Tag: Sibo

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this is a photo from last year when I stepped out of my apartment for the first time after being bedridden for seven months. Apart from the trips i made to the hospital for tests and appointments, i was completely bedbound due to a massive lower back flare which caused excruciating pain and muscle spasms in my entire lower body. i was also undergoing a treatment for #sibo, following a highly restrictive diet which was helping my physical symptoms and also changing my relationship with food for the first time. With support from my close friends and a couple of family members, i somehow survived those seven months in my own apartment, walking not more than 200 something steps per day. i think i’ve dealt with times worse than that and have come out a little wiser and stronger each time in my entire life. Despite spending countless nights in pain and doubt of whether i’d get out of bed the next day, i’m still here today. Not ‘fixed’ or magically cured. Just doing my best and allowing myself some rest. And so are you. And I promise, if you’ve come this far, you can go even farther.

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Roasted yellow capsicum + sun dried tomato soup

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So the pain and sensitivity due to 2 extractions (which required the dentist to drill through the bone) has reduced slightly, now that it’s a week since the surgery. Unfortunately, I see no difference in the swelling since the last three days. There was a significant decrease in swelling after the 4th day but nothing since then.

I’ve attempted to eat a little more than just soups. Mostly soft food items but I figured I’d rather stick with soups for a couple more days. Anything but soups or puréed food has been making pain and sensitivity much worse, which, obviously I could do without.

As a matter of fact, with EDS, we know that any form of healing takes much longer than what is expected. Unfortunately, sometimes it gets to you and makes you a little impatient, mainly because of the extended period of rest and recovery time starts to affect the rest of your routine etc.

On a positive note, I’ve started strengthening during physiotherapy once again. I had taken one entire week of any strengthening exercises and focused mostly on trigger point and fascia release. I needed to make sure the rest of my body is functioning to its best while I have my extractions some time to heal.

I hope everyone’s having a great Monday!

Lots of love to all

M

Update

Manasi Dalvi2 Comments

Hi all,

I haven’t been too well since the start of 2017. I’ve been dealing with bedriddening pain + gut related issues and the effect of all of it on my activity level has been quite significant.  My health has taken a major dip this year and I’ve spent a large part of my time re-figuring things out.

This is life – it’s never predictable and to stay afloat, we have to keep finding a “new” balance + remember to be patient with ourselves through it. Sometimes it may feel like we’re starting all over again, however, it’s crucial to put our focus on the fact that we’re also wiser, stronger, more courages and a little more ready each time.

There’s been more happening in my gut and I’m currently working with an intergrative GP, a gastroenterologist and naturopath to find the next best step. The amount of decision fatigue I’ve experienced over the last five months is not funny. Apart from a rather serious back flare up + sublaxed shoulders, something so simple, straight-forward and enjoyable like food turned into this massive, overwhelmingly exhausting thing that required/ requires constant awareness and thinking.

For the next three weeks or so, I’ll be going on two very strong medications, known for worsening all existing symptoms. I’ve have been specifically told to not take this treatment too lightly and it might make life seem a tiny bit miserable. As someone who deals with excruciating pain and indescribable fatigue on a daily basis, I honestly don’t know how much worse things can get. However, I have also seen myself at my worst before and hence believe it’s important that I take extra precautions and have help available for me if necessary. Thankfully, I do have a small group of people to count on if needed.

On a brighter note, I’ve got a couple of workshops to teach and close friends to meet so I’m really keeping my fingers-crossed and spirit high :) I’m aware of what may happen, giving my body extra time off, saying more no and less yes (trust me, it’s needed when you are functioning on limited energy) and taking everything one baby step at a time.

I hope everyone’s doing fine.

In case I’m not around much, Happy June! ❤️

Love,

Md

P.S. This post is not about defeat or seeking validation, and most definitely not one asking for pity.  If it sounded like any of these to anyone, please let it go. I’m just sharing and giving an update of how things have been this year. Please keep in mind that it is very much possible to mentally accept and deal with things gracefully WHILE experiencing a great amount of physical discomfort.

#chronicillness

Dark Chocolate + Coconut Milk Popsicles

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85 % Dark Chocolate + Coconut Popsicles. Pure bliss! 💕

I could’ve done with more dark chocolate but you know, I didn’t want to push it. I made sure to stay within the allowed quantities of each ingredient and frankly, these just turned out magical. As usual, my friend couldn’t believe these were SIBO friendly and this time, neither could I.

