Healing the gut

[Kyle970]

Well, milk could be my nemesis and I'm sure if we rewind here a couple years... that would be what was recommended. Hence, we're possibly a little different. I think this is a little difficult when you try to build a brand around a dietary protocol.

With respect... you're preaching to the choir on the bean diet.
Karen says to use other fibers like psyllium for those that don't do well with beans.
Sometimes it has nothing to do with toxins. If you eat food- you are toxic lol.
More to do with low stomach acid, enzymes, etc. Beans and red meat are not the easiest foods to digest. I think this way is great for fine tuning or working up to... just seems common sense, come on. Seems some steps are skipped over here.

 

[InChristAlone]

Well, milk could be my nemesis and I'm sure if we rewind here a couple years... that would be what was recommended. Hence, we're possibly a little different. I think this is a little difficult when you try to build a brand around a dietary protocol.

With respect... you're preaching to the choir on the bean diet.
Karen says to use other fibers like psyllium for those that don't do well with beans.
Sometimes it has nothing to do with toxins. If you eat food- you are toxic lol.
More to do with low stomach acid, enzymes, etc. Beans and red meat are not the easiest foods to digest. I think this way is great for fine tuning or working up to... just seems common sense, come on. Seems some steps are skipped over here.

It's based on physiology though, if we keep recirculating our bile then we don't get rid things like excess estrogen. For some people maybe pressure cooked veggies are able to help them get rid of estrogen, but personally I couldn't keep doing the veggies, they gave me nausea. I don't get nausea from beans. So I actually don't think beans are hard to digest, if you properly cook them they seem gentle. And I prefer them over psyllium husk and even whole grains.

 

[3apples555]

edit: this turned into a huge wall of text it's late and i'm feeling contemplative, sorry

After all these years I would say the most important missing piece personally has not been perfecting diet or medication/supplementation but once the basics of nutrition have been figured out and major irritants avoided, there is great benefit to be had from intentional nervous system resetting practice. e.g Heart rate variability training/EMwave/gut hypnosis/trauma release exercises (TRE)/loving kindness meditation etc. I did the free trial for a gut hypnosis training app called Nerva (recorded the sessions and put them on an old ipod) and have really seen good results, much moreso than with normal meditation. It's basically a deeply guided meditative prompting to restore the flow of digestion, much more effective than it seems like it should be. It's a very soothing british female voice and is genuinely pleasant to hear - It's really suprising to me how much listening to these sessions once or twice a day for 15 mins has helped. Doing Trauma release exercises (TRE) over the last few years has been massive, I felt a tangible lowering in pain and a joyous feeling of my body being more whole than before, less at war with my own gut, from the first session I did. And lots of good old simple stuff like foam rolling and using a pso-rite, directly getting into the ab wall and relaxing the tissue, signalling safety and calm to the body even if my mind doesn't feel it yet.

I think we benefit the most when juggling the combination of reasonable diet (most importantly to avoid things that clearly mess you up but try to keep enjoyment in eating because that matters quite a bit), careful or no supplementation once you've fixed specific deficiencies, and try to cultivate a sense of moving forward in life, and ideally feeling grounded/safe periodically, and actively undertaking balancing or flow practices. That can mean that the missing key for some people might actually be something totally left of field like going for a long walks in nature or painting a picture or pursuing a passion. I know a walk won't cure a diagnosis but getting unstuck from your own bull**** is an incredible relief for the body, however temporarily. The energy flow to get into a rest and digest state is key - there may be some part of you that feels suppressed and expressing that part will help a lot too. Being sick is straight up traumatizing, and many people developed poor health in consequence of childhood trauma. Many of us were let down by people charged to keep us safe. We've been blamed for displaying symptoms in social settings and learned to suppress them and smile through painm to stay in good social graces. Those scars can heal but that first requires acknowledging that we have been hurt, not just by the illness itself but by how others have reacted to us. We have to accept that our nervous system likely needs that extra bit of care and self forgiveness to restore the full potential of digestion

There is a tendency in state of acute unwellness to have this gnawing anxious feeling that you have this problem in you, something separate that really needs to be fixed, maybe you start pacing around or you sit in a weird posture on the pc and won't move for hours like some kind of serotogenic freeze state while you obsess over why, why, searching forums and research papers for an external reason for an experience of internal disarray. There's a feeling you like you want to sit and search for the next supplement that'll fix it, the piece of knowledge that'll turn it all around. Ironically this sitting around processing, analysing, being frustrated is quite a significant factor to the overall gut situation.

The gut thrives when you're breathing well, relaxing your body, and not taking into too much content, when you're moving in life without thinking, just living. The internet really isn't great for the gut overall. This is why you must go at it head first, with practices that will bring you back to a sense of comfort with your gut and back into your body. You have to gently coax your body down into parasympathetic activity, in whatever way works best for you. For me personally its morning sunlight, walks without podcasts or music, nerva gut hypnosis twice a day for 15 mins, trauma release exercises a few times a month, not neglecting my creative instincts, and cultivating a sense of being more relaxed about food choices (this last one becomes much easier as your symptoms ease). Of course I've spent years fiddling with diet like we all have but if I eat well and also neglect the above things, my nerves start to become sensitive again and I feel the old patterns rearing up. We just can't eat and supplement our way our of nervous system imbalance and nor should we try to. I think many people here have experienced the dead end spinning your wheels feeling this can result in.

