Oh Nuts! and IC: 3 Nut Alternatives

Interstitial cystitis(IC) bladder pain with flares can be amplified by the routine use of nuts of any kind and this includes their butters!!  Peanut butter, almond butter, cashew butter

Why?

Unlike the matter science(MS) nutritional information that fatty acids are good and bad, the energy science(ES) of Ayurveda states that all nuts are inflammatory due to these molecular fatty acids regardless of the “good or bad nature of them”   The reason for this is that the post digestive(small bowel) effect is heating therefore inflammation provoking

The sweet taste of many foods covers the acidic nature of the foods itself and this is true of the nut category  This is why the ES nutritional information trumps the MS guesswork around nutrition and is why the anecdotal information of the MS nutritional realm is at times confusing hence flares and then no flares   What gives?   This also explains why various other inflammatory conditions are interrelated with IC such as fibromyalgia, IBS, chronic fatigue syndrome(CFS), GERD, prostatitis(did you know that PSA is a marker for inflammation?), and CPPS(chronic pelvic pain syndrome)

As an aside this sweet taste of nuts in general make them a great choice for building tissue since the sweet taste is anabolic

OK Then What Can I Use for Nuts? 

Sorry to blow your day if you crave the mixed nuts but there is certainly a favorite guideline of mine and that is “There are no hard guidelines in the ES realms”  Know that if you use the foods that are provoking that you increase the likelihood of a flare   That use of inflammatory foods will keep you up at the ceiling of the curve below rather than allowing your mindbody to do the rebalancing as the curve progresses to the right(BTW the ascent from the left shows how we gradually get sick over decades by our own choices(Oh shoot, you didn’t have to say that did you?)

Journey to Balance

Soaked and peeled almonds(this is very important! or you can use slivered almonds from the bulk section of the grocery store if they have one ) are very helpful for their nutritive benefit but also for their cooling effect  Turns out that the skin of the almond holds enzymes that in and of themselves are inflammatory   Almonds are not actually nuts but in the end who cares

Charole(actually seeds like sunflower) is another nut choice  It’s a very small nut found in very few stores in the US(I know because Ive looked; let me know if you have a source that you would share with the community) and is heating but due to the size and its energetics is acceptable and does not provoke Pitta(more about this energy pattern in future blog posts)

And of course coconut because it’s COOLING!  The general energy science principle is this:  Plants that grow in hot climates are there for a very specific reason  Their job is to make the environment cold(well cooler) and so Momma Nature is always taking care of balancing herself

What about nut milks?  Almond Breeze is made from blanched and peeled almonds so a great drink  Coconut milk also is a very nutritious drink and both these “nut” milks make great date shakes  More about that in the future

3 Nut Alternatives

Here are three options for substitution without provoking inflammation or the Pitta energy pattern in the physiology

Use the above three recommendations and make your own nut butters from the slivered almonds

Sunflower seeds can be used by anyone anywhere anytime  Sooo..  sunflower butter sold at Trader Joe’s is an excellent proprietary product and the best tasting sunflower butter on the planet    Have tasted many and this by far is the closest to peanut butter with a nice sweet taste  Mmm good!

Give yourself “permission” to have a few nuts every once and a while if the craving is too great   The ES reminds us that food cravings are a result of imbalanced digestion so the faster we can improve our digestion the better it will be

Interested in a free ES consultation with me?  Just tap on this link

Or sign up to join our growing ES IC community!

Well enough for now  Until next time                                           To Health as a Skill  Love DrBill

IC and Food Allergies: An Energy Science Understanding

Interstitial cystitis (IC) pain is often associated with other conditions such  food allergies or sensitivities or GERD which we have written about in the past   This is difficult to understand from a molecular approach to dis-ease since the model looks at the problem within an organ system without taking into consideration the interrelationship of all organ systems

This is frustrating to physicians as well as patients seeking to understand the pain of IC and how to treat it   And it sometimes leads a real difficulty for IC patients in choosing foods thinking that perhaps their IC pain symptoms are related to their “food allergies”  so they are fearful of eating anything Oftentimes elimination diets are used to try to sort it out but partially fail

The Dis-ease Origin Is the Same

With a different way of seeing the mindbody from an energy science viewpoint rather than the currently used matter science discipline it becomes clear that food allergies are interrelated with IC   Why is this so?

