FruitMonster.com

This is part 3 of ‘Becoming The FruitMonster’.  If you haven’t read part 1 or part 2, be sure to read those first!

Yeah, so I’m back to the stomach stuff…. Greeeeaaat you may say, but I promise, this will get somewhere useful!  Mainly onto how I discovered this crazy fruitmonster diet!.

Nope, Sorry Doc, Try Again

The Joys of Prevacid

Last I left you, I was diagnosed with duodenal and peptic ulcers and prescribed a prevacid panacea which was to eliminate all of my problems right?  Eeeeehhhhhh!  Wrong!  (That was my attempt at a “you got it wrong” buzzer). Forget fixing things, how about just diving further down the mystical rabbit hole that is the human digestion process?  Do you know what prevacid even does?  It uses chemicals to damn up your digestive juices.  It’s known as a PPI or proton-pump inhibitor, which stops your body from producing the acidic soup in your stomach.

This has all sorts of great results in your body!  Yeah, like making it extremely hard for your body to digest the food you eat… your body produces that stuff for a very good reason: you need it to live!  The result?  My energy level,  emotional vitality and my very passion in life were leeched from me.  I was irritable, tired, felt weak and came to deserve the title “FartMonster” rather than the self-titled tweet-world alternative.

In a PPI Phunk

Sometimes a I would feel nauseous and vomit a few hours after I ate:  my food would come up looking as if I had just eaten it.  All of this because my digestion was no longer working correctly!  You take it for granted, but your digestive tract and what you put into it are the basis of your very life force.  Another joyful side effect of this delightful drug?  An overproduction of the gastrin hormone in your body, high levels of which are linked to increased rates of cancer!  Great, don’t take it, get esophageal cancer, do take it and get colon cancer or worse.

A Lose-Lose Situation

Pop 'Em Like Skittles, Pink Skittles

Between a gallstone and a hard turd, I found myself.  These symptoms all seemed to grow worse as I continued on for a year, waking up to the same routine:  alarm -> pretty pink pill -> shut down an essential life-giving process -> internal chaos and despair.  The best part?  My stomach still hurt!  I continued to have acid-reflux and stomach ulcer symptoms!  The doctor’s solution?  ”Oh, it must not be enough.  Take another pill before dinner time.”  Naturally, I obey like a good pharma puppet, and I’m left to pop prescription like three year old with a bag of Skittles (pop? try straight pounding prevacid to the face with that analogy).

We are now into winter quarter of my senior year of college in beautiful Athens, Ohio  and I’m fed up, not happy and ready to embrace another solution.  A friend of mine at the time had given me a well timed birthday gift, a book:  ”Ulcer Free“.  I believe I read nearly the entire book the first day I owned it.  Between that book and a lot of personal research I did on the Internetz, I felt both frustrated and confident enough to start down a new path, a whole new holistic and hopeful one.

Pharmaceutical Addiction

So I cut the prevacid cold turkey and started trying a slew of new things:  DGL Licorice, Aloe Vera, Omega 3 pills, Vitamin this-that-and-the-other and a funky little chemical combo called zinc-carnosine.  Now cutting a PPI drug off usually leads one into a stage where their body overproduces acid and serious pain endures.  One must wean themselves off of a PPI a few days at a time, or they can do some serious damage to their insides.  So, after a year of damming up my acid factories, you’d think my body would do the same… but it never did.  That’ because my digestive capabilities never fully came back; in fact I believe that taking prevacid permanently damaged my body’s ability to produce enough stomach acid and sent my body into a dsyfunctional hormone balance.

Essentially Addicted

Obviously, I cannot prove this to you, but I can tell you that prior to taking it and after taking it, my stomach operated in very different ways.  In fact to this day, I still endure digestive weakness and poor motility (thats gut motion for all you stomach-stupid folks ) which I believe to be correlated to my year of taking 1-2 of those worthless, life-long drugs.  Oh, did I forget to mention that part?  Prevacid, Nexium and all those other PPIs:  people don’t usually ever stop taking them.  Sounds like a great way to make money, kind of like cigarettes, in that pharmaceutical addiction is exactly what this is.  However, not of the same mother as a nicotine fix, this one is addictive because it DOES NOT SOLVE PROBLEMS, IT TREATS SYMPTOMS and that is a process that does not end my friends.

DGL Licorice – The Defender

Stomach Pain? Stomach This Solution!

