Back when I first started cracking down on my diet in earnest, I would go through my monthly Bon Appetit subscription and earmark pages that had recipes I could actually eat (or that were easily adaptable). They weren’t the majority, by any means, but it was always surprising at how many I could pull out of […]
Research Alert: PREdiCCt
Looks like some investigators in the UK are looking to identify environmental triggers for Crohn’s and Colitis flares. Basically, they’re going to sample people’s gut bacteria and given them questionnaires on their diet, lifestyle, and health over the period of 2 years, then attempt to find trends in the data. This is the kind of […]
Public Bathroom Etiquette
Usually, in a public bathroom, you don’t talk to anybody. Just do your business, turn around, and get out. Most of the time, your business is pretty quick, quiet, and not incredibly stanky. TMI alert. These last few weeks, I’ve been having a bit of trouble with my bowel movements. They’re a bit out of my […]
Fighting the Health Insurance System
One of the things that frustrates me most about health insurance: when you need it most, you’re less able to deftly navigate the system: “You have the right to independent medical review, but how good are you going to be at taking advantage of it if you’ve got cancer?” said Dustin Berger, an attorney in […]
Training the Gut
Mike Massimino became an astronaut, but only after applying an extensive amount of work. And over the course of several years, he applied twice to become a NASA astronaut and both times was rejected in the first rounds. A few years later, he tried again, finally getting an interview. But the interview included a medical exam, […]
Now Hiring: Gut Translator
Over the years I’ve gotten pretty good at listening to my body, of translating various signs and symptoms into actionable cause-and-effect chains (or at least as close to them as possible; it gets pretty tricky sometimes). The hardest part is that my guts do not speak English or even Korean or Braille or any other language […]
Real Talk
Yesterday I sat down with a friend of my mom’s and talked about living with a gut disease. She has Crohn’s, her daughter has Ulcerative Colitis, and like many people she’s stuck in the middle of “regular” doctors and all of the weirdo alternative stuff. And like many of us, she knew what her next […]
Out of Control Health
I completely melted down in my naturopath’s office this week. Tears, about 500 tissues, profuse apologizing, all of it. I couldn’t even explain why I was such a mess. Usually I hold it together. This week? Not so much. It’s the skin issues–they always get down, every single time. My Crohn’s, when it’s acting up, is […]
Delicious Red Velvet Ice Cream Cake
If we’re talking SONIC deliciousness, which we absolutely are. This month I have been loving the Korean R&B/Pop girlgroup Red Velvet, especially their song Ice Cream Cake. (And video! You can’t forget the videos!) With it, the (inevitable) K-Pop obsession has descended on me. Hard. I haven’t stopped listening for three weeks now. Typically I listen to music via […]