Dis-ease or lack of harmony in the mindbody begins in the gastrointestinal tract(GIT) and when there is too much of the hot quality it leaves the GIT to be eliminated through the urinary tract   The GIT is not healthy enough to deal with the excess hot quality

Food allergies that occur in the GIT leads to distress as well but the energy science explanation is due to lack of digestive strength   The same lack of digestive strength leads to two seemingly different forms of dis-ease

Lack of Digestive Strength

Digestive strength from a matter or molecular science approach is not enough digestive enzymes to do the job  Because of this toxic debris builds up much like a cold campfire has unprocessed charred remains   Acute symptoms occur after eating such as:

Poor appetite                     Coated tongue                      Nausea                   Bloating               Belching with smell of previously eaten food

Weakness and fatigue         Foul gas or flatus; bad-smelling feces       Unhappiness       Constipation or diarrhea

Abdominal pain and/or distention               Bad breath           Bad taste in the mouth        Restlessness     Heaviness after food

Congestion            Excessive sleep

These signs and symptoms represent poor digestive strength but as you can see could be interpreted as “food allergy”

Then chronic signs and symptoms may occur over years of poor digestion strength:

Tissue emaciation                     Malabsorption          Emotional eating                Food cravings                   Food allergies

Insomnia        Poor visual perception           Poor circulation           Abnormal color and complexion     Lack of luster(skin rashes)

Fear           Grief, sadness, and depression         Confusion          Apathy, repulsion      Shortened life span      Aggressiveness

Indecisiveness and lack of discrimination     Lack of intelligence(loss of clarity)           Impatience

Improper direction and inappropriate goals

Isn’t it interesting that fear, confusion, apathy, aggressiveness occur in this list of chronic symptoms?   The reason for this is that there is a mindbody connection   What happens in the mind happens in the body  What happens in the body happens in the mind

From an energy science view mind and body are intimately spliced   You cannot separate them  Mind is in every cell of the body   So we see that if the GIT is effected with dis-ease or disharmony then it will register in the mind and these psychological manifestations will be apparent

3 Things to Do to Improve Digestive Strength

As I have said in previous blogs eating according to your mindbody energy makeup is the most important thing along with avoiding poor food combinations   But here are some other general things you can do as well

1  Liberal use of fresh ginger in your cooking

2  Use of cooling spices such as cumin coriander fennel seed mint cardamon tumeric and fresh basil and avoidance of other heating spices   These will aid in digestion

3 Follow the 5 interrogatories of energy science nutrition

Until next time                                                         To health as a Skill               Love DrBill

Imbalance and inflammation is the answer

IC and Incompatible Food Combinations

Fruit and yogurt = Poor Food Combining

Those with IC know that  acidity has something to do with their bladder pain and other symptoms either intuitively or reading what others have to say about IC and its causative factors

This leads to a large number of dietary recommendations to eliminate the acidity from the diet and to reduce symptoms of pelvic pain

You can go a long way toward resolution of your symptoms if you do fundamental changes in your nutritional format just by eliminating known trigger foods from your food choices  But as I have written before what foods to avoid often comes down to “who’s doing the eating?” because from an energy science viewpoint the nutritional format can be meaningful

Food Incompatibility

At times we don’t know that what we are eating is making us sick  Did you know that pain from IC can also be related to the acidic loading that occurs from poor food combining?

Some foods don’t belong with one another  For example, fruit with any other food is commonly practiced yet it can lead to poor digestion and symptoms of bloating and abdominal pain if done frequent enough  In the energy science of Ayurveda every food has qualities and when foods are combined which are antagonistic to one another they may be toxic to the mindbody

Here’s a list for you to consider

A strong digestion which I’ll cover in the future is the most important physiologic tool to deal with poor food combining aside from not combining in the first place

An Energy Science Nutritional Approach

From an energy science approach nutrition is more than diet   The study of diet concerns itself wit h molecules of the food ingested   But nutrition takes into account not only the qualities of the foods taken in and how these qualities interact but also the impact of the digestion of foods on the mindbody physiology   This is a very significant difference between matter science and energy science nutrition

So here are 3 things that you can do right now to stop or reduce the flares of IC

1 Check out who you are energetically

2 Choose a nutritional format appropriate for your mindbody energy makeup

3 Go to the orange box and sign up to become a member our growing IC Ayurvedic energy science community

IC and Bladder Inflammation: Herbal Remedies

The pain of IC is related to pelvic inflammation particularlyof the bladder   The flares that occur are related to the episodic increase in intensity of this inflammation

So it stands to reason that the treatment for such a chronic disease would be antiinflammatory(AIF)   This is not rocket science, folks!   And there is a wide host of naturally occurring AIF   For example, tumeric is commonly used in cooking and is a well understood AIF which when used with black pepper is potentiated even further in terms of its AIF effect

