Anyone Read "Food Is Not Medicine?"

(Jane) #43

Then clamp your mouth shut, do not explain and SMILE.

We had a nurse practitioner take over our GP practice and at our first visit asked us “did we eat a healthy diet?” Didn’t qualify that so we both said YES!!! :grin:

#44

I must be becoming more of a conspiracy theory believer, but when I looked at the picture of this book in the OP, all I could see right off the bat was a public image campaign paid for by the industries who are threatened the most by the keto diet or any low carb diet. I didn’t even know yet if the book supported keto or not. I saw a big pill bottle filling the cover and the chosen verbiage “escape the diet trap” along with big bold letters, “Food is Not Medicine”??

The heck it isn’t!! :rage:

Y’all don’t know much about me yet, but I struggled for years with ADHD and severe anxiety, and OCD thinking. I have three children with multiple disabilities each, all ASD spectrum and two with Tourette syndrome. We spent the last 20 years going “the medicine” route to our detriments. Two of my kids had the worst social experiences you would ever want to watch your own child go through, and both turned to attempted suicide to escape the pain and rejection by their peers and our community. That was also somewhat driven by the medicine. Nobody suggested or encouraged a diet change in all these years or tried to educate us about what the foods we ate were doing to our bodies. The first order of business was always drug therapy. The amount of additional symptoms we each battled day in and day out from the side effects of those drugs was unreal. I thought I was doing the best I could for them, making the right choices, with the help of my doctors. :roll_eyes:

Today, after 12 weeks on keto, I’m sitting here free of ALL psychiatric drugs, including my Adderall XR that I absolutely could NOT function without for a single day in 16 long years. I haven’t taken one dose in almost four weeks and didn’t even realize I wasn’t taking it until the end of that first week. Yet I feel as if I am still taking it because the benefits it did provide are all present, but without the negative side effects. I haven’t had any anxiety spikes since starting this diet. I have never been more even keel emotionally in my entire life. I think more clearly and have more time to control my reactions, equal to non-disabled people, so the impulsivity control side to ADHD is completely gone. I had only one OCD preoccupation in all this time on the diet, and it was two days ago, and only because I was personally harassed online by someone and it deeply rattled me. But even so, I never responded back to them yet and never will, even though I know they smugly think they hurt me I won’t. Yet before this diet I would have had plenty to say in return within hours, maybe minutes, without thinking first. Not that there is anything wrong with defending yourself when you are both justified and in the right, and fully articulate, but it’s unwise to be so quick to react. I have always known the wisdom, but my condition sabotaged what I always wanted to do. This time, I had full cognitive and emotional control for the first time ever to be able to choose the patience I always knew was wise. Decades of medicine never gave me that without adding grogginess, depression, hopelessness, and unclear thinking. The Keto diet cleared it up in under three months. Probably in the first few weeks! I just had no opportunity to test it until now. :joy:

I am way more mentally healthy now than ever before. So food absolutely can be medicine!

I bet the Statin manufacturers wouldn’t want people to believe that.

If the health information getting circulated today is opening too many people’s eyes and closing their pocket books, you can better believe there are several boardrooms across America where comments can be heard, like, “C’mon people, work the problem! We need an effective campaign here!” And somebody no doubt suggested finding either a trustworthy doctor to deliver their campaign, or one young enough to be bought and molded. “Let’s have him scare people into neglecting medicine. Let’s squash this “food can heal you” notion loud and clear. We will give him speaking engagements too.”

After all I’ve seen and read so far, it seems so plausible that a book like this releases in answer to a threat. And of course the author sounds sincere and well meaning. When marketing drives the bus, there is not a single breath overlooked and it’s always Oscar worthy writing.

How’s that for conspiracy theory? It’s my first. :joy:

(Robin) #45

All good points. Are your kids doing better too?
I wish I had known about keto when my autistic son was a kiddo. Sadly, I was quick to give in to whatever he would eat. Now, he’s on the verge of 40, diagnosed with T2D two months ago. That got his attention and mine and he is down 20 pounds already and reports feeling energetic and is sleeping better too. Hopefully will be off BP meds & statin very soon.

#46

Yes and no. They are all in their 20s now and I wish I had known about the food when they were young too. I lost my oldest, my daughter, several years ago. It wasn’t suicide or anything like that, but I can’t elaborate because the pain of not having her in my life is a fresh wound every day.

My oldest son is 24 and he is still a suicide risk, having spent weeks before, after, and on Christmas in the hospital. He worked tirelessly since grade school through to college to overcome his disabilities, and 4x harder than all other kids in private school just to try and fill the gaps left by the public school, and he graduated with honors and went on to earn a bachelors degree with high marks. He was hired before graduation by a fabulous company, but he quit after 9 months. He is simply worn out by the years of non-stop stress and anxiety and demands, and he has never had a moment to just breath and recover from it all. He needed a break. (Theres more to the story but it’s not necessary here.) I’m trying to get him to consider my diet but he is hard to convince of anything because we are at that point where he hangs on to “mom isn’t always right” stubbornly, even if it hurts him. He has always developed slower than his peers so he is at that stage that most kids go through with their parents in their late teens. He did stop his meds because the side effects of the new ones were just horrible and leading him to deeper depression, and he sees how I was able to stop mine. But he refuses to hear the connection about the diet in their place, even though I’m stressing it. He is very much at a stage of, “if I ignore it, it isn’t real”. It’s kind of dangerous to cut certain medication and not do anything healthy in its place, and that’s why I worry about my oldest and am watching him closely. Right now the most I can do for him is a lot of deep prayer. Forcing him to listen will only push him away. Occasionally he asks a curious question about my diet out of the blue though so I know his wheels are turning. Yesterday he asked, “so … do you ever get a cheat day on this diet? Like one day a week or even a month?” :joy: He must think I’m sorely deprived. LOLOL I told him I hear how others do, and if they have been on the diet a while it doesn’t hurt them so long as they get back on the train the next day. But I haven’t had any desire to cheat myself because I don’t crave things like I used to, and my cheat day is me cheating with extra helpings of keto food. :joy: He seemed shocked to hear I don’t have the desire.

My youngest is still in college and seems to be doing better. I work hard on helping him learn social things I wish I had known. But I know it wouldn’t take much social conflict and shunning to push him back to the edge. He is a computer programmer and video game enthusiast, and he just joined a fraternity. Thank GOD it is full of other nerds like him. :joy: I pray every day his experiences there are blessed, and if he finds even one other guy that accepts him as he is and is loyal to him as a friend, then it will be a success. But I have had that prayer with every new school or club or church and it never happened before. But I know for certain now that he can survive it all if he is mentally healthy and strong. So I have been trying to encourage him about this diet too. He might come around. He is the one I worry the most about health-wise because the family gene of obesity looks to be developing faster in him. They all are prone if it gets out of hand, but he is becoming overweight and unhealthy. His diet was the worst of the three since he only liked macaroni, white rice, fishies, cheez it’s, and McDonalds. :roll_eyes: Those foods are all so addictive too. I’ve slowly tried to encourage him to wean off his meds and replace it with this diet. He knows the diet is key, but is afraid he can’t afford it at college. I told him thats not true. The money he spends on the crap food will be more than enough for meat and healthy foods. But he doesnt have the free hours to cook like I do.

I’ll keep working on them both, slowly. Bit by bit. My own success has never been more critical than right now for their sakes. It speaks louder than my words.