Why Didn't I Do This Sooner?

I've been a little frustrated with ear canal issues and discharge for several years now.  While the silver-aloe protocol seemed to help some, because I had discharge from my ears while I was on it, it didn't completely clear it up.  There's actually so much gunk in my ears every morning that if I don't clean it out it affects my hearing a bit (and it smells funny!).  Yesterday it was itching something awful, just driving me crazy.  I had tried coating a cotton swab with the Sovereign Silver First Aid Gel and swirling it around in there a while back, which helped, but never really cleared it up.  The itching was always back in a few hours.

So, I was frustrated enough that I finally did what I should have done months ago.  I dumped an eye dropper full of the liquid sovereign silver down each ear canal, while laying on my side.  Then I left it in for about 8 minutes and then sat up and let it run out.  Then I put a little of the first aid gel around the outer part of the ear where my skin is a bit flaky.  The difference this morning is amazing.  The outer part of the ear is still a little itchy where there's some eczema, but the inner part of the ear canal is totally happy and not itchy.  It doesn't feel like there's gunk in it like usual.

I have had some clear fluid discharge coming out of my ears today, sort of like water. 

I'm going to keep doing this every night for a few days to clear it up.  Apparently candida can grow and do exactly this itchy, crusty, gunky stuff in the ear canal, so I'm betting my ears have been one of the last bastions of candida in my body.  Bye ear candida monster, you are going down!

Also I am working on my scalp eczema too.  It's back a little but not nearly as bad as it was before the silver-aloe protocol.  I read online that you can put about 10 drops of grapefruit seed extract (the same stuff I use diluted in water to clean my veggies) in your shampoo and leave it on for about 3-5 minutes.  Talk about cheap, and using stuff I already had.  I tried it for the first time last night.  That would be awesome if it works!

Ch-ch-ch-chia!

My intestines are getting back to normal now (the new healthy normal) after several days back on the silver aloe protocol.  Another change I have made that seems to have really helped is the addition of chia seeds to my morning smoothies.  I had been eating a lot of chia seeds early on in the form of chia seed pudding, but I have been so busy I haven't made any in a while. 

Adding 2 tbsp. of chia to my 1 cup of organic kefir, 1 scoop of chocolate One World Whey, two scoops of Amazing Grass chocolate, and almond milk really seems to help.  Sometimes I put a bit of extra raw cacao in it for some more chocolatey goodness.  As a bonus it does keep me even more filled up than my smoothie alone.  I have to put a little more almond milk in it to compensate for the liquid absorbing properties of the chia seeds, otherwise it would be too thick to drink.  The chia is going to become a permanent addition to my morning smoothie.

I've also discovered flavored stevias which I am totally in love with.  Sweet Leaf makes liquid flavored stevias in all sorts of flavors.  So far I've tried the vanilla creme and chocolate and I love them both.  The vanilla creme is especially awesome.  I put a few drops of it in with my milk thistle and dandelion tincture (to help detox my liver) and it totally masks the nasty taste of the milk thistle and makes it yummy.

Crazy Life and 25 Pounds!

Gee, it has been forever since I've updated.  Life has gotten crazy lately.  I am doing pretty well, especially on the depression side.  I am holding at 20 mg of Prozac now, half of what I have been on for the last 5-7 years.  It's pretty awesome!  I am using homeopathic sepia as a single remedy and King Bio's Good Mood Enhancer to help support me in this.

My last period was a bit rough, as I appeared to be trying to detox some more and was losing a lot of blood again.  Thankfully it wasn't as bad as the period from hell, but still rough.  I had a really bad headache on the worst day that I thought was a sinus headache, but even with all the usual sinus remedies I couldn't get a handle on it.  I took some white willow bark tincture in water and that took the worst of the edge off of it.  I was also feeling pretty weak and puny.

Realizing I was losing a lot of blood, I went to the local health food store to get some ferrum phosphoricum and Mega Foods Blood Builder supplement to help support me like the last time.  I popped the ferrum phos. pellets into my mouth walking out of the store and about 15 minutes later the headache was gone and my energy level perked up within an hour.  My best guess is that this wasn't a sinus headache at all, but more of an anemic headache, as I've heard of people getting really bad headaches from anemia.  By the next morning I felt SO much better.

