This week’s summary is going to mainly be about the change I’m seeing. The granuloma annulare on my ankle seems to have faded a bit, and that makes me ridiculously excited. The harsh light in my bathroom does me no favors here; I promise that it is definitely is far less in-your-face under normal lights. The pictures below start with week 1 on the left and go to this week on the right.

I’m not going to claim it’s a major difference, but the image on the far right shows a lighter coloring and the edges are less distinct than the previous two images. When looking at it in person, it doesn’t appear to be the angry red-purple color it had been.

Even the slightest change is exciting to me, because I haven’t seen it do anything but grow, since 2010, unless I was using steroid cream or if I was pregnant–in both cases it went away.

I’m not seeing that much change with the GA on the top of my right foot, so, no side-by-side comparison for now.

Week 3 Stats:

Weight: 195.5

Granuloma Annulare:

I tried a couple of non-typical–for me– foods this week. AIP isn’t just about eliminating foods, but it’s also an opportunity to eat nutrient-dense foods that will help your body heal. I thought I’d try salmon and beef liver.

The salmon was an epic bust. I cannot stand fish; I had a bout of food poisoning my senior year in high school–on spring break no less!– and I haven’t been able to eat it since. Shrimp and lobster, those things are fine. Anything with fins, instant nausea. But, I thought I should pull up my big girl panties and try again. I really did cook it well. It was flaky and moist. It was flavored well with dill and lemon. Really, it tasted good. But the minute that salmon was in my mouth, I had to fight the urge to hurl. I struggled through the entire piece, but the leftovers sat untouched in my fridge. My 4-year old, who was very excited to help cook it, took a bite and also rejected it. She told me the next day that I was “chopped for that fish.” Maybe we watch too much Food Network together.

I tried a beef liver pate recipe from Autoimmune Paleo, and that was much more successful! We have A LOT of beef liver from a half steer we bought back in June. The liver has been taunting me from the freezer so I tackled it a few nights ago.  The recipe I used included bacon, so, you know, it was the best opportunity for this to taste good. The only modification I made to the recipe was to puree some of the bacon with the liver instead of only stirring in the bacon chunks. I feel like that was a good call. The recipe made a lot of pate, so I’m going to freeze half of it and try to eat some of it weekly.

I noticed this week that my gas from the first week has mostly subsided. I still don’t know the cause, but I’m glad for the progress. I also have a belief that the granuloma annulare has lightened ever so slightly on my ankle, but it’s possible that this is my very wishful thinking. Time will confirm or deny this belief.

[Update: I feel more strongly a couple of days after this post that it has changed a wee bit; what makes it look different to me that you can’t see in the picture is that it doesn’t seem to be as raised as it was.]

Week 2 Stats:

Weight: 198.2

Granuloma Annulare:

Resources:

Beef Liver Pate – Autoimmune Protocol (Mickey Prescott)

The first week of AIP wasn’t as difficult as I expected it to be. I think having been mostly Whole30ing already–except for during the end of December–helped a lot. It didn’t seem that difficult to remove a few more items from the meal plan. I thought I’d really miss eggs; I miss how cheap of a protein source they are, but I’m not counting down the days until I can eat them again.

Speaking of cheap, this protocol ain’t. I had been eating a lot of eggs. I used tomatoes to stretch a lot of meals–spaghetti sauce, flavor in meatloaf, etc. Now I’m eating meat and veggies pretty much three times a day. Meat is expensive. I go through veggies VERY quickly. I’m going to experiment in the coming weeks to see how I can get the cost down AND not have to go to the grocery store 3 times a week. Ain’t nobody got time for that!

Much like the Whole30, within a couple of days of starting AIP, my joint pain virtually disappeared. I mean, I was having some serious joint pain in the later part of December. It might never cease to amaze me that something I’m eating can cause so much pain. My sincerest hope is that I reintroduce correctly this time to determine what it is that causes such inflammation in me.

The last thing I noticed was that this week, I had a serious amount of gas. Sorry; it is what it is. This surprised me because I never really experienced it on Whole30, and what I’m eating now is pretty much all on the Whole30 meal plan also. I’ve googled and not much comes up about why this might be. The few things I’ve gleaned is that it could reflect a sensitivity to something I’m eating or it could be a sign of a shift in gut flora. If it’s the latter, that’s great! If it’s the former, that’s strange.

Week 1 Stats:

Weight: 200.2

Granuloma Annulare:

I’ve been away from the blog for a while. Life got in the way, and truth-be-told, I’m not really good at multi-tasking more than two things at once. So, life and work won out. I’m back though; new year, new protocol.

When I did the Whole30 last year, I suspected that I might need to try the Autoimmune Protocol (AIP). I’d like to get rid of my granuloma annulare (GA). I, and all doctors apparently, have no idea what causes it, but the doctors do categorize it as an autoimmune disorder. That’s some tidbit of information anyway. Interestingly, I’ve had pretty bad allergies to so many things as an adult, and it has made me wonder if there’s a correlation.

I won’t rehash it here, but I do buy into the Paleo philosophy that our bodies process some things we put into them really well (real food), and poorly process–or don’t at all process– other things (junk). This is why I tried the Whole30 and had what I felt like were fantastic results that further solidified what I’ve been reading and internalizing about what we eat and how it affects us.

Lately I’ve been reading more from Dr. Sarah Ballantyne, who blogs at The Paleo Mom. She has a PhD in medical biophysics (yes, I give that a bit more stock than the average paleo blogger) and used the AIP to clear up her lichen planus…which sounds a whole lot like GA.

So, knowing that I already buy into the root of Paleo, and knowing that other people have found success treating similar autoimmune conditions with AIP, it’ll come as no surprise that I suspect that the GA is caused by either something I’m putting in my body or something I’m putting on my body. And that I think AIP might be helpful to me. What I’m most concerned about is the length of time I’ll need to be on AIP before I can expect any results. It took a long time for my  body to start trying to notify me of issues, so I expect it to take a while for me to notice any changes. I’ve read to give AIP at least 90 days before you start reintroducing foods. That means 90 days of no coffee, no nightshades, no nuts and seeds, no alcohol, in addition to what the typical Paleo framework would exclude. It’s daunting. I’m not sure that I’ll make it the 90 days, but I’m going to start today and see how it goes. I’ll post daily food pictures to the well-nourished lives Facebook page and I’ll summarize the results I’ve noticed weekly here on the blog.

Starting Stats:

Weight: 202.8

Granuloma Annulare:

• You probably can’t really see it in the third image on my arm…that one has seemed to clear up fairly well on it’s own. My feet, though, not. at. all.

Resources:

Whole30 Results

thepaleomom.com: My Experience with the AIP to Treat Lichen Planus