched then ever surely the responsibility for dealing with such a common yet easy to diagnose and treat ailment could be handed down to Nurses? Also why was the information I was provided so contradictory? Some Doctors have told me to drink Cranberry juice, another has told me its a bad move.

The next time it happened I didn't even wait for the next morning to try and get a GPs appointment, I took myself straight to the NHS walk-in centre and got my antibiotics. 

 The F Word - Cystitis

This website I have linked to is website discussing feminist issues. It contains information that some readers might find triggering.

What I ate today - 9th August 2010

I'm still getting my act together on the organisational front, so today's lunch included yesterday's left overs. We'd had vegetarian hotdog sandwiches for tea and there were a couple left over to put in a salad.

With mayonnaise and wholegrain mustard.

Pulses wise I was down to my second to last tin of green lentils so I put them together with a tin of tomatoes spiced with the following.

• 1 tsp chilli powder
• 1/2 tsp cumin
• Pinch of salt
• Pinch of tumeric
• 1 tsp smoked paprika
• 1/2 garam masala spice blend
• Some fresh ground black pepper.

At first taste this was somewhat bland so I ended up putting a load more chilli powder in. Unfortunately this was something of a mistake. The sauce was very spicy when I came to eat it at lunch time. Nevermind, lesson learned!

Mmm spicy . . . maybe too spicy!

I will make it again though as it was very tasty and filling. The chopped up sausages made it really interesting as they have a very deep savoury flavour.

Financially speaking it wasn't so bad either. Around 20p worth of vegetarian hotdog about 70p for the tin of lentils and about 45p for the tomatoes and a couple of pennies worth of spices. It works out at about £1.50 in total so just £0.75 per portion. Bargin!

Insight into IBS: IBS and the Menstrual Cycle - A happy combination leading to joy

OK part of the title of this post was a lie.

Do you remember that ex-boyfriend of that friend of yours. You remember the one, he was always changing his behaviour, acting differently under different circumstances. He was really nice to her when they were alone, but he was a bit of prat when he was around his friends. Yeah you remember him.

My IBS is a bit like that. Except that it's a prat all the time, it's just a different sort of prat when it's friend Aunty Flo comes to visit and behaves as though it were a completely different condition. Gone is the constipation/diarrhoea alternating combination. Instead we have almost normal motions. I say almost normal, these motions come with an interesting side effect, what I like to think of as the Lamborghini effect. For those who are not familiar with fast cars (I include myself in this group, I had to Google this) the Lamborghini can go from 0mph to over 60mph in 4 seconds.

This is what my bowels like to do when Aunty Flo is around. They all get into her lovely Lamborghini and are just sat there relaxing. I'm totally calm and unaware when suddenly they make a bolt for it. In the space of a few seconds I've gone from not needing the loo at all to needing it so desperately I almost have to do that half crouched running to the loo dance.

The only positive thing I can say about this is that, unlike my IBS symptoms the rest of the time, this is at least predictable so I can prepare for it. Unfortunately it means that my activities on the days when I'm on my period are pretty limited.

So there you have it, another one of the joys of being an IBS sufferer.

What I ate today - 6th August 2010

OK. I'm going to be honest with you. Today wasn't a great day.

Last night I had really bad IBS. Despite feeling really tired my stomach was burning and my intestines were doing the conga.  In the end I didn't drop off until well after 1pm which meant I was a very sleepy head in the morning.

I did manage to stoke up the energy to make myself a nice packed lunch but I couldn't manage breakfast before I left the house.

For lunch I used half a packet of mixed salad on top of which I placed some roughly chopped chunks of Somerset Brie and chopped up sweet red pepper.

Mmmm cheese

For a dressing I quickly made a honey and mustard dressing. To make this I combined the following ingredients.

• 1 tsp runny honey
• 1 tablespoon oil
• 1 tsp rice wine vinegar
• 1 heaped tablespoon of wholegrain mustard
• 4 tablespoons of warm water

I found that adding the warm water helps to mix the honey and the oil together and helps spread the dressing more evenly.

Extreme Honey and Mustard Dressing close-up

I put all of this into my regular lunch box in layers with the salad leaves first, then the peppers, then the cheese,  drizzling a trickle of salad dressing on every layer as I went. 

I love a good drizzle

It all looks pretty good in this photo below but it was somewhat flattened by the time I got it to work. The poor salad leaves collapsed under the sogginess of the dressing and the massive portion of cheese! 

