Stuffed Squash

This is not a zucchini and it's certainly not a yellow squash, but it's something of a mix. While the person with candida can eat the zucchini but not the yellow, summer or winter squashes, I wondered if it is possible to eat this one. I'd say not because it caused some phlegm afterwards and was certainly sweeter tasting like the yellow squash, so must be higher on the glycemic chart. Anyway, this dish is suitable for the zucchini although perhaps not as colorfully green and the size is much longer. Ah well ... still would be good.


To keep the colors bright, in the fry pan I lightly sauteed onions and garlic and then added zucchini, the tiniest amount of the high glycemic carrot, grain of choice, and seasonings (basil, marjoram, thyme and salt). After turning off the heat whole frozen cranberries were stirred in.

While making the stuffing, I put the hollowed out "zucchini" in my toaster oven with a little coconut oil in it and a shake of salt. When it was getting tender, I stuffed the squash and for 8-10 more minutes baked it in the toaster oven. For the new year, I plan to get a real oven. The toaster oven cooks so slowly and is recommended to only be used for a maximum of 15 minutes before cooling it down. But not complaining, the dish turned out fine.

Chestnuts & Brown Rice

I don't know the glycemic load of chestnuts but I can imagine them being somewhat high. They turn sweet when cooked and that tells me the sweetness is from cooked starch. So that's a caution against indulgence. That said, I sometimes pass chestnuts sellers on the side of the road. There are 2 main kinds of chestnut stalls. The most common kind of chestnut sellers roast the nuts over flaming charcoal briquets while the infrequent seller lets the customer choose whether they want the nuts heated in the hot pebble vats or to buy them raw. Raw is the only option for me as the charcoal singes the starch and also flavors the nut with smoke, and both blackened starch and smoke need to avoided as they feed the bacteria. However, I read somewhere that eating chestnuts raw, even though they are rich in vitamin C and heating destroys that vitamin C, causes some kind of intestinal problems (sorry, can't remember the specifics). So I bought a bag of freshly shaved chestnuts from my favorite chestnut stall around the corner, and chopped them up to make a very tasty Thanksgiving-like rice. I certainly wouldn't do this very often but eaten this once and in moderation with lots of fresh vegies to counterbalance the heavier glycemic load is acceptable for me today, Thanksgiving! What a nice treat!


Wow, does rice ever taste good with chestnuts mixed in. I really liked wrapping spoonfuls of rice in lettuce and other leaves and just enjoying the natural sweet flavor complementing the nutty brown rice flavor. I'm very much inclined to think that chestnuts and brown rice together make a complete protein, so with a big plate of leaves on the side, I've just had my Thanksgiving feast. [I'll have the big vegan, low-glycemic feed this weekend with friends ... oh yum and fun!]

Creamy Cherry Yogurt Dip

Tonight I wanted something red in my meal ... I'm not sure why but red is a vibrant, appealing color to complement the huge amounts of green I eat, so tonight my eyes landed on the tart cherry concentrate (100% tart cherry) little used in my fridge and I figured I could add that to a cashew base and get a pink dressing. While blending it, I added a not-so-very-smart shake of coriander for a complementary flavor; however, the coriander powder muted the color. Oops! Hmm, so then I remembered some fresh frozen cranberries - even lower glycemic than tart cherries - so added a handful to the blender. Wow, the cranberries left flecks of candy cane color and did color the dressing a soft pink (the picture unfortunately doesn't pick up on that color ... or the flavor, but it was very smooth and subtly sweet, very much like a yogurt in both flavor and consistency!)

Creamy Cherry Yogurt Dip

2/3 cup cashews (soaked 1 hour, soak water tossed)
1 1/2 cups water
3-4 teaspoons tart cherry concentrate (100% cherry)
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1 shake coriander
1 handful frozen/fresh cranberries

When it was fresh, it was somewhat pourable but after several minutes it had begun to thicken and set. Ah, what a wonderful yogurty dressing. So for the main entree of black beans and adlay/Job's tears, I dolloped a big spoonful on the beans and grain, mixed salad in to, and had a wonderful warm meal. Very wholesome and VERY tasty!

