Eat Better? Sure! But Cook???

We all know that one of the biggest symptoms/problems for the Lyme patient is fatigue. And I don't mean, I need a nap fatigue. I mean, I seriously can't think, and may, in fact, die at any moment from this fatigue fatigue (seriously).

And, we've all heard You are what you eat. Hippocrates said, “Our food should be our medicine and our medicine should be our food.” Over two thousand years later, Thomas Edison put his own spin on it: “The doctor of the future will no longer treat the human frame with drugs, but rather will cure and prevent disease with nutrition.”

And, most of us Lyme patients have heard of eating so as to reduce inflammatory symptoms—inflammation simply meaning our symptoms acting up. There are many different versions of this diet and my doctor has thoughtfully given me a simple chart of foods that tend to exacerbate inflammation in one column, and foods that can help reduce inflammation in another column.

So what's the brain-fogged Lyme-fatigued patient to do (aside from referring to such a chart)? If we are what we eat and we want to recover, it seems we have to pay close attention to our nutrition (as well as to whatever other treatment options we've elected).

I'm not a breakfast person. It's easy for me to down a few supplements (vitamins and probiotics) and a couple of cups of caffeine-containing beverages (bad, bad bad!) in the morning, get behind my computer and think every so often, I'm kind of hungry. That progresses to I'm starving! anywhere from eleven am to two pm. Some days I do better than others. Some days I make myself a bowl of oatmeal with fruit and nuts. Some days for lunch I have turkey and fruit (and maybe more nuts). Some days I remember to drink decaf green tea instead of that coffee. But many days, lunch is bought from the General Store (yes, I live in rural Maine). Or, famished, I start grabbing anything in sight. Some days I attempt to drink water. Some days I forget. My doctor has stressed the importance of drinking enough water. "Pee your way to better health," he actually said, as well as giving me a target number: drink half of my body weight in ounces of water each day. (If nothing else, that's incentive to lose weight: less ounces of water to drink per day.)

Bad writer I'm being, for in the last paragraph I failed to address its opening question. What are we to do? I've found some new tools. One is to make use of anyone living in your home and coerce them into helping you cook a good meal. For me, that person is my husband and he's usually (fairly) easily coerced. Secondly, cook a good meal during the part of the day when you usually are the least exhausted (for me, it's mid-morning/mid-day—although Lyme makes it difficult to predict). And lastly, find some new good-for-you recipes! If you are lucky enough to have someone to help you cook, you can undertake slightly complicated recipes. If you find yourself cooking alone, go for the easier recipes so your fatigue doesn't set in fast and furious in the middle of the prep or cooking time.

Your Lyme literate doctor can provide some good nutritional guidelines. And treat yourself to a Lyme cookbook (yes, there is such a thing!). Use recipes you will enjoy. Don't use recipes where the mere chopping of ingredients will send you to bed for days. Recently I've discovered Recipes for Repair: A Lyme Disease Cookbook. Frankly, I'm too tired in this stage of my disease to worry about its symbols (gluten-free; dairy-free; egg free, etc...) and its phases (in a nutshell, once you are feeling better, you can progress to different foods). But I know if I cook a recipe from this cookbook (no matter which recipe I decide on), it will be light years better for me than mozzarella sticks or fried buffalo chicken or fried haddock from the General Store (although they make all three very, very tasty—and we won't talk about their homemade brownies). I'll paste the link from Amazon here:

http://www.amazon.com/Recipes-Repair-Lyme-Disease-Cookbook/dp/0983097704/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1300485581&sr=8-1

Tonight, I'll try to remember to reach for an organic green apple with some almond butter when I'm really wanting ice cream instead.

When I'm not so tired I'll coerce my husband into helping me make some of those awesome-looking goodies in the Lyme Disease Cookbook!