Liver to LRA: "Payback, it's a bitch."

After Pooti's comments here and other places, I started looking into the whole liver problem thing. I used to make jokes about my liver shuddering, but now it seems the joke's on me.

For someone who's abused their body as shamefully as I have--it would be easier to list the drugs I haven't done, and let's not forget the thousands of gallons of spirits consumed by yours truly--I've enjoyed good health other than being fat. I catch a cold maybe once every couple of years; my last illness with fever was the bout of "Red Sox flu" I caught this time last year. But the calendar doesn't lie. I'm in my early forties and it seems like my body is saying "hey, I've had enough of this shit" and turning on me. And my liver is leading the way. It's not quite at crisis mode yet--my eyeballs are still nice and white and I don't have any pain--but looking at my swollen feet and swollen stomach and having to catch my breath after bending over to tie my sneakers scares the crap out of me.

So today is day five of no alcohol (I'd been restricting it to weekends mostly but as with everything else in life I went way overboard and now look what happened). I've been eating fish and chicken and some green veggies ... okay, and a bunless hot dog here and there. My feet are still blowing up but today was the first time in a while that I haven't felt so