Gluten-free, Sugar-free Toaster Oven Flatbread

Making gluten-free, sugar-free, yeast/leavening-free flatbread is quite easy with a food processor. But expecting chappati-like or pita-bread-like flatbread is unreasonable with this recipe as it's a pourable batter, and not a roll-out dough. Hmmm, now I wonder if it's possible to pour out pancakes on greased and floured pizza sheets and bake them into tortilla breads ... must give this a try.

Ingredients

2 1/2 cups (guessing) garbanzo bean flour
1/2 a long zucchini (chunked)
1 medium-to-large onion (chunked)
3-4 cloves garlic
2-3 handfuls of fresh spinach/leaks/turnip greens ...
1-2 tablespoons lemon
4-6 tablespoons mixed herbs (thyme, marjoram, basil, parsley)
1 teaspoon tarragon or savory (optional)
3 tablespoons olive oil and/or coconut oil
1 1/2 teaspoons sea salt
1/2 - 1 teaspoon turmeric (optional)
1-2 teaspoons rosemary (sprinkling on top)
1-2 teaspoons thyme (sprinkling on top)
1/2 teaspoon sea salt (sprinkling on top)

Step 1: In food processor, chunk up and blend to a liquid the zucchini, onion, garlic and fresh spinach greens. [Using celery, green onion, kale, leaks, broccoli, or other greens are options.] Add the lemon and oil(s), and this will be the liquid base for the bread. In fact, this wet mixture composes 50-55% of the ingredient.


Step 2: Add in the seasonings and be generous. Combine seasonings and vary the ones offered here. I've made spicy North African style flatbreads before, and apple-cranberry with sunflower seed breads seasoned with coriander (not my favorite but an interesting variety). Anyway, when ad libbing on the seasonings and spices, consider how the outcome will taste. Two favorites for mixing are rosemary and thyme.


Step 3: Eyeballing the amount of liquid in the food processor, add the equivalent or slightly less of garbanzo bean flour. Blend till smooth.
Step 4: With solid coconut oil lightly grease the pan and sides, and then completely dust the greased areas with bean flour. Tap off excess flour into the batter and whizz the flour to mix.


Step 5: Pour the batter into the pan and smooth it out evenly. On top of the batter dust with, liberally if you wish, rosemary, thyme and sea salt.


Step 6. Pop into the toaster oven and time bake for 13 minutes on 250F. Let the toaster oven cool 5 minutes or so and then bake at 250F on 13 minutes timed setting. Rotating the pan the last 5 minutes might be necessary for even baking.
Step 7: Serve hot or cool. As there is no yeast whatsoever in this bread, serving hot and not fearing yeast infection is a joyful plus.

Garbanzo Broth Stir-fry

Made a huge batch of garbanzo beans for the next two days. They are wonderfully versatile and transportable, and the next couple of days I'll be too busy to spend much time in the kitchen, so hurray for high energy, nutritious beans that are low on the glycemic count and can be easily prepared in large quantities.

As can be seen by the picture, I have whole beans left for throwing in tossed salads, a hummus (with a slight variation of flavor this is garbanzo bean "mashed potatoes") for spreading on brown rice crackers I get locally at a health food store, and some of the excess broth went into the making of this colorful stir-fry.

Garbanzo Broth Stir-fry

1 1/2 cups garbanzo bean broth
1 tablespoon olive or coconut oil
1/2 zucchini (sliced into half-moons)
1 medium onion (sliced)
1-2 cloves garlic (sliced or minced)
2/3 cups cherry tomatoes (quartered)
1 bunch greens (any of choice)
1 tablespoon lemon juice (optional)
sea salt

Step 1: In fry pan, add garbanzo bean broth, oil, zucchini, onions and garlic and cook until getting tender.
Step 2: Add the fresh greens and tomatoes and stir them in. Do not overcook.
Step 3: Remmove from heat and add lemon juice and salt to taste.

