Excruciating is the word to describe it yet the outcome was far better then I ever imagined. It would have been nice if it hadn’t taken what it did to happen, but sometimes we have to touch bottom to launch ourselves to the top.
The set up for disaster
My 12 month old son and wife and I were on a three week vacation that included a wedding at St. Paul’s cathedral in London and then two weeks in Orlando at Disney. It was to be a fantastic trip but for the ugly ending.
In the months leading up to the trip I was working hard, working out hard, eating fairly well and getting a sub-par amount of sleep. Just before the trip a doctors visit uncovered some discoloration on my tongue. No worry I was told, drink lots of water and it should go away. So I did and it went away about 3 days into the trip. Great.
The gluttony and the attack
After the festivities in London we headed out to our dining included trip to Disney. I think there were 22 of us who met from various parts of the world for this family get together. We had a great time and ate some great food. Lots of it. And just as the trip was winding down I felt it.
My left big toe felt as if it needed to crack like when you pop your knuckles. The sensation wouldn’t go away and nagged at me for days getting steadily worse. On the second to last night I woke up at 1am in excruciating pain. My left big toe (LBT) was on fire and merely a whisper of air on the skin near it hurt. After some ice and elevation allowed me to get some rest, the next morning I headed to a local clinic and was told I had an attack of gout.
Gout: not just for old people!
It turns out that gout is quite common in 30 year old males like myself and that my diet leading up to the trip together with dehydrating plane rides, adjusting to a 6 hour time difference and drinking more alcohol and eating more meat then I usually do was enough to trigger the attack.
Gout: your friend forever?
When we returned home I did some research on my new friend. Apparently the result of gout – deposits in your joints, rarely go away. And medication to keep it from happening again has some side effects that I wasn’t interested in apart from having to take the meds for life.
My LBT had become far less flexible then my RBT, and I was beginning to realize that this was going to inhibit not just my idea of perhaps another Ironman triathlon but my overall quality of life. This realization was touching bottom for me. I had to do something and something drastic. Enter the cleanse.
Hello Master Cleanse, good bye gout
From reading various bits of information around the web I came to the conclusion that a good fast could give my body the opportunity to clean itself up, gout included. I had already changed my diet upon return from the trip – no meat, very little coffee or junk food – and so transitioning to the fast was more or less easy. I did it for 15 days. I think it was around day ten when my LBT regained the range of motion that I have in my RBT. This was fantastic news, but there was more to come as I came off the fast.
Clean body = more energy, clearer thinking and less eating
While on the fast I really noticed how I would reach for food because it was there, not because I needed it. This was an eye opener for me. Also I noticed how my brain was working the way it would work when I had a good coffee buzz on and was in the zone. It became very easy to get in the zone and focus. I stopped picking at my fingernails as I tended to do when I was drinking coffee.
After the fast I ate less. Sometimes a bowl of muesli in the morning would last me until dinner. I slept less. I was waking up refreshed and ready to go after 5 hours of sleep. I would have a 20 minute nap during the day and I felt great.
I’m now several months on from the fast. I’m meat and dairy free and more or less white flower and coffee and sugar free too. I have my lapses but when I get back on the eating live foods train I feel unstoppable.
This whole event was a shock to me and caused me to rethink my eating habits. Without actually experiencing this side of the fence I doubt I would have arrived here. The other shocker is how little direction that I gave myself with respect to eating. That in itself is another can of worms, suffice to say that I can’t believe how much I would think some things thru but spent very little time on thinking about nutrition. I now have a set of rules that I try and follow and I will post these in an upcoming blog post.
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