Ultra Simple Diet

[Jacques]

[Yeah, in Toulouse days, I have to wake up at 5:30am and I arrive home at 8:00pm. So I take the left-overs of the day before as lunch plus some extra bacon and blinis. The bottle of water with vitamin C is the life-saver. It keeps the inflammation down and boosts up your adrenals.

Hi Psyche,

Are you still using the Vitamin C from the company "Now" (ascorbic acid) or are you using a Vit C made from acerola ?

 

[Gaby]

[Yeah, in Toulouse days, I have to wake up at 5:30am and I arrive home at 8:00pm. So I take the left-overs of the day before as lunch plus some extra bacon and blinis. The bottle of water with vitamin C is the life-saver. It keeps the inflammation down and boosts up your adrenals.

Hi Psyche,

Are you still using the Vitamin C from the company "Now" (ascorbic acid) or are you using a Vit C made from acerola ?

I'm still using ascorbic acid from Now company. I find that it is cost-effective, works very well and it is very well tolerated. If you add stevia, it cuts out some of the acidity. But if you can afford something else, then that is better as usually ascorbic acid comes from corn, thus it may have traces of corn.

We make a cocktail with ascorbic acid and mucomyst (powdered NAC from the pharmacy) and it is always the winner cocktail for when you're feeling bad.

I tried the sodium ascorbate and didn't like it. My stomach felt "paralyzed".

I once had several chewable acerola tablets with excellent results. I was out and was feeling low in energy. After chewing several tablets in a row, I felt like a different person. Problem is, they're expensive!

 

[Jacques]

I once had several chewable acerola tablets with excellent results. I was out and was feeling low in energy. After chewing several tablets in a row, I felt like a different person. Problem is, they're expensive!

Thanks Psyche.

Right now, I am using this product from the Now company.

Serving Size: 1 Level Teaspoon (3.6 g)
Servings Per Container: 47
Amount Per Serving
Calories 15
Total Carbohydrate 3 g
Vitamin C (from Acerola and Ascorbic Acid) 180 mg
Acerola Powder Complex (4:1 Concentrate) (Berry) 3.6 g (3,600 mg)

They say on their website :

Acerola Powder is derived from acerola cherries, one of nature's highest sources of Vitamin C. Our Acerola Powder is a 4:1 concentrate with added Ascorbic Acid that yields 180 mg of Vitamin C per teaspoon and tastes great!

The taste is great but there is only 180 mg of Vit C per teaspoon. However, I read somewhere (Dr Sircus ?) , that we need less Vit C from acerola than other sources. The ratio could be up to 1 to 10. Acerola is supposed to be totally assimilated while other sources are not that much assimilated.

 

[3DStudent]

The latest thing to disappear from my grocery store shelves (or refrigerator cases) is hemp oil. Has anyone else seen this happening? Is it seasonal?

I don't get my omega oils in the grocery store. I get mine from Vitacost. But often Imedmart is cheaper.

Though considering the new diet guidelines, I may ditch the shake. Mine isn't a shake anymore, I just put the flax meal and hemp powder in my food. It's actually good. I just got some more of those, so I guess I will just eat them until they're gone.

And if I slept for 14 hours, I would have to be at work in 10 minutes after waking! ;)

The bottle of water with vitamin C is the life-saver. It keeps the inflammation down and boosts up your adrenals.

Interesting, the only time I loaded a bottle of water with C was when I was sick. Would you recommend always sipping Vitamin C throughout the day?

 

[mcb]

Belibaste has been going to physical therapy every day for the past few weeks (you may recall that he had surgery for stage 3 brain cancer - this left his hand partially paralyzed, so he is re-wiring his brain in therapy to fix this.) Anyway, he found out right away that the therapy center provides awful food only, so he takes his lunch. Also, Psyche has been going to a French course in Toulouse 4 days a week. She also takes her lunch. What they do is just pack some lunch or dinner from the day before in a lunch container (like a flat, covered dish) and take that with a bottle of purified water. Sometimes it's chicken, steak, stew, a couple of burgers in a bed of lettuce, half a sweet potato, meat chunks or slices, etc. It's really not a big deal to cook a little extra to have something to carry for lunch. They also frequently take a bottle of water with 20 grams or so of ascorbic acid and some stevia in it as a refreshing detox drink.

Today, we had some grilled chicken left over from last night, a bowl of steamed peas left over, some plain, boiled, red potatoes. Both of them took that for lunch.