I kind of wonder if perhaps there is a bit of iron deficiency going on, so I think I'm going to stay on the Blood Builder and ferrum phos. indefinitely.  It's amazing to look at the bleeding in a whole new light, knowing my body is using it to throw out toxins.  Before I would have been running to the doctor for something to "fix" it.  Now I know there's nothing to fix, my body is doing exactly what it should be doing.

My intestines have gotten a little squirrely again, and I can see some bloating in my tummy so I'm going back on the silver/aloe protocol for a week or two.  Robert mentioned on his radio show that this might be something that would be needed periodically, so I think it's a good time to restart it after four months.  I was planning on doing it again at 6 months just to refresh everything.

It's not like I'm sliding backwards, health-wise as I'm continuing to make strides.  My sinus episodes are becoming less and less frequent and less and less severe.  Even when they do hit they are responding very quickly to the homeopathic meds and snorting Sovereign Silver and SinuOrega.  I am changing my bed clothes much more frequently, since I sleep with my dogs (an allergy no-no I know, but they're just so darn cute and pitiful), and putting my pillows in the dryer on high heat for an extended time to kill any dust mites.

The diet is going well, and I'm learning new ways to prepare good organic foods and eating lots of veggies. This usually involves garlic.  You can never have too much garlic.

Oh, and I hit 25 pounds gone now.  I am hovering at 190!

Getting Stronger

We've dropped my prozac dosage down due to the twitchies and I'm doing well at the new dosage.  My doctor wants to follow up with me next week to make sure all is well.  The twitchies have stopped, so that was definitely the culprit.

I'm also seeing more and more signs that my digestive system is getting stronger.  I can eat small amounts of goat cheese now on rare occasions and I can tolerate two meals with raw vegetables a day.  Before now I would have to have one of those meals with cooked vegetables to help me digest the food.  These are small steps, but it's encouraging to see more and more progress as I go along.

I still can't believe I've come this far in just three months, but I have a feeling there is a lot more to come.

Twitchies Twitchies Everywhere

Apparently I'm going to need to lower my antidepressant.  I've been noticing more and more twitchies especially in other places besides my eyelids.  These are the classic "too much prozac" twitchies where the muscle just goes into fast rapid spasms.  A couple of days ago I had one in my side by my lower ribs that was driving me nuts.  Today the muscle at the base of my thumb is going ape.

At this point I think we're going to have to go halfsies - back to the dose I was on in my twenties when I was first diagnosed.  Wow.  That is crazy.  Cutting my prozac in half.  I am calling the doc first thing tomorrow.  Freaking awesome!

Three Years of Healing

I read an interesting thing on a homeopathic web site, but I can’t remember where.  It said that for every year you have been sick, that it will require a month to get well using homeopathic and natural detoxification methods.  Wow!  Considering that I’ve been sick most of my 36 years, that is about 3 years to approach a full healing of my body.  I knew in my mind that this would be a long term process, but to put an objective number on it is a bit sobering.

Three years to get better.  I’ve been mulling it over in my head for a while now.  On the one hand it’s amazing that the human body can recover from a year’s worth of abuse and FDA-approved poison in just a month, but it really made me think about how far I have to go.  Obviously my health is going to continue to improve, but it suddenly seems like a long way off.  I guess the key is to focus on the progress I’ve already made in the past three months and let the next three years take care of themselves.

I am getting better by leaps and bounds, but there are occasional setbacks, like Thursday.  Even the setbacks though seem to press the fact that I am getting better.  I was sick as a dog yesterday, and woke up early in the morning well before my alarm went off and I was choking on snot running down the back of my throat.  Up til yesterday my sinuses really hadn’t been bugging me much, so much so that I had cut back on my homeopathic remedies for my sinuses and allergies to only twice a day.  But yesterday they cut loose.  

The sinuses didn’t feel so bad, but I was coughing and gagging from the stuff draining out, and as the stuff ran down into my stomach it got all upset and nauseated.  It was about all I could do to gag down my morning smoothie (which is really good!) and make it to my early workout before work.  We did a light workout since I felt so crummy.  By mid morning the snot had made it into my intestines and even more fun began.  Then by lunch time I had a sinus headache that was really hurting and making me dizzy.  This is always how my sinus infections start.

I started taking my phosphorus for the headache and upped my dose of kali bichromicum and allium cepa to try to help, and took some of the King Bio Headache Relief, but it didn’t really phase the headache too much.  Fortunately when I got home and started flushing my sinuses with as much Sovereign Silver as I could squirt up my nose the headache finally let up.  I went to bed early to let my body rest and recover, and slept with my head elevated.