Hopping off of my soap box and unbunching my panties, I voyage on into a lighter subject of sorts.  The holistic path had actually been quite helpful!  I had found my own medicinal manna:  DGL Licorice.  DGL has that funky acronym in front of it because it needs to be … let me get this right, **reaches into desk drawer for handy pill bottle** Ah yes, Deglycyrrhizinated (double, triple checked for spelling, scout’s honor).  That means that a critical component of licorice that produces ultra-high blood pressure has been removed (extra good for me, I already had that problem).  But the basic benefits of licorice remain:  when licorice is mixed with your saliva, it encourages your mucosal membranes to produce extra mucous!  That may sound *snort, hock, spit* a bit disgusting, but mucous is actually what keeps your stomach from eating itself!   This makes licorice a great natural remedy for just about ANY stomach pain, because it shields your stomach wall and all those nerves from the dangers of HCl.

So my new solution?  Taking two chewable DGL Licorice tabs before every meal, drinking aloe vera juice (yes you can drink it and if your stomach ails you, you should too!), making sure I was up on all my vitamins and taking Zinc Carnosine*.

Zinc Carnosine – The Healer

To the Rescue!

Zinc Carnosine… a strange name for something to be popping into your body.  Well not that strange if you really start reading about what the traditional American ingests.   Try reading the ingredients of your next meal:  If you know what more than 90% of them are, congrats, you are one of two things:  a) a really healthy eater, go  you!  or b)  a chemist.

So don’t be scared of its rather pre-historic title, it is, in fact a powerful combo of stomach-wall-healing-goodness.  It is two things:  Zinc (the mineral) and L-Carnosine, a dipeptide bond composed of two essential amino acids, L-histidine and beta-alanine.  Yes, I read that from the book.  Take it to say:  it literally adheres to stomach sores and encourages them to heal.  This is supported by multiple scientific studies and can be verified by yours truly.  THE STUFF WORKS.  (*Disclaimer, Zinc Carnosine is NOT vegetarian and I was not a vegetarian at the time I was taking it!)

Although it took me well into my first year of graduate school, by pounding those delightful DGL  chewables and religiously taking the Zinc Carnosine twice a day, I was able to free myself of my ulcer pain!  If you’re interested in trying this, you should take DGL every 2-4 hours or so, before your stomach starts hurting and then also whenever your stomach feels upset (post jalapeno popper fest 2011).  This, in addition to cutting out things that I identified as trouble foods (well except beer… I loved me some beer back in those days), I was able to heal my ulcer problems completely.

Whoopee! Ulcer Free!

Hooray for Holistic Healing!

To this day, I am indeed “Ulcer Free” – thanks Georgie-Porgie! If you or someone you know has ulcer problems (or any stomach pain at all), buy them some DLG and Zinc Carnosine (Swansonvitamins.com Rocks!)  and tell them to read this (and my other) posts.  They don’t have to suffer anymore and neither do you!  Start the healing today!

Now, cutting away from the info-mercial crapola I just pulled (Swanson referral code #47AB3 include my name in the referral section of the order form, that’s N-I-C-…. haha, no seriously, I’m just kidding) you might be fooled into thinking that the story ends happily with my ulcers forever vanquished!  Well, it turns out, for all the progress on my stomach pain, I was still suffering from daily bouts with acid-reflux and generally slow (and coincidently very fragrant… I have cleared rooms people and I have a reputation, be glad this is the internet and blogs are not smell inclusive) digestion.  No, unfortunately these problems continued to worsen, down a slippery and likely esophageal-cancer-ridden slope.

But, alas!  Never fear, my fiance is here!  It just so happens, the love of my life is the reason I’m doing this whole little face-book-food-freak0ut-and-blog-o-twit-ter-sphere thing.  Because it was her that helped me realize the key to managing my cranky-chronically-complaining-craptastic stomach issues… but that my friends, is for next time….

Part 1

Part 2

Part 4

This is part 2 of ‘Becoming The FruitMonster’.  If you haven’t read part 1, be sure to read that first!

In my previous post, I let you in a little secret of mine:  how terribly I treated my digestive system during my freshman year of college.  When you hear about the way I used to eat, it’s not really that surprising that I have some problems with how my general gut function behaves.  Pounding four hamburger patties at a time… ridiculous!  The human body was not meant to eat the way I did, and although a lot of people could get away with eating in that manner, I was/am unfortunately of poor genetic quality in the digestive realm already.

Genetic Grievances

Somwhere in There. It Says 'Weak Stomach'

There are a number of digestive issues on both my mother and father’s side of the family.  Most notably my father, who is on Nexium (evil stuff! stay away! I want him off of it!) and has weekly, if not daily bouts with acid-reflux and stomachaches and probably does not posses the healthiest colon function (but who honestly talks to their father at length about droppin deuces anyway?).  Also my mother’s father and sister are both victims of poop-poor (as in piss-poor?) genetics.  The prior has always had a sensitive stomach, and can’t eat certain “trouble foods” (if you have digestive problems, you need to identify which are yours!) and the latter who has a very hard time with her lower digestive tract.  It doesn’t end there!  Both my dad’s mother and sister have had gallbladder removals and, most unfortunately, my brother and sister have both, in the last year, began to exhibit acid-reflux symptoms and general food-factory malaise.