Here’s what went in them:

6 pieces of dark chocolate + 8 tablespoons of coconut milk + 1 cup of coconut water + 2 tsp pure vanilla essence + 1 tbsp raw clover honey + 3.5 tsp raw Cocoa powder + 2 tsp pure coconut oil. This recipe made 4 popsicles.

Method:

The easiest way of making them would be to blend all the ingredients excluding dark chocolate, pour into your moulds and pop them into the freezer for about 8 -12 hours. Before serving, melt dark chocolate + coconut oil and drizzle over the popsicles. You could also just dip the popsicles into the melted chocolate if you wish.

I made these in three parts because I wanted to add extra dark chocolate pieces inside each popsicle and also have bits of plain coconut cream in every popsicle. So we had the main body, chocolate flavoured coconut cream + parts of honeyed coconut cream + pure dark chocolate pieces and drizzle.

Lactose-free milk

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I’m testing out lactose-free milk in my diet from today and you guys have no idea how excited I am! I tried it with coffee this morning and realized I forgotten what it felt like to have a somewhat normal tasting coffee with dairy!

Well well. I am lactose intolerant too so I have to watch out on my dairy intake (which really wasn’t that much to begin with) in general. This diet has also reduced my caffeine intake by half and now I just have one small cup of coffee of tea instead of… two.  That’s a lot isn’t it?

For about 8 weeks out of 13, I totally cut off caffeine of any sort and had to deal with withdrawal symptoms for the first week. From week 8 onwards, I reintroduced coconut milk and came up with this amazing all natural, homemade coconut creamer recipe which worked wonders with a cup of coffee. It kept me happy and going if I really “needed” a caffeine fix.

Going back to dairy.

Dairy is dairy and coffee + lactose-free milk  >>  coffee + coconut milk.

I’ve come a long way with this diet and added restrictions. There have been hiccups along the way but I guess I’ve been alright. I’m hoping the reviewed diet gives me more energy and less unnecessary complications. Also, I’d be more than happy if it stops me from having absolutely random cravings. I mean, I don’t remember craving pecan pie in my life ever before…not just one slice…I wanted TWO whole slices of freshly-baked pecan pie…

SIBO Update 

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After 12 weeks of going on a very strict diet, I’m finally moving on to the next level of re-introducing some food items and seeing if my gut is able to handle them. While SIBO in itself is a very complex condition to treat, treating SIBO in a patient who already has a pre-existing condition makes the process much harder than it is. Sometimes complete healing takes  longer than “normal”.

In my case, my body went into a massive caloric deficit and I started experiencing drop in blood-sugar, increased brain-fog and exhaustion and a lot of unnecessary complications. It started happening more when my physical and mental demands increased over the last couple of weeks and I was left absolutely no energy for anything else. I would be dog tired all day  (as if so wasn’t already fatigued out of my brain) and had the strangest of food cravings.

In my recent visit to the ND, we took a closer look at my diet and made a few changes to accommodate for more stuff happening in my life right now. Here’s the thing about SIBO –  you have to do you very best and stick to the diet, especially the initial eradication phase, however, life happens and there are ups and downs and you might have to adapt the treatment to your specific needs at that point in time. I was very disclipined with the diet for the first 10-11 weeks and started finding it difficult to stick to in the last one to one and half weeks.

As my symptoms haven’t improved drastically, I am “supposed” to continue the current SIBO treatment phase for a while longer but the matter of fact is that my body isn’t able to handle the diet and I’m starting to experience all these other issues which I could honestly do without. I also had a few major SIBO symptoms flare-ups along the way and had to go back to my baseline diet of eggs and zucchini several times. There was a point where I was only having about six ingredients/food items including salt and pepper and nothing else. The eradication phase requires that you starve the bacteria and feed the human which is exactly why the diet (symptom based, customised, low FODMAP diet) is  so strict. My ND thought that it was time to find a balance where we are trying to eradicate the bacteria and re-introducing certain higher calorie food at the same time – we don’t want to accidentally starve the human you see.

So the good thing is that I have a lot more items that I’m going to re-introduce in the next phase and that also means more room to experiment! YAY!  That’s always exciting and fun, as long as I have enough energy left to actually be creative with it. I’ve mostly been pretty enthusiastic and managed to come up with so many delicious, SIBO-friendly recipe over the last 12 weeks. I guess that’s something to feel good about. 