When I woke up Friday morning I was fine and dandy.  The sinuses are a bit sore if I press on the pressure points, but otherwise I’m good.  They still seem to be draining some more stuff off.  Before, I would have been heading to the nurse practitioner at the Walgreen's for some antibiotics that would take days to work (if at all), and now I knock it out in a day with homeopathic medicines, snorting silver, and a little rest.  I guess that’s just another sign of how far I’ve come.

24 Pounds Gone and Assorted Random Musings

I’ve officially lost 24 pounds as of Monday.  Wow!  That’s one pound short of a whole weight plate at the gym.  It’s pretty crazy.  People at work are really starting to notice and joke about how if I lose any more weight they won’t be able to see me going by, they’ll just feel a whoosh of air as I run by.  

Obviously at 191 pounds I’m not quite to that stage, but still it’s nice to hear.  One of my friends said the place she could see it most was my face.  All the puffiness that used to be there is gone.


My period this month has been a whole lot of nothing, thank goodness.  I think I had two mini cramplets but that’s about it.  It’s definitely not been the drama that it was last month.  I guess my body just got a little zealous about the whole detoxing thing.


I’m down 10 mg of my antidepressant, actually I am having to split the capsules because I’m in between the doses that are made by the manufacturer.  It’s been a couple of weeks now and I still really haven’t noticed a difference.  I have been taking some homeopathic sepia which seems to be working well for me.  I’ve been trying to find some aurum metallicum, but there is none to be had around here, even in the vitamin and health food stores.  I did get a complex remedy from King Bio that has some in it, so hopefully that should prove helpful.  Everything I’ve heard about aurum metallicum is that it’s great for depression.  I keep my depression managed pretty well, but I’m all about the “hey let’s throw everything and the kitchen sink at it” school of thought.


Interestingly I did some reading about aurum metallicum that really led me to a lot of questions.  I have a materia medica app with Boericke and Kent on my phone (it’s a freebie if you have an Android device).  The stuff seems a bit rambly to me but I’m starting to figure some of it out.  One of the things they kept rambling on and on about in the stuff about aurum metallicum remedy was about syphilis and mercury.  Of course, this is cracking me up for some reason, I guess because I have never had syphilis and thus have never had to medicate myself with mercury.


But then I stopped to think about the possible connection between mercury and the brain.  From what I gathered (and I’m still a total newbie at reading this so I could be way off base), the mercury treatment was making people depressed, and then the docs were going back and using the aurum metallicum to help with it.  Then a ding ding ding went off in my head.  


I was a very well vaccinated child.  The only vaccine I didn’t get a second time was the DPT, because I had a reaction to it when I was little.  There was some sort of temporary leg paralysis thing, I’m a little fuzzy on the details that my parents told me about and I was too young to remember.  I think it was something to the shot went in the rump and a few hours later I could no longer stand or move the leg attached to said rump cheek.  It cleared up in a day or two I believe.  Anyway Mom and Dad opted to not let me have any boosters of that one, and they told me when I was older to avoid it.  


So I had lots of vaccines as a kid.  Vaccines have mercury in them.  Possible connection with the depression?  I don’t know, but it does make for very interesting questions doesn’t it?

Sweet 16!

Over the long weekend I got into my first pair of size 16 jeans and a couple of pairs of size 16 pants.  I can’t believe I am actually taking the first steps out of the plus size clothing department.  I actually even tried some tops on, but since my biceps are pretty big from weight lifting I had some issues there.  Then there were some that were very short sleeved, but the arm holes were cut WAY too low.  Do fashion designers not realize that if women don’t want necklines cut down to our navels, we probably don’t want the arm holes cut down to the navel either?

Anyhow, I’m feeling much better now that the little intestinal upset has passed.  It was nice to take some time off over the holiday.  I’m heading up to my period in the next couple of days.  The period from hell I had last month started with major PMS and brain fog several days beforehand and I haven’t seen any signs aside from a little gassiness.  Hopefully that bodes well for me this month.  I started taking my PMS Relief proactively yesterday just to be safe.

My melasmas are really starting to get noticeably lighter.  