Wince, Exclaim, Moan

So I’m screwed from the start right?  I have all sorts of digestive ailments in my family that I’m doomed to realize in some form or another in my life, from BOTH sides of my genetic make-up (imagine a sperm popping two tums and an egg cell doing a uterine inspired version of the pepto-bismul dance during my conception).  And THEN I go off to college and eat like a freakin’ maniac. GREAT.  Smart move fruity-pants, no wonder why your howlin’ about your bowels to the blogosphere.

The First Signs of Reflux

So we exit freshman year, and I leave the generously stocked Jefferson Dining Hall for a summer of home-cooking.  I was a lifeguard during the summers at that time, spending a lot of time outdoors in the heat, working and burning a lot of calories, and also, not eating nearly as much as I did in the prior months.  So what did the sudden drop in calorie intake do to me? Well it left me in a state of over-production of stomach acid and lead to my first symptoms of acid reflux.  After about a month of time at home, I began feeling pain in my chest like I needed to burp after I ate.  My dad of course suggested I ‘try some Tums’, but those didn’t really help me much (if you know anything about stomach chemistry, you’ll know that medicine like Tums actually spikes your acid production after the initial drop), instead I found refuge in the pepto-trio (pictorially defamed above).  As the summer went on, the problem just got worse and by the end of it, I was visiting the doctor.  And what did good old doc doctor me up with?  A little pestilent purple pill called Nexium.  Thankfully, I only took them a handful (pun?) of times, where upon not realizing any positive effects, I stopped taking them.

So, into my sophomore year of college, the reflux continued to get worse, first only bothering me during the day, but then also slowly creeping up my throat at night.  It wasn’t enough to bother me into going back to the doctor, but it sure was a nuisance.  During this time, I was also right back into lifting and eating heavily (an eat-o-holic?) again, eager to put back on the 15-20lbs I lost over the summer. Although, it was definitely a tamer version of what I had been doing as a frosh (considering Jared, my lifting buddy, was recovering from shoulder surgery – due to an injury incurred while we fervently were pumping iron the year before.  I have I mentioned we were stupid?), but it was certainly still enough to torture my stomach further.  Throughout that year, my bouts of stomach pain became increasingly more frequent and my reflux symptoms more intense, a trend that continued (sparing you too many details ) into the autumn of my junior of college, where it finally reached a tipping point… and I was headed back to the medicine man.

So, What’s Up Doc?

It's About as Fun as It Looks

This time my doctor was in Athens, where I went to school.  He was an older man, probably in his 60s, and was “by the book” kind of guy who didn’t really analyze his patients as individuals, but instead viewed them as problem sets in his med school books and a test subjects of his research journals (a gripe probably applicable to most medical professionals out there).  What did he recommend?  Well to begin, an upper endoscopy, which is where they knock you out, wheel you into a cold dark room half-conscious, shove a tube down your throat, light up your insides, and then leave you to puke on yourself in a recovery room while forcing you to leave earlier than your ability to sit-up straight and reason coherently returns.  Sounds wonderful eh?  Well I have now done this twice, with the ONLY upside to this predicament being the follow up review of the hilarity  of my anesthetized antics.  I say it’s the ‘only’ upside because A) it SUCKED and B) both times I have done this, I have gotten bad news when I was done.

This time, I was diagnosed with duodenal and peptic ulcers.  Meaning that while food was sitting in my stomach and as it emptied into my small intestine, hydro-chloric acid was running over open canker-sore-like wounds on my insides.  No wonder why I was in so much pain!  Also, as a double whammy, I was also exhibiting the initial symptoms of erosive esophagitus (aka, my stomach acid was doing a caustic tap dance on my swallow tube).  My response “Thanks for making my day doc! Now what?”  His stupid suggestion?  Prevacid.  A proton-pump inhibitor which, when taken first thing in the morning would stop the secretion of my gastro-intestinal digestive juices.  In theory, this increased stomach pH (less acidic!) would allow those ulcers to magically disappear, my insides would be wondrously healed and I would smile just like the actors lying through their falsely whitened teeth in the television commercials.

Pretty Pink Prevacid Pill, 30mg

So of course, being brought up believing “Doc knows best!”, I took those pretty pink pills every morning, religiously.  Because I sure as heck wanted to feel better!  Little did I know that I was dooming my body’s ability to ever digest properly again, but I will save that one for post 3.  Gotta take it easy on this stomach talk, or I might give someone an ulcer