I had headaches at least every couple days for about the last 10 years. Ridiculous! I cannot remember when I have had more than 2 days without a headache.
I know so many people in the same situation, suffering daily. The list includes my mother and sister – both are vegetarians. My mom has a headache everyday and is addicted to excedrin – a habit which gives such relief in the short term, but inflicts such cruel damage to the body and creates an addiction worse than the original problem. There are so many short term solutions to these headaches, so much so that an entire industry is built around the headache.
But why are these headaches occurring? That’s the important question! After searching for this illusive answer for the past 10 years, I have come to some very shocking information regarding diet, health, and my very sturdy, but yet fragile ecosystem that I inhabit.
My life with food, nutrition, guilt and the reality of life…
I guess the question I struggle with today is not what made a staunch vegan start to eat meat. That answer is simple – the quest to find a cure for my headaches. My question is still the same one I have had for the last 10 years. Why do I have headaches?
First, let me tell you a little about my life so far. For most of my life I have been almost exclusively a carnivore. Given the choice, I ate meat with no desire for any other dietary substance. I was raised in a household with a mother who loved chicken and a father who ate red meat. But strangely enough, my parents both became vegetarians when I was 14. It was an ethical decision for them. My parents were great – they let my sister and me make our own decisions about our dietary intake. So we ate meat.
As any troublesome teen, I rebelled and ate as much as I could get my hands on. More meat please… hold the veggies. I even worked in a BBQ restaurant; free meat all day long, everyday. I felt great. I smoked, drank, did drugs – you name it, I did it! I was young and nothing seemed like it could do any damage.
Then somewhere in college I found myself as a vegetarian. I was opposed to the way animals were treated and grown. It did not seem right that the animals suffered so, but I have always been on the border whether consuming flesh was right or wrong. After all, right and wrong are simply perceptions – we all have them – and they are no more than that – perceptions, and perceptions change with circumstance.
Because of this “perception” issue, my perceptions changed several times over the next few years. I was a vegetarian, then a carnivore, then a vegetarian, and so on… but I never really ate veggies when a carnivore or meat when a vegetarian. But what I had always been sure about was that, as a consumer, it was my responsibility to do what I felt right, and to uphold my ethical and moral beliefs with my decisions. My life was so easy then – eat meat and enjoy, no veggies required.
Then I met Sandi, my wife and owner of Eden Alley Vegetarian Cafe. She cooks so amazingly that I realized I could give up meat and not miss it. Her cooking is layers upon layers of flavors disguised as simple vegetarian food. Whole food nutrition that tasted better than anything I had ever encountered. So, I gave up meat without a doubt that I was moving in a healthier direction.
I stopped smoking somewhere in here too, and life was great! Running a vegetarian restaurant makes it easy to be vegetarian because there’s food I could eat everywhere around me, and great tasting food at that.
But I found that I missed the texture of meat – the chew. Then I discovered meat substitutes. The joy of processed foods that had a similar texture to meat. Textured vegetable protein and wheat gluten were constants in my diet. Oh the joy of the chew without the death and suffering of an animal.
Could life get any better? I was married to the hardest working, greatest woman I had ever met, helping to run an amazing restaurant.
Then the headaches started. Slowly at first, but with astounding pounding pressures that would leave me curled up on our bed wanting to die.
So, the search for the cure started. In my quest, with such excrutiating headaches that I wanted to crawl in a hole and die, I went to the one place that seemed they could help me – the Headache and Pain Center – it’s in the name. Well, I was told that the chances of finding the cause of my headaches was so low that I shouldn’t even bother. Their solution was to place me on antidepressants, but I wasn’t depressed. No matter, supposedly, they help headache sufferers too.
Even ten years ago I knew that this was the wrong approach for me. It did not answer the question as to why I had headaches. The headaches were obviously the symptom of something. What it was was the answer I was looking for – not just something to mask the pain of the message my body was sending me.
So, the quest continued. I started to look at everything I put into my body. What was the trigger for these awful pains that left me feeling less than the supercharged person I was without them?
As I was now, again, a vegetarian, helping to run a vegetarian restaurant, I was eating a typical vegetarian menu consisting of tofu, beans, rice, breads, eggs, dairy, etc. Then my doctor tells me I have high cholesterol. What, now that I am not eating meat? So, I started Lipitor to control my cholesterol. However, my headaches become more frequent. Even though my cholesterol is slightly lower, my doctor tells me my blood pressure is high. So, I am now taking a blood pressure lowering drug.
This was just great. I am not a big supporter of pharmacueticals and was not to happy taking these drugs… like my life depended on it! I have always believed that nature has the answer to our health, so taking prescription medication simply went against what I felt was right, but because my doctor said I really needed it, I took it. That was the start of the end of my trust for the medical community and what they perceive to be the truth of our biology.