My poor boxer has a nasty yeast infection in one of his ears.  I'm out of his normal ear meds (an antibiotic/steroid/anti-fungal combo), so I am putting a bit of Sovereign Silver in them.  He's so miserable wanting me to rub the base of his ears, and when I was rubbing them he maneuvered his ear to try to stick one of my fingers in it.  Gross, but my baby boy definitely knows how to give me a hint.  So I suppose we'll see how Sovereign Silver does for the canine set.  I've already been using the First Aid Gel on his eczema patches with success so hopefully the ears will do well too.

Go Big Orange!

Yes, I’m from Tennessee so orange is normally a good thing.  Except when your poop turns orange.  Then it’s just scary as heck.  I’ve had some intestinal issues over the past few days, I think from not properly cleaning my sprouts like I should have, but at the same time it all turned orange!  Seriously, I had no idea poop could be orange.  It freaked me out, and I stopped at the local health food store on the way to work to pick up some aloe juice, King Bio Diarrhea Relief, and some hepar sulphuris calcareum.  Admittedly the intestinal issues have been a little annoying, but not bad.

The orangeness was really freaking me out, but I was checking out an article on astaxanthin, because my endurance in my workouts has been through the roof since I started taking it about a week and a half ago.  Sure enough, listed as one of the side effects of taking astaxanthin on several different sites is orange-ish poop.  I’ve been taking two pills a day of the BioAstin, so that would definitely explain it.  Freak out averted.  All my spirulina turned it green, and now the astaxanthin is turning it orange.  Maybe now I really will bleed orange.  Go Vols!

Geez, I feel like an old lady always discussing the state of my bowels.

So is it weird to really like the taste of aloe juice?  I kind of miss it anyway from when I was doing the silver-aloe protocol.  It tastes so fresh and green.  Is green really a taste?  I don’t know but that’s the word that strikes me when I drink it.  Plus my whole abdomen would sort of sigh happily and relax whenever I drank it with the silver.  Since I got that feeling on the protocol, I figured it wouldn’t hurt now that my intestines are a bit crabby.  Sure enough, I took a couple of gulps out of the bottle and my tummy went, “AHHHHHH.”  Pepto Bismol sure doesn’t work that fast. 

I’ve been sipping on the aloe juice all day and it’s amazing how much better everything is.  The funniest part is that almost intuitively, I seemed to know that I needed the aloe juice.  This whole “the body is smart” (and apparently very chatty) concept is new to me.  I’m sure the homeopathic stuff is helping too, but it’s such a weird feeling to see these dormant instincts in my body are starting to awaken now that I’m not fighting it.  Kind of like finding out everything you ever learned about your body is wrong.  That’s probably why my brain is still spinning.  Is there a homeopathic remedy for that?

Fat and Being Not Fat

My mom commented the other day, seeming a bit bewildered by how much fat I am eating.  It made me stop and think about how much my diet has changed and how much fat I am really eating.  When I bought into the fat is bad mantra, I avoided fat like the plague, everything was low fat and low calorie, but I still wasn’t losing weight.  Sure I managed to drop about 15 pounds on the Medifast powder and water diet of about 800-900 calories a day, but even that stalled out.

Since I started the silver-aloe protocol, my diet completely changed as I started researching and finding out more about candida and reading the Body Ecology Diet book.  I started drinking kefir smoothies for breakfast and eating lots of fresh veggies and oily fish, including my favorite salmon.  My favorite way to make it is to brush the filet with olive oil before seasoning and cooking it, as it helps keep the salmon nice and moist.  Then there were the oily salad dressings, usually made with either olive oil or hemp oil and apple cider vinegar.  If I’m not eating meat I usually put a good amount of hemp seeds in my salad which have a good bit of fat in them along with the protein.  For snacks I often eat organic almonds or pepitas (aka pumpkin seeds).

Oftentimes I’ll saute kale or another leafy green in either coconut oil or ghee, especially as I can’t seem to handle two meals with raw vegetables in a single day very well.  (Speaking of which, kale sauteed in ghee with a tablespoon or two of minced garlic and Himalayan sea salt - freaking awesome!)  It’s not too bad when I eat two meals of raw veggies, but my intestines can get a little cranky about all the roughage.  Plus there’s the tablespoon of coconut oil I take religiously every night, as it has anti-candida properties.

