Happy Healthy Gut (2 page)

We need to take it upon ourselves to start thinking “food-forward”—to critically recognize whether or not any given food will contribute to our overall growth and escalating health, or if it will simply satisfy our immediate caloric needs, and promote disease and digestive malfunction.

This book is the compilation all of the knowledge I have accumulated, and encompasses absolutely everything I have found personally constructive and useful in my journey to good digestive health. It is about aiding you to find out why the food you are choosing to consume may be the root cause of the digestive discomfort and other health issues that you may be enduring and how, by taking the proverbial bull by its horns, you can take huge steps towards improving your own digestive health without the need for medications and surgeries, while simultaneously bypassing general affliction and impairment. A whole food, plant-based plan can change your entire life. If you feel that your time for a tune-up has come, whether for better health, a clearer mind, or in order to take responsibility for today’s heady ethical or environmental issues, then you’ve come to the right place.

I hope your journey is enlightening, positive and, with little effort, pain free. Let me show you how to get your life back quickly, because you’ve already spent too much time feeling like crap.

Let your journey to great digestive health begin . . .

T
he first section of this book is all about problems. The issues we’re facing as a nation with inadequate digestion, the obstacles our digestive systems have with attempting to process foods that our bodies can’t handle, and the dilemmas that arise when we try and force ourselves to ignore an ongoing issue that can (and will) only get worse.

It will provide an accurate description of the digestive process, introduce you to a handful of common digestive diseases, and discuss inflammation, the health concerns associated with consuming animal products, reductionism, food-borne disease, genetic modification, food irradiation, and more. It was written with education in mind, and with the intention of convincing you why adopting a whole food, plant-based platform provides a clear path to good digestive health. By knowing what you’re up against in terms of the quality of food that is being made available to you, you can then proceed to implement better decision making in regards to your grocery list. The following is the low-down on what is happening with our food to which we might not be paying attention, and items that you may be consuming on a daily basis that are probable contributors to your digestive unease.

“Nothing’s changed my life more. I feel better about myself as a person, being conscious and responsible for my actions and I lost weight and my skin cleared up and I got bright eyes and I just became stronger and healthier and happier. Can’t think of anything better in the world to be but be vegan.”
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—Alicia Silverstone, actress, activist, and vegan foodie

A
s it was, I became used to missing birthdays, parties, weddings, and work. I was so deep into feeling unwell that I completely forgot what it was like to feel normal. You just get used to feeling terrible, and then once you experience the normalcy of a perfectly working digestive system again, after nine years, it’s akin to the feeling of waking up one day forty pounds lighter, after attempting to lose it for nearly a decade. For me, it was as simple as a clicking sound that resonated throughout my brain one random day, like any other, at my mother’s house.

Luckily for me (and not so much my husband), I’m like a crow: I like shiny things. It’s weird how sometimes all it takes is something very small and unassuming to get your internal pendulum swinging in a different direction. One of the most important life decisions I
have ever made for myself began by catching a glimpse of a sparkly bracelet (the shiny thing) lying on top of a book I saw on my mom’s kitchen counter in October of 2010. After trying to convince myself that I owned many bracelets, that I didn’t need this particular one, and that I should probably check into some sort of shopping rehab, my attention turned to the book. It immediately had me curious because it had Alicia Silverstone’s name listed as the author, and I didn’t know she was a writer. I flipped through it for five minutes, and even though it was clear that my mom was only half way through reading it, I “asked” her to lend it to me, and I whisked it home.

Silverstone’s
The Kind Diet
was the first of several books on plant-based eating that I ended up reading that month, and by November, I had completely changed my mind about food and food animals. These books marked the beginning of my love affair with healthy food, and the end of my decade-long problem with (and I’m putting this nicely) inadequate digestion.

Here’s how it all went down:

Growing up, I always considered my family to be pretty healthy eaters. My mom (who’s totally embarrassed by this) does admit to orchestrating tea parties with my sister and I that consisted of artificially flavored drinks and candy, but she also went through the trouble of making all of our meals, and we never ate out. During those tea party days, I even remember being force-fed tablespoons of cod liver oil. You know, along with the candy. We had a balanced diet . . .

When I was twenty, I was diagnosed (after several invasive exploratory procedures including laparoscopies, colonoscopies, and one very unpleasant and predictably shocking barium enema), with irritable bowel syndrome, otherwise known as IBS.

My symptoms were bloating, gas, chronic constipation, stomach pain, and chronic back pain. By-products of these symptoms were hemorrhoids, insomnia, weight gain, and occasional depression. Sounds super fun, right? Sometimes my symptoms were so bad that
I would only be able to walk hunched over, and occasionally the episodes would last for days or even weeks.

IBS is a diagnosis of exclusion, which doctors like to give to people when they can’t figure out why their digestive tracts aren’t working properly. Approximately seventy million Americans suffer from digestive disorders like IBS,
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with almost twenty percent of the U.S. population exhibiting IBS-like symptoms.
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Canada’s number? 20 million.
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That’s pretty prevalent! Basically, we are told that there is always medication and steroids to help with the pain and symptoms if they get out of control. I’m very certain that this sounds familiar to many of you. When you consider that there are currently about 315 million people living in the United States,
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then that means that one out of four and a half people suffer from a debilitating disease that I now know is completely repairable and reversible.