Lentils & Millet w/ Mint Sunflower-seed Dressing

Staple Grains & Globalization

Unfortunately, for a person with candida, the staple grains of North America (wheat, corn, oats, rye and even barley) cause reactions. They are glutinous (except corn) and stick to the GI track, and in so doing, feed the candida bacteria that have fastened themselves there, and so avoiding glutinous grains is a must for people with candida and autoimmune diseases. In Korea with rice as a staple, one would think that eating out would be easy and enjoying noodles wouldn't be a problem. However, white rice is served in restaurants but it is high starch, highly glycemic and therefore highly inflammatory on both counts. Although not served in restaurants, the expensive brown rice can easily be purchased in large supermarkets, but the nuttiness of the grain is well-worth the extra expense. As for noodles, whether they are rice or buckwheat noodles, the affects of western expansionism and globalization in apparent in the first ingredient on the package -- "wheat" -- and usually to the amount of 60-70%, and yet, they can still be labeled as 'rice noodles' and 'buckwheat noodles' because they were traditionally labeled so and people just go on expecting those ingredients to be central to the product. Ahhhh, the deceptions of marketing on the psyche of people ... and the expectations of people reinforcing that mis-marketing.

Cereal grains that I can get here in Korea and that are considered non-glutinous (although glycemic count does fluctuate quite a bit) are: brown rice, millet, buckwheat (in the Russian market), sorghum, and 율무 job's tears.

Tonight millet felt like the happy option. I don't eat millet much as it has a higher glycemic count than other grains, but in many parts of Asia and Africa it is an essential part of the meal. Even in the US among health circles it is "marketed" as a woman's grain, as it somehow is supposed to nurture the woman's fluctuating hormones or something like that.

Anyway, I made millet to be topped by a rich North African spiced lentil gravy with a huge tossed salad and a complementary sunflower-seed dressing with hints of mint. The dressing actually reminded me of sour cream once the dressing and lentil gravy started mixing with one another.

For making the lentil gravy, just substitute lentils for the millet in the October 26 posting on "North African Millet Stew". Also, the only vegies I added to the lentils were a large onion sliced long and 5-6 pieces of home-dried tomato slices for adding just a bit of extra flavor. I dropped the vegies in the last 10-15 minutes because I didn't want them to overcook and lose all their vitamins.

Mint Sunflower-seed Dressing

3/4 cup sunflower seeds (soaked 1 hour and soak water tossed)
1/2 cup cooked millet
1/2 cup fresh mint leaves
1/4 cup olive oil
1 small onion
2-3 cloves garlic
1 lemon juiced (some zest would be good, I think)
1 1/2 teaspoon sea salt
2 teaspoons basil
1-2 teaspoons marjoram

Whizz all ingredients in the blender to make a thick but pourable sauce/dressing. This recipe works really well as a sour cream substitute. Serve with green onion rings.

Black Rice & Buckwheat Waffles

Eating freshly cooked, well-hydrated beans and rice with vegies is very supportive and rejuvenating to tired, overworked adrenals glands, but life with baked breads, fried breads, toasted breads, and other breads is sooo much easier for traveling ... but oh so hard on the compromised digestive tract not to mention the adrenals. Sigh. On weekends, I like to travel WITHOUT of course carrying heavy, somewhat messy lunch boxes, and especially ones that need refrigeration. So I thought I'd whip up something exotic for a little weekend getaway -- something bready and not requiring constant refrigeration, also something easy and light to travel with, but something still nutritious, filling and non-glutinous.



Again for this recipe I blend my own whole grains into flour just prior to making the waffles in order to have maximum health effects of whole food nutrition that's been "processed".

