Serene Forest

Wednesday, April 16, 2014

Standard Healthy Eating Is Not Best For Individuals With PP



Hello All,


Yesterday a new member of our PPN Support Group wanted to know if eating grapes could cause a paralytic attack. In answer to her question I posted a few articles about the sugar content in grapes and other fruit. After reading them she stated, “Standard healthy eating is not best for individuals with PP” and she is absolutely correct.

For us with Hypokalemic Periodic Paralysis or Andersen-Tawil Syndrome, the amount of sugar in fruit can cause our potassium to drop, so as good as fruit may be for most people, it is not necessarily good for us. The Hyperkalemic Periodic Paralysis diet is a little different, in that more sugars and carbohydrates are needed.

Standard healthy eating does not work for most of us. We need to evaluate and experiment and keep a journal. To make this easier, we have created a chart which can be copied on our website and in our book with instructions to discover your triggers, including food triggers.
 
Some of the biggest culprits are sugar, salt, gluten, wheat, caffeine, simple carbohydrates, red meats, alcohol and much more and simply eating too much at a time. Because most of us tend to be acidic, we need to follow a pH balanced diet (70/30). Foods should also be organic, not processed, that is free of additives, fillers, food colorings, artificial sweeteners, hormones and antibiotics. Most meat and dairy products have hormones and antibiotics in them and some meat can be infused with a great deal of salt. Fasting can cause symptoms also. So we need to look at five separate things as we prepare our food: the timing of our meals, the amount we eat at each meal, the foods which are our individual triggers, the acidity of our diet and whether is it organic and safe to eat.

Even our water can have hormones, antibiotics and other drugs in it. I drink only distilled water for this reason.

We have adopted several sayings related to how best to manage our diet in order to best control our symptoms. From the book:
“Eat to live rather than live to eat.”
”Eat 70 percent alkaline and thirty percent acidic.”
“Eat from the farm and not the factory.”
”If it's delivered through a window then it's not food.”

The 70/30 rule is the most important of the group. We have it posted on our refrigerator along with the acid and alkaline ratings of particular foods.

Our bodies need a certain amount of sugar, salt, protein, carbohydrates and more so we cannot eliminate these things but we must find the proper balance. “Balance” is the most important word in our plan. If just one thing is out of balance, it can mean the difference between life and death in some cases. Besides the 70/30 balances in our diet, the other elements in our body must be in balance also, especially the elements or minerals (sometimes called electrolytes). This is due to the fact that Periodic Paralysis is a mineral metabolic disorder and when the minerals are out of balance, paralysis will occur. Some of these elements are calcium, magnesium, sodium, potassium, chloride, and bicarbonate.

These may be needed and can be consumed as supplements. The supplements also need to be organic and free of additives, fillers, food colorings, artificial sweeteners and anything not natural.

Many of us with Periodic Paralysis cannot tolerate the medications normally prescribed to minimize the paralytic episodes or we cannot obtain the medications. We must use natural methods to control the symptoms.


Until later…

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