I was barely 21 when I had my first sudden and absolute pain riding through my back like a bolt of lightening, waking me in the early hours. My mind rushed to try and make sense of what was happening. In the emergency room the nurse quickly deduced that I was having a kidney stone, stating "I have had 3 kids and 1 stone and I would take the 3 kids all over again!" After a week in the hospital with constant x-rays, forced fluids and tons of pain meds, they let me go home, where I passed the stone a day later. That was what I thought had been the worst week of my life.
I was stone free for 10 years, believing that was a fluke, a moment of karmic equilibrium... I was wrong. The stones came again and with a vengeance. I began having them every 6 months, and then every 3 months. Over the course of another 8 years, their frequency increased, as did my tolerance for pain, though only slightly. It was the nausea that I despised almost more than the waves of pain. In the last 2 years the stones were often times within 6 weeks of one another. Of course I sought out specialists, seeing 2 different doctors that were supposed to be the best in the field of kidney problems, one of whom specialized in stones. The first doctor told me, after a barrage of tests mind you, that my stones were due to milk and that I had to leave the world of dairy behind me. I spent 2 years not drinking a glass of milk, which I grew up loving over all other beverages! There was no change in the frequency or pain with regard to the stone factory I had running.
The next specialist ran even more tests and declared, without a doubt, that my stones were caused by red meat and the proteins that only red meat offers the body. In my case, a build up of these proteins formed into the little spiked monsters within my kidneys. Dismayed beyond belief, I swore off all red meats. It is important to note that I grew up in the South, where we ate every form of animal and in every way possible. I had a long love affair with 4 legged animals and the bountiful cuisine they offered. Steaks on the grill, hot roast beef sandwiches covered in gravy served over french bread, prime rib, beef ribs, hamburgers, the list just kept building. How was I to give up red meat! Like a adhesive bandage, I chose to rip it off quickly and when confronted with the unrelenting pain of the kidney stone to my love of red meat, the pain receptors beat the craving centers of my brain every time.
After a year of no red meat, the stones had not decreased in their attacks! There seemed to be no correlation between the lack of a specific food group and the frequency and intensity of the stones. I became disillusioned, angry at the medical system, tired of the hypervigilance any time I had so much as a twinge of muscle discomfort. I became complacent in my misery, which is no way to live.
During my 30's I was going to school full-time in a graduate program for my doctorate in Clinical Psychology. Anyone who has gone to graduate school for any advanced degree knows the level of stress, long unpaid internship hours, non-stop studying, papers, presentations, reading, writing and research. Having kidney stones on top of this made life challenging at an entirely new level! It was in the last 3 years of my doctorate, where I completed my PreDoc internship residency requirement and was researching and writing my dissertation, that I began reading about people in other countries, other cultures, who were not having the kind of disease problems we were having in the west. I also noted a correlation between stress/anxiety levels and kidney stone frequency. Meaning the more stress or anxiety in a person's life, the closer together and more painful the stones seemed to be.
A quick word on correlations, as a correlation never ever means causation. In other words, two things that seem to interact or effect one another, we can talk about as having a correlation, a relationship, but we can not make absolute claims about these relations. We can not say that because one thing acts when another thing also acts means the two things are causing one another to act together. They might very well be causing the interaction, but causation is not correlation. Correlations offer us a place to take note when things appear to be acting in concert and then adjust our testing to see if they actually do affect one another.
So I began reading. It turned out that here in the west, we have no idea what causes a kidney stone, why there is so much pain, or pain at all and why some people have them and others don't. The medical community just doesn't know. I also learned that this is not what the docs and nurses are trained to tell people. After all, who wants to go through all of this discomfort, go to the specialist and hear "we just don't know, so we are making the best guess we can make." Well I did not want to hear the best guess, I wanted the honest truth. Funny thing about human beings though, once we buy into a belief we tend to hold onto it as if it were etched into the very fabric of our being.
In my own research I began to realize that diet was not just playing a role in people's health outcomes, but that the choice in what we ate was everything! While it made sense to my logic centers that what we put into our bodies would directly effect the chemical composition of what occurs within us, my emotional and cognitive sides were not in agreement that thick steaks, fried dough and soft drinks were the only cause! The more I read, the more I realized that our culture in America was not just eating in the worst possible ways, we seemed to be killing ourselves at an alarmingly high rate!
