M.E (Myalgic Encephalomyelitis) AKA CFS, (Chronic Fatigue Syndrome)...

Posts and articles on this blog are not meant to be medical advice in any way. Please contact your medical doctor or qualified practitioner for all medical conditions.

Me and My M.E (Myalgic Encephalomyelitis) is also known or similar to CFS, (Chronic Fatigue Syndrome)…

As a first post to this blog, Me and M.E (Myalgic Encephalomyelitis) also known or similar to CFS, (Chronic Fatigue Syndrome)... I will give you some history on how I got to be  in the position I found myself in. From here, I will then blog about my various healing 'adventures and processes' since I was first diagnosed with M.E also often referred to as CFS (Chronic Fatigue Syndrome)

Back in the early 1990s over the course of a few weeks I began to experience total exhaustion. It was quite alien to me as I had always been so very active and this felt like something serious, so I took myself off to the doctor, and some blood was taken for analysis.  About a week later, the results were in. My white blood-cell count was a little down, but it wasn’t considered serious, and whatever it was would probably clear up on its own, and I wasn’t getting any younger, so I was told!

Well, I accepted the diagnosis and thought that this was just a temporary blip in my life.  I would just need to motivate myself  and get myself moving more.  I worked as a therapist which involved a lot of sitting and talking with my clients, so I would make a point of getting out walking briskly to get my metabolism moving again.  But whereas before exercise would have reinvigorated me, this time, I found myself feeling worse. I was burning up energy and my body just didn’t seem to be replacing it.

After another couple of months there was still no improvement at all, in fact I was beginning to feel even more exhausted and couldn’t help but to reduce my workload with clients. As a psychotherapist I knew only to well, how commitment and motivational processes would improve conditions like depression and other stress-related conditions. If I was stressed at all, it was because of the chronic pain coming from a new development… chronic mouth ulcers (canker sores) and now I was feeling totally exhausted during all my waking hours.  There was some relief when I practised zazen (Zen meditation) as my first discipline each day, but when motivating a client to get better conditions for  his/her life, I became very drained of energy very quickly and I was conscious of actually looking exhausted and this was hardly a positive or inspiring influence for my clients!

I went back to my doctors again because over-the-counter remedies were not solving my mouth-ulcers condition as soon as one sore would disappear, sometimes within hours another would take its place.   I was given  Cortisone tablets to place on the ulcers, which initially worked, but after a week or so of finishing the course, I would be in pain again.

The feeling of exhaustion was a daily occurrence now. After morning zazen, I would feel OK, for around 5 minutes, but then it was taking all my energy just to stand up from my chair.  There was nothing more that medicine could do for me.  It was suggested that I was depressed..  Well of course I was! Who wouldn’t be with constant daily exhaustion and mouth-pain?  I was not suicidal, but thoughts were coming into my mind that this was not really living.  I would have to find a way.

By chance I met a fellow therapist I knew well. He told me that I looked dreadful and I explained what I had been going through. He gave me the name of a retired doctor some two hours drive away from where I lived, who dealt with people with M.E (Myalgic Encephalomyelitis) also known or similar to CFS (Chronic Fatigue Syndrome).. Well I was chronically fatigued and in pain, so I made an appointment.  I had never thought of M.E but had heard of it cruelly referred to as “yuppie flu” and that it was like getting a dose of ‘flu that never went away. I hadn’t had ‘flu for at least 10 years, but I felt that this doctor just may have the answer.

A  week later, I was sitting in the doctor’s consulting room answering a whole host of questions about my lifestyle, exercise, eating habits and even toilet habits.  He was certain that I had M.E. And yes, my attempts to ’exercise it away’ provided a very clear indication of his certainty.  He added that there was no cure, and no way to diagnose it back then, but he had had a good success rate in reducing the symptoms significantly enough to live a full life again. I asked him about a blood test to which he replied that a blood test may show something, but he very much doubted it, and anyway, I had gone down that road, and found nothing.   I was going to have to find out what foods were triggering my problems via an exclusion diet...

Sugar Connection

I would need to go back to eating a ‘stone age diet’.  All simple foods, organic if I could manage it, and nothing processed at all. Above all – no sugar from fruit, cane or beet.  He considered sugar as empty calories and and a substance that would more than likely be feeding the disease, probably by mixing with yeast (candida) that was more than likely already in my system which was giving me the feeling of having the mother of all hangovers permanently – and that was without having had the enjoyment of having celebrated the night before!

Commitment

When I commit to something firstly I will share my commitment with others – these others will act as witnesses to empower my ability to keep the commitment even if they don’t agree or think me crazy.  In fact if I have said that I am committed, I will keep to it as if my very life depends on it.  I see it as my integrity and I would not want to compromise myself. 