Black Rice & Buckwheat Waffles
1 1/2 cups black (or wild) rice
1 cup buckwheat
4-5 tablespoon flaxseed
1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon cloves
1/2 cup almonds (soaked 6-12 hours, discard soak water)
3 tablespoons coconut oil
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla (alcohol free and w/o corn syrup)
1 teaspoon sea salt
water as needed

Step 1: In the BlendTec whizz the dry ingredients into a flour (black rice, buckwheat, flaxseed, cinnamon, cloves and sea salt).
Step 2: Add in the wet ingredients (water, drained almonds, coconut oil and vanilla) and whizz to a thick but pourable batter. You will need to adjust the water as this recipe (as always) is by eye-ball measurements.
Step 3: Pour the batter into a lightly oiled hot waffle griddle. In the picture above the small square dish in the lower right hand corner contains coconut oil and a paper towel for whisking the oil lightly onto the griddle - works excellently.
Step 4: Cook the waffles till done. I needed to flip the waffles over to cook the tops better as they are a heavier batter than light wheat waffles with leavening. Without the (chemical) leavening the waffles will be more substantial but also will take more time to cook, about 15 minutes per waffle. When in my mom's kitchen and cooking for four, I pull out three waffle griddles and keep them going! What a set-up but no such luxury in my rinky-dink kitchen.

Breakfast, Lunch and Supper

Why do waffles have to be culturally limited to breakfast? Since these waffles and some flatbread I make with garbanzo flour are my only "breads", I eat them indiscriminately and for any meal. As yet I'm not eating fruit (too high of a glycemic count), so eating the traditional breakfast waffle without fruit or syrup topping is just out of the question. Sometimes I mix up some nuts (always pre-soaked), hempseed, coconut oil, cinnamon, cloves, cardamom and coriander mixed with a quarter of an apple and use that as the topping!

Lunch can be a sandwich between the waffle "breads". Here I've "buttered" my waffles with a little coconut oil and plopped in a large wad of sprouts, which need to be washed VERY well - bacteria and e.coli lurk in poorly washed sprouts! Top with a tomato slice or two, and a nut or seed dressing. After this picture was taken I remembered a sunflower seed and millet dressing I made yesterday. Wow, it brought out the fresh sprouts and complemented both in appearance and in taste the buckwheaty flavor.


For supper waffles can make scoops for hummus and cucumber salads and other Indian dishes. I eat vegies at about every meal so why can't waffles be a lunch or supper food too?

Parkinson's Disease and the Candida Diet

Last summer I went home for 5 weeks of R&R, and because of this candida problem, my mom can't cook for me so I kicked her out of the kitchen and told her to take a 5 week rest. She needs it because she's always trying to cook special for my younger brother who has major food allergies and we're convinced, candida too, and then of course juggle some of my dad's Parkison's disease needs.

Anyway, while I was home, I basically put everyone on my diet, of course cooking one or two dishes every meal I couldn't have because my foods must be extremely low on the glycemic count. However, almost everything I prepared was garden-fresh or whole foods, not processed foods. They ate lots of greens filled with toxin-removing chlorophyll, energy-rich beans, a wide variety of gluten-free grains and seeds, very little corn, almost no processed foods but a rare treat of gluten-free spaghetti was ok, and tons and tons of almonds and walnuts [pecans for my bro because of his allergies to walnuts].

The amazing happened! After 2 1/2 weeks I noticed that my dad's arms and shoulders weren't shaking as he was walking around the house! I commented to my mom and she said dad had been commenting to her on that for the past 3-4 days! My dad was even starting to smile again and the twinkle that had gotten wiped out of his eyes about 5+ years ago was coming back! He was cracking jokes, and reciting poems he learned in grade school [never did that before, but with what a clear memory!] Such an amazing change!

Wow, wow, wow, wow! I had read in books that people with Parkinson's should be dairy-free and gluten-free, and the results was amazing! Mom and dad were already dairy-free, but they ate gluten. They also ate out quite a bit, and my dad often commented that he didn't feel good when eating out, especially at Asian restaurants [vinegar? soy sauce? MSG? fermented things and of course MSG affect autoimmune patients].

Since I had started the cooking, clean nuts were always on the table and for snacking, and dad ate a lot of them - great, because people with Parkinson's need the protein and the natural oils. Also, dad was eating regularly. People with Parkinson's have an imbalance of serotonin and dopamine, and one of those hormones tells the person when to eat, but this doesn't function properly with Parkinson's so blood sugars are falling and the person feels badly but still doesn't recognize that he/she is hungry. Because of my candida and my food is so low caloria, I need to eat 3 times a day. So 3 times a day, I would call dad to come eat with me. He didn't want to but I like presentation and he liked being spoiled at the table, so he would come, and eat, and sometimes he would eat a lot! And afterwards, he would feel be smiling and seem much more relaxed.