The not-so-good thing is that just because you have more options doesn’t mean they are okay for you and that your gut will very happily accept them and respond well. The other not-so-good thing is that with so many additions, it can get more complicated to find direct correlation between your intake and symptoms. That said, the ‘not-so-good’ part of the story doesn’t sound nearly as bad as living with the feeling of being overly restricted in terms of food. It makes you feel deprived and limits you further. I don’t think I would have ever said that a particular form of diet is difficult… but in all honesty… the SIBO diet is HARD. There were times when the combination of lack of food options (at home, eating out or calling in) + lack of ability to move (I was bedridden for  good 65 days due to a flare up and I’m still barely recovering) + lack of dark chocolate made me feel like life was unfair :) 

Of course, now that I’m no longer surviving on just six items, life is all rainbows and bunnies again. You get the point.

Six ingredients chicken broth

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Maybe this is a more Indianized version of chicken broth or soup. Each time I caught a flu or fell terribly sick, I’d have this made for me. It’s super easy, doesn’t require much effort and is extremely delicious and nourishing. If you’ve got a sensitive gut like me, this is well worth a try!

You can trust me on this one!

Ingredients:

  1. Chicken with bone (any part)
  2. Black Peppercorns (as per your preferance)
  3. Ginger (small pieces)
  4. Salt to taste
  5. Lemon
  6. Cilantro

Method:

All you have to do is dump in all the ingredients (except cilantro and lemon) into a pot, add water (enough to cover the chicken or a little more than that) and let it boil for a good 30 minutes. Lower the heat, add more water if needed and let the chicken slow cook for another 30 minutes. The chicken cooks so well it practically starts falling off the bone :)

If you’d like to have a thicker broth, you could add and reduce the water a few times. Three times works perfectly.

Bowl it up. Squeeze in some lemon and garnish it with cilantro. That’s it!

Optional – 1 teaspoon of coconut cream/milk.

Enjoy!

Homemade Coconut Creamer 

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I’ve been off caffiene and dairy for the last 5 weeks and just recently got a green flag to have a cup of coffee or tea per day, preferably black. I know me and I can’t do black tea or coffee, and, I’m currently off nuts (milk and butter) and soy too —  it doesn’t leave us with too many options now.

The thing is, I never needed caffeine or relied on it. I genuinly enjoyed having a cup or a half once a day, while writing or when I went out with friends.

For a while I was worried I’d lose the freedom to have a cup of something. As I said, I simply can’t get myself to truly enjoy black coffee.

Good thing is, that’s not the case anymore. I I’ll be carrying my creamer around from now on. It is just heavenly!

Ingredients: 200 ml Organic Coconut Milk (or any coconut milk with no or low preservatives. The one I used contains 99.9% coconut cream) + a few drops of organic stevia (you could use coconut sugar if you have no sugar restrictions) + 1-2 tsp coconut oil + 1 tsp vanilla essence or a pod + 3-4 tablespoons of water or coconut water (can water down the coffee, so decide based on your preference). Coconut water has its natural sweetness and goes well with this creamer.

Method: Blend all ingredients and store in an air-tight bottle. You can keep this for about a week but I suggest using it within 3-4 days and making a fresh batch. I also use the same in golden milk latte (turmeric milk) or chai. I’m supposed to only have a teaspoon in my cup but that too boring for me so I add about 2 teaspoons :)

P.S. Coconut milk might not work for everyone with SIBO. It can be considered high FODMAP in certain amounts so I suggest checking with your Doctor before you decide to try this creamer. You might be allowed some other nuts in your a diet that’s more specific to you.

Thai Style Pan Roasted Chicken Breast 

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Marinade:
Ginger paste, Turmeric powder, Red Chilli powder (less, for SIBO), Lime juice, Dried Lemongrass powder + Dried Galangal + Dried Kaffir Lime leaves + Thai Sweet Basil leaves (or use a Thai mix without garlic or onion), Cumin powder, Curry powder (without onion and garlic powder) finely chopped Coriander leaves, finely chopped chives, 1 tbsp coconut milk, Black pepper powder, Sesame oil and Salt.

Method: Mix all the above ingredients, mix in with chicken and refrigerate overnight. Pan-fry in more sesame oil (love the nutty flavour it gives. I can’t have nuts at the moment so this really helps!). Cover if needed. I prefer cutting a deep slit into the chicken breast so that it cooks evenly. Plate up and pour a bit more of coconut milk if needed.

That’s it. Cut up and store in an air-tight container in you plan to have it over a day. Easy-peasy and SIBO-friendly! One chicken breast usually lasts me for 2-4 meals as I have it with a serving of low FODMAP veggies.