Me on Diet. Splenda Evil.

I haven't written in this blog (or any of my others) for quite a while, and I'm missing it so I'm going to try to just jump back in. What's been going on with me? Well, I've been trying to deal with my health issues. I can't be a good Mommy if I'm sick all the time, and I was getting sick all the time. I got a new doctor who is Western but is open to alternative medicine, and she believes I have Candida problems, so she put me on the Candida diet. What is Candida? It's a natural bacteria everyone has in their bodies, but you can get an overgrowth of it and it can wreak havoc. Most Western docs don't believe in it because it explains too many things, but it sure fit the bill when the doc went down the list of symptoms:

fatigue, headache, mood swings, sinus congestion, depression, poor memory and concentration, and cravings for sweets (not to mention yeast infections and and UTI's).

The diet is basically low carb, avoid wheat, gluten, sweets. So, no pasta, no bread. I've been doing this almost a month now and I can't believe I've lived without bread for that long. Breads are basically my favorite foods. And of course being a vegetarian made this challenge just that much harder. I eat a lot of peanut butter, and almond butter. Oh, and cereal, how could I live without cereal?? I finally found some brown rice cereal that I can have a bit of, although it's not real low in carbs. At least it has no wheat. I also went to Whole Foods and found a case of wheat-free, gluten-free goodies and got some cheddar biscuits, cornbread, and peanut butter cookies. And no, they don't taste like shoe leather! They're actually really good. Just very spendy. $7 for 8 cookies. So I see the doctor next week to find out how my body chemistry has changed in this month.

I haven't been sick, except for the nausea and stomach cramps that I got when I tried to use an artificial sweetener: Splenda. Evil! I've always been suspicious of those artificial sweeteners, especially aspartame, which gives me a headache, but I thought Splenda would be okay to try since it's "made from sugar." Er, yeah. It wasn't okay. Not for me, anyway. I made these delicious muffins with almond flour, and used Splenda instead of regular sugar, and got bad cramps and nausea and fatigue right after I would eat a muffin. So I started researching Splenda (probably should have done this before I bought it), and what it is is very freaky:

Sucralose is a molecule of sugar chemically manipulated to surrender three hydroxyl groups (hydrogen + oxygen) and replace them with three chlorine atoms. Natural sugar is a hydrocarbon built around 12 carbon atoms. When turned into Splenda it becomes a chlorocarbon, in the family of Chlorodane, Lindane and DDT.

And I read many horror stories of people who had all kinds of side effects from it. So I stopped using it right away. Ugh! I'm not a dieter so this has been very weird for me. John has been very supportive, finding meals to cook that are low-carb and making sure I get enough protein. I'm glad the month is almost over, but I think I will probably keep eating a lot of these healthier foods. Like not so much pasta, and I found some great brown rice tortillas that are great with either cream cheese or almond butter on them (corn tortillas not so much).