On Monday I did a bit of a fast and during the next couple of days had some major stuff working its way out of me. During the middle of the week I noticed a very strong pain around the bone of my left orbit - almost like the bone was bruised or I got punched in the face. What was this strange sorcery and did it relate to my detox? Possibly. From the bits and pieces of information I found on the interwebz it most likely was something called "referred pain" stemming from sinusitis infection of the underlying sinuses. On the anecdotal wavelength I did find several mentions of people going through this after a diet change, fast, or detox. The prevailing sentiment was to ride it out and it will go away. I did just that and the pain went away after a couple of days. Perhaps it was related to my body detoxing and shuttling stuff out and away… I also had a lot of boogers, some body acne, smelly poops and other secretions doing their thing during this period after my Monday when I fasted. Hopefully I got through the worst of it because it was pretty gnarly both with brain fog, tiredness, and a general malaise. I stayed the course and things got better.
The War Within
And I want to document a strange case of food craving I got… and how it relates to the growing body of evidence suggesting a profound and encompassing gut-mind relationship. That the microbiome of your gut - the commensal bacteria that help digest the food you eat - exert a strong and profound influence on how you think, feel, and act - might be even influencing the decisions you make. Especially concerning the decisions of what you put into your body. As I mentioned in my last post one day I got a strong craving for some buttered pasta. This was not unusual for that day because I was still on the learning curve of how much I should be eating and was running a bit of a calorie deficit that day. Therefore buttered pasta seems like a sensible thing a body craving calories would want. But it got me thinking…
And I want to document a strange case of food craving I got… and how it relates to the growing body of evidence suggesting a profound and encompassing gut-mind relationship. That the microbiome of your gut - the commensal bacteria that help digest the food you eat - exert a strong and profound influence on how you think, feel, and act - might be even influencing the decisions you make. Especially concerning the decisions of what you put into your body. As I mentioned in my last post one day I got a strong craving for some buttered pasta. This was not unusual for that day because I was still on the learning curve of how much I should be eating and was running a bit of a calorie deficit that day. Therefore buttered pasta seems like a sensible thing a body craving calories would want. But it got me thinking…
After that craving I started looking over vegan recipes for various foods and one that I became very interested in trying out was vegan fettucine alfredo. Again, not too unusual as I have been poring over various recipes for vegan dishes and I researched several promising ones on vegan fettucine alfredo. What is interesting is that I was never really that crazy into fettucine alfredo even back when I ate dairy. I can't even remember the last time I ate it? You would think that being, if I can speak in broad strokes, a typical male with a love affair with meat that the most intense cravings would be for meat, not for pasta dripping with creamy dairy? Or was something else going on? That it was not my own mind going to look up veganized alfredo alternatives and that this repeated thought pattern was not simply a quench for calories?
Let me offer an alternative hypothesis: that the dairy loving bugs - the micro biome in my gut that thrives on dairy - that it is losing ground to an increasingly plant based, fiber loving intestinal flora. That such a flora is losing the evolutionary battle in mine own gut for retail space and that such a flora, through a desperate bid for food and survival, might some how communicate via the gut-brain axis to eat dairy and trick me into thinking that "I want dairy" when it is in fact the dying, starving, and losing dairy loving flora that want the dairy. And what better a rescue food for the starving minions than quite literally one of the most calorie rich, buttery and creamy dishes known to man but fettucine alfredo?
Was there a way to test this notion of mine, even in a cursory anecdotally somewhat non-controlled setting? Some observation that would point my nose in the direction that this hypothesis, as strange and weird as it sounds, might have some merit? All I could think of was this: pay attention to when and how these cravings arise. If they arise because I am hungry I can't count that as supporting my hypothesis. But if they arise when I have unequivocally had enough food that day, that I met all my caloric requirements and that if a sudden craving for fettucine alfredo still occurs that might in fact evince the dairy loving gut flora betraying their plea for survival. On Friday such a craving occurred around 11:30 at night as I was ending my shift at work. I know for a fact that I ate a ton of food that day - including lots of avocado and rich coconut milk - there was no way I was running a deficit. Yet there it was the thought of a big rich plate of fettucine alfredo just ram-roading its way into my consciousness. Again, I didn't eat a crazy amount of the stuff when I did eat dairy. I would have expected cravings for In-N-Out hamburgers, baby back ribs, carne asada tacos or fried chicken - NOT some stupid mammary secretion dish. I mean the dishes I just mentioned are also calorie rich foods too, why am I not craving them?
I have a strange hunch that someone who has dealt with a drug addiction can relate to the parable I just told.
Let me offer an alternative hypothesis: that the dairy loving bugs - the micro biome in my gut that thrives on dairy - that it is losing ground to an increasingly plant based, fiber loving intestinal flora. That such a flora is losing the evolutionary battle in mine own gut for retail space and that such a flora, through a desperate bid for food and survival, might some how communicate via the gut-brain axis to eat dairy and trick me into thinking that "I want dairy" when it is in fact the dying, starving, and losing dairy loving flora that want the dairy. And what better a rescue food for the starving minions than quite literally one of the most calorie rich, buttery and creamy dishes known to man but fettucine alfredo?
Was there a way to test this notion of mine, even in a cursory anecdotally somewhat non-controlled setting? Some observation that would point my nose in the direction that this hypothesis, as strange and weird as it sounds, might have some merit? All I could think of was this: pay attention to when and how these cravings arise. If they arise because I am hungry I can't count that as supporting my hypothesis. But if they arise when I have unequivocally had enough food that day, that I met all my caloric requirements and that if a sudden craving for fettucine alfredo still occurs that might in fact evince the dairy loving gut flora betraying their plea for survival. On Friday such a craving occurred around 11:30 at night as I was ending my shift at work. I know for a fact that I ate a ton of food that day - including lots of avocado and rich coconut milk - there was no way I was running a deficit. Yet there it was the thought of a big rich plate of fettucine alfredo just ram-roading its way into my consciousness. Again, I didn't eat a crazy amount of the stuff when I did eat dairy. I would have expected cravings for In-N-Out hamburgers, baby back ribs, carne asada tacos or fried chicken - NOT some stupid mammary secretion dish. I mean the dishes I just mentioned are also calorie rich foods too, why am I not craving them?
I have a strange hunch that someone who has dealt with a drug addiction can relate to the parable I just told.
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