I committed to the doctor’s stone age diet.  Vegetables, no salt or flavourings that had been manufactured.  No sauces or gravies containing chemicals,  flavourings, sugar or artificial sweeteners;  no packet foods or breads... generally no food stuff that a caveman could not get.  But cooking was allowed, but near-raw with the vegetables was better.  If I could be totally committed to this, then at a later date, we would be able to discover what substances I was eating that was acting as a trigger of my ME.

Upon returning to the doctor a fortnight later, I think I amazed him when I told him that I had kept to the stone age diet 100%.  Apparently most of his patients would cheat. I knew about this from my own experiences with some clients.  But I was the client this time, and  I didn’t think this was a big deal, as I was only too aware of the value and power of keeping one’s word as I had seen it so often, and motivating my clients to keep commitments was the main function in my interaction with them in my work; it was certainly the most powerful ‘tool’ that I used.

 My next post will relate my experiences of eating the stone age diet and my learning curve of taking back the quality of my life and work.

Commitment. My Healing Path

Please Note: All posts and articles on this blog are not meant to be medical advice, so please contact your medical doctor or qualified practitioner for diagnosis and advice of all medical conditions. 

My commitment to heal continues.

My second appointment with the food doctor was  three weeks after the first.  I was pleased to be back as I was sure that he would find a way to help ease the severe withdrawal symptoms that I had been experiencing.

He asked me how I had been getting on with the stone age eating plan.  I told him that I had found it difficult and at times very uncomfortable, but I was determined to stick with this way of eating until there was no more craving or withdrawal symptoms.

“How often have you cheated?” he asked.

I was amazed that he asked. “Not at all,” I answered.

“Not once?” he queried more intensely. “I can’t remember any of my patients sticking to the plan 100% especially with the elimination of sugar, as it is highly addictive and that’s what makes it so dangerous to health. It not only effects physical health, but is a great persuader in the mind that it’s harmless, because with some people, it takes years before any symptoms can appear, by which time they would not be convinced that sugar was a problem for them." The addicted mind,” he added, “can use every argument and trick you can think of, to satisfy its craving.”

The Power of Commitment.

“Well, I can’t see  the point of embarking on a coarse of treatment and then cheating”, I said, “But I will tell you I have been having hallucinations of smelling cakes baking!” It is like when one sits in Zen meditation, the mind will hallucinate to try and get you to quit the discipline.

I could really identify with what he was saying about the tricks of the mind, because in my teenage years, I had become addicted to smoking and when I finally quit, thoughts would flood to me that one cigarette won’t hurt, as I could quit again tomorrow.  I was very familiar with the power of the mind and imagination, and used it against such tricks, by visualising the next day, that if I had even one draw on a cigarette, I would be buying a full pack before finally quitting again; perhaps next year or maybe never!  However...

I told myself, “why wait? Quit now! Experience the craving. Let it do its worse, for it will definitely pass or nobody would ever quit”.  I would need to experience the craving, because it would only get stronger if I tried to deny it is there. I quit smoking this way and have never started again. But now, it was about my eating, a little different because I was not about to quit eating! But my commitment was established for the next 6 months.

I continued to talk to him for a while about my Zen practice and the ‘commitment interaction’, a process I used with my own clients on their initial appointment with me. I would say..   “If you are not prepared to commit 100%  to the therapy process, then it is not wise to begin, because  you would be effectively reinforcing the habit of procrastinating and giving up.”  I wouldn’t proceed to make another appointment-session with them, until together we had established this sort of high-level commitment to making it work. 

Commitment can really work miracles in this way, and here I was with my food doctor, committing myself in the same way... 100%. I further explained to him that I was committed to give it 6 months as I totally trusted in his past research, and his experience of the  stone-age eating plan, with both his clients and himself.  I learned that he himself, had suffered from bad digestive issues that he had cured with diet.  After  6 months, if I could see positive results with the eating plan, I would permanently integrate it into my daily life, not as a diet, but as a way of eating.

My doctor’s  instructions were to continue with the stone-age diet and see him again within a month to give chance for all withdrawal symptoms to ease further and then we would be testing various foods and substances, to discover more specifically what single foods/family of foods I was sensitive to.  He reminded me that we all respond differently to exclusion diets that were in effect acting like a detox, and that I may still have some symptoms that we would investigate further at my next appointment.

I drove back home with the feeling that I was at last on the right track.  A chance conversation about my ailments had brought me to an unusual healing path that I would never have considered.

