On fire
carolSIMONTACCHI csimontacchi@earthlink.net
Until I wrote a book about inflammation last year, I really was not aware that inflammation was a significant problem, except to those poor folks who suffer from arthritis. One of my earliest jobs, back in the sixties, was in a nursing home. One of the residents was a young woman in her fifties who was so crippled by rheumatoid arthritis that she could no longer care for herself. I decided that, if possible, I would avoid this heartbreaking disease.

A few months ago, I started having aches and pains. My hand and leg muscles started cramping painfully, and my neck was so stiff that I sometimes could hardly bend it at all. Then I started experiencing severe pain down the left side of my neck and searing pains shot through my upper back. My knees hurt and I was afraid to jog. I blamed it on stress and sitting too long at a computer, and vowed to get an inversion board to ease the muscular tension.

Last year about this time, I did an allergy test and learned that I am severely allergic to several common foods like chicken, ginger, cranberry, and salmon. I eliminated those foods for a short time and after my symptoms went away, I re-introduced them back into my diet, seemingly without consequences. That is standard protocol.

"Great!" I thought. "My body just needed a rest."

Little did I realize that over time, the continued intake of these foods was setting my body on fire with inflammation. The pain just crept up.

But now, I was in so much discomfort that I decided to take action. I pulled out the old allergy panel, and wrote a four-day rotation diet that eliminated every food to which I react. Day 1 is lamb day, with tuna salad, cashew butter, apples, and romaine lettuce with black beans. Day 2 is shrimp day, with quinoa, almond butter, lentil soup, and watermelon. It is a fairly dreary diet with little room for sudden bursts of spontaneity but after just two weeks, the pain is almost completely gone. My neck no longer hurts, the knots are gone from my shoulders, and my lower back feels fine.

The moral of the story is that even good foods can trigger inflammation. Salmon, chicken and ginger may not bother you; your trigger foods may be completely different and that is why you may want to explore this topic further. Read "The Pulse Test" by Dr. Coca for a more in-depth explanation. Your problem may not be food - but since we eat every day, it is a good place to start looking. Carol Simontacchi

is the owner

of the Island

Nutrition Center

on Sanibel. She

can be reached at

472-4499 or on the

Web at www.islandnutritioncenter.

meta-ehealth.com.