I started switching doctors, looking for one that might have a clue about solutions to causes instead of masks for symptoms. I asked them all if the Lipitor could be contributing to my headaches and high blood pressure. They all said there has been nothing written about that. But I said, I have never had high blood pressure until I started on Lipitor. It did not make sense to me, and so I question authority – it’s just the nature of how I was raised, thankfully. Long story short, once I got off cholesterol lowering drugs, my blood pressure was fine and I had fewer headaches. But of course, there was no correlation!
So what was causing these headaches still? Soy? As a vegetarian, I was ingesting a lot of this stuff. I confirmed it time and time again in my many trials. Eating tofu made my head split open. Thus, I felt the answer to my painful life was found, but it was only the beginning.
Then I found Dr. David, and now, after one visit to Dr. David for NAET, no headache! No headache, what kind of magic is this?
Does it really matter what’s behind it if it works? To me it does. I love learning and understanding. So, I have bought all the books about this written by the founder of NAET, Dr. Devi Nambudripad and am loving the read. My first was “Say Goodbye To Headaches” of course.
So here is NAET in a nutshell – Greg’s nut shell of a brain.
My body knows what it needs, and what it doesn’t, what bothers it and what helps it. So, Dr. David just asked the right questions and used muscle checking – a method that has been used for centuries – to get the answer.
In my first visit, he checked for the most common 18 allergens and digestive disorders known to this system. Of these, I tested positive for 11 of them.
Currently, my body cannot process protein from any other source than cow. Luckily, that’s what I’ve been eating as of the last few weeks – 100% grass fed, no grain. My body had already figured that one out – but nice to see the proof.
My body is unable to assimilate a whole heap load of nutrients from the foods I have been eating as a vegan. The doctor believes, and stated his proof, that a vegan diet is not sustainable for more than a few years for the majority of people. He did say a small percentage of people thrive on being vegan, but apparently not me. He used to be a vegan, coincidentally. He stated that a vegan diet is one of the best things you can do for your body. It is the greatest cleanse and does wonders, but once it is done cleansing, it can have bad effects if continued – and that is seen in my world for sure. Of course, this is his opinion based on the facts he sees – no offense meant to anyone.
So what exactly caused my myriad of headaches for the last 10 years, a really bad vegetarian diet? Well, an overly dominant excess of soy and gluten proteins in the form of “meat substitutes” that made up my diet for the first few years after I turned vegetarian, has given me a “leaky gut“. This allows proteins to escape my gut into the rest of my body. My immune system, which is in perfect shape, sees these proteins as enemies and tries to destroy them and sends the alarm message out – a headache.
I had been a carnivore, so in my early days as a vegetarian, I really missed the chew of meat. Fake meats were everywhere at the health food store. Soy and gluten proteins masquerading as meat solved the chew issue for me, so I ate them to excess. Couple that bad diet with cheese and dairy – a truly crappy vegetarian diet – how could I not have allergy issues? Unfortunately, at the time, I had no idea about a balanced diet in the vegetarian realm.
Of course, many years ago I learned the dangers of a diet completely based on “isolated” proteins, which were stripped from their natural home in the soy-bean and the wheat and grains, and have thus moved away from that predominance, but the damage had been done.
So what now? Currently, I stay on a limited diet consisting of 100% grass-fed cow, egg, and most vegetables and fruits. As my NAET treatments continue, I will go through some different phases, but ultimately, my body will be cured of most, if not all, of its allergies, and of course, my headaches.
And what will my diet consist of then? What will my body say it is supposed to be eating? Stay tuned…
So my beliefs of right and wrong, left and right, up and down – my unique perspective on life – have been my guiding light, my beacon in the night. These beliefs have determined my diet; a diet I have turned into a lifestyle. I mean really, what I eat has taken over what I am. Ok sure, one way we humans differentiate between animals is their diet: this one’s an herbivore, carnivore, or what’s this – an omnivore.
Well, that’s me now for the first time in my life – an omnivore. I’ve spent time as a carnivore, then an herbivore, guess this makes sense. Is there really nothing more to me, that is more important, in determining who and what I am than my diet? Really, I mean my diet.
Now, thanks to NAET, I have the entire rainbow of foods to choose from without the fear of the headache. Wow, gotta’ choose wisely.
We’ve heard the saying all our life: “you are what you eat,” but it doesn’t seem that many people really ever consider this to be true. I mean consciously we would all probably agree with this statement, but in reality very few people actually live as such. I sure found this to be true. Crap in crap out.
I was ruining my body. Now Dr. David and Betsy have given me the chance for a whole new life, without fear. Thank you both for giving me a second chance to understand my body’s needs, not just my philosophical desires.
