Salmon & Avocado Rice Cakes

I absolutely hate fish normally but I actually found this quite tasty and really filling.

Ingredients:

Smoked Salmon Flakes (bought in Dunnes Stores)

Avocado (1/2)

1 Tomato

Rice Cakes

Sunflower Seeds


Method:

1. Scoop out the avocado and spread on the rice cakes.

2. Chop up the tomato and put on top of the avocado.

3. Place the salmon flakes on top, Sprinkle over the seeds and eat.

Pizza



This is one of my favourite mainly because I loved pizza so much before I got diagnosed. Again this is relatively easy as it does not require any actual baking from scratch.

Ingredients:

Schar Pizza Bases ( I bought mine in Asda but they are also available to buy on their online website)

Tomato Puree

Asparagus

Pineapple

Prosciutto

Pepperoni

Mozzarella Cheese


Method:

1. Cover the base in tomato puree along with the cheese and all the other toppings (you can add your own favourite it doesn't have to be the same as mine).

2. Place in the oven for 15mins and that's it.

Green Veg & Bacon

I'm not actually going to put a recipe up for this one as it is pretty self explanatory. I find this is a really easy way of building up my Iron. I'm not anaemic but my Iron stores are on the low side and I find it makes a difference when I try to up my iron intake through my diet and this is the easiest way to do so.

Ingredients:

Kale

Spinach

Broccoli

Unsmoked Bacon


Give it a go and let me know how you find it.

Kenwood 2GO Sport Review

As I said in my 'Green Juice' post this is the machine I use for making my juices.

I went for this product as it was very reasonably priced it was under €40 back in November and it's a really good product.

At the time the store assistant was trying to make me buy the latest nutribullet but it was €99 and I couldn't see how there could be €50 worth of difference in them so I went with this one and never looked back. Recently I saw Rosemary Mac Cabe had been sent one, she normally would use her nutribullet and even she said that by comparison to the nutribullet she thinks she preferred this Kenwood one more.

The convenience aspect of this product is what attracted me to it the most. The containers you see in the image above are actually the exact same. The product comes with 2 of these bottles and lids for each. The concept is that you screw on the blender top and turn it upside down on the stand to blend. Then unscrew the blender top but on your lid and away you go. It's super handy.

As well as this there is no big mess with the product in the same way I find with your general run of the mill big blenders. The thought of having to clean those out puts me off wanting to use it to begin with. The Kendwood 2GO Sport has no awkward nooks or crannies that you can't get to and is so easy to clean.

I would 100% recommend this as it is an investment and not a very expensive one.

You should be able to purchase this product at any of your local electronics shops, Currys, Argos, Harvey Norman etc.

Green Juice

Before I got diagnosed I started trying to up all my vitamins and fight the fatigue myself. I find it best to have one of these first thing in the morning but an hour after food or 2 hours before food as it is like a meal in itself.

 I will provide details and a review of the product I use in another post that you will find under 'Resources'.

Ingredients:

Handful of kale

Handful of spinach

1/3 of Cucumber

Slice of lemon

Slice of fresh pineapple

1 full carrot

5 or 6 blueberries

500ml of water


Method:

1. Put all the ingredients in the smoothie maker and blend and enjoy.

Tuna and Pasta Salad

Again this is another really quick and simple one for when you are on the go or really handy to throw into a lunch box for work and add the tuna when you get there.

Ingredients:

3 tablespoons of gluten free pasta (mine is the asda own brand as I love it)

 

Handful of raw spinach

 

3 tablespoons of peas

1 tin of tuna

 

A teaspoon of mayonnaise ( if desired)

 

 

Method:

 

1. Add the 3 tablespoons of pasta to a saucepan, add boiling water so that the pasta is an inch below the top of the water and leave to boil.

 

2. When pasta is almost cooked add the frozen peas and leave for a further 10 mins.

 

3. Drain and serve with drained tuna and a dash of mayonnaise.

 

4. Add spinach on top, mix around and enjoy.

Gluten Free Porridge

When I was first diagnosed with coeliac disease no porridge was one thing I really struggled with but on seeing my dietitian I found out that there were other alternatives. This is my own favourite.

Ingredients:

Kelkin rice and millet flake porridge (can be got in any dunnes or tescos)

Lactose free milk (Can be whatever milk you drink yourself)

Linwoods Mixed milled gluten free seeds ( mine are predominantly flax as I was told they are the best)

Some rasberries and blueberries.

Method:

1. Pour in your desired amount of porridge.

2. 2 tablespoons of mixed milled seeds.

3. Add your milk and a spoon of honey.

4. Add your berries, you don't have to add the berries you can have these as a snack at about 11 o clock in the day if you chose but I prefer to include them in my breakfast because I would probably forget.