Now the well respected National Institutes of Health(NIH) published a year ago(October of 2011) a review article on antiinflammatory therapies using the energy science Ayurvedic formulary   This article essentially says what I have been advocating for the last 5 years:  that we need to marry the matter science discipline of the West(so called matter science healing) with the energy sciences such as Ayurveda and the traditional Oriental Medicine(TOM)   An East meets West in healing traditions

Importance of the Study

In the health arena it is very normal and expected that the consumer with a painful bladder is timid about trying “new therapies” that can potentially help them because nobody in the medical establishment has condoned their value   Further the allopathic(matter science clinicians) tradition are reticent to support the use of such therapies since they are not “tried and true” and supported by evidence based medical(EBM)review

Because of this there is a tendency in the current medical profession to stonewall articles that speak to the use of natural remedies to help with painful bladder syndrome because they are not consistent with the status quo and EBM

The AIF Nutritional Format

But what about just regular food?   Hippocrates, said to be the father of Western medicine, wrote that “Food is medicine and medicine is food”   We have been so ingrained traditionally to believe that food is just something we put in our mouths and it takes care of our appetites that it doesn’t really have a medicinal effect to help a painful bladder

But let’s rethink this  If you take in 3T of salt you know that there will direct and distinct physiologic consequences   You’ll pee more, require lots of water, maybe get acid indigestion, have tight feeling skin, have excess hot sensation in the body   All because you took in some food in this case salt

The energy science perspective is that foods can be inflammatory and that’s why they lead to symptoms of pain   So a well delineated energy science nutritional format can be AIF with no grey areas   It won’t lead you astray   Coupled with the incompatible food combination list which is basically a group of foods that when joined together produce inflammation you have a way of using nutrition in a AIF way

There are three things you can do right now to help yourself with IC pain

1 Go to the above links and begin following the nutritional formats

2 Begin using the AIF cocktail we spoke about in an earlier blog

3 Begin using cumin, coriander, fennel seeds, tumeric, and cardamon in your cooking   All are AIF

Until next time                        To Health as a Skill       Love DrBill

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Sexual Intimacy and IC: An Energy Science View

As you know the pelvic pain from IC can be so severe that it precludes having normal sexual activity  In a survey done through the ICA organization 90% of IC patients report problems with intimacy   And the majority of women(50-85%) have associated vulvodynia or pain specifically related to the vagina

The fear of bringing on the pain and a flare can lead to avoidance and resulting isolation

Some have reported breaking into a cold sweat due to anxiety just with foreplay   And this can obviously put a severe strain on a marital relationship unless one is fortunate to have an understanding spouse who doesn’t want to inflict pain to his best friend

But for others it can lead to failed relationships or inability to find new ones   As one IC patient told me, “I feel like I’m damaged goods”   Others express a sense of loss of womanhood much as men are fearful of the same for themselves

As we know the matter science approach to the chronic IC problem is unfortunately not helpful since this model doesn’t deal with chronic disease well

But sexual intimacy need not be dead   The energy science can successfully deal with pelvic pain and hence restore intimacy once again

The Energy Science Take on Pelvic Pain

We have discussed the energy and matter science approaches in doing their work   The energy science approach is about balance of qualities; too much hot(responsible for the shearing pain) balanced by delivering the cold; too much subtle balanced by the gross quality(the energy field is subtle and the matter biological field gross);  too much mobile(responsible for the urinary frequency and pain) balanced by the stable or static quality

In energy science parlance we can call these qualities primordial vibrational frequencies

So the symptoms of IC in the pelvis from an energy science view is related to an imbalance of qualities   Now you can see how different these two healing disciplines are when we compare their ways of doing their science

The Energy Science Approach to Pelvic Pain and Vaginal Pain

There are many different tools available from the energy science of Ayurveda to balance the qualities that are imbalanced and localized in the pelvis   Of course the foundation is changing one’s nutritional format and looking at poor food combinations that we have talked about in the recent past

But there are other energy science treatment options to explore  for vaginal pain   Herbal supplements can be used orally or topically   In matter science circles the use of suppositories as a means of delivering pharmaceuticals is commonly done today   Along those lines herbs can be delivered rectally in the form of a low volume enema called basti in the energy science terminology

I have managed patients who have reported remarkable results with medicated enema   I have even had an IC patient report to me that she was having so much pressure that she tried an enema and much to her surprise experienced relief of pelvic symptoms at least for awhile

So if we see the mindbody with fresh eyes we will make available to ourselves new modes of treatment that can bring about astounding results

Until next time              To health as a Skill   Love DrBill