I thought nothing of my diagnosis at the time. I was young and relieved that the exploratory procedure portion of my early twenties was finally over. It didn’t occur to me to persistently ask any of the doctors I had seen any questions about IBS, or what it meant for my future, and they didn’t offer up very much information. The name sounded innocent enough: irritable bowel syndrome. Like my stomach was cranky, but similar to anyone who is going through a particularly moody or self-proclaimed depressed period in their life, my abdomen would eventually get over it and carry on as if nothing happened. You know, like immature teenage angst.

Well, that didn’t happen, and so I waded through the next nine and a half years trying to hide my pain and bloating, while desperately searched for anything that made me feel more human and less zombie. It was very scary. At one point, I actually remember telling my mom that I was convinced I would end up with colon cancer. Although I never considered trying any of the available medication prescribed for IBS (because I’ve always been a holistic kind of girl), I did find some things helpful like peppermint and fennel essential oils. I used to rub them all over my stomach when I could feel an
episode coming, and sometimes that would help to mellow my symptoms. Hot towels placed directly over my lower abdomen would work sometimes, too. I also discovered that if I laid flat on my back on a hard floor it would assist in decreasing the bloating and pain, as long as I wasn’t too far gone. (And as long I was at home, of course!) Things like sitting for hours (particularly flying) would guarantee to commence stomach pain. My husband knew that when we landed at our destination, I would have to walk hunched over to our hotel room with my pants unbuttoned because of the incredible bloating, and then would have to lie down as soon as possible. Just for the record, this was not just any old bloating. I totally looked like I was five months pregnant when this would happen. It was embarrassing and very stressful, which made my symptoms even worse. I remember teaching English as a Second Language (ESL) for a particularly precocious group of children one year, and a couple of the girls constantly asking me if I was expecting a baby. (Seven and eight-year-olds have no boundaries, and certainly no tact.) Needless to say, I was extremely self-conscious.

Did I mention that I was a complete laxative addict? I knew that it wasn’t healthy to take laxatives all the time, and that it would be bad for me to become addicted to them, so in my warped way of thinking, I thought it would be better to incorporate different brands and types into my routine. I rotated between Senna tablets, Metamucil, and Dieter’s Green Tea in the hopes that I wouldn’t become dependent on one or all of them permanently. (The logic was not sound.) I did the laxative dance for about eight years, and it was common for me to not move my bowels for five to seven days at a stretch, which I now know was so incredibly bad for me.

In my early twenties, my diet consisted of lots of creamy white pastas, bagels with cream cheese, cheese sandwiches, and crackers and cheese. (As you’ve probably already noted, I love cheese. It’s my crack.) I was in university, and those were my comfort foods. I also drank a lot of wine, and ate huge portions at every mealtime. Even
though I thought I was pretty healthy, my diet was a disaster waiting to happen. I would habitually work out five days a week (for years), and not drop a pound.

Around the age of twenty-three (still relatively early in my IBS days), I accidentally stumbled upon the fact that, much to my severe disappointment, wheat products made me feel generally inflamed. When I abstained from them, I did not have as many IBS symptoms. In fact, for my wedding at the age of twenty-four, I didn’t eat any breads or pasta for three months before the big day for fear that I would get bloated in my very tight wedding dress. I pretty much gave up bagels, pasta, and pizza, in their entirety, until I was twenty-nine. On the odd time when I did eat those things, I paid for it dearly and swiftly. The initial discovery about the wheat products was my first inclination that food going in played a pretty big role in how I felt, as did what came out. When I stopped eating wheat for my wedding, I effortlessly dropped close to ten pounds within a span of three or four months. No wonder Dr. Atkins had so many followers! The thing is, as soon as I went back to eating wheat, my stomach resumed its daily rant, and I gained back the weight. If I tried to go completely carb-free, I got completely exhausted and very moody. It sucked, and I was getting depressed.

My paternal grandfather died of complications due to celiac disease (an autoimmune disease characterized by the inability to tolerate gluten), so I started to think that maybe I had inherited that; but celiac disease was ruled out through a blood test and a small biopsy of my colon. Twice. I was also paying more attention to the fact that my symptoms were not just wheat-related. In fact, for lack of a more refined description, I noticed that they completely correlated with the frequency of my bowel movements! If I was regular, like when I abstained from wheat, I felt good and lost weight. If I was constipated, like I was most of the time, I felt terrible and I gained weight. In other words, I realized that in order to ward off symptoms, I needed to remain consistent in the bathroom. Ditching
the wheat helped, but not enough for me to stop investigating and call it a day. By now, I had three children, and I was sick and tired of being sick and tired. I needed energy, stamina, and a real fix for my stupid IBS, and I needed it right away.

When I started reading about what a plant-based diet had to offer, and it was explained to me that meat is very heavy, tough to digest, acidic, inflammatory and disease provoking, a light went on in my head. I’m so happy for the existence of that light! About a week after cutting out beef, pork, and poultry, I felt like a different person. I felt light, energized, and . . . regular! The laxatives were no longer part of my life after only one week, and the essential oils and random floor flops were gone too. And it didn’t stop there. The longer I abstained from meat, the better I felt. In fact, I was able to reintroduce wheat-based foods to my meals with very few consequences. There was definitely something amazing about my new plant-strong diet.

It’s unfathomable how many millions of people put up with digestive trouble. Your digestive system is something that you use every single day, something that has the power to eradicate harmful
bacteria, and absorb helpful nutrients. This system is complex and amazing, and given the right foods, it can be your closest ally. However, when you mistreat it by eating a typical western diet full of preserved, diseased, and overly processed ingredients, that same system has the ability to turn your entire world upside-down.