While and just after I was doing the USD I experimented with cooking something quick and simple for lunch on the back burner while fixing breakfast and it worked, but the shakes were easier to make. I think that is the best solution for the long run. I will need to reprogram my slightly autistic brain for the change in routine, though, and in any case I think it is best if I don't make too many dietary changes all at once. It's too hard to "debug" if the change turns up a new food sensitivity.

I am starting to wish that we had bought a 6-burner cook top instead of a 4-burner one when we remodeled last year, but we didn't really have room for anything larger. Oh well. I could also bake something while cooking breakfast on the stove.

 

[mcb]

...I tried the sodium ascorbate and didn't like it. My stomach felt "paralyzed"...

And I do better with sodium ascorbate than I do with ascorbic acid. We all have to experiment, I guess. Using ascorbic acid gave me a whopping case of diarrhea, even when I reduced the dose way down. I didn't actually feel ill -- it just cleaned me out and kept cleaning.

 

[mcb]

...Though considering the new diet guidelines, I may ditch the shake. Mine isn't a shake anymore, I just put the flax meal and hemp powder in my food. It's actually good. I just got some more of those, so I guess I will just eat them until they're gone...

Be careful with the flax meal. It gave me vomiting and diarrhea (both at the same time) which I interpreted at the time as an allergy. After reading Fiber Menace, though, I wonder if the flax meal was just too "bulky" for my gut to process any longer. I know most people don't react this way but one of the messages of the book is that fiber does its damage over decades and the damage may not be entirely reversible by the time you are old enough to feel it (I am 60). I could be a "canary in the coal mine" for this particular food. I used to obtain a lot of my fiber from flaxseed. I won't touch the stuff now.

 

[Gertrudes]

The bottle of water with vitamin C is the life-saver. It keeps the inflammation down and boosts up your adrenals.

That's a good idea. Although, after drinking the water don't you feel that the enamel in your teeth is being affected? I usually have my vitamin C in only a little bit of water because I find it very strong, so I want to drink it all at once, the least liquid the better. I feel it in my teeth straight away and need to rinse my mouth with water afterwords. Maybe having it less concentrated, as in a whole bottle of water, will dissipate its effect on teeth.


An update on the diet and something that happened 2 days ago: I have read several members' accounts of having tried out something highly inflammatory while on the diet and having had severe reactions. So far, I hadn't experienced anything like that (apart to the now completely gone skin reactions to fats), and have always kept away from all the known inflammatory foods, it has been now one and a half years.

Well, Sunday I went to have lunch at a friends' place and I decided not to mention any diet restrictions. I have been there many times and he always does roasted meat, only seasoned with salt. Then there's the side dishes, but I usually don't eat those and that's always been fine.
This time, I filled my plate with only roasted lamb, but soon began to notice a mild taste of what seemed to be hot peppers. I thought: oh, boy, now I've already started and I'm really hungry, so I might just eat it. I also didn't want to spoil the lunch...a lesson soon to be learned, better learn how to say no to lunch then having lunch mess with you badly.
Within 40m of having finished, what I can only describe as an horrendous sensation invaded me. I began to feel dizzy, light headed, and had vertigo. I literally felt like I had been drugged. I decided to leave, and during the whole journey back home I was so dizzy that images sometimes seemed to come in flashes, and my eyes felt so heavy that I could barely keep them opened. I rested my head on my partner's shoulder, closed my eyes, and spend the 1h20m journey home like that. We got home, dizziness and vertigo had slowly faded away, but I was left with one hell of a headache that lasted until I went to sleep. It was as if my head had been compressed, and I was hearing things from inside a glass bottle. Very strange feeling.

Now I know how it feels to ingest poisonous food. And to think that I actually used to love hot peppers and ate them all my life before the diet! Amazing how these foods insidiously hide inside us as we eat them regularly, inflaming our bodies, our brains, and turning us into very poor sketches of what we really are, or could be. Very sad.

 

[mcb]

... I usually have my vitamin C in only a little bit of water because I find it very strong, so I want to drink it all at once, the least liquid the better. I feel it in my teeth straight away and need to rinse my mouth with water afterwords. Maybe having it less concentrated, as in a whole bottle of water, will dissipate its effect on teeth...

I found ascorbic acid to be very strong, but not sodium ascorbate. I can't remember now if I noticed anything unusual about my teeth after taking ascorbic acid. I dilute either one in 12 ounces of water and drink it fairly quickly. The ascorbic acid tasted awful, but the sodium ascorbate is almost tasteless now that I am used to it. I can't imagine concentrating ascorbic acid in a smaller amount of water. If I were still taking it I think I would use more water.

