Nutrition: Become a Detective

I’ve been watching a new show this summer called Genetic Detective. It follows investigative genetic genealogist, CeCe Moore, as she uses her unique research skills to transform the face of crime solving. By working with police departments and crime scene DNA, Moore is able to trace the path of a violent criminal’s family tree to reveal their identity and help bring them to justice, even in cold cases 30 years old! It’s fascinating.

I mention that because it reminded me of something my walking buddy, Joanne, shared with me a few weeks ago. We talk about everything under the sun on our walks, including health, food, recipes and the like. She mentioned that she was experiencing symptoms like headaches, upset stomach, nausea, digestive upset and just not feeling like herself. But it would come and go. She did mention when she typed her symptoms in to “Dr. Google” the first thing that came up was COVID-19. Well, everything can’t be attributed to that now can it? So she kept track of her diet and the symptoms.

I always recommend people keep food logs so that if something doesn’t agree with them, or they begin experiencing different symptoms they can go back and see when it began and what they may have been doing differently. Essentially, it allows them to be nutritional detectives! This is exactly what my walking buddy did.

Simply by intentionally paying attention, she figured out what was causing her digestive upset. She follows the Wheat Belly diet and she and her husband have had great success with that. She carefully reads labels and avoids grains, processed foods and particularly those with artificial ingredients and additives. She uses a particular brand of fruit jam on the homemade muffins she makes. The store was out of her brand and after scanning the label of another brand, she felt it looked good and bought it. She noticed that her symptoms happened every time she used this new jam. Upon closer inspection she noticed in very small print that it contained a preservative which her usual brand does not. Well she is obviously very sensitive to that preservative in particular and once she figured that out, like magic, her symptoms disappeared.

All it took was just a little bit of nutritional detective work! I believe the effort required is well worth figuring the mystery out. It’s much better than being prescribed some drug to “manage” the symptoms that always have their own fair share of side effects.

Are you willing to do some nutritional detective work when you experience symptoms to try and get to the cause?

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