The Stone-Age Diet

The Challenge of The Stone-Age Diet

In preparation for the stone-age diet challenge,  my wife and I went on a shopping spree for healthier foods. We spent most of our time in the vegetable section, buying everything we could find that was organic, except potatoes of course, as I was committed to eat only a stone-age diet.  I am not a great lover of meat products, but for protein I bought some chicken breasts and fresh fish.  All the vegetarian packet foods that I had been eating before, had artificial flavourings and other additives, so they did not find their way into the shopping basket.

My food doctor had told me that prehistoric man probably ate different seeds from wild grasses so providing that nothing was added, crushed seeds like oats or barley could be considered as part of the stone-age diet, but not bread.  Commercially made bread that could be bought in the stores and supermarkets were off the menu because of the additions of chemicals and sugar.  

Some of the foods I quit
Some of the foods I ate

On that first morning, breakfast consisted of organic porridge oats made with water. No milk or sugar was to be added.  I began feeling somewhat positive about beginning this new diet. I was going to feel well again!  I had managed to find organic porridge oats made by an Irish company called Flahavans    The product comes in strong paper packaging and not plastic, which I liked; so I was happy that I was doing the best I could for my health by having a product that didn’t risk contamination with petrochemicals and/or plastics.   I boiled  the oats  in some filtered water and that was all there was to it. I can’t say that I didn’t like the porridge, but it had no taste whatsoever.  I finished breakfast with a cup of hot-boiled filtered water.  All tasting so totally bland,  but I had a good imagination and imagined that I was feeling better already! I also imagined that I was smelling and drinking a beautiful cup of black coffee as I sipped my way through my boiled water. The mind is very powerful and believe or not, this really worked for me!  

By profession I am a hypnotherapist and regularly use meditation and often self-hypnotic techniques. If you want to know more, please leave your question in comments below, or visit my Zen and Hypnotherapy Blog for more details on the subject.

By mid morning I was craving for some cookies, biscuits, or even a cheese sandwich would have gone down really well! But all our ‘junk food’  had been disposed of, to remove temptation.  I like to think that because of my commitment, any sort of temptation would have been out of the question, but sugar addiction in particular can be very persuasive and powerful. I will just say that it would have been extremely difficult and tested my determination to keep my commitment to the limits!  I reminded myself what the good food doctor had told me, “addiction was a strong sign of an intolerance”. 

Addicts to any substances are intolerant to the substances they crave, and those substances can destroy their health.  I was beginning to understand the mechanics of addiction, experientially. It came to me that even gambling addicts, were on the road to self-destruction. The mind is easily addicted, and its main function is survival of all that it learns. And through repetition of any bad habit,  the mind learns so very well!  Food addiction is learned through the digestive and immune system, and a gambling addiction is learned through the behavioural and nervous system.   It has been discovered that the immune system and the nervous system have strong links to each other.  So either will result in creating problems in the body and mind, or both. 

My dietary discipline went on for about three days without too much problem, but then the addiction seemed to ‘step up in intensity’.  I  had returned home from some business I had been doing and as I walked in, our home smelled strongly of baking.  My wife, who had suffered from her teens with arthritis was also following the stone-age diet with me.  I asked her, “Why on earth are you baking cakes?”  She assured me that she was not. “Yes, you are,” I argued, “I can smell them!” I marched straight into the kitchen, and nothing. Not a cake, a bag of sugar or flour was in sight. In fact all such products  had all been stripped from our kitchen and given away or thrown away.  It seemed that I was coming a ‘sugarholic’ and had started hallucinating an illusory sense of smell! 

During next day, I was beginning to feel exhausted, with a pounding headache and I had a busy day lined up with clients.  I would not allow myself to take pain-killers because of the chemicals they contained, and they had long-since stopped working anyway.  I knew that I could easily transcend the pain whilst interacting with my clients as I had done it before so many times. It was a struggle, but I had a break mid-afternoon, so I phoned my food doctor.  He told me that I could expect these pains, and what I was describing was classic withdrawal symptoms.  My body was detoxifying itself from years of built-up toxins and chemicals.  This was a ‘die-off process’ sometimes referred to as the Herxheimer Reaction. He added that I probably had an overwhelming toxicity with a variety of yeasts, bacterium and moulds in my system that was now being ejected from the cells into the blood stream.  I was right not to use pain-killers to subdue it, and was advised to drink plenty of water – room temperature would be good, to ensure a good flushing through my system.  

It was not possible for him to assess how long I would suffer from this withdrawal effect as everybody experiences it differently. It was likely to come and go, but it was a sure sign of food addiction and sensitivity, so I was on the right track.  By sticking with this exclusion diet, I would continue to unmask symptoms of sensitivities and would make a really positive difference to my M.E, 

It was difficult to remain positive and optimistic now that I was in pain.  And is was difficult to see this pain as a part of the healing process, but I trusted my doctor. Things were definitely changing!  I began to feel nervous as to how I was going to manage my workload if this was going to get worse, but I was committed and I would deal with it.  