So, I’m eating all this fat, and my weight is coming off.  Not at the super fast rate it was at first when I started on the silver and aloe, but a pound or two every week or two.  According to all the conventional dietary and medical knowledge, all this fat should be making my butt swell up like a hot air balloon.  But instead it’s deflating.  Hee hee!

I really don’t understand the dynamics in play here, but in concert with the silver-aloe protocol and the anti-candida diet, eating healthy fat seems to be a major game changer.  One thing is definitely clear.  Fat is helping me be not fat, and that’s a good thing!

Workout Bliss!

I am kicking some serious booty working out!  Maybe it's the One World Whey or the astaxanthin I started taking last week, but I am seriously on fire lately.  I'm not even breaking a sweat on my cardio and really going at it.  Either way my endurance and stamina is way up.  As the fat is coming off I am starting to see some of the muscle trying to show itself in my biceps.  It's always been there, just hidden by all the flab.  Still, it's kind of nice to say, "hello there little muscle!" now that I can see it. It was so cool to kick my trainer's butt in cardio today.  I beat him by 0.15 of a mile on the stationary bike during our circuit today!

I had a little setback with my digestion over the weekend, but I'm not 100% sure why.  Perhaps I ate something wrong, or it could be that I forgot to soak my sprouts in water with grapefruit seed extract before eating them (bad, bad, bad me!).  It wasn't that terrible, mostly just annoying, but I did get a little sick.  Even still it's not nearly as bad as the day to day drama I used to live with before starting my journey slaying the evil candida monster.

I am still in awe that I've lost 22 whole pounds.  It seems to be going at around a pound or so every week or two, kind of doing its own thing as it feels like it.  Strange though, I'm really starting to trust the wisdom of my body and figuring that it's doing what it needs to do when it needs to do it.  It's such a totally new concept for me, because everything I have done up until now has been about fighting my body.  Fight it on the depression, fight it on the allergies, fight it on the eczema, fight it on the monster zits.  But then look where that got me ... a one way ticket to Sickville.

The rash under one of my arms is trying to flare up a smidge, but I'm slathering the Sovereign Silver First Aid Gel on it and it is keeping it happy.  My ears are acting goofy too, and the eczema and itching have gotten a bit worse.  Fortunately the Sovereign Silver First Aid Gel is coming in handy there too.  I get a Q-Tip and roll it in a huge squirt of the gel and then swirl it around all in the ear canal.  It feels like I'm giving myself a Wet Willie, but it works.  So far I've been doing it twice a day and it seems to help.  The color of the discharge in my ears has changed from yellow to white over the past few days, so apparently it's doing something in there.  I may try a couple of drops of the liquid in there to see if it improves the results if it continues with the itchiness.

I have to remember that these things aren't setbacks, just more layers of the toxic onion trying to peel off.  Believe me with the crap I have put in my body over my lifetime, there are lots of toxic layers.  But they'll come when my body is ready to release them, I am confident.

An Arnica Montana Kind of Day

I'm not sure if the One World Whey is contributing to this or not, but I am so sore from my killer workout yesterday.  My abs hurt, my butt hurts, my legs and chest hurt, and my back hurts.  I haven't been this sore in a long time.  I don't know if it was because the workout was killer, or if the addition of the whey protein just gave more power to put into it.  Either way, I've been popping arnica montana pellets and using arnica gel pretty much everywhere today.

I'm sure my trainer will be the usual sadist that he is tomorrow when he finds out I'm sore.  He says "the best way to deal with soreness is to work it out."  Which of course means that he's going to work everything that's sore even harder tomorrow.  By Friday I may not be able to move!

I had to face a harsh reality of weight loss today - my boobs are shrinking.  I suppose that's a good thing in the grand scheme of things, but it necessitated a trip to the mall to go bra shopping tonight.  So, I've officially dropped a full bra size in the past two months.  It would have been much nicer if those inches had come off my butt, but I'll take what I can get!

Everything else seems to be going well.  I've been able to reduce my usage of the homeopathic allergy meds to twice a day now, so they seem to be clearing up a bit more.  This new immune system is pretty powerful!

It's a Conspiracy...

What is it with people trying to make me eat the exact stuff I'm trying to avoid?  Seriously, it's nuts.  Everywhere I turned at work today, there were bagel platters and cookie platters all over the place.  All filled with the wonderful things that will make my gut very, very cranky: sugar, lactose, gluten, and refined carbs.  Sheesh!

