Pain, Pain, Go Away!

Last Tuesday I had a chocolate chip cookie. "I've been awfully good, and one cookie won't hurt me," I rationalized. But eating that cookie gave me a stomach ache, acid reflux for two days and painful nasal congestion--the viscous, sticky kind that won't move--for four days. How did one cookie make me feel so bad? Was is the extra carbs? According to Pepperidge Farm's web site , one of their chocolate chip cookies (similar to the one I ate) has 20g of carbohydate. That's quite a bit if you eat low-carb, but that's less than a Luna bar, which has 25g of carb--and which I can eat without any ill effects. The Luna bar also has more sugar. What the Luna bar doesn't have is wheat. I stopped eating wheat months ago; this was my first lapse since then. There's a saying that it's not the poison, but the dose, but in my case, wheat is poison in any amount. Some people are amazed at those of us who don't eat wheat, but I never found it the hardshi

Let me tell you about my 38th birthday. It was 2007. I took a frozen dinner to my parents' house and ate it while I watched a movie; it was all the excitement I could stand. In prior years, I'd gone out on a weeknight and worn out dance partners half my age. But that year, I had a sprained neck and back and TMJ problems from a car wreck and an undiagnosed acute infection of H. pylori and esophageal ulcer. I was working a lot of hours and the helper my employer hired had the IQ of a bowl of cornflakes. Between ibuprofin, antibiotics, acid blockers and vitamins, I'd soon be taking 20 pills a day. The relief I found didn't come from massage or acupuncture, but music. Specifically, it came from old R&B from the 40s and 50s played every Saturday night on a radio program called R&B Jukebox. (What's old R&B? Readers of a certain age may remember the cast of the Cosby Show lip synching "The Night Time is the Right Time" by Ray Charles, David Lee Roth&

Back in January, I stopped eating wheat (except for a few cookies on Sundays) and in February I cut back on sugars in all forms. A few weeks ago, I cut out starchy, sugary foods like fruit, potatoes, beans, yogurt, and Odwalla protein drinks that pack 40 grams of sugar per bottle from my diet. Along with neglecting carbs, I've been neglecting a few other things: Sudafed. I can't remember the last one I took. Ibuprofin. I've had two tablets in the past several weeks; I used to take them almost daily. Gas-X (a gas reducer). Zantac (an acid reducer). My chiropracter. Trying to get to bed at a reasonable hour. When you can whiz through the day on seven hours' sleep, and get by on six, why go to bed early? Four-hour naps on Sunday afternoons. See above. Weighing myself. My sagging jeans tell me I'm losing fat. Expensive skin care products. I don't know whether my skin is that much better or my priorities have changed, but buying anything fancier than drug store sunsc

But I got it back, I'm feelin' better every day. Tell all those pencil pushers, better get out of my way. We all know that diabetics are supposed to avoid sugar, right? And since starches are sugars that are glued together, so to speak, diabetics shouldn't be eating very much of them, either. Right? Especially since complications from diabetes include blindness, amputation and organ damage. Aren't those good reasons for sticking to a diet low in sugar and starch--in other words, a low-carb diet? I'm not giving advice, I'm just stating what I believe used to be common knowledge and common sense. So why don't more doctors and health organizations tell diabetics to avoid carbohydrates? My mother has had diabetes for 20 years and says she never got any advice from her doctors on what to eat. Sadly, nobody in our family knew that starches were as bad as sugars, and she continued eating bread, potatoes, and cereal. What advice might she have gotten if they had cou

It's a good day for paying your bills And it's a good day for curing your ills So take a deep breath and throw away the pills 'Cause it's a good day from mornin' til night A low-carb diet has cured me of GERD! Thanks to the work of Dr. Norm Robillard, author of Heartburn Cured, I no longer have acid reflux--and I don't have to avoid "trigger foods" like onions, caffeine, chocolate (in the form of baking cocoa), mint, tomatoes and fat. This is a big change from the Body-for-Life program I was on just a few months ago. Body-for-Life involves eating (among other things) six small servings of "authorized" carbs like whole-wheat bread, pasta, fruit, beans, brown rice and winter squash per day. Now I mostly eat meat, eggs, nuts and non-starchy vegetables like leafy greens, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage and green beans. Low-carb diets defy just about every official dietary guideline out there. How often do you hear "eat plenty of healthy whole

"Avoid trigger foods!" is common advice to people who suffer from acid reflux. (This is more advice than I got from my doctors.) The theory is that certain foods cause the LES (lower esophageal sphincter muscle) to remain open and allow stomach acid into the esophagus. Today I put that theory to the test. Two trigger foods are fat and garlic; another trigger is a big meal. For lunch, I ate a two-egg omelet with garlic-herb cream cheese and reduced fat cheddar cheese (it was what I had on hand). For good measure, I put half an avacado on top and added some mushrooms, thyme, salt and pepper for flavor. Except for the avacado and absence of salsa, this was the same meal I ate last Sunday when I had blistering reflux. For a mid-afternoon snack, I ate about a cup of mixed nuts and sunflower seeds (a high-fat snack) and chased it with two cups of white tea, which has caffeine (another trigger food). For breakfast, I had a plain Spiru-Tein protein shake with a few drops of orange an

If I had any doubt that sugary or starchy carbs give me acid reflux, my experience yesterday removed them. I felt fine except when I ate high-glycemic foods. I ate some lentil salad, berries and oat bran in the morning and got acid reflux. I ate about 10 blackberries last night and got acid reflux. The rest of the time, the only carbs I ate were cabbage and cauliflower--two supposedly gassy foods that didn't give me gas or reflux. Dr. Robillard is right about high glycemic foods causing reflux, and I can't wait for his book, Heartburn Cured, to arrive. Yesterday, Day 2 of my low-carb experiment, started with a workout I couldn't finish: I didn't have the energy. But after I showered and got dressed, all those Saturday chores--shopping, sorting papers, mopping the floor, clearing out clutter, putting away laundry--got done easily. I normally hate, dread, and often put off those chores. I noticed the same thing the day before: I was flying through my work. Last night, th