Kidney Health and Marfan Syndrome - Processed Food Challenge

O.K. Here are two more items I am booting out of my diet and medical regime.

Marfan Syndrome, kidney health and processed foods.

Oatmeal and Emergen-C are gone.  Yep, I was just as surprised as you are right now, but let take a moment and quickly explain why.

First of all I am not suggesting anyone eat a certain way.  My diet is special and so is the information here on this blog.  What works for me may not be right for you.

Because I went into renal failure during my open heart surgeries, I have to really treat my kidneys with special care.  Learning about a renal diet has been a challenge, what foods to eat and which ones to avoid.  It is all so very complicated but important, for without my kidneys functioning at their present level I could end up on dialysis.  Yep, dialysis is right around the corner for me possibly.

But I never received any real help from the myriad of doctors who treated me over the past three years when it came to learning what foods to eat and what grub to shun.

My cardiologist did comment on the Coca-Cola I was drinking one day during an office visit, telling me I must avoid dark sodas at all cost.  He went on to explain that the dark colas contain forms of phosphorous and that any drink with 'phos' in any form in the ingredients was bad for my kidneys.  For that matter, anything at all that contains a 'phos' for an ingredient should be abstained from, warded off and shirked.  I never did mention to him that it was his nurse who gave me the dark cola.  Today though I do avoid all sodas, dark or clear as the National Kidney Foundation recommends!

Sugar in any form hurts my kidneys.  Sugar and salt are two of my most hardest for substances to avoid, primarily because I like their taste.  It is easy for me to tell when I've had too much of either.  Excess salt raises my blood pressure almost instantly.  Sugar makes me very, very sleepy - almost comatose-like.  I don't need to read a medical textbook or have a doctor tell me when I've eaten too much sugar or salt; my body tells me loud and clear.

So the other day when I noticed I was getting sleepy after a dose of my favorite vitamin C powder - Emergen-C I read the packet's ingredients.  First on the list was fructose.  Good grief!  No more Emergen-C.  I thought I was drinking vitamin C, turns out I was imbibing mostly fructose. Sugar, sugar, sugar.  Ugh.

Now for the hard part.  Everyone has always told me oatmeal was good for me but lately, after eating Judy's homemade granola containing mostly old fashioned oats and very, very little processed sugar - she uses dried fruits to sweeten her granola - after a small handful of crunchy granola the same sleepiness would sweep over me.  Yawn.  Here comes an insulin spike.

As usual Mr. Google pointed me in the plentiful information path and my mouth fell as I read article after article about how oats cause insulin spikes and are really not so good for many people's blood sugar issues.

Finally, I am beginning to listen to my body.  Most of the time I know when a food or medicine is not good for me long before I read about it on Google.

Avoiding added processed sugar and those foods with glycemic indexes affecting my insulin levels and kidneys is really easy if I watch for the comatose feeling after ingesting the substance.  I knew even before reading about oatmeal that it may not be good for my kidneys because of the way the oats made me feel.

Yes I know oatmeal is full of fiber and has a lower glycemic index than other cereals.  Too bad.  Broccoli and many nuts are full of fiber and don't hit my bold sugar the way oatmeal does.

So goodbye to two more old friends.

If I could just stay away from processed foods……..

Eliminating Processed Foods from my Heart Healthy Marfan Syndrome Lifestyle Diet

Knowing what you need to do and doing it are two totally opposite actions.  I know I must avoid processed food if I want my body to continue to function.

Oh no! My favorite fish is loaded with ugh fructose corn sweeteners!

But as I am writing this post about the importance of eating not-toxic, un-processed, real food that even looks like real food, well….I just finished off three fig bar cookies (hey….Aldi foods sells them for $0.89 a package and they are loaded with high fructose corn sugar (HFCS)).  I know it is important that I give up HFCS.  I know this in my brain.  But my brain does not always carry majority rule over my tongue and my mouth and my belly.

Dylan, our teen grandson who is living with us while his mom recovers from a serious brain injury attends the local jiu jitsu dojo most week nights.  His instructor and I were talking about diet the other day and I really, really agreed with his statement, "everyone has to have their cheats".

My cheats today were the three fig bars.

Seriously, I am proud I stuck with food that looked like food today.  Except for the fig bars.

I ate nuts, oranges, greens from the garden, chopped okra, cooked beans, garlic, a couple pears and a can of sardines for breakfast.  The sardines were very, very rich in fish oil. So rich in fact that hours later when Dylan came home from school he asked me, "Papa K, did you eat sardines today?"  So despite scrubbing my teeth, gargling with peroxide and flossing, the fishy smell still lingered.

Sardines and fishy smelling fish are full of important omega three fatty acids.

A small handful of walnuts each day is always part of my omega three purposeful diet but the walnuts do not pack the omega three punch strong smelling sardines do.  Herring has long been another  favorite fish dish.  I especially love(d) Vita Herring in wine sauce and  in sour cream.  OMG.  Melodious waves of joy and ecstasy would roll across my tongue at the first fishy bite.

But no more.

You see, I have started reading labels and this has led me to some seriously sleepless nights lately.  I am finding out what I am really eating.  And most of the processed foods I am eating, no matter how healthy the labels look, are filled with chemicals and MSG and HFCS and other fabricated compounds right out of a show like the 'Twilight Zone'.

I knew this years ago but my tongue and stomach and mouth kept vetoing my brain's attempts to boycott these processed foods.

Unfortunately I am finding that if a food tastes really, really, really tasty then either MSG or HCFS are present.

I was very afraid of reading the labels on my Vita Herring because my brain was in no mood to piss off my tongue, mouth and stomach.  But I read the labels and sure enough they were full of high fructose corn syrup.

Sadly, I usually do not change habits until I have to.  And so it was with my Vita Herring.  A while back I started noticing my blood pressure spiking after I'd eaten my Vita, my systolic hitting the 150s.  150 systolic is way too high for someone like me with a dissected descending aorta.  In fact, systolic that high is deadly for me.

My brain knew the overload of HFCS was to blame but I tried eliminating every other food I'd been eating recently with no luck.  So I read the ingredients again, just to be sure.  HFCS was a major ingredient.

So I threw my Vita Herring away.  And I cut out all the HFCS and MSG out of my diet (except for those three fig bars today).

Within a week my blood pressure had returned to a normal range of 110/55-120/60.

My brain finally won the vote.

Yet this means that I've had to eliminate almost every processed bit of food from my diet.  No more ranch or blue cheese dressing.  Too much MSG.  No more fig bars.  After today.  No more ketchup.  No more delicious buffalo wing sauces.

I am going primal.

I knew I had to do this all along.  Friends urged me to do this for years.

The only reason my brain has won is because I really, really want to live.

Processed foods are so addicting.  We live in a world today where slow death by toxic food is an accepted norm.  My tongue, mouth and stomach are laughing at my brain for thinking this.