Dear Reader,
The other day, I heard from a 32 year old client
who I last consulted with in early December of 2013.
Anne had heard about me from a friend who I helped
through a water fast about ten years ago. She was
beyond distraught - I sensed that she had entered
that space of feeling hopeless, grasping for one
last thing, anything that could bring her relief.
When she started our initial conversation by telling
me that she was up to about 35 episodes of bloody
diarrhea daily, I knew what was ahead. A relatively
young lady with dozens of bouts of bloody diarrhea
a day almost always means ulcerative colitis with
a history of prescription steroid use to combat
symptoms.
Indeed, she told me that her symptoms began about
two years prior while she was doing a residency in
a highly stressful environment. Her primary supervisor
at that time was extremely abrasive and mean-spirited,
and a year and a half of long shifts of tip-toeing
around this toxic person left her gastrointestinal
tract and overall health badly damaged.
Initially, she was able to get through her shifts
without blood and mucous-filled diarrhea by taking
six evenly spaced doses of 10 mg of prednisone. But
the side effects were becoming difficult to tolerate,
and even with a total of 60 mg of prednisone daily,
she was unable to prevent some diarrhea from
occurring while at work.
She contacted me on the first day of her leave of
absence asking for help with an extended water fast.
Given her history of blood sugar and insulin issues,
I felt that a water-only fast was not a good choice.
In reviewing her diet, it quickly became clear that
she was blindly following popular advice among some
raw foodists to combat all digestive ailments with
raw vegetables and fruits and little else.
I told her about my experiences with people just like
her whose symptoms disappeared quickly after reducing
intake of foods rich in raw fiber and increasing intake
of foods that are much easier to digest, things like
white rice porridge, steamed zucchini, and potato soup
 |
| It all begins with proper nutrition... |
made by blending steamed Yukon gold potatoes in chicken
or vegetable broth.
She actually broke down, quietly crying on the phone
as I explained all of this to her. She told me that
her instinct had long been that her raw food diet was
harsh on her GI tract, but that her brother, who is
a well known figure in the raw food world, was adamant
about her being completely off of cooked foods. Despite
being a physician with a high level of understanding of
human physiology, she ignored her instincts and adhered
to her brother's raw food plan.
Fast forward to this past Tuesday when Anne gave me
a surprise phone call. Her voice was almost
unrecognizable - her energy and cheerfulness over the
phone were contagious.
She was down to 10 mg of prednisone daily and has
been free of bloody diarrhea since the fourth week of
January. When we spoke back in December, she was 105
pounds and very frail at 5'5". She had worked her
way back to a much healthier 115 pounds, and had the
strength to walk daily in the hills and do 30 minutes
of yoga each evening.
She explained that she was so desperate when we spoke
in December that she decided to adopt my suggestions
to the word. For three days straight, she ate nothing
but rice porridge made with white rice, broth, and
organic egg. The cramping that she had experienced
for two years went away immediately, and during those
initial days, though her stools were still soft and
sometimes watery, there was no more blood and a marked
reduction in mucous.
She continues to eat rice porridge several times a
week, along with the other foods that I mentioned.
In February, she added bean-based Korean pancakes that
she found a recipe pictorial for at our site, and was
delighted to find that she digested these pancakes
without any discomfort.
She also added steamed carrots and hummus, and just
recently began eating honey dew melon and avocado
without any symptoms of intolerance. She also tried
some raw lettuce and spinach, but in feeling mild
cramping with these leafy greens, she senses that her
GI tract is not yet ready for these foods.
Given how much improvement she has experienced over
the past four months, Anne is very hopeful that she
will be able to completely taper off of prednisone
over the next month or two, and most importantly, she
shared how empowered she feels in caring for her
health by respecting the feedback that her body gives
her in response to her daily food choices.
A situation like Anne's lifts me up in a huge way.
If she hadn't broken free of the dogma of raw foods
healing everything, I believe she was well on her way
to needing an ileostomy - tens of thousands of people
have this procedure done annually, and it saddens me
to consider how many of these people may have been
unaware of how the foods that they were putting into
their bodies daily led to chronic inflammation
that necessitated major surgery.
Please don't misunderstand me. I am all for eating
fresh plant foods. I eat plenty of them daily, and
take joy in preparing fresh fruits and vegetables for
our boys every morning.
But I have the experience of working with people like
Anne whose health has deteriorated to a point where
their bodies actually suffer more when they ingest large
quantities of raw plant foods.
It takes a relatively healthy digestive tract to handle
uncooked fiber. And where degeneration of the
gastrointestinal tract lining is severe enough, I have
found that recovery requires avoidance of these foods
for some period of time.
I've written about this issue on my blog in the past,
only to receive hateful comments from some people
who strongly disagree and say that the only way to
heal is to eat raw foods. All I can tell these
folks is that I have to go with what I have experienced,
that while I respect their ideology and don't doubt that
they know plenty of people who have done well on a
raw food diet, I have worked with a lot of people who
couldn't recover on a raw food diet and needed something
else to heal. So I have come to believe that every
situation is unique, and that we need to be open-minded
in trying to figure out what each person needs to
recover their health.
Thanks to Anne for allowing me to share her journey
in today's newsletter. If you'd like to try the two
recipes that have become staples in her diet for now,
you can find them below:
Simple Rice Porridge:
http://drbenkim.com/how-to-
Bean-Based Korean Pancakes:
http://drbenkim.com/bin-dae-
Wishing you and yours a peaceful and love-filled
weekend,
Ben Kim
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