As you relax further into rest and digest/parasympathetic activation and make these restorative activities daily practice, you'll find foods that bother you don't cause the same symptoms. You'll find you feel less bloated after meals, not as tired. The pain isn't there, the aversion to eating in anticipation of something bad happening. These things can shift without your diet being radically different or figuring out exactly what's "wrong with you". the mind and the enteric nervous system as so inseperably linked, when we really respect how much our state of mind and mental diet matters to digestion, then we can really get free from old patterns. As annoying as it is to think about, the self perception that we're sick can be limiting to a state of mental wellness. This is why it's important to have time that has a different mental charge. Not, 'What happened to my gut? Why does it hurt there? What's the cause of all this? What should I have done differently? Is this my fault?' Whether these questions are valid, are they helping you or actively disturbing you, if you let them swirl around your head over and over? I've come to realise how much overthinking can really contribute to visceral hypersensitivity and all the strange gas pain/slow peristalsis. The answer isn't magically thinking positive about everything, but doing 'workouts' of peaceful good brain activity like gut hypnosis. It does your body so much good to halt the negative self talk (even just for minutes at a time) the frustration at not being as well as you'd like. One of those ironies of life that accepting negative emotions and letting them go actually releases you from their grip - and the cruel fate of the sick person is that this is difficult to overcome because your body is signalling you to feel bad. It has a similar quality to depression in that it lies to you and tells you it can't be any better. But it can.

Just as it took quite some time for our digestion to become dysfunctional, we must be patient in slowly rolling it back to normality. Recognize that you have within you most of the tools you need, patience, some discipline, self acceptance and self forgiveness, and hope, because you will feel hope if you are diligent with some kind of restorative practice as I've mentioned, it has to be earned. I know how terrible it feels when it feels like the food is your enemy, and you'd like nothing more than for your body to accept it but it feels like a battle, with pain and sensitivity all the time not just when you're eating. I've been there, at one point when I was 22 I weighed only 43kg, in hospital getting nasogastric intubated because I couldn't hold down any food and the doctors didn't know what was wrong, now I feel strong at 71kg and can eat most things without much bother. It can get better and it can get better without finding your ultimate diet, your ultimate supplement (Having said that THC/CBD/Cyproheptadine have helped me a lot on the way), or even knowing exactly what befell you to get to this point. I still don't really know what my situation is at the end of the day, as far as where one problem starts and another ends- hypothyroidism, gut dysbiosis, visceral hypersitivity, trauma, MTHFR, damage from malaria all rolled into one mess. I had to let go of knowing exactly. The true healing is within, the acceptance and self restoration as you serve yourself with your mind and activities that can cultivate that feeling of internal nervous system balance - that will be the ultimate complement to eating well and supplementing and all the rest of it. Our minds are powerful in their influence on the physical state, a cultivated relaxation of the nervous system is the finest supplement and empowers food to heal you.

This was such a wise and beautiful post and I agree with you on SO many points, and I thank you for it.

 

[Sampa]

oregano oil is an absolute GAME CHANGER

What do you think is the best way to take it? Please

 

[ddjd]

What do you think is the best way to take it? Please

i put 2-5 drops in an empty gelatin capsule and shake it around so it sticks to the sides....then take with some water

 

[Kyle970]

@InChristAlone yeah I'm not going to continue arguing about a type of food. That is incredibly that it helped you. I love beans and have been eating them regularly since about 2004 but I am now annoyed after reading here and I'm considering doing the complete opposite.

I'd love to see the proof of where beans alone cure chrohns/colitis because this is a bold claim.

I can relate to OP... after bouncing around many specialists, fluff gets a little old.

 

[InChristAlone]

@InChristAlone yeah I'm not going to continue arguing about a type of food. That is incredibly that it helped you. I love beans and have been eating them regularly since about 2004 but I am now annoyed after reading here and I'm considering doing the complete opposite.

I'd love to see the proof of where beans alone cure chrohns/colitis because this is a bold claim.

I can relate to OP... after bouncing around many specialists, fluff gets a little old.

You can look her up Unique Hammond, she worked with a doctor who was making sure she wasn't getting worse. There's no money to be made selling beans! Why would anyone lie about that?And why would you now not want to eat them? I'm super confused.

I had to do coffee enemas for a few months and activated charcoal morning and night to begin eating more soluble fiber. So no it won't be a magic bullet, it took her 1 yr to heal her bowels. She also had to cut out ALL stimulants, this is very key to healing.

 

[Kyle970]

@InChristAlone link for the claim beans cure colitis/chrohns?
If this is fact ilovesugar and many others are suffering unnecessarily.

 

[InChristAlone]

@InChristAlone link for the claim beans cure colitis/chrohns?
If this is fact ilovesugar and many others are suffering unnecessarily.

She wrote a book, has a podcast, has a practice helping others, and here is her story:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBzsJ7WM2Pc


I do think people are suffering needlessly. Health is not as complicated as we make it out, we just have to understand a few basic principles.

 

[DanDare]

Fibre and no coffee, cocoa, tea, and small mono meals as others have said.

 

[DanDare]

Lol.
Notice how original poster said beans hurt him but he just needs to eat more?

Gut function is extremely complex. When people simplify it or speak with authority, its usually evident they are full of it.
The diet you described is almost to a T what I was eating when my life entered a literal hell. I don't blame the diet but I'm not under a psychosis that this food alone will reverse a chronic disease. Even Karen says some most definitely should avoid for a while.
Y'all seem to oversimplify things or use your personal way as authority it seems to me.

I believe she says you start with tiny amounts and build them up

 

[DanDare]

What You Can Eat on The Bean Diet - Guidelines​

PS: I don’t follow her protocol that scrictly. @Coderr
I personally don’t eat vegetables, I do eat some fruit, I drink black coffee in the morning, I enjoy a cigar here and there, I use fragrance occasionally, I am sleeping less than recommended.

I appreciate your contributions, thank you