Now I was realising the full force of  stone-age diet challenge. And yes, it was to come and go, with symptoms that would grow worse, but my body and mind would just fully accept that I was doing this to enhance my health and quality of life. I knew that I was supported by my doctor who had years of experience in this field. And I now felt thankful for  my day-dreaming imagination that had at times got me into trouble during school lessons! 

The challenge goes on in the next post….

Please note: Posts and articles on this blog are not meant to be medical advice in any way. Please contact your medical doctor or qualified practitioner for all medical conditions.

Doctors Orders: The Stone Age Diet

My Health and The Stone Age Diet:
My Commitment Established.

My diet began the first day after my visit to  my ‘food doctor’.  I began eating only those foods that would only grow only in their particular seasons in the climate of the UK.  It did not have to be a vegetarian diet as prehistoric man was mainly a hunter and would eat only natural plant foods that would grow on the planes and forests.  When those plants were not available due to the shifting seasons, he would hunt and kill animals in order to survive.  My doctor explained to me that it wasn’t until 10,000 years ago that human beings started planting crops and producing cereals and dairy products like milk and eggs, and all these foods were to be eliminated.

I was puzzled by this and asked why I had to stop eating foods that humanity had been eating for 10,000 years.

I was informed that 10,000 years is nothing in evolutionary terms and that it would take a million or more years for significant changes to occur in the immune systems of a species.  So therefore, to make this diet successful in dealing with my problems, I would need to eliminate all cereal products, and this  included foods that contained all grains, like wheat, corn, rye, barley, cane sugar and others that were part of the grass or grain family.

Tea, coffee, cocoa and sugar (especially sugar!) was also to be off the menu.  These products were only introduced in the UK and other northern countries around 450 years ago, when they were brought back from the newly discovered Americas.  They may have appeared harmless at the time, but slowly through a few decades caused addiction and intolerance. Many individuals  immune systems got overwhelmed producing severe inflammation as a reaction to these foods. This lead to many chronic and apparently incurable health problems that were never really associated with the offending foods at that time.

The Problem with Sugar

I was a little shocked about not eating sugar, as I thought that the human being just had to have sugar. I communicated my scepticism about going totally sugar-free in this way.

The doctor explained  that my body didn’t need sugar to be ingested at all. It would get small traces from vegetables and my body would make adequate glucose for energy and indeed during World War II, he (my doctor) had been involved in research into the health of the nation because the UK was not getting all the supplies of sugar and other substances from overseas. An interesting addition to that,  most were growing their own vegetables.  The results of the research were that people of the nation who were not away fighting in the war, were actually healthier!

The doctor also explained to me that before the discovery of the Americas, the consumption of sugar in this country was zero. Fruits were consumed during a very short season but most soon rotted away before the sugar from over-ripe sugar would overload the system. Also, prehistoric Man didn’t have the knowledge of how to keep fruits fresh all year round. And it should also be noted that even insects can appear aggressive as if ‘drunk’ when overloading on fermenting fruit. So fruit was also off the menu, for the time-being anyway.

It needs to be remembered that my appointment with the doctor was was back in the early 1990s, before it became common knowledge that most people in the country had problems with ingesting sugar. And from what I have experienced it has taken well into the millennium before the sugar-problem has been fully acknowledged, but even today, there is still addiction, and many people still over-indulge believing it to be totally harmless. And it seems that the problem is still ignored by the majority of people I have met and discussed this with.

The other substances were chemicals that were introduced around the time of the industrial revolution, a mere 250 years ago when new discoveries introduced food colouring, flavouring and preservatives.  And air pollution introduced toxic substances into our blood streams through our respiration, fumes from factories and later from the motor car which are still about to this day. There is nothing that I could do about avoiding this, but I could avoid artificial ingredients in foods. All packet and canned food were to be examined for sugar, and artificial ingredients and kept out of the shopping basket.

Teas, coffees and cocoa were also to be avoided and spring or filtered waters to be drunk instead.

Finally there was the matter of potatoes that were also introduced to this country on the discovery of the Americas.  Potatoes were a member of the nightshade family, along with tomatoes, peppers (both red and green), aubergine, cayenne, paprika, pimento, chilli and tobacco was also a member of the nightshade family.

I loved my potatoes, in all forms…  But I went ahead with the commitment. I promised my doctor that I would absolutely NOT eat anything other than the stone age diet described. Armed with a list I left the doctor’s clinic and immediately began to wonder how difficult this was going to be; a subject of which I will address in my next post.

Please note: Posts and articles on this blog are not meant to be medical advice in any way. Please contact your medical doctor or qualified practitioner for all medical conditions.