Also, because Parkinson's people need protein to replace the energy being lost with their incessant tremors, nuts, spirulina, beans, hemp seed, are really recommended to boost their energy levels. We had beans almost every day - beans that I couldn't have because of their glycemic level but beans nevertheless are necessary for dad. Fava beans and asparagus, I've read somewhere, actually are very good for boosting dopamine naturally. We served a lot of them!

Obviously food is affecting people positively or negatively with Parkinson's. From my readings and from my 5 weeks of cooking for my family (and loving to cook for my dad), the basic candida diet with of course higher allowances for glycemic counts in food is a very good diet for people with Parkinson's.

So, my suggestions for Parkinsons' patients are:

(0) Be vegetarian
(1) Be dairy-free
(2) Be gluten-free
(3) Use little soy and corn (best to be soy and corn-free -- both are high GMO foods)
(4) Eat lots of greens for their chlorphyll effect
(5) Eat lots of protein-rich almonds [also high in calcium and low in carbs] and walnuts - these are the cleaner nuts, but the nuts need to be washed free of dust, mold and as many toxins as possible
(6) Eat 3 balanced meals a day
(7) Eliminate processed foods and sugars (honey, maple syrup and blackstrap molasses are OK in moderation; they do have some nutritional value; agave nectar is extremely high in fructose, higher even than corn syrup, and should be absolutely avoided)
(8) Skip the sugary or fermented condiments - use fresh squeezed lemon juice instead of vinegar; make seed dressings instead of mayonnaise or mustard; simplify your taste buds and appreciate the rich flavors of fresh fruits and vegies
(9) Avoid fried foods and "harmful" oils - better oils are olive, coconut, flax, and perhaps grapeseed
(10) Indulge in other vegetarian high-protein foods like hemp seeds (4 tablespoon for complete protein), spirulina (1 tablespoon for a complete protein), chlorella, and others.

Grose Mold in the Pots

Two days ago I said I was experiencing weird neuropathies again, well, I think I figured out why! Ugh! I went to make some garbanzo beans in my crock pot and noticed a beautiful, filigree mold growing from the bottom of the crock pot. I was HORRIFIED! After every use, I let it soak a few hours and scruuuub it, but the stains have accumulated over time. Well, it's terracotta so somewhat porous ... I just figured with all my scrubbing that it would be OK. Not! I grabbed that baby up, poured bleach into it and let it soak in bleach-water for 2 days, and what a beautiful pot emerged, one without any stains! I had linked my neuropathy to when I ate the previous batch of beans made 3 days before, but didn't link the pot to the problem. In the next few days, I'm going to soak ALL my plastic container lunch boxes, even the glass ones, all of my silverware and cooking ware ... allll of my cooking stuff in bleach water.

At my parents' home, we always put a couple of squirts of bleach in the dishwater to minimize on bacteria because my younger brother has had severe dietary sensitivites for about 17 years. For years no one has been able to understand any kind of diagnosis for him, and we have all been inclined to believe it's one of the multiple new kinds of autoimmune diseases popping up so fast that doctors can't make diagnosis.

Both my brother's and my symptoms have been oddly similar [soy sauces messed both of us from the beginning, then peppers - bell peppers for him causing near anaphalactic shock and hot peppers for me with the skin in the tooth ridges sloughing off after pepper contact] yet uniquely different [I've been much more sensitive to sugars and foods on the higher glycemic index]. I don't know much about his early months with the problem because, as I lived here in Korea, no one wanted me to worry, but I do know that we both experienced a steady increasing of foods that bothered us and that we have just had to subsequently eliminate from our diets in order to feel somewhat decent. I don't have the acute food allergies or anaphalactic shock that he has, but when I got sick I immediately hit the internet and went to doctors to find the problem so that I could address it in its early stages and prevent the acuteness of my brother's "disease". Last year about Thanksgiving time I finally knew I had systemic candida because I decided to eat what I wanted one weekend. Ohhh, I was sooo sick afterwards, but that just clenched it: it was directly food related and nothing else! And the ultra strict candida diet made the pain and symptoms go away!

