Yes. It is that time of year again. New Year’s Eve. I use this Holiday to reflect on what worked in the last year and what needed some improvement. One of the things my husband and I agreed upon this year was to step it up in our intentional diets. As you may have read in one of my previous articles, Isaac (spouse) has been diagnosed with eczema, and it seems to flare up all over his body. With some research, I learned that more people are approaching the disease as an auto immune deficiency, instead of a skin disorder. How the “gut” and the skin are related, I really don’t understand it all yet, but let me tell you what I have observed.
 




 
For about 3 weeks prior to the new year I decided to make a mental note of the times when either one of us felt “sick”. For example, I would start to take notice when my stomach had pain, if Jenna could not sleep, or if Isaac had another break out. At first it seemed that nothing had a correlation, but then I noticed 2 things that blew me away, and they both have to do with our diet. The first was all dairy. I firstly want to explain to my readers that I absolutely love milk. As a child I would drink it everyday. It was perfect with cookies, cake, cereal and just a big glass by itself was great. My dad started joking when I left for college that the milk would spoil cause I was not there to drink it everyday. So this was a big shock. Whenever he or I had a dairy product we would suffer from painful gas, and I would also have some mild cramps and joint pain. Cheese was particularly horrible, as It gave us both indigestion. Along with indigestion, I believed that the intake of cheese was causing Isaac’s skin to break out. In turn, it was probably causing some problems for my little one through my very own breast milk. So we stopped all dairy for a week and guess what…we felt better. We started drinking more water and the milk substitute called Ripple from Target. It was a little bit more expensive, but it did taste great and we had no problems throughout the day.
 
The second was eating at fast food restaurants. We paid more with more than just money every time we ordered. A few times we even had food poisoning that left us vomiting and dehydrated for hours. My skin is prone to acne and I have found that fast food would break out my skin as well.
 
So now we are working to stay in control of our health, and listening to our bodies as it tells us what it likes and dislikes. The way you process food is unique to others and you should not just eat something based on the reaction someone else has. I would encourage young families to start a meal log and record your reaction to the things you are consuming on a regular basis. Because of the great result we had with stopping all dairy, my husband has decided to start researching foods that my cause a flare up in his skin. So far, he has noticed a lot of the foods he commonly eats may have cause some severe reaction in his body. And because I nurse Jenna, I have followed the example by ending these “triggers” from my diet as well.
 
Just for the record, I’d like to close with the possibility of diet change being one of the most important if not the only important evolution into your health journey. Take control and discipline yourself in to a better life for you and your family.
 
Live Healthy one day at a time.