I decided to research the diet angle with myself as the test subject. I began by moving to a primarily organic diet, added supplements and veggies that I had refused to eat most of my life. I still ate meat, I just ate less red meats and left most of the milk drinking to the baby cows. I still had cheese and all other manner of dairy based foods. The outcome after a half a year was some weight loss, some increase in energy and a better overall feeling. I still had the kidney stones however. They were less intense and less frequent now, but still happening.
I became more serious in my commitment and began working with a series of diet books called "Eating Clean" which allowed me to step into making more dishes with organic foods in ways that were tasty. I paired this with spreadsheet tracking, breaking my food intake into 5 smaller meals per day, knowing my fat, caloric and protein levels for each food. I quickly became bored with these meals... see I not only grew up in New Orleans, but I was raised by amazing chefs! I grew up cooking and eating the most amazing dishes. So the hardest thing for me to do was to walk away from flavor, to abandon one of my great, life-long passions of preparing and eating fine cuisines!
I then came across a piece of research published in book form that was sweeping large and small circles around the country and if you are anything like me, when different people mention the same title or topic in separate conversations, I tend to take notice, as if the universe was saying "look at this!" And into my life came the book "The China Study." Beautifully written with absolute science spanning a massive population base over 4 decades with American and Chinese scientists working together on diet and disease. It was a stupendous undertaking which helped to change my personal condition.
At the end of the day, the research showed that ANY animal protein (called casein) when eaten in moderation (less than 5% of your daily intake) had a direct correlation to cancer, heart disease, diabetes and kidney stones. Their research showed not only a reduction in cancer rates, but a reversal of cancer tumors!
But to give up meat and ALL animal by-products! My mind began to wage war on itself. After a lifetime of cooking and devouring every animal dish I could muster, there were NO mealtimes without animals in attendance - none! Think about your own diet, when do you not have some form of animal... no cheese, no dairy, no sour cream, no egg, no meat... how often does this happen in your world? The task seemed impossible and came with a loaded gun! A word, THAT word - vegan.
I wrestled with myself, spoke to my close friends, listened to lectures on the harmfulness of vegetarianism and veganism... then began to hear about the athletes, Olympic gold medalists who were vegan, the movie stars who ate this way to maintain their youthfulness and energy, business men and women who went vegan to keep their high-powered lives in full bore! I was shocked to hear the opposing arguments over and over again. So I made the decision to jump into the deep end and try it out for myself.
Baby steps first and I can't stress this enough. I started by "becoming" a vegetarian. Another book to help my palate along the way, "The Clean Diet" with a vegetarian focus on culinary style became my "go to" book for awhile. I let go of the spreadsheets and calorie counting. I began experimenting with my own vegetarian dishes, slowly moving more and more to an all vegan diet until I made the transition completely.
I have been vegan for a year now and within that time, I have had zero kidney stones. The China Study seems to be on the mark as I consume no casein and have had no further pain. With this I have also managed my overall health, including my stress levels. Over the last year I have studied veganism and the many recipes out there, trying many dishes and creating many more and offering these dishes to friends and family for further revision. So many cookbooks with a vegan focus tend to be the quintessential bland, raw and dare I say, tasteless foods which seems to have fueled our culture's biased against the mere idea of the 'big V'. Not to say there are not amazing vegan and vegetarian cookbooks out there, as I have named a few here already, only that I have spent a lot of time in the experimental kitchen and have created and tested a lot of my own amazing dishes. Bland, tasteless, unappetizing dishes should not be a part of your regular diet. It is my firm belief that how we feel about what we prepare and how our foods effects our taste buds also affects our mood and self image.
So that is the reason for this blog. As suggested by a friend of mine, instead of putting out a cookbook (though that may still happen at some point), offering a blog of ongoing recipes while expanding my test audience to those who would like to walk a healthy life and find longer, more productive health with less physical and mental suffering. I am not a Medical Doctor and I am not telling you that if you do this you will have the same results that I have had. I am merely offering you my story and inviting you to do your own reading, your own experimenting and I will keep testing and reporting on my own outcomes, discoveries and amazing dishes!
In glorious Health,
Namaste.