From that weekend, I could identify my problem and so how to eat accordingly. Since then, it's been uphill. I went to my parents' place for an extended winter break and told my brother that I had finally figured out his problem, too. He didn't believe me because why could I figure it out when doctors couldn't? After two weeks of cooking for me and telling him he could eat that food I prepared (he is ULTRA careful because of anaphalactic shock), he started to believe me. He was afraid of cumin, turmeric, cardamom and fennel, but I checked them out on the internet - they are anti-inflammatories and are NOT in the pepper family. He's allergic to pumpkin too, the pumpkin family and perhaps a few squash. I introduced spaghetti squash, a very low-starch squash so I can eat it, and we confirmed it is not any cousin of the pumpkin family so he cautiously tried it. What a tasty and versatile squash! It has since become one of his favorites! Wow, so my getting systemic candida has helped him better deal with a very restrictive diet, and also, now if he has a question on a certain food, he can search out whether or not that food is acceptable for the candida diet, of course also considering his acute allergies to certain plants.

But once I figured out that I had systemic candida, I knew that that was what my brother had too. Everyone experiences some differences in their candida symptoms and, from my readings, over time if left unchecked the bacteria wrecks havoc on the body and somehow DNA gets rewritten so that cells start attacking the host body, thus, an autoimmune disease. This is why I'm so fanatical about following the strict candida diet. I don't want to be forever compromised in some way like my brother who has not entered a restaurant for dining for over 10 years [and that last experience ended in an anaphalactic shock episode cementing the reason for never eating out.]

A-n-y-w-a-y, I didn't want to use bleach in my dishwater like my parents and brother because bleach is harmful to the environment ... but what are my choices now, because mold is harmful to my body?

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Written several days later:

I filled the terracotta pot with strong bleach soak water and let it sit for 2 days, then scrubbed it out and let it dry. 2 days later, I noticed mold spots like sporadic raindrops on the bottom surface of the pot. I immediately started the bleach soak process again, but mold that is so aggressive and which withstands so much bleach is scary! What has that done to the inside of my body, especially since I can't take bleach to get rid of the internal fungi?! Absolutely I'm tossing the pot, but first I'm going to keep experimenting on how many times I have to soak it before the mold stops growing. But no way am I going to eat out of that porous thing again!

And then God answers unspoken prayers. Yesterday at Costco I just felt the urge to look, something I rarely do. And wah-lah! Costco had a small sized crock pot that had a glazed insert pot. While glazes can also be harmful on the body, especially when used in heat and for extended periods, I figured it's a whole heap better than the porous terracotta that traps and stores bacteria ... so I bought a new crock pot. It's oval and slightly larger than the infected one, but I'm quite happy with it because Korea only has 2 crockpots - the terracotta one I bought and one that can cook a whole stuffed chicken along with a mess of vegie trimmings, so my find at Costco is gold :)

Barlean's Olive Leaf Complex

Ugh, again. I've been having some neuropathies lately in my left foot especially but also left hand again, and they are directly related to food. I just couldn't figure out why until I also started to have pain, like before, in the knotty groin veins that are rubbery hard and arteriosclerotic. When the pain went into the second day, I jumped onto the internet to look up the symptoms of arterioslerosis and how diet can be used to control it. While I do have the symptoms, the causes on several pages are unanimously from a high-fat diet, resulting in sticky blood cells. Well, my diet is very low fat so as not to feed the candida ... but then it occured to me that maybe I just wasn't getting enough fat, and that would also be why my vitamin A is low because to utilize vitamin A, fat is essential.

