UPDATE: In my last post I talked about Vitamin C to bowel tolerance. As it turns out, the pain in my thumb which progressed into my entire hand, my carpal tunnel, and inner elbow ended up being caused by taking Vitamin C. Read about that here. Day 405: Vitamin C and Inflammation.
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So my thumb has been hurting. Well, actually the left was hurting, then both were hurting, then the right stopped bothering me and now the left one is bothering me.
I started looking on the Internet and found this page: Thumb Carpo-Metacarpal Arthritis. I read on one site of some foods to avoid, and I'm already avoiding most of them, but the one I'm not avoiding is tomatoes.
I understand GAPS can heal rheumatoid arthritis, but what about plain ol' arthritis? The aforementioned site says women are prone to it beginning in the fifth decade of their life. I'm 47, so not quite at my fifth decade, and doggone it, I'm supposed to be getting healthier with eating GAPS. GAPS took all my aches and pains away, well, pretty much too everything away.
This possibly is another symptom of going off my asthma medication which was a corticosteroid. Corticosteroids help to cut down on inflammation. Seems to corrolate. But back to my thumb, I feel kind of disappointed that I might have arthritis while doing GAPS! That is how strongly I feel that it is a healing diet.
OH, and I did read on another site, “It is easy to diagnose if during the examination you press on the thumb carpo-metacarpal joint, which causes pain. Also, holding the thumb and pushing the joint together produces pain in the base of the thumb and is called the grind test.”
I don't know if either of those actually cause pain. I am mostly bothered by the pain when I need to grip something, and I am having trouble say for example, using a can opener, or a wide mouthed jar, like the ones we keep our milk in.
Good news. One of my sisters is reading the GAPS book. She said she totally loves that Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride explains everything so thoroughly. I hope she will embark on GAPS. It would be awesome to have another family member doing it with me. My mom is getting closer, but she's still unwilling to give up her buckwheat pancakes.
I have not been able to get my “what I ate while on vacation” post ready for publication, I may not get a chance until next weekend. It has been a crazy weekend so far. My husband went to visit a family member who is very ill with mental problems, which you can imagine I am convinced the person should be doing GAPS. But the problem is how do you persuade a mentally ill person who lives alone to fully embrace GAPS? I can't even persuade people who are in their right mind to do GAPS. I don't mean you, my dear readers, but I mean people in real life who are looking at me and watching me and seeing the real life results.
I have been more hungry than normal this weekend. It has been a stresser to have my husband gone. For one thing, he did not anticipate that he would want to stay overnight for a couple of nights. We both expected him to be home the same day. Then he didn't have cell phone reception, so I didn't hear from him for hours – like 24 hours.
Pre-GAPS, I would have been popping Kava Kava like candy and crying my eyes out with worry over what might be or could have happened. He might be lying on the side of the road in a ditch somewhere. Maybe the family member grew agitated and shot him and he's dead and stuffed in a box somewhere. You know, our imagination can run wild with us at times, and I have a rather vivid imagination as you can tell. 🙂 And it doesn't help that in our early years together my husband did get himself into a few troublesome situations. But we are living in the present, not twenty years ago.
Anyway, I am going to take a detox bath tonight. It will be nice to just relax in the warm water. The weather has cooled down just a bit here in Arizona, maybe summer is finally easing up. We'll continue to have hot days into October, and I need to figure out what I'm going to do about my garden.
Well, I better run. Have a good one!
I’m sorry to hear you have arthritis. How long have you had the symptoms? I can understand your disappointment since GAPS is SUPPOSED to get rid of those problems, right?!! Don’t give up. Can you up your good fats/ fish oil/FCLO? Don’t know if that would help, but whenever I have joint pain/issues that always helps me.
Hope your sister joins you in GAPS. That would be awesome! Amazes me that more people don’t pay attention to all our healing and wonderful changes in our lives that GAPS brings. I try to shout it from the rooftop every chance I get, but not many people are interested.
Hi Eileen, well I don’t know for certain I have it though my thumb joints are still hurting. 🙁 I do need to be more dedicated to taking my CLO and I haven’t started with fish oil yet. It would be awesome if my sister started to do GAPS! I guess we have to look at this like a business would look at an annual campaign. I think they figure however many solicitations they send out they figure to get back a 2% return. So I guess we should look at it like that. Hopefully of every 100 people we tell about GAPS, two of those will listen and look into it. Thanks for your comment, Eileen! 🙂
Starlene, are you sure you aren’t getting some hidden corn derivatives anywhere? There are lots of places in the GAPS diet for them to hide and that is one of my symptoms from corn exposure. I have certain “weak” joints that start hurting when corn causes a reaction and it doesn’t let up until I figure it out and remove the offending food.
Common hiding places: dusted on frozen fruits or veggies, conventional fruit and veggies in the form of wax, gas and citric acid washes, preservative (undisclosed) in some coconut oils, dried fruits and nuts, eggs, pectin. Hope your thumb gets better.
Hi KC, oh boy. Every time I think about being allergic to corn I feel a little panicked. It seems SOOOO much harder to do than GAPS and as I’ve said before we aren’t doing grass fed, range free meats or organic veggies. So I am probably getting all kinds of corn exposure. Heck my family is still bringing in corn chips and taco shells and corn meal and making corn bread. Ack. So far my thumb is still bothering me. I am learning how to do things differently, like wash dishes so that my thumb doesn’t hurt, or picking up a large jar with two hands instead of gripping it. The left one bothers me more than the right, but the right one is also hurts and aches sometimes. I’m bummed.