If you’re wondering if it was the coffee all this time causing my hives, the answer is no.
Two weeks ago when I decided to go coffee-free, I postponed my decision until my hives were gone.
I was still using Benadryl each night and I had only mild itches and burning. Since I was so close to the hives disappearing altogether, I waited a little longer to stop drinking coffee.
I’m glad I did!
If I would have stopped drinking coffee last week, I would have thought for sure that my hives were the consequences of the yummy brown goodness worshiped by people the world over. It turns out, that it’s not.
Food sensitivities can be a very tricky thing. If our bodies are already hypersensitive, it would be very easy to convict an offending food with a guilty sentence, and banish the food forever! Some foods have proteins in them that mimic other foods and that can confuse matters even more.
The only way I’ve found it possible to identify key food offenders is over time. All too often we want quick fixes and dramatic results to happen overnight, yet sometimes it just takes patience, observations and time.
I’m not sure if it’s our culture that makes us so impatient or if it’s our inability to realize that our bodies are on a different timetable than our minds, but either way, it can be frustrating waiting for positive changes in our bodies to occur.
A prime example of that in my own life and health is wanting EVERYTHING to be better all at once. It’s unrealistic to think that way, yet I do find myself wondering why I’m not further along than I should be. Can you imagine that? If you’ve been following our Primal journey each week, you’ll find that amazing things happen each week for us.
I guess when I experience amazing energy, a lack of pain in my joints, clarity of mind and thought, and overall happiness, I look at other parts of my body that aren’t as quick to respond and wonder what I can do to speed up the process. Is that a good thing?
NO, and here’s why…
My body started falling apart on me in 2001. I was struck with partial paralyzing peripheral neuropathy. They ran tests for all kinds of disorders after admitting me to the hospital. My health made a turn around for a short period of time in 2002-2004 when I became a raw food vegan. I was able to shut off the autoimmune responses happening to me and my life dramatically improved. But it was short lived, and from 2004 until 2012 my physical life was like a nightmare.
Nine years of physical misery. Nine years of pain, and almost everything that I experienced over those years has been erased from life as though it never happened. Can you imagine that? I’ve been primal for two months now, and I’ve reversed my health problems. I sometimes wish I would have known about eating a primal diet back then, but I can’t change the way things have been done in the past. I can only move forward from here, improving my life in amazing ways where I no longer sit by as a spectator in my own life.
I thought for sure the reason I only had a little scratching last week was due to taking a night time cold medicine. It had a cough suppressant in it as well as an antihistamine. But I haven’t needed to take anything at ALL over the last three days and I don’t have any hives. I do have a little bit of itching, but not due to hives. When I used to scratch, I actually clawed at my skin, usually causing bleeding and leaving long thin scabs in its wake. Right now those scabs are in the process of falling off and they are mildly itchy. No more hives! No more painful itchy skin.
It feels so good to go to bed at night without needing to take Benadryl for the pain and itching, which leads to me getting a great night sleep. I used to wake up in the middle of the night in pain itching my body when the Benadryl wore off…not anymore! Woot! 🙂
At this time last year:
Simmi was pretending to make us strawberry pie. She did a great job making her pie!
So? What was it? Just the residuals from the old diet?
That is so awesome that it’s gone away! :~)
It could very well have been inflammation. I’m not sure why they are gone, but over these last two months they’ve just started to become less intense and finally POOF! all gone. It could have been food related, or inflammation related. I’ve been gluten free since December 24, 2012 (ate chocolate with wheat in it) and that was it as far gluten goes. If occasion arises where I do eat something that contains gluten (I need to wait at least six months first) and the hives come back, then I’ll know for sure it was the gluten. It’s not dairy and its not coffee…that much I do know. 🙂
so you’re still eating dairy huh? awesome that you didn’t have to give up coffee! no sugar and gluten though? i’m slowly working my way towards the paleo/primal diet. achy joints at 27 SUCKS!
Yup, still drinking the coffee and drinking and eating dairy. What we don’t eat (or drink) is anything with sugar, no gluten or grains of any kind, and no starchy vegetables at all. I do drink wine once a week, but that hasn’t affected being in ketosis at all.
I wish I could have said that it was just the gluten that caused the majority of my problems, but I believe strongly that it’s actually the sugar and fructose content in the foods I used to eat that was the real enemy. Gluten may be a part of that, but giving up wheat was easy for me…it was giving up potatoes and starchy veggies that was mildly difficult for about two days only because I grieved future yummy encounters with french fries and baked potatoes. And even during those two days I wasn’t so focused on what I couldn’t eat that I craved it more. I just let it go in my brain and never had a real thought about it since. It was a lot easier than I imagined it would be.
Give it a shot. 🙂