One Day … ahem… Dish at a Time

If you remember, right before Christmas, I got the news that my aortic valve is shrinking as we speak, faster than I thought or even ever realized. When I saw that picture(linked to the above blog) of what my valve could be looking like, something went off, or on, in my brain, not sure which. And the way I eat had to change. I have loved food all my life and have indulged plenty, but at the end of that December something just snapped inside and I just have to keep fats away from my arteries! I will just have to do my very best, this time!

As a result, I have been looking for and trying on plenty of vegan recipes, and I have eaten mostly meat and dairy free. Egg whites are about the only animal product I’ve eaten lately. I don’t use oil in my sautéing, either, or cheese or even butter. I use a vegetal butter in my grits, but it’s not fat free – that is, so far, my biggest challenge at home: trying to make mashed potatoes and grits with fat free vegan butter. It doesn’t exist: you either get the fat free (with milk) or you get the vegetal butter (with fat). Who knew that someone raised in Romania, with a carnivore family and meat for breakfast, lunch and dinner growing up can actually pull this off?!

Here are some examples of dinners I have made lately. They were all incredibly delicious and so filling. I am not missing meat yet. I know it will happen, and I even wonder which meat I’ll crave first. But for now, I am looking forward to my next tasteful and fatless meal! 

 

Gimme Lean vegan sausage with garlic and fresh herbs, over mashed potatoes mashed with Earth Balance butter and light soy milk. My husband made the bread - no milk, eggs or butter in it. 

 

 

Curried Brussels sprouts with potatoes, tomatoes, onions and herbs, over dirty jasmine rice

 

Teriyaki vegetable stirfry (broccoli, bell peppers, yellow squash and mushrooms) with Lightlife vegan "chicken" strips, over rice noodles

 

Bean soup (cannellini beans, potatoes, bell peppers, onion, celery, carrots, tomatoes) with herbs and chilli seasoning.

The biggest challenge is eating out. The only "safe" food I can find is salads - and that is a bit old after a while. And with a full week of being on the road for work coming up, the stakes are about to get very high.

What to Eat? - Part 2

... and a couple of other notes ...
 
Although being on an almost exclusively vegan diet for the past two weeks rendered some ease in my symptoms, it did not make them go away completely. I still get occasional welts, although not as huge as before, and not as overwhelming. But bothersome and worrisome, still. Same thing with my stomach pain – still there, but it’s muted. Just enough to not leave me think about something else!

So, in a way, I am back to square one, seeing what else it can be, as it’s not positively dairy or/ and meats. I am reaching out to friends overseas who are doctors, and see what they might recommend based on my pictures and latest allergy test results.

In the meantime, I am trying to grow into my new diet, and I feel much lighter and just more comfortable overall.

Our air has been insanely bad lately, lots of smog and lots of pollution – so I have had migraines and headaches for the past two weeks, which has eaten up the energy my new diet and exercise regimen has given back! I will continue to push on, for sure. Is there any other option?!

Also, I have read about our local PCSK9 study which has invited me to participate, after my cardiologist recommended me to them. After reading the 36 page pdf about the study, what is known so far, how it works, what involves, and what are the (very little known, now) risks, I decided against participating. I have just never had that heroic streak in me, where I could go forth for the benefit of the future generations. I am more selfish, I guess, that way.

Outside of trying to find some answers for my more recent (relatively speaking – it’s been a year or so since it started) discomfort and continuing on with the diet and exercise, nothing much more new to report.

I am also shocked by the amount of kids with HoFH lately – seems like every day there is a new post on the FH Facebook page from a parent desperate to know some answers. Quite sad, and I wonder why seemingly the increase in cases of HoFH?!

What to Eat?

Happy New Year, and hopefully, Happy New Health, everyone!

I really do wish this to all, from the bottom of my heart! In Romania, we always say that the most important thing to wish someone is health. Not money, not successes, nothing else. If you have health, we say, you have everything else, or the stamina and foundation to build everything else with/on it.

You might remember that I have been flirting with this pain in my stomach for the past year or so. It’s around my upper liver, or the gallbladder area. Since the beginning, I have felt that it’s coming from something I am eating or drinking or taking (meds included) that no longer agrees with me. My doctor, of whom I don’t think too highly, but up here, where I live, I have little choices, has been convinced that it’s my gallbladder. But he has failed to show me one blood test or one test to clearly demonstrate that it is the gallbladder. He tells me we have to take it out (the gallbladder) and I will see that I feel better. I fail to understand why I should play God with my body, just to “try things out”, without proof that something is indeed broken.

So, after a year of pain, and multiple other symptoms that have just piled up on me (more than usual painful gas, diarrhea, and more recently, huge, painful and itchy welts and rashes), as well as blood tests that show some kind of allergy, he finally accepted that I might be allergic to “something”. So, he finally gave me a referral to an allergist.

I will save you the trouble of reading about the drama of this allergist’s screw ups – the office visit was anything if not mind troubling and a chain of non-professional, half-a$$ events – but I will tell you that he did do a food allergy test (I had a general allergy test before, and I already know I am allergic to pets and dust). He did perform an allergy test that showed I am allergic to chicken, pork, cod and clams. I am not allergic to milk (but they only test for lactose, not the other proteins in milk), and to grains, neither (but he did recommend I would go to the hospital for a gluten blood test which is more accurate than the skin test for grains). He also told me to stay away from all dairy for a week and see if that helps with the discomfort in my stomach and the welts.

