With all of those dietary restrictions, it can be overwhelming to try to determine what I can actually eat. Snacks are the hardest, but apple with organic peanut butter works pretty well. I was having egg sandwiches for breakfast, until I learned that I’m allergic to eggs. I had oatmeal for a while, but got sick of it. Granola is pretty good, but most of it is made with cane sugar, so I have to read the ingredients. Right now I like Barbara’s Cinnamon Puffins with Rice Dream rice milk. Rice milk is very sweet, even without sugar. Tasty stuff!
Instead of wheat, I can have buckwheat, amaranth, quinoa, chick-pea flour,and rice flour. It’s virtually impossible to find items made with these substitutes. Lucky for me, I know how to cook!
Red meat has been very easy for me to give up. I’ve never really craved meat, and I do just fine on occasional chicken, duck, or seafood. Fish is also so much easier to cook–just wrap it in foil and stick it in the oven. The duck I get is precooked, and I make a really great soup with it. Dairy is harder–I really miss it. I miss ice cream and cheese, especially pizza. I’ll live though.
Refined sugar, while hard to avoid, is not that hard to give up. I simply modify my baking recipes. For instance, I have a great brownie recipe that I make with quinoa flour instead of wheat, maple sugar and maple syrup instead of brown sugar, and goat butter instead of cow butter. Goat butter does not affect the body as bad as cow butter does. It does still caused the production of some prostaglandins, but I figure brownies are not supposed to be good for you anyway. The hardest thing about giving up sugar is chocolate. Supposedly carob is a good substitute, but I’ve yet to try it.
I have given up caffeine almost completely. The only time I ever have it is when I have not slept well and then have to drive long distances. Fortunately, that is very rare. Whenever I do have caffeine, I get sick, though that might be more from the sugar and dairy.
About soy: most forms of soy are bad for you, but a few forms are okay in limited amounts. The difference is in the processing. According to the book ‘Recipes for the Endometriosis Diet’ by Carolyn Levett, “The soybean did not serve as a food in China until the discovery of fermentation techniques, some time during the Chou Dynasty” and “the Chinese did not eat unfermented soybeans as they did other legumes such as lentils because the soy bean contains large quantities of natural toxins or ‘anti-nutrients’.” Fermented soy products include miso, tempeh, and tamari, and are ok to use in small quantities.
The modern use of soy came about from an attempt to use the leftovers from soy bean processing, after the oil had been extracted. “There was so much soy bean residue that extensive multi-million dollar campaigning and advertising was used to promote this new ‘wonder-protein’.
Soy bean by-products are mixed with alkaline solution to remove fiber, acid washed to precipitate and separate the mixture, and washed in an alkaline solution to neutralize the resulting product. Acid washing is done in aluminum tanks, and aluminum is leached into the soy mixture as a result.
The curds are then spray-dried at high temperatures and extruded at high temperatures and pressures, which denatures proteins in soy (other than textured vegetable protein). Spray drying produces highly carcinogenic nitrites, and alkaline processing produces toxic lysinoalanine. After all this, soy is artificially flavored to resemble meat, sometimes using MSG.
Soy is used in many, many products and foods. Next time you go grocery shopping, just read the ingredients labels quickly to see how much soy you actually consume. I know for me, it was way more than I ever thought. One last note: “After multi-million dollar figures spent on advertising and intense lobbying to the Food and Drug Administration, about 74 percent of US consumers now believe soy products are healthy”.
Since I cannot use vegetable oils (such as soybean oil, corn oil, canola oil, cottonseed oil), I have to look to alternatives for my cooking. I do a lot of cooking on the stove top, so I tend to go through a lot of oil. Acceptable oils are safflower, walnut, flax seed, linseed, borage, star flower, olive, and coconut. I had been using olive oil for just about everything until my naturopath told me it does not do well at high temperatures. I have since switched to coconut oil. The important thing is that the oils are natural, unrefined and cold pressed, and not allowed to go rancid.
Coconut oils provide a variety of health benefits, including: faster metabolism, reduced risk of heart disease, lowered cholesterol, disease prevention, healthy thyroid function, energy boosting, and skin rejuvenation. They also improve the condition of people with diabetes, chronic fatigue, and certain gastrointestinal disorders. Coconut oil has gotten bad press in the past, based on flawed studies completed over 4 decades ago, some using hydrogenated coconut oil. “Hydrogenated oils are oils with trans-fatty acids, which have been altered from their original chemical composition and have been shown to raise cholesterol levels and lead to heart disease and other health problems”.
Coconut oil does contain saturated fats, but the majority of these are medium-chain fatty acids. These are easily digested and utilized differently by the body than other fats. Medium-chain fatty acids have even been shown to have anti-microbial properties.
Fiber is important for everyone’s digestion, but for women with endometriosis, it has an added bonus as an estrogen-binder. Excess estrogen is filtered out by the liver (when it is not overburdened by poisons), and excreted from the body; fiber assists in this by disallowing the re-absorption of estrogen before it can be excreted. Good sources of fiber include whole foods, unrefined whole-grain cereals, nuts, seeds, berries, pulses, and vegetables such as celery, carrots and potatoes.
While the majority of my diet includes fruits and vegetables, even these aren’t always safe. They must be peeled, as they potentially could have picked up dioxins from pesticides. Even organic foods can be exposed to these. The best option is to buy locally organic. Some people think that foods with a peel that you don’t normally eat (such as bananas) are safe to buy non-organic. This couldn’t be further from the truth. If you took high school biology, you know that plants absorb water mainly through their roots, and this water then travels throughout the plant. Any chemical that is sprayed on the ground near the plants can get into their water supply after a rain, and the chemicals are then transferred throughout the plant, instead of just being on the outside.
Certain foods can be helpful in eliminating estrogen from the body. Foods that contain plant sterols are thought to block estrogen receptors. These foods include peas, beans, pulses, red and purple berries, garlic, apples, parsley, fennel, cabbage, cauliflower, nuts, seeds, celery, carrots, rhubarb and sage. Elimination of estrogen is important not just for women with endometriosis. Those suffering from adenomyosis, polycistic ovarian syndrome, and breast cancer can all potentially benefit from less estrogen in the diet.
Noni juice seems to have been a “superfood” fad about 5-10 years ago, but there are health benefits to back up this title. For starters, noni juice contains 9 essential amino acids (not found in the body), vitamins A, C, E, and the B vitamins, beta carotene, linoleic acid, bromelain, calcium, magnesium and zinc, as well as others. Bromelain is particularly effective as it is an anti-inflammatory enzyme, and also assists in digestion. The drawback to noni juice is that it is expensive, and has a very strong taste, so I am not currently taking it.
Green tea is a wonderful antioxidant, but should be consumed in the decaffeinated version. Natural decaffeination, using spring water and effervescence, is best; otherwise the antioxidants are not preserved. Green tea is also thought to protect the body from dioxin. Dioxin plays a huge role for women with endometriosis, so this is particularly important.
Overall, processed salt, caffeine, alcohol, soy, red meat, fried food and artificial additives have been the easiest to avoid. Sugar is a little harder, as is dairy because I like it so much. Wheat is the hardest, as it is everywhere. Usually I don’t worry too much about wheat, since I have never been prone to yeast infections. Sugar is probably the biggest problematic food for me personally.
Endo Sucks 