Things I Forgot to Mention

A few things I forgot to mention yesterday regarding my appointment with Dr. alternative.

1. My blood pressure has spiked and is resisting treatment. Again. This is not awesome. It's not high enough to go to the ER or anything but it's getting there. I finally just now had an almost normal reading.

I have talked to my primary care physician about these spikes, these attacks, and they have been no help. It's a case of 'I didn't see it so it didn't happen' medical care. Kind of bizarre to me because hypertension is very common, this is not weird adrenal stuff so why the brick wall?

Yeah, doctors say they want to partner with patients and they say that they want to listen, but what actually happens is I'm left to deal with high blood pressure on my own. It's going to take an ER visit at this rate for anyone but me to pay attention.

2. I am having issues with Dr. alternative's superfood vegan bias. I say low-carb and they picture bacon. For the record, I eat broccoli a lot for lunch right now. Just broccoli with a little bit of butter and some Parmesan cheese. Yesterday I had broccoli with hummus. Dinner tonight will be pesto with zucchini noodles, broccoli and chicken.

For the love of preventing diabetes, please note all the fricking fracking vegetables there and the utter lack of bacon.

It's very difficult to work with someone who perceives you to be only consuming processed meats. I eat my chia seeds. I puree spinach and blueberries. Stop with the vegan bias already!


4. Food allergies. I read an interesting article in the waiting room in some sort of medical journal for alternative medicine. The article was written by a board-certified physician and it was about how hormone disruptions can impact food allergies especially for patients with estrogen dominance. I thought that was very interesting. Unfortunately, replacing the progesterone missing in my system has not improved my reactions to wheat, tomatoes or peppers. In fact, everything got worse.

However the article did point out that skin testing does not always yield a reaction in patients with hormonally driven allergies. I thought that was interesting considering I am actually probably going to be having some skin testing done sometime in February.

I am not too concerned about food allergies except that I just need to know what my risk is and whether or not I need an epi-pen, because wheat does affect my breathing. If it was just a rash I would not care and I would not be doing any allergy testing, but with the itching and the triggering of the asthma and feeling the inflammation in my lungs I want to double check and make sure I don't need an epi-pen.

The other thing that's interesting about the hormone connection with food allergies is that it leads to the idea of sort of cyclic sensitivity. With tomatoes and peppers, sometimes I can eat them just fine and then other times they make me very sick with heartburn. Sometimes the raw food multivitamin I take that has tomato and pepper extract in it is fine, sometimes it really bothers my stomach and I can't take it. I wonder if it relates to my hormone levels in the moment?

Hey I dictated most of this post! I'm getting there!