 

[theos]

... I usually have my vitamin C in only a little bit of water because I find it very strong, so I want to drink it all at once, the least liquid the better. I feel it in my teeth straight away and need to rinse my mouth with water afterwords. Maybe having it less concentrated, as in a whole bottle of water, will dissipate its effect on teeth...

I found ascorbic acid to be very strong, but not sodium ascorbate. I can't remember now if I noticed anything unusual about my teeth after taking ascorbic acid. I dilute either one in 12 ounces of water and drink it fairly quickly. The ascorbic acid tasted awful, but the sodium ascorbate is almost tasteless now that I am used to it. I can't imagine concentrating ascorbic acid in a smaller amount of water. If I were still taking it I think I would use more water.

To lessen the effects on your teeth you may want to try drinking it through a straw. If you can get your hands on a glass straw (not plastic) it would be even better.

 

[Gertrudes]

I found ascorbic acid to be very strong, but not sodium ascorbate. I can't remember now if I noticed anything unusual about my teeth after taking ascorbic acid.

Apparently ascorbic acid can damage teeth, this post by Psyche provides more details.
A small excerpt:

Acid in the Mouth
First of all, any acid can etch the surfaces of your teeth. This is the reason the dentist cleans your teeth and warns about plaque, for acid generated by bacteria in the mouth can etch your teeth to cause cavities. Cola soft drinks contain phosphoric acid, actually used by dentists to etch teeth before tooth sealants are applied. Like soft drinks, ascorbic acid will not cause etching of teeth if only briefly present. Often, vitamin C tablets are coated with a tableting ingredient such as magnesium stearate which prevents the ascorbate from dissolving immediately. Swallowing a vitamin C tablet without chewing it prevents its acid from harming tooth enamel.

Although it is only briefly present in my mouth, it is still enough for me to feel it in my teeth. Perhaps my enamel is not very strong.

To lessen the effects on your teeth you may want to try drinking it through a straw. If you can get your hands on a glass straw (not plastic) it would be even better.

Good idea, that never occurred to me. Now glass straw, that's something I've never seen :)

 

[mcb]

Good idea, that never occurred to me. Now glass straw, that's something I've never seen :)

There are stainless steel straws; I have a few. Anything is better than plastic.

 

[Lucius]

I have a question about the last session and vegetables:
Do you eat all homemade products (natural) As at present reintroducet for my body and eat them:
- Buckwheat
- Carrots
- potatoes
- Sauerkraut
- pickles
- Onions
- garlic
- apples

I'm thinking about:
- green olives
- mushrooms
- Bananas
- tomatoes

 

[mcb]

I have a question about the last session and vegetables:
Do you eat all homemade products (natural) As at present reintroducet for my body and eat them:
...

Reintroducing and testing foods is just one consideration for choosing what you eat. If something disagrees with you then don't eat it, but you may not want to eat it even if it doesn't cause a reaction.

I avoid nightshades, generally, because I have arthritis, not because I am sensitive to them, and because there is something about the way they taste that is, so to speak, less than exciting. The same goes for most fruits (I don't care for the taste). Buckwheat tastes great but it is high in fiber and I am on a low fiber diet while my gut recovers from 15 years of fiber overload. I do have buckwheat pancakes occasionally without any adverse effects, but I don't eat them regularly.

How do you "feel" about each food on your list? Do you crave it, or are you not particularly attracted to it? If so, don't eat it -- your body knows quite a lot about these things. Cravings may indicate a deficiency in something else, so look for what it might be.

 

[Gawan]

Belibaste has been going to physical therapy every day for the past few weeks (you may recall that he had surgery for stage 3 brain cancer - this left his hand partially paralyzed, so he is re-wiring his brain in therapy to fix this.) Anyway, he found out right away that the therapy center provides awful food only, so he takes his lunch. Also, Psyche has been going to a French course in Toulouse 4 days a week. She also takes her lunch. What they do is just pack some lunch or dinner from the day before in a lunch container (like a flat, covered dish) and take that with a bottle of purified water. Sometimes it's chicken, steak, stew, a couple of burgers in a bed of lettuce, half a sweet potato, meat chunks or slices, etc. It's really not a big deal to cook a little extra to have something to carry for lunch. They also frequently take a bottle of water with 20 grams or so of ascorbic acid and some stevia in it as a refreshing detox drink.

Yeah, in Toulouse days, I have to wake up at 5:30am and I arrive home at 8:00pm. So I take the left-overs of the day before as lunch plus some extra bacon and blinis. The bottle of water with vitamin C is the life-saver. It keeps the inflammation down and boosts up your adrenals.

Thanks for these tips Psyche, especially to mix the water that way I haven't tried yet. But tomorrow I give it a go.