5. Put in the microwave for 2 mins on full power and take out and stir and put back in for a further 1.5 to 2 mins.

Again this is really simple and is soo beneficial to your health and a great source of fibre to start off the day.  

Bacon & Salad/Veg

This is more of an idea than a recipe. Again because of the need for protein this would be my go to lunch a lot of the time because it is so convenient.

Ingredients:

4 Slices of unsmoked bacon
Handful of Kale
Handful of Spinach
1/2 and avocado
1 tomato

Method:

1. Grill the bacon until cooked.

2. Boil the spinach and kale in warm water as this increases the level of proetin in them.

3. Chop the tomato.

4. Chop the avocado and add some salt and pepper and serve.


Really simple, really quick and really tasty.

Turkey and roasted Veg with Basmatti Rice

This Recipe is super easy and so quick which is why it is one of my favorites. Because of the need for more protein in my diet I would normally have this for either lunch or dinner.

Ingredients:

1 Turkey Fillet
Handful of green beans
Handful of Mangetout
3 baby tomatoes
Basmatti Rice
Kalo Vegetable Stock Cube
Coconut oil/Olive oil (any oil you have is fine)

Method:

1. Pour in your desired amount of rice with cold water. Enough so that it covers the rice. And put on a moderate heat. The reason I don't give a specific measurement is that I find it handy when there is some left over to use for the next days meals so it doesn't bother me.

2. Chop up your turkey and veg and place in an oven dish. Drizzle over some of your oil, about a tablespoon and crush your stock cube over the top. Place in the oven at about 200 degrees for 35 - 40 mins. ( Feel free to add more veg as this was all I felt like on the day but any veg can be added.)

3. Meanwhile  keep an eye on the rice and once holes start to appear in the surface of the rice it is ready, drain any excess water and leave to dry out a bit if sticky.

4. Make sure to constantly mix around the turkey and veg to make sure it is all cooked. Once finished take out of the oven and serve.


Depending on how many people are eating the measurements and ingredients in this recipe can be chopped and changed to suit your requirements.

Hope you enjoy it.

The Diet for Recovery

Unfortunately I am not going to talk about any quick fix diet for recovery. After being so sick for so long it is going to take a long time to feel normal again. My own dietician says she gives her own clients a year for full recovery from the damage that has been done.

I am in the VERY early stages of my new diet, I officially started gluten free back at the end of November 2015, but I don't really think that counts as I wasn't fueling my body in the way that I should have been. That being said, I had been unable to get out of bed at the beginning, didn't have the energy to walk around the shops without feeling like I was going to pass out and on some days could barely even muster the energy to stand in the shower...washing and drying my hair was one of the hardest tasks imaginable and required far too much energy that I just didn't have, even after lying in bed all day. It sounds ridiculous but it's true. A week or 2 since into the diet in November I noticed a big change that seemed to just happen all of a sudden nobody else around me seemed to be noticing but I was suddenly able to walk around the shops without having to go to the car. I was afraid to push myself though, afraid that if I pushed myself too hard I might end up back where I started as my body had been doing nothing for so long. Don't get me wrong, I didn't have boundless energy but it was a drastic improvement from what I did have.

Now I am still suffering from fatigue and some of the ataxia symotoms, I often find myself battling with myself, 'why do I still feel like this? I'm doing everything I should?'. I forget how far I have come and how far I have yet to go. I forget the extent of the damage in my intestine and the fact that my body is constantly working to repair it. This is why fueling your body is key to your recovery.

As I said I saw a dietician for the first time last week and here is some of the areas that I myself was lacking:

I get these on prescription from my GP.

1. Vitamins and Minerals etc.

           It is SO important to have these checked by a simple blood test with your GP. It is so common for anyone with Coeliac disease to have absorption problems and this could be what is hindering our recovery. The most important ones in my opinion are : Iron, folate iron/iron stores, Vitamin D, Omega 3 and B12. I personally do not eat fish as I just cannot develop a taste for it so the omega 3 supplement is really beneficial for me especially considering the fact that I have the ataxia symptoms. I also have low Vitamin D so I take Desunin 800IU once a day.




