Allergic to Running: Experiment Results (Part II)

I've made quite a few posts earlier about this absolutely nasty skin irritation that has been occurring recently when I run. Last evening, I decided to stop procrastinating and go for another run.

This time, I did the opposite of the last experiment. I ate food with little break before my run, and I ate dairy. Instead of pasteurized dairy products, I substituted with the raw milk. My dinner/trial food was two glasses of chocolate raw milk (raw whole milk, unsweetened cocoa, and a bunch of table sugar), and a half glass of plain raw milk five to ten minutes before my run. The rest of the milk was ingested within an hour of my run. I wanted to throw oil on the fire with the half glass immediately before the run. I normally wouldn't eat or drink something that close to a run. Running and digesting food at the same time doesn't tend to work well for me.

I set an alarm on my phone for about 30min in the future and began my run. Nothing awful happened. Felt like I had a heavy stomach with the milk hanging out there...some of it wanted to come back up. Very pleasant. I was completely fine, despite it being quite cold and windy. I seem to pick the best days to stop procrastinating.

What does this mean? I'm not sure. I guess it means raw milk doesn't cause the reaction. Or, it could mean it's gone away? The raw milk might even been somewhat protective to the point if I do an experiment with regular pasteurized milk, it may not work. I might have to buy some of that ultra-pasteurized milk. Ugh. Or, it could simple be a different food entirely that is causing this allergy.

I can also determine that it's probably not dermatitis herpetiformis because I have been bad and eaten two gluten containing chocolate brownies. One the same day as the run, and I had no problems. That skin condition is associated with eating gluten within six months.

Or....who knows....maybe my diet is healing my intestines and what was developing into a significant problem may have disappeared and returned to it's real home in the flames down under.

Upcoming tests will include honeydew (seems to cause a slight sore throat when I eat it) and pasteurized milk.

Liars.

The more I read, the more frustrated I get. You read a lie or myth enough times, you start to believe it. For a long time, I read the conventional stuff. Now I'm way out there, reading what the conventional belief system wants us to believe is crazy. The more I read, and the more I hear, the more I am being moved to the other side.

And whoever comes to read this blog, may witness how an individual such as myself can come to believe all these things that we initially find crazy.

Last night I watched the documentary, Farmageddon. Today I read more of my Untold Story of Milk. A little more than a week ago, I had my first adult visit to a farm. I don't remember much from visiting farms as a kid.  The farm I picked up the raw milk from provided a handout about the risks and benefits of raw milk. They listed a few links at the bottom of the handout. Most of the websites I had been to.

I had not been to the FDA's section on raw milk. I already am familiar with their position from other articles. Still, I looked it up. I kind of got the impression that they took all of the pro raw milk arguments, and said the exact opposite. Not true, not true. Be scared, you will get sick.

Somebody is a liar. Who?

Shall we follow the money? Big agriculture and FDA vs small dairy farmers going out of business around the country?

How many of us trust our politicians? But we trust the FDA with our health?

In Farmageddon, they demonstrate how small farms and co-ops get raided when none of their customers got sick or complained. It all seems like fear-tactics, and why would anybody being using fear if they had nothing to hide or lose?

Lack of regulation of raw milk. So in IL, they inspect milk four times before it is sold. Raw milk, they don't inspect at all. It's like they are setting the system up to have problems. Yes, we want you to get sick on the milk so we can shut the farm down and prove our point. Luckily, when you pick it up from the farm, you can ask all the good questions about testing.

All the while, they don't care about the sickness of the animals in factory farming. And the downplay the food illness outbreaks from meats, vegetables, and pasteurized milk. Seems a little suspicious to me.

We've all heard about many of the moral issues surrounding our agriculture system, but why are we so apathetic?

Change in Cycle Imitating Change in Diet?

So I've been bad about posting recently. The weekends are my busy work days. Last weekend came and went without any time to post a worthwhile post. I was also sort of waiting on my cycle because I really wanted to show how my diet has significantly changed that. Well, that failed. Four cycles in a row coming in at 30 or 31 days was unprecedented reliability in the over two years of period tracking I've been up-keeping. Too good. So the would-be fifth in-a-row 30 day cycle had to mess with me coming in at a 36 days. Maybe next month or the one after I'll post a pretty graph with more information than anyone cares to read about.

I'm used to variation from 27 to 38 day cycles. So a 36 day cycle is nothing to worry about, except that it doesn't make the case for my diet as well as a 30 day cycle does. But then again, this month also had so many unprecedented food changes which I'll list below...

1) Discovery and over-eating of Noosa yogurt.

Each container has 2 servings. I'd eat 2 containers at a time. I generally don't eat a lot of dairy in any given month. I couldn't resist this yogurt. Considering it's pasteurized too, ooops.

2) Nearly half a stick of butter experiment.

Yeah, ingesting almost half a stick of butter wasn't a great plan. It resulted in a terrible outbreak of acne that didn't go away for awhile. Again, I don't think that acne is a good sign of your inner-workings. This alone may have not been significant, but with everything else - potentially.

3) Raw milk trial.

I bought 3 gallons of milk. In the last week and two days, I've probably drank almost a gallon. I usually drink less than a quarter of a gallon in two weeks. Significant change in diet...however, it did come later in my cycle so it's less likely to have had an influence when compared to the yogurt.

4) Lots of fruit juices (100% juice, not from concentrate)

They also have to pasteurize fruit juices. I didn't pay attention to this until the debacle of information concerning raw milk. Anyways, I splurged on a two big bottles of juice shortly after the butter incident and around the same time as the yogurt. It messed with my insides, and may have been a contributing factor in the slow recovery of my acne from the butter.

Clearly, my diet was a bit out-of-wack this month --- and the result was a bit out-of-wack cycle. Little change in exercise levels.

I've sworn off the fruit juice. Eating nearly half a stick of butter isn't fun anyways. And as for the Noosa yogurt, it don't believe it is particularly healthy. I'm also weary of anything that makes me feel like I lose self-control in eating it, like a food addiction. I'll be trying to avoid it in the next month. That just leaves raw milk. Guess, if I'm good, in another month I will know what the impact of raw milk is on my cycle.

Good Day on the Scale...Again

My New Year's resolution last year was to trim down to 125lbs. I basically met it without trying that hard. Yes, in April last year I had help from a marathon, but for awhile afterward those last couple of pounds weren't budging. This year, I haven't set a goal or resolution for weight, but I'm still losing weight gradually. Just over three weeks ago, I was excited about a 124.8 lbs weigh-in. This morning was 123.0 lbs. ~half a pound lost a week. I anticipate seeing the 122s soon -- a weight I didn't realistically imagine ever returning, too. It's not an official goal either. I've been sticking to this diet because it's been relatively easy to follow. Who doesn't enjoy a little bacon for breakfast? We often see and hear that it is recommended for thin people to eat calorie-dense foods, maybe these foods are the ones helping to keep them skinny.