So, I jumped up and looked through my cupboards for something that would help the low fat problem but wouldn't compromise my strict candida diet. I found a bottle of Barlean's Olive Leaf Complex, which I'd been meaning to try for some time. One tablespoon is the recommended daily allowance so I drank one tablespoon. Almost instantly I felt better and the neuropathies died down a bit while the pain in the veins eased! The next day I took it again with the same results! I was so impressed that I wanted to share my good fortune with my cat, Aulait, who's had nutritional problems since I got her at 4 months of age.

I mixed up her barley green solution that I've been giving her quite regularly since she got sick shortly after I got sick; she was diagnosed with thrombocytopenia, and I had to take her into the vet every 4 months (3 times) because she would relapse. However, once I started the barley green solution, I've never had to take her back to the vet even though he said the problem would be for life! That said, the last couple of months, the muscles on her back have been getting more and more crawly (obviously a nutritional problem b/c it is certainly not thrombocytopenia) and it's pained me to see that and not know what to do. BTW, I've had to hide all plastic bags and vinyl in my house since I got her because she tries to eat them ... so maybe she's missing some natural oils too! So, I loaded up her barley green syringe with some Barlean's Olive Leaf Complex and slowly shot it into her mouth. She was not too impressed and clamped her mouth down at one point, but I got it in and then finished up with the better tasting plain barley green water. Amazingly, she seemed more relaxed afterwards! The next night I gave her another tiny bit (maybe 1/8 teaspoon) with barley green and she has been definitely better since! If only I would have known earlier!


2 1/2 years ago, both my cats and I got sick at about the same time. Whenever I drank the water in my apartment, my cheeks would tingle, among other strange things. I had been starting to get my energy and weight back from Grave's Disease (hyperthyroidism) and at first thought I was in the 40% who would relapse within two years of getting off the meds, but those symptoms were just plain WEIRD and didn't match my previous symptoms! Aulait developed very red eyes and seemed to get stiff - not good, since she was just a young 3-year-old at that time. Since I got her at 4 months, she has been a picky eater and has just refused to eat many cat foods even though she is hungry. While I've never figured out what dry ingredient(s) she's refusing, with wet cat food, she detests foods that have filler meats (her most hated is Fancy Feast, which looks like nothing but filler, so smart cat!) Cafe, on the other hand, had the cat-killer disease panleukopenia as a tiny kitty and I knew her system was compromised because she always had bad breath and extremely waxy ears growing up (I read later that both were signs of candida in cats and dogs ... if only I would have known to give Cafe barley green on her road to recovery to help heal her tortured GI track). Anyway, at just 2 years of age (the same time I was having problems with my apt water) Cafe started to have renal failure. I limped her along for 6 months even though I was getting sicker and sicker myself, but when she relapsed I had to be merciful and put her to sleep. Ah, if only I would have known about diet control for disease soooo many months ago ... as well as moved ... we would all have been better.

Anyway, I'm going to study more up on this Barlean's Olive Leaf Complex. So far my system is loving it and Aulait acts less anxious. It seems to be a nice treatment for both of our various symptoms, but I don't want just a quick-fix cure-all symptom-masker, I want to treat the underlying problem - broadly speaking, it's nutritional, specifically, candida and vitamin A deficiency for me, and for Aulait ... I'm not completely sure except that I do know her problem is dietary too. So, she sometimes gets mini-doses of what helps me.

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Written several weeks later:

The olive leaf extract was helping Aulait and I so much that I decided to buy a bottle for my parents to try, specifically for my dad who has Parkinson's. Mom gives the extract to dad in a tiny med cup while she's fixing the afternoon meal and which gives time for the extract to interact in a relatively clean esophagus and empty stomach. Wow! As a Parkinson's victim, Dad frequently has bouts of choking and difficulty swallowing - not as bad as some people because Mom and Dad share some of their meals with my younger brother who has a multitude of food allergies so needs a very specific wheat-free and other allergen-free diet. Anyway, Dad doesn't analyze food as being a problem, but he's been commenting from Day #1 that the olive leaf extract has been soothing to his throat and calming down tightness, numbness, and other strange feelings he has. It's also eliminated a lot of the coughing he's had to do during a meal when food seems to stick in his throat. So, wow! Bet you can't guess what's gonna be in Dad's stocking this Christmas?