My dad has taken to calling me "grass eater" because I am eating so many vegetables, mostly leafy greens.  Dad's never met a vegetable he likes, with the exception of battered and deep-fried-til-it's-blackened okra.  He eats something like two doughnuts a day, so I have started calling him "doughnut eater."  It works!

Sometimes it is so hard dealing with everyone else around me shoveling all this toxic garbage into their faces as fast as they can, and it's so hard for me to find things that are safe for me to eat out in the wide world.  I get bored with food easily so it's definitely going to be my next challenge to come up with more creative ways of putting together the foods I can eat, while still getting all the food combining rules from the Body Ecology Diet right.  Mostly it's making sure that you don't even put protein fats, animal proteins, or protein starches together.  Fortunately veggies pretty much combine with anything.

I just got almost two weeks worth of samples from One World Whey in that I started on Sunday.  It's definitely pretty tasty, and I did have an AWESOME workout this morning.  Maybe it's the whey, maybe not.  Only time will tell.  It's a little on the spendy side, so I'm glad they offered samples first.  I really like mixing it in to my morning smoothies, and the offer it in chocolate too.  The vanilla is pretty awesome too, and they have strawberry but I haven't tried that yet.  One of my smoothies will last me a good 4-5 hours before I get hungry again with the whey in it, so that's definitely a plus!

The Meat Goes On

I guess I am still in the process of rebuilding from period from hell.  The meat cravings are still going on, just not quite as bad.  I brought hemp seeds and leafy greens for lunch the past two days, but have still found myself running out at lunch for meat.  Yesterday was salmon, today chicken.

Actually today I was really craving sushi but I talked myself out of it because of the white rice.  I used to eat sushi all the time but with the white rice being higher glycemic and thus more likely to feed the candida monster I have relegated that to the status of very occasional treat.  But a girl's gotta have sushi every now and then, candida or not.

With the period from hell I almost forgot to update on my toe.  By Saturday it was COMPLETELY HEALED!!!!  I mean, it looked like nothing ever happened, aside from one little spot where I had to trim off some dead skin.  Is that crazy or what?  Go Sovereign Silver First Aid Gel!

The kale cravings seem to be dying off a bit now that I've been on the King Bio Liver Detox formula for a while.  I'm still eating it, but I think that the whole kale obsession was my liver.  I cut down on my homeopathic sinus and allergy meds to twice a day from three times a day as an experiment.  So far so good!

The Period from Hell

I haven't posted in a few days because I have been feeling under the weather thanks to the period from hell.  This was the first "real" period after stopping my birth control pills in addition to the fact that my liver seems to be in epic detox mode.  Between all the kale and green stuff in my morning smoothie, plus the addition of the Liver Detox formula from King Bio, I am sure my liver had something to do with all the craziness.  I started the liver detox formula after I suspected that the kale cravings are liver related since kale is supposed to be very potent for liver detoxification.  Robert Scott Bell suggested using the King Bio formula.

Now on to the not fun stuff.  On Wednesday I could feel a little PMS coming on so I started taking the King Bio PMS Relief.  Thursday was flat out nuts.  I started having ravenous meat cravings and actually had to leave work at lunch to get some meat because my broccoli and hempseed was not cutting it.  By the afternoon I could not remember any usernames and passwords at work, which was actually quite funny.

Friday I finally started and had a really heavy flow for a first day.  I was pretty crampy and nauseated as well, moreso than usual.  Still it wasn't too bad and the PMS Relief took care of most of it.  By Saturday the flow was horrible and my sanitary protection was wholly inadequate to deal with it.  It was bad enough that I was actually scared that something was wrong.  I hated to bug him, but I contacted Robert and assured me that this was ok and likely just the result of detoxifying and gave me some remedy suggestions to help.

By Monday it had all but stopped, and I rarely finish that quickly.  Oddly I feel strangely more balanced and almost lighter now today, so I really think my body was just trying to use the cycle to force some toxins and other stuff out as hard and fast as possible.

The switch to the whole food GTF Chromium still seems to be going well.  I can't really tell any difference in how I feel on the new stuff versus the Chromax, but that's a good sign I think, considering I was on 500 mcg of the Chromax and I'm only on 300 mcg of the GTF Chromium.  So far so good. 