Lunch is ready to go

I'm not really sure how this ranks on the health scale. I suppose at least it had green leaves in it. I suspect there was way too much fat and sugar because it was a pretty big portion of cheese. I've recently been told I may have a calcium deficiency which may be why I'm craving so much soft cheese at the moment. 

Cost wise however it was good, just £1 for the salad, 60p for the pepper and £1.20 for the cheese. The amount of ingredients used to make the dressing probably only cost about 10p. So that's a total cost of £2.90 over all so a total of £1.45 per portion. 

It was very filling and I didn't feel hungry till about 3pm. I really enjoyed the tastes. It was nice to have the crisp peppers and leaves with the sweet tang of the dressing and I liked the slightly gritty texture of the mustard grains against the cheese. I'll definitely be making this again.

Unfortunately the rest of my day didn't go so well food wise. As I mentioned earlier I couldn't face breakfast when I was in the house so I grabbed something on my way into work. 

I am a bad 'grabber'. Feeling tired I went for the quick sugary burst that only a chocolate muffin from Greggs the Bakers and a bottle of Lucozade can provide. 

So wrong but  so right

One day I plan to have an array of healthy snacks on hand for these situations. However I have to say that bad for you though it may be Lucozade has got me through some really tough, post rubbish nights sleep IBS days and it had really helped me to perk up by mid morning. 

Unfortunately as I am not efficient or organised at the moment I had no idea of what to make for tea so I ended up buying a pizza, some garlic ciabatta bread and worst of all chocolate eclairs for desert. I felt that as it was a Friday I deserved a treat. 

Overall I reckon I have consumed about 90million calories today and not nearly enough nutrients. It will be interesting to see however if the effect of having consumed all this sugar and flour will make a difference to my IBS tomorrow. 

Searching for Energy by saving time.

One of my theories about how to increase my energy levels is centred around my daily activities. I believe that if I break my daily tasks down into small parts, I might find them easier to do. I'm also looking for what I think of as 'hidden' time. Those five minutes here and there that I could have spent doing something useful.

I found a hidden five minutes today while I was waiting for the oven to warm up. I used it to do a few little online administrative jobs I needed to get done.

It was such a small little change but it was really beneficial to me. I got the jobs done quickly because I knew I had a time limit and I felt much more relaxed while eating my tea because the jobs were already done.

I'm going to spend next week looking for hidden five minutes. I'd love to hear your ideas for where you can find your hidden five minutes.

What I ate today - 5th August 2010

I'm trying to eat more healthily and save money so I am taking my lunch into work with me every day. I'm going through a deli box style salad phase at the moment so today I made a spicy chick pea salad with marinated tofu and pine nuts.

First I made the spicy chick peas. I buy canned chick peas as I'm too lazy and disorganised to soak dried beans over night. I cooked these in the microwave according to the instructions on the tin and then made a sauce for them by combining the following.

• A tablespoon of Brown Sauce
• A tablespoon of Tomato Ketchup
• Half a teaspoon of chilli powder
• Half a teaspoon of paprika

Extreme chickpea close up

This was added to a bed of salad which I bought for £1 from a well known supermarket. 

I then added some marinated firm tofu. I buy the Cauldron brand which was pre-marinated, but I wanted to add a little extra sauce both to add more flavour to the tofu and to provide a bit of dressing for the salad. I made a quick dressing by combining 

• 1 tbsp of light low salt soy sauce
• half a tspn of rice wine vinegar
• a pinch of ground black pepper.

I sprinkled a handful of pinenuts over it and this was the overall result. 

This made a filling and I think overall reasonably healthy lunch. It didn't leave me feeling flat and tired in the way that a sandwich and a packet of crisps type lunch sometimes can and I believe it is much more nutritious over all. However I wasn't sure that I'd got the combinations of flavours right. The spicy chick peas tasted lovely as did the tofu but together they didn't taste quite right. The saltiness of the tofu overpowered the taste of the chickpeas. I think I would definitely make these two again but I wouldn't put them together in the same salad box.

Price wise this was fairly reasonable. I estimate it worked out at about £2.20 a portion which isn't bad for such a filling lunch. I'm on the hunt for cheaper, not marinated firm tofu so that I can marinate it myself and hopefully save a few pennies. 

For tea I made I chilli using this recipe. I made a few alterations, I halved the quantity, added a sweet red pepper instead of a green one and added red jalapeno peppers but no green ones. I also used half a packet of Quorn mince as I didn't know what a burger crumble was!  I served it with corn tortillas and some slightly salted Doritos. 

