Poison as "Food"

This morning, I wrote down the following symptoms:

1. troubled sleep
2. headache
3. sinus congestion
4. irritated bowel
5. heart murmur
6. irritability
7. dejection
8. demotivation
9. fatigue
10. elevated body fat %
11. elevated blood sugar
12. elevated blood pressure

Yesterday, I had all of these symptoms. Over the past two weeks, I'd had some of them, but not all. But yesterday, I had 'em all.

Today, however, I have none of these symptoms.  I'm back to normal.

For me, yesterday was truly strange. In my entire 46 years, the number of days on which I had symtoms 5, 7, or 8 I could count on one hand. But yesterday, I had 'em all!

The remaining 9 systems, while more common than these 3, are still quite rare for me (i.e. a couple of days per year).

What the heck happened to me? I turned 46 today. Is this just a sign of getting old?

It's been raining here for almost 3 weeks. People around me have been sick. Was I just under the weather?

I don't think either of these explanations holds water. I think the answer is really obvious. A couple of weeks ago, my wife, a wonderful cook, decided to start baking fresh bread from scratch.

This is something she'd done in her youth. And there's nothing quite like the smell of bread baking in the oven on a rainy cold day, with the fires going. And the taste right out of the oven! Man, that's in the top 3 of all flavors for me.

Anyway, the bread had cow's milk and wheat in it. Over the past many years, I've been avoiding cow's milk and wheat because they seem to disagree with me. So as of two weeks ago, when I started eating this amazing bread, my bowels were more or less clear of milk and wheat.

Then, these past two weeks, my bowels got flooded with them. Soon, the above 12 symptoms started croppping up. Two one day. Then five of them another day. Back to 3 of them. And so on. Noticeable. But not dramatic.

All until yesterday, when I had all 12 of these symtoms. And let me tell you, when you are a person like me, and those symptoms are rare, and you get them all at once, that really, really gets your attention.

So yesterday, I had a mini-fast. Ate very little. Soup. Fruit. Yoghurt. Coconut oil. Raw nuts. Drank lots of water. Pooped 7 or 8 times. Went to bed early.

Woke up this morning, measured my body fat %, blood sugar, and blood pressure. Everything was back to optimal. Mood was back to normal. Body was back to normal.

Realize that, as a kid, I consumed voluminous amounts of milk and wheat. I drank gallons of milk per week; ate loaves of bread. Consumed bags of Hostess potato chips and the like. Buckets of ice cream. It goes on.

But hey, I felt great as a kid and as a young man. Set sporting records in college that still haven't been broken. Didn't even know what "dejection" and "demotivation" felt like back then.

But last week, I ate some organic milk baked into "artisanal" bread lovingly created from scratch. This was way better "quality" stuff than the crap I was consuming as a kid.

Yet, yesterday, I experienced one of the all-time worst days out of all of the days I have spent on this planet.

Why am I so sensitive now? Maybe this is where aging comes in. Maybe what aging is is simply a higher sensitivty to damage. Maybe aging doesn't mean that we have to look or feel old. Maybe it means simply that if we abuse our bodies -- in ways we abused them as kids but got away with it -- our bodies won't forgive that abuse anymore.

Food for thought.