Getting used to my new body with a mid of its own is a whole new concept for me.  It is a lot smarter than I ever gave it credit for.  My whole system seems to be flushing itself out as hard as it can.  Speaking of flushing out, I can't wait until payday tomorrow.  I am in dire need of some new not plus size pants!

Tuesday, June 7 - The Discovery of Italian Kale

So far the GTF Chromium switch is going well this time.  I haven't noticed any difference between taking the 300 mcg of the whole food stuff vs. the 500 mcg of the Chromax form.  The only thing is remembering to take it, LOL!

I'm starting to feel a little PMS coming on - bloating, a little tiredness and some intestinal discomfort.  It's not too bad though.  I started up with my King Bio PMS Relief again and it seems to be helping.  Today I stopped by the farmer's market and got some Italian kale.  It's a little different than the curly kale I've been eating, perhaps a little sweeter.  Since my tummy is a little goofy with the PMS I sauteed it in a little ghee and put some hemp seeds on it.  I wasn't sure it was going to tolerate raw stuff tonight like I usually eat. 

I guess it's all part of this whole process I'm in of learning to listen to and work with my body, instead of fighting it like I used to.  Speaking of listening to my body, I checked with Robert Scott Bell about my kale cravings.  I really think those are indicative of my liver needing help cleansing.  My body is a lot smarter than I have ever given it credit for and those cravings have to be a sign of something my body needs.  Kale is a pretty potent detoxifier for the liver.  He suggested a few things to help support my liver as it continues through this process of detoxifying.  There's no doubt I've got loads of garbage stored up in my body and the liver has got to out process it all from my body.  It's somehow comforting that these lines of communication seem to be opening up so that my body is starting to tell me what it needs.

Monday, June 6 and Kale Quinoa Salad with Hemp Garlic Dressing

Well Sovereign Silver does it again.  My toe is solidly scabbed up and normal color is returning to the flap of skin that was cut loose.  There is no pain now even when I press on the wound.  So not only does it heal your gut, but also your toes!

Now for the big news of the day.  I have officially lost 20 whole pounds!  Pound number 20 just popped off last night apparently.  That is 20 pounds in less than 2 months!  I am now at 195.  I never believed it could be possible, especially after struggling for so long on ultra low calorie diets and now finally eating normal quantities of food for the first time in ages.  I am so excited!

I decided tonight to experiment tonight with my new bottle of Hemp Oil I got from NaturalNews.com.  Unfortunately the bottle had an unfortunate mishap and the top of the cork was broken off during shipping.  Seeing as how no one in our family drinks alcohol, we do not have a corkscrew.  So, as you can see from the picture, when you don't have a corkscrew, a long screw and screwdriver works quite nicely!

Of course, being the kale-o-holic that I am, it had to involve kale.  I just grew some lentil sprouts as well, so I threw a bunch of kale and lentil sprouts into a bowl together, then boiled up some quinoa for protein.

Now for the fun part!  I decided to make my own dressing using the hemp oil.  I used:

1/8 cup of hemp oil
3 tsp. of raw organic apple cider vinegar
2 tsp. of lemon juice
1 tsp. of minced garlic (from a jar, but hey, I'm tired after work - at least it's organic).

I mixed them all up in a cup and added salt and pepper to taste.  Then I poured some of my new dressing over my salad.  It's an interesting flavor.  I'm definitely going to have to refine it and play with some spices.

Here is my result.  It turned out pretty yummy for my first hemp oil experiment.

Sunday, June 5

Toe is doing ok. It's a little tender if I press on the wound but otherwise not hurting and I'm able to walk normally. It looks really nasty, but there is no swelling or signs of any infection. The skin that was cut away has solidly knit back to the toe, but it's purple under the skin today. I can't tell if the flap of skin is dead/dying or not. I'm keeping the silver gel on it and making sure it's exposed to plenty of air. Getting the silver gel into the wound immediately after the cut must have made a huge difference, I've never seen a cut this bad heal this quickly.

I lost another pound, so I am now at 19 pounds lost, weighing in at 196 pounds. I actually weighed myself twice to be sure, because I have been hanging out at 197-199 for several weeks now. I'd like to get down to around 180, which is definitely do-able I think. My weight is going to be higher because of my weight lifting, but once I get to 180 I'll re-evaluate and see how much more I may need to lose. My size 18W pants are getting way too big now, so I'm going to have to get some non plus size pants. I hate that, LOL! Actually most likely I'll get Mom to help me take them in, because that's cheaper than buying new ones.