    
     2. Probiotic
        
       This didn't even cross my mind but makes so much sense. It is very helpful to take a probiotic to Alflorex. I can't say I notice any differences but then again it's probably helping my insides massively.
help the good bacteria in our intestines as we are lucky if we have any left by the time we are diagnosed. The probiotic I am taking is






      3. Fibre

      I had really been struggling with this because every cereal you could get fibre from I couldn't have, or so I thought. Buckwheat flakes, millet flake porridge and Quinoa flake porridge are brilliant for fibre. I myself have taken to the Kelkin rice and millet flake porridge and I absolutely love it. I also add some mixed milled seeds to this as the antioxidents in the seeds are so beneficial to us and they are full of so many vitamins and minerals that we all need and don't get much of. Check out all the products I use on my instagram https://www.instagram.com/p/BAe74XwFLd4/?taken-by=pommeberries .You should try to include as much fibre as you can in your breakfast so you don't have to be as cautious of whether your eating brown or white pasta, rice or bread throughout the rest of the day.

 
4. Protein
    
      I have been told that protein is the most important part of my diet. With this condition we need to eat double the amount of protein as anyone else on a day to day basis. I have been told to aim for 75g in both lunch and dinner. I find this pretty difficult as even a body builder wouldn't eat this much but I think the key is to aim for that. Even if at lunch you do not feel like eating it is important to try and eat the protein part of the meal. Again visit my instagram to see some examples of the meals I chose to eat.

   5. Dairy

     I have found the dairy tends to upset my stomach a bit, I am not lactose intolerant but I find the dairy is not helping my gut repair itself. For this reason I have opted for either almond milk or lactose free milk in my porridge and tea etc. HOWEVER, I ALWAYS include dairy in my daily diet in some form. I might have a yoghurt with some milled seeds, a cup of tea with some cows milk or some ice cream. This is essential as when the villi are repairing themselves if we have eliminated dairy for our diet the lactose parts at the end of our villi will not reform because there will be no need for them and we will end up being dairy intolerant. As well as this we need the calcium because of the increased risk of osteoporosis.

    6. Snacks

     During this time it is so important not to eat any products that are not labelled gluten free or included in any of the coeliac guide books. I myself find I am constantly snacking on the harvest morn chocolate coated rice cake bars, they are such a nice treat, I will put up a picture of them on my instagram. Rice cakes and peanut butter or cashew nut butter are also a really nice treat. In terms of the gluten free cakes and biscuits we should try to limit our intake of these as they really are not good for our recovery. The fact that these products are baked 3 times in order to preserve them it is not easy for our stomachs to digest them so we should not be putting it through this too often as it does not aid recovery. 2-3 times a week is okay.

This book should become your bible during the first few months post diagnoses.

    7. Exercise
   
      This was one of the hardest things for me. Because I have been so inactive and bed bound my body is not able for intense exercise anymore or exercise at all for that matter. I was told to start with 10 minutes a day. I walk 2.5km 5 to 6 days a week just to get started. I will up this as time goes on but it is very important that this is a gradual process as our body has gone through so much over the time we have been sick. The fact that I was bed bound and very inactive has had a massive impact on my muscles and I would say that I have lost a lot of muscle. To fix this I am hoping to start a pilates class next week.


I know this is a lot of information to digest but it is information I wish I had of had access to when I was first diagnosed. It's hard to change your life so much, it's hard to push yourself, you don't even know if you are physically able to push yourself and your afraid of pushing yourself too far but you won't know until you try. I'm glad I did because it is the first step in getting my independence and confidence in myself back. To be honest I feel great, don't get me wrong I still get my ups and downs of tiredness and no energy but I'm at a point where I never thought I would see again.

The key to getting better is helping yourself, nobody else can do it for you. You need to take control and be determined and get your life back.
       

What Next?

So I had my diagnoses, all be it short and sweet so my next step was to see a dietician. Unfortunately I didn't get to see one straight away. I was diagnosed at the end of November 2015 but did not get to see a Dietician until last week, the middle of January 2016. My advice would be to do this straight away as I wasted too much time waiting to be sent to one. The key thing with a dietician is that they have a lot of experience with your condition. Mine is based in Galway and she is the woman I have been dreaming about meeting for the last couple of months.

Within minutes of being with her she had established what Vitamins I need and is sending me for a Dexa Scan which will hopefully be in the next few weeks. She was the first person to address my shaking, twitching etc and confirmed that it is all related to Coeliac but is the neurological symptoms that not everybody seems to get. They are quite serious which means you must be extra careful with your diet.

I now have a diet plan to follow, an exercise regime and my full course of vitamins and probiotics in the aim of being able to return to work at the end of February (I'm hopeful). I have another follow up appointment in February to see where to go from here.

Where it all began.... (Part 2)

The road from here on in was long and hard. Involved so many doctors appointments that they were all convinced I was crazy with the amount of new symptoms I was developing day by day. First shaking, then twitching, then numbness down my hands, tingling in my fingers and tongue, the list was endless and growing so fast that I could barely keep up.

