I’m back to reading some more and am trying to prioritize that over Netflix in my few hours of downtime in the evening.  I do love learning about all the medical and diet stuff from the Wahls Protocol book and my latest learning is that animal protein is critically important for us.  Now, this makes me happy because I’m a meat and fish lover, so it will not be a challenge for me to eat high quality animal protein every day for the rest of my life.

Apparently it’s great for us because it is a complete protein, i.e. it contains all the amino acids we need to ensure our bodies don’t start eating parts of themselves.  This is a weird thought, but thankfully our bodies appear to be very smart and when they don’t have complete proteins they take amino acids from other parts of our bodies as a temporary measure to make up the deficit.  Doing this in the short term is fine, but allowing this to happen in your body for a long time is clearly going to be detrimental.

Another reason it’s so good is for the essentially fatty acids: Omega 3.  I didn’t know this, but it seems we get Omega 6 from plants and grains, and Omega 3 from animals and that, because our diet is more focused on eating plants and grains, we don’t have a healthy balance of these two fats.  Too much Omega 6 is linked to inflammation (which for me is a trauma because that’s what RP is all about) and autoimmune issues.  So, we need to eat more Omega 3 to stay in balance.

Terry Wahls goes on to say that it’s also beneficial to our joints and bones and she recommends drinking bone broth daily to get all the good stuff from the animal bones that helps healing your leaky-gut issues.  Here’s a cool thing to know: when you’re sick with the flu and have that really horrid achy-all-over feeling, it’s your body (intestinal cells) pulling glutamine (their preferred amino acid for fixing internal damage) from your muscles to help heal.  So, if you drink bone broth, like how (in the old days) chicken soup was made, i.e. with bones in it, then you’re giving your body more glutamine and then your achy feelings should go away.  Why didn’t I know this: now I don’t expect that I would have known about glutamine, but maybe the importance of using bones in soup or something….. this is definitely one to pass on to the next generation.

Other than reading and learning again, I’m feeling stressed and tired.  My ears have been bothering me on and off all day, but have come to nothing, so that’s really good news because my body (and the Methotrexate) are clearly keeping a lid on the worst of it.  Every day I find more reasons to make this diet work for me and today it’s to do what I can to make sure my RP flares keep coming to nothing.