I have now been to two different Vitamin Shoppes over the past couple of weeks and the sales guys have actually flirted with me at each one. That has never happened before. Apparently I'm getting cute!

My friend and I went shopping the other day and we discovered Steaz!!!!! It's an organic sparkling green tea with all organic fruit flavors (including elderberry juice), no calories, and sweetened with Erythritol and Stevia - both are candida/Body Ecology Diet friendly natural sweeteners. They aren't cheap, but it's a nice treat when all I've had to drink for the last little bit is water, unsweetened iced tea with stevia, and almond milk for the last two months. I like the orange flavor, but my favorite is the blueberry pomegranate flavor. Yummy!!! I drink a lot of the Numi hot teas in the winter, but that just doesn't do it for me in the summer months. This is a perfect way for me to get some healthy antioxidant goodness.

Saturday, June 4

I am such a klutz. My ever-hungry boxer was howling this morning wanting his breakfast at 6 AM. So I stumbled to the back door without my glasses or contacts half asleep and let him out then got a can of dog food from the fridge. Lo and behold I dropped it right on my left big toe. Apparently the serrated metal rim must have hit it because I realized after squinting really good that I was bleeding like crazy all over the place.

I went and got my glasses so I could see and I had a huge gash right at the edge of my toenail that had cut into the tip of my toe. The gash was about 3/4 inch long across the toenail edge and cut straight down into the tip of the toe about a 1/4 inch. So I had this huge flap of skin that was cut loose on the tip of my toe. Gross! I rinsed the toe out with water and grabbed by Sovereign Silver gel and packed the gash with the gel, all the while it was still bleeding everywhere and the silver burned like %*$#@ (insert your favorite expletive here). As if it wasn't hurting bad enough already.

I found some non stick wound pads and some self adhesive ace bandage and made a compression bandage to try to stop the bleeding and then took a dose of silver hydrosol orally before propping up my foot and going back to bed. It took a little while to get back to sleep because it was hurting pretty bad.

When I got up I took the compression bandage off and it was only oozing a little. The flap of skin that had been cut loose looked good and I left the bandages off for a while to give the toe some air. It was pretty tender at that point but the pain has gone down to nothing and I was walking normally by mid afternoon.

I have a band-aid on it loosely now to give it some protection but still allow plenty of air circulation. The oddest thing is the flap of skin that is nearly cut away seems to still be alive and somehow knitting back up to the rest of the toe. I was figuring that it would die and I would need to cut it off in a day or two. The minimal pain and the knitting of the skin must be due to the silver. I haven't ever seen anything try to heal this fast, especially with a wound this bad. Now that the skin is knitted I can't get the silver into the wound itself when I reapply it. I am putting it all over the cut and the flap. Hopefully it will penetrate the skin to get in where it needs to be. What the gel doesn't get I am sure the Sovereign Silver hydrosol I'm taking orally will get.

My intestines are still a little squirrely with some mild bloating and gas. I am putting through a LOT of poop. These new probiotics are definitely doing something.

Friday, June 3

The GTF Chromium switch seems to be going well this time. I'm a little more tired than usual today, but that may be because I got up early and drove to one of our other offices 2 hours away for work. I also forgot a dose of my Sinus Relief and Regional Allergy stuff last night and I woke up with a little bit of a sinus headache, but that quickly cleared up. Either of those could explain the tired, not just the chromium switch. If it continues tomorrow I'll up the chromium dose by 100mcg a day to see if I just need more.

I had an epic blowout from the Dr. Ohhira probiotic switch yesterday morning that was pretty bad. When I say epic, I am not exaggerating. The smell was really ripe, not anything like what I'm used to. Today everything was nice and solid, but there was still the strange nasty smell to it. Before now I wasn't getting any smell. I seriously was not sure the toilet would ever be functional again after I was done with it, but God was merciful and the toilet soldiered through and flushed.

I'm still having the weird kale cravings. It literally is all I want, aside from the occasional broccoli sprouts. I have it with my salmon, I put hemp seeds on it, I put sprouted garlic sunflower seeds on it, I scramble it in my eggs. The thing is it really doesn't even taste that good just by itself. The vinaigrette I'm using is made with apple cider vinegar and olive oil, and the ACV gives it a nice kick though. Still I think it's funny that I'm craving it so badly. It must be the liver detoxing.