I am still not 100% convinced that it’s the dairy, but since I have stayed away from it, my welts are almost non-existent. The pain in my stomach and the extra bloated-ness (past what Lipitor and zetia give me) is better when I stay away from milk and meats. If I simply just eat vegan, I feel great! I have virtually no symptoms at all. No pain. No welts. No rash.

And in the light of the news I got for Christmas Eve I am shooting to eat fat free and vegan, all at the same time, as anything with fat and cholesterol pretty much disgusts me.

It has not been easy, though. Going out to eat is a major challenge. Even when you pay the extra buck and go to “fancy” places to eat, they fail to accommodate “special dietary needs”: I asked them to not put milk in the egg white scramble at one place, and they told me they would not, but they did put milk (or cream, or butter) in it anyway. They also put oil on my toast, although I specifically said I wanted it “dry, with no oil nor butter”. Finding milk free and fat free foods is a huge challenge, and I have not found one cheese alternative like that, for instance. Since I am not allergic to lactose (which is more common), but to milk protein, the market caters very little to people who are allergic to the whole product. I am never easy, am I?!

It’s a learning experience, for sure. And like I said, I am not even 100% sure it is milk. Although staying away from it all does show some improvement now.

The last thing I want to experiment with is my meds. Maybe they are the culprit, but they are the only thing that keeps my numbers down and hopefully the damage to my heart slower to progress, for now, so I am making the call to keep taking them for now. As a last resort, I will drop the meds, if all else fails, to see if they are causing all this.

I figured, trying to stay away from dairy helps two targets: less fat intake, and hopefully, less allergens for me.

It will be tricky to stay away from chicken, as that is the number one meat I eat and cook with. But so far, it’s been OK. I am testing out in the next month or so various vegan meat alternatives, and I hope to have some reviews here on them. I travel a bit for work, and that will be my biggest challenge. But that’s when I stock up on granola bars and feed off them for a week, I guess, when all food options in the airports fail. We’ll see.

Wake up Call? I Hope so!

Not sure if having a cardiology appointment the day before Christmas Eve is a good or a bad idea. If the news they share with you is good, do you really want to have a carte blanche on eating as much ham as you want when you already have heart disease? And if the news is bad, do you really want to ruin your Holidays having a confirmation about something you already know is bad enough?! Either way you look at it: I don’t necessarily recommend it.

I had a recent echocardiogram done to check the status of my aortic valve’s condition, as this is supposed to be done every 2 years and I have not done this since 2011. The doctor appointment on December 23 followed that test, to talk about the results. I just figured there is worsening in the narrowing of my aortic valve, but that maybe the progress is probably slow, because I am medicated and I eat moderately healthy. I just figured “oh, this is just another routine echocardiogram where I have some damage, but it’s manageable”.

Well, there was progress on the worsening of the aortic valve’s condition. But the progress was much more advanced than I thought. Nothing makes more sense to me than talking in numbers. The doc said a normal adult aortic valve has an area of 3 cm squared. A section through my aortic valve is 1.1 cm squared, down from 1.3 cm squared from 2011. He did say that I am a “little person” so I can get away with a smaller opening, but if it goes lower than 0.9 cm squared, he “will have to do something” – meaning a valve replacement surgery. The velocity of my blood through the valve has gone up from 2.6 m/s to 3.5 m/s – which means it’s more of a struggle for my heart to pump blood through one of the main valves. Also, my left ventricle and atrium are enlarged, which shows the strain on my heart trying to pump through a narrowed passage.It's like looking down the barrel of a gun.

If you want a visual of what my valve looks like, I found this site that pretty much shows it: http://www.heart-valve-surgery.com/heart-surgery-blog/2010/07/02/aortic-valve-size-normal/ - and just like the second picture shows it: mine is bicuspid, too. This picture pretty much rings home and wakes me up with a jolt.

So, “happy holidays” to me, I guess. I have known about my cholesterol for 33 years now. But for the first time in my life, this news really, really woke me up! As we talked specifics about valve replacement surgery, how, when, open heart vs catheter surgery, etc, I kept telling myself “this is serious now. This is the time. This is the time when things get real”.

As much as I have loved foods, all my life, for the first time ever, I really started feeling a repulsion against all things cholesterol – even ham and bacon. Especially ham and bacon. I came home and started browsing the internet and my Dr. Ornish books for new recipes. I am working on new rules, 33 years later, and I am actually excited about kicking this in the a$$! Finally. I guess nothing wakes you up more than facing 40 and hearing that your heart is giving up. I am so blessed that I have done everything I ever wanted to do till this day. So grateful that I have not yet had a heart attack or a stroke. With every beat of the heart, and every blood drop, I cannot tell you how much gratefulness flows through my old, aged, and clogged up veins for everything that I have been allowed to do so far in my life!

So, I have stayed away from pretty much all protein that is not 100% fat free so far, in the past  couple of days – quite a feat if you knew what I had in my fridge – ham, eggnog, homemade mayo in my chicken and potato salad, and so forth. No, I don’t make all these all the time – only this time of the year. But no more! 

If I don't go on a drastic diet and a drastic (for me) exercise regimen now, I am looking at open heart surgery in 3 more years, if the progress stays the same. But it could go faster, given my advancing age. I am definitely not ready for that. 

 

I am not sure what my new “diet” is, but I can tell you I have cleaned up my fridge and freezer and simply threw away everything that was not fat free, low fat, or too much fatty meat. Done. Not looking back! Not this time. Just hope and pray it’s not too late!