Nuts!

Today I went to see my Cool Acupuncture Guy again. This past week has been a little weird because after being hyperthyroid, now I really seem to be swinging back into the hypothyroid phase. Luckily, CAG seems to think this is normal and expected.

But after eating gluten or whatever was on those dastardly fries, I was feeling even worse---ringing in my ears, diarrhea, headaches, dizziness, and just generally being tired. Oddly enough the arthritis part wasn't that bad. In any case, I made a new (and somewhat unfortunate) discovery about two days ago. I'm going to skip my sob story (just this one time) and say that I feel much better when I don't eat tree nuts.

I really like walnuts and pecans and hazelnuts so I eat them pretty often. I couldn't figure out what was making me feel sick because SO MUCH is already cut out of my diet. But yesterday (after a whole solid day of the Big D), I didn't eat any nuts at all. And voila, normal trips to the bathroom! A miracle!

On the upside, peanuts are really legumes and so far don't appear to cause any ill-effects. So, there's a positive to go with my negative.

CAG said that now that my body is starting to heal  we can start to help my thyroid dig itself out of the hole my body has scared it into. He means two things by my body starting to heal--one is that based on my blood tests and mostly good feeling, it seems like my immune system is calming down and two is that I don't have diarrhea as much!

Here is a summary of my appointment with CAG today:

*He said that he thinks my whole body is deficient. Not just one part of me, but my whole me. He used some Chinese terms that I don't fully understand--my Yin is deficient, my Yang is deficient, and so is my Chi....all of me is suffering.

*He made a fancy Chinese herbal solution for me to take for the next month. I asked what was in it and he started speaking Chinese.

*He said that I should continue to use Thyroxal every day (unless I feel sick, then suspend taking it for a bit) and ClearVite every day or as needed. To me, ClearVite is a miracle because it calms my tummy and my immune system down quite a lot!

*He looked at my tongue and could tell some crazy shit about my body. I will not divulge any details. But if I won't publish it on the Internet, it must be personal because I am pretty much an open book. ;)

*I asked about staying away from 'goitrogenic' foods (and similarly, nightshades that might cause arthritis) and he said that from the way he was looking at it, it wasn't the food itself that was the problem, it was my body's reaction to that food. So, another way of saying that is that my thyroid isn't malfunctioning because my thyroid is broken, my immune system is ATTACKING it. So goitrogenic foods (unless they also happen to be foods that 'upregulate' my immune system) aren't the problem, because my thyroid isn't the main problem.

I would like to take a short intermission to point out that he is looking at my body as a whole instead of as a bunch of small parts. The other docs I have seen were looking solely at my thyroid, even though all agreed that I had an autoimmune problem. Instead of trying to fix the immune system (which they see as unfixable), they just tried to alleviate symptoms of a thyroid hormone deficiency. I'm hoping this Chinese, whole-body approach WORKS!