Are you poisoning yourself every day??

Years ago, I started to notice that I was not feeling as energetic and excited about life as I used to be.  I chalked it up to long hours in the hospital, sometimes being up for over 36 hours at a time.  I figured once my schedule slowed down, I'd feel much better.  Unfortunately, it didn't happen that way!  My schedule never really changed, and I continued to feel worse with each passing year.  

Adding to this crazy life were the pounds that were piling onto my body every year, the constant run around that never seemed to end...or some new "task"  that would surface to take the place of the old thing, and so on it went.  During this period of time, I "thought" I was eating healthy...I mean, hey...I was a doctor, so I thought I knew what healthy meant.  The point is I was going downhill every day, my symptoms were growing… first fatigue, then weight gain, then insomnia, then aches and pains, and when I checked my thyroid and basic labs, everything looked "normal."

It was only through divine synchronicity that I found my way into Functional Medicine, and discovered that I was actually poisoning myself on a daily basis!

I learned how to search deep within my physiology to find out “why” I was feeling the way I was. The first thing I realized was that my seemingly “normal” labs were actually NOT normal for me, not by a long shot!! I’ll chat about that more in an upcoming letter. I also learned that there were foods I was eating every single day that were keeping me sick! I just didn’t correlate the foods with the symptoms…

I guarantee that if you are having stuck symptoms, you likely are poisoning yourself on a daily basis with some of the foods that you are eating. It might not be what you think either! For instance, for me, chicken, eggs, berries and dairy (amongst other things) were creating problems for me. Who would have thought??!!

The beauty of this is that when I figured out what foods were creating the problem, I was able to remove them, repair my gut, and start the healing. Pretty quickly, my thyroid symptoms turned around, I became more energetic, and I could FINALLY sleep for the first time in years!!

So how do you figure out what foods might be poisoning your system? You can definitely do an elimination diet and remove some of the top offenders. These would include wheat/gluten and dairy. Start there. If you want to go deeper, also remove eggs, sugar and artificial sweeteners, and soy. Remove them for at least 21 days, and ideally a little longer. See how you feel….

If removing these foods helped, there may be others that are sneaking through your gut as well. This is where I recommend “test don’t guess” and ordering food sensitivity testing. This is a simple way to diagnose for yourself what foods are creating symptoms. You can usually test up to 150 different foods, vegetables, grains, meats, colorings, additives, and other things that will personalize for YOU what needs to change to heal.

I’m curious if you’ve ever had food sensitivity testing done, and if so, were you surprised by what you found?

Click below to get tested and get started removing the “poisons” you might be putting into your body!!