I tried a purity test (again)

This time it was mostly for the guts

I call it a “purity” test when we try to solve health problems by minimizing bad habits for a while, and maximizing the good ones. They are a lot like New Year’s resolutions to get in shape, but with loftier goals.

I think everyone with unexplained chronic illness has occasional spasms of fear that it’s somehow our own damned fault, that we've surely done it to ourselves with all the questionable life choices that we feel guiltiest about.

Even though we have more or less the same bad habits as people who are perfectly healthy. 😜

Or maybe we even have fewer bad habits. I know people with serious addictions, terrible diets, catastrophic work-life balance, etc … and yet they are … "healthy"! For now. Their long-term prospects probably suck! But meanwhile they are free of mysterious afflictions. And if they can get away with their shitty habits for many years, surely my relatively tame sins aren’t the cause of all my troubles.

But this is a hard fear to kill off with mere logic.

Whatever we suspect we're doing wrong with our lives might be at the root of our troubles. And that “might” is a beast.

You can't go too far wrong trying to minimize bad habits, amiright?

This is the other reason that purity tests are seductive! They are so 🤬 virtuous.

If nothing else, unhealthy habits are clearly a health headwind, a complication worth minimizing. The only thing worse than being mysteriously ill is also suffering from the preventable consequences of poor choices, like staying up too late, drinking too much, or being less fit than you're capable of being.

And so here we go again, this time for the GI tract

I’ve done about three fairly big purity tests over the years … with no apparent effect whatsoever, except that I felt temporarily good about myself before resuming all of my nastiest habits. 😜

I’ve just finished another one. It was a little more specific. This purity test was focused on my GI tract, and giving it a bit of a rest from the onslaught of challenges I give it. I wanted to eat a simple, plain, unimpeachably “healthy diet” for at least a month, hoping for the relatively achievable goal of an improvement in my digestion.

I wasn’t really looking for a broader effect on my health, but hey … you never know. (“Microbiome” will get a mention below! How can I not?)

A tasteless month: bland bland bland!

I’ve never really had much in the way of abdominal pain or nausea. As diverse as my painful symptoms have been since 2015, I have somehow dodged that bullet. But I have had slowly but steadily increasing “indigestion” over the years, which is a shorthand for “too much information.” Suffice it to say it doesn’t seem like that system is running smoothly.

So I really cleaned up my diet for a month. There wasn't a lot of room for improvement, but there was certainly some…

• I have a weakness for Hawkins Cheezies. Paused! Sigh.

• I’m also a little too fond of Ichiban noodles (albeit always fortified with a lot of veggies, I basically turn it into a stew every time). Also paused. Also sigh.

  • (Culinary addendum: I was happy to see some proper ramen experts give Ichiban noodles their approval in this video review of several instant noodle brands. While it wasn't their favourite, they clearly thought it was a strong contender. But, wowee, the sodium in that package! 😬)

• Another weakness: ice cream, and I’ve written about my ice cream suspicions before. So I had almost none of that for a month either.

• Onions and garlic were completely eliminated, and that was relatively easy. Although I love them, and cook with them constantly, ice cream is much more addictive.

• I’m also very keen on spice, but for a month I didn't eat a single thing that made me sweat. Goodbye, sambal oelek!

• I also dialed up my protein intake, because historically I probably haven't included enough protein in my diet, especially given how hard I work at being active despite my constant soreness and malaise. Also, there is a whole thing about protein being good for pain, so I could do a partial test of that at the same time.

• The elephant in the room, alcohol, was tricky. I originally intended to quit for a while, as I have a few times before, but I couldn't quite pull it off this time. I did reduce my generally modest dosage though, probably by about 50% on average.

The result? The usual

None of that had the slightest effect on anything going on behind my belly button. Or more widely in my body.

Cooking was more work, and eating was more boring.

“Had” to be tried.

I celebrated the end of the experiment by getting tipsy and making a mighty bowl of Ichiban with a lot of garlic and sambal oelek. And then ice cream for dessert, of course.

The microbiome testing

Partly I did this now because I wanted to do it before getting a microbiome analysis done. That is now in progress! As I write, my literal shit is currently in a Californian lab being studied. Stay tuned for poop news!