I'd show you a picture but I forgot to take one before we ate it! I'm not a massive chilli fan and I didn't find this particularly tasty, probably because of all the alterations that I made. I'm not sure that I got the quantities of the herbs and spices correct so I will definitely try this one again to see if I can follow the instructions more closely. The other half liked it though, so he gets to eat the left overs for his lunch tomorrow!

The Poo Issue

I’ve already warned you on this blog that I talk about pooh. I don’t talk about it because I want to make you feel sick or disgust you but because I think that digestive health is too serious a problem to ignore. I know it has a significant and unhappy effect on my life and I’m hoping that by reading this you’ll perhaps see what it’s like for someone living with my condition or see some of your own struggle in it.

At the moment I’m having really bad IBS symptoms. When its this bad I feel uncomfortable from my stomach right the way down to my bottom. Right now my stomach feels acidic and sore. My intestines are gurgling away. I feel as though my intestines are a series of tunnels under construction. I can feel hundreds of workers in there moving their big heavy scaffolding and walking across the floor with their steel toed boots. All this makes me feel like I need to go, but I can’t. This is because I’ve already experienced diahorea three times today. I have nothing to go on, but my intestines are acting like I’ve eaten a life time supply of laxatives.

It’s been like this for the last two or three days. Before that it was long days of feeling dull and constipation. This is the joy of IBS.

While this is all very uncomfortable and distressing it would be bearable if it weren’t for the other effects it has on my life. All this stomach action leaves me feeling exhausted. For the last few nights I’ve gone to bed at around 9pm, but irritatingly I can’t sleep. I’m too uncomfortable. So I toss and turn for an hour or two and eventually drop off. I wake up the next day exhausted and consider calling into work sick. But I need the money so I can’t. So I go to work. I have enough energy to get through the day but after that I’m pretty much done. The short walk from the bus stop to my house seems insurmountable and I call my other half to come and collect me.

I have things I need to do when I get home. I get by doing the bare minimum. The cleaning, ironing and social activities I would like to do go out of the window. I don’t literally throw my ironing out of the window you understand, while tempting it would be counter productive, and it was just a metaphor. I have things to do for the morning but I’m too tired to stand up. I convince myself that I will feel better in the morning and that I’ll catch up then. I lie in bed with my laptop reading and writing this blog entry. This is the only way in which I’m marginally comfortable.

All of this makes me feel so frustrated. Frustrated that I can’t seem to find a path to eat and live the way that is going to make me feel better. Frustrated that I only have the energy to get by and not enough energy to have fun. Frustrated that there isn’t a magic wand I can use to make this all go away.

I've also decided to be optimistic about this and I'm determined to do everything that I can to change the situation. So this is why I want to write this blog and why I want to talk about poo. I'm going to use this blog to find my way to a better lifestyle and hopefully make a few friends along the way.

FAQ

FAQ

To be honest I haven’t actually received any questions so these aren’t true FAQ. They are questions I’d imagined readers might ask. They will of course be amended under two conditions. The first being that I get some readers and the second that repeatedly ask me the same question.

1. Why did you decide to write this blog?

I want to find the most healthy vegetarian lifestyle that I can possibly live by exploring the resources that are available on the internet and by connecting with others in a similar situation. I have a terrible memory so I thought that starting a blog and writing some of this stuff down might actually help me to make some progress.

2. Why did you decide to write about pooh?

My issues with IBS have had a serious negative impact on my life. Part of this impact comes from my embarrassment over discussing these issues. It’s really hard to say to someone that you can’t go out tonight because your pooh is also really hard. I hoped that by saying these things on paper I’d be more comfortable saying them in ‘real’ life. In an ideal world, I’d like to see this become more true of society as a whole so that we can talk about our problems with our pooh free from embarrassment.

3. Why do you call yourself A Dab Genteel Grove Peony?

I couldn't think of a username for the blog and so I used an anagram machine to make up a name for me. This was my favourite of the many options it came up with by using the title of this blog.

4. Are any of the recipes featured on your site original?

No they are not. I always take my recipes from other sites and I link to the sites they are taken from. If you have noticed a link is broken, please let me know. If there is no link to a specific recipe this is because it is something I have made up myself, but it is so heavily based on the different recipe books and websites that I have read over the years, that though there is no one specific to credit, I can't claim to have invented something truly original.

Under construction

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