At the end of July one doctor tested me for coeliac disease, I originally lost my mind over this...how could she possibly think I was coeliac when all my stomach problems had settled and all these unexplainable ones took over. A few days passed the results came back and she told me I was coeliac. I was so angry, I didn't believe her but I went with it anyway.

I arranged to see a gastroenterologist and had an endoscopy and biopsy of my small intestine. During the procedure the consultant told me it did not look like I was coeliac but that we would need the biopsy to confirm. Based on this I then went looking for more things it could be, M.E., Fibromyalgia, M.S., a brain tumour, everything horrible and terrifying you could imagine. I presented myself to the doctors again, by this point I was experiencing really bad anxiety as a result of the coeliac. I told the doctor and she decided to test my cortisol levels which were through the roof, even when I dropped something I would give myself a mini heart-attack and would be shaking for about half an hour afterwards. 

I had been having high blood pressure and palpitations ALOT from the end of September to November I would say, so much so I was admitted to hospital. The consultant there started treating me for underactive thyroid which I DID NOT have!! Started giving me the medication before any of the tests had even been done. The woman who carried out the ultra sound on my thyroid gland told me that it looked fine, that evening the nurse came in with tablets and I argued with her about not having got the results and whether or not I should be taking them but eventually I took them. BIG MISTAKE. I ended up having an awful evening with a huge migraine and refused to take any more of the tablets from the nurse. The next morning the consultant came around and told me that all the tests came back fine, he didn't know what was wrong, maybe glandular fever and sent me home. At this point I was beyond feeling hopeless, this had been the man I had been waiting to see for the cortisol levels and I could do a better job diagnosing myself than he could.

Two weeks after this I decided to see what the hold up with my biopsy results was, only to find that the consultant had not bothered to send them and claimed they must have 'Gone astray'. This was the man I had paid the guts of €600 to see. All I got was an email to say I was coeliac to go on a gluten free diet and review my blood in 6 months. The issue of his slackness aside, I was DEVASTATED to be coeliac, completely and utterly in despair. No pizza, no baguettes, no anything tastey and carby, no cakes, no buiscuts....no life.

I carried on like this for a couple of days until finally I coped on and realised this was all I had to do to get better. Give this up and I would never feel this bad again, I would have my life back, my independence and confidence. It takes a lot of strength and courage to take the bull by the horns and make positives out of the situation, but once you do, you will never look back.

Where it all began....(Part 1)

For me, this whole journey began almost 6 months ago to the day spread out over several different counties and various different hospitals,it is quite a long story so I have decided to split it up over several posts.

I had been feeling fine, had been in hospital the previous month with very bad migraines, they went away and I was happy to conclude they were just a result of the extreme pressure I had been under at work and I was in the middle of studying for my professional accounting exams. I returned to work for 2 weeks feeling fine, but on the 14th of July 2015, life as I knew it was about to change forever.

Since that morning I hadn’t been feeling great, I had walked to work but had not been able to stop sweating all morning, and I mean properly sweating dripping down my face. I thought maybe I had just gotten very unfit during my time off. As the morning progressed I started to get shakey, my head started spinning and I just knew something was badly wrong. At 1 o’clock that day I left the office thinking I would be back in a day or two….little did I know what was around the corner for me.

The Doctors visit was first that day, she could not understand what was wrong with me so ordered a blood test and possibly gave me some kind of medication but I can’t remember what. She made another appointment with me for 2 days time but if I was not feeling any better in between to come back to her, eventually ended up in the emergency department as they were worried there could be something wrong with my head because of the headaches. Had more blood tests – everything fine, iron stores slightly low but nothing out of the ordinary, high blood pressure but told I was just having migraines and was discharged.

A day or two later, started getting AWFUL feelings in my stomach, sickness to the very pit and the worst nausea I have ever experienced in my life with frequent bouts of diarrhoea. Had been taking motillium and  Imodium and they were providing some relief but not enough. I was crying in pain having to keep bouncing my legs to distract from what was going on in my body. Eventually ended up back in the Emergency Department waited 7 hours in agonizing pain feeling completely drained and desperately wanting help of some kind. Finally got seen and was told it was just some bowel inflammation was given some solpadol for the pain with motillium and send on my way again. All this time I had been advised to be eating food such as bread and crackers to settle my stomach….yes BREAD and CRACKERS. Little did I know that this was only adding fuel to the fire.

Things eventually got so bad that I could barely get out of bed, didn’t have the energy to stay awake, felt like I was just surviving. My parents eventually drove 8 hours in total to come pick me up and take me home to them because I needed help. I spent days on end lying in bed barely able to walk, trying to eat but not even having the energy to sit up long enough to do so.

It felt like my body was giving up and I would never be able to overcome this…