A healthy person needs a lot less than a painie; women need a slightly higher proportion than men. Recommendations are based on healthy men. Think that over for a minute, painie women…
More and more science is discovering the link between longstanding pain disease and demyelination, that is, the protective layer of fat around certain nerves. Without that protective layer, the nerves can’t work right and rapidly get very sick and sore.
A healthy person can maintain myelination on a normal diet. That’s great for them. It’s why we call them normal.
We have a lot more demand on our myelination. We are playing a different numbers game than normal people. Normal diet is not necessarily right for us. A low-fat diet does not necessarily support myelin enough for those whose nerves are as heavily besieged as ours are.
We benefit, more than most, from staying away from poisonous fats, like hydrogenated fats and conventionally-farmed flesh foods and farmed fish. They can really push the poisons into our sensitive systems.
We need, much more than most, to get cleansing and healing oils and fats of all kinds:
– from omega-3s in fresh vegetable oils (avocados, olives, sunflowers, nuts, seeds) and wild fish (salmon, sardines, cod, menhaden fish),
– to the medium-chain fatty acids in cocoa butter and coconut, both of which are wonderful to cook with (vegetables sauteed in refined coconut oil are outstanding),
– to the naturally saturated, artery-*cleaning* fats in 100% pastured dairy (cheap source: Kerrygold butter!) and other flesh foods raised according to their genotype (scratching poultry, rooting pigs, pastured herd animals, etc.)
*Fats and oils are necessary, in the presence of ongoing nerve damage.* They provide mechanical, physiological, and anti-inflammatory support to the beleaguered nerves. Lack of adequate lipid intake can worsen the nervous system’s situation, which has knock-on effects on the metabolism, cardiac system, digestion, endocrine signalling, and so forth. The nervous system drives every system in the body; without adequate support, it can’t do a good job. Very simple.
When I first got knocked down by CRPS, I couldn’t lose the sluggish-digestion-related extra weight or improve my functional level, until I raised my intake of healthy lipids to about 2.5-3 times what the recommendations said. Once I was getting enough of these neuro-protective and anti-inflammatory ingredients, my metabolism went up, my pain and clothing-size went down, and everything got significantly better.
The temptation then is to overdo, which still helps reduce pain at the time. Half a tablespoon of grassfed butter is better than a pain pill for me. Unfortunately, it was a high-pain winter, and I used it several times a day. That created a much bigger body than I can manage, and that puts more strain on my joints and bones. I’m working on that right now. I definitely overdid the pain-reducing foods through all the activity around moving and travelling my first 6 months here. I’m about 20 pounds down, but it won’t really show for another 20.
We like to eat serendipitously — it’s natural, and harks back to when we ate whatever was around: apples, berries, tubers, mastodons, and so on. Unfortunately for me (as it is for many spoonies), I have to be very thoughtful about what I eat. As my brain gets clearer, it becomes easier.
It’s too bad, because I’d love to be thoughtless and festive about food once in awhile, but I’ll have to be content with being thoughtful and festive instead. It works better.