Friday, April 9, 2010

Blessing in Disguise

This is a bit of thinking out loud.



I've been lactose intolerant ever since college when I was on a very strong course of two antibiotics (Biaxin and Ciproflaxin) for more than 3 months for a severe infection.



I lived in denial and suffered with the very unpleasant digestive consequences of eating dairy for far too long. Eventually I wised up a bit and cut back, but still used Lactaid or Dairy Care to help me eat one or two servings of dairy per day.



Pookaloo developed eczema that seemed strongly correlated to dairy consumption. We've been (mostly) off dairy for more than a month now.



I say mostly because there have been some slips due to poor label reading, and today I gave her skim milk as a challenge. (still waiting on results of that)



I've been feeling much better than ever before. Today I was reading about milk and excess mucus production and made a correlation I never had before:



Up until college, I would get bronchitis and/or a sinus infection every year, sometimes more than once. I've had pneumonia 4 times in my life. Since I started taking my lactose intolerance seriously, I've had bronchitis only once, and only had one sinus infection.



I used to pray and pray for God to take my lactose intolerance away so that I would be able to eat all the foods I used to enjoy and not suffer with the digestive symptoms.



He said no, and now I can finally see that it was for my benefit!



Pookaloo's eczema is what it took for me to go that extra step and be completely dairy free.



Now that we're dairy free I still have some unpleasant digestive symptoms, so I think the lactose issues were just covering up some other problems (leaky gut? yeasts and/or parasites? all of the above?). I'm feeling ready to tackle those and confident that I can be disciplined enough to change my diet for the better and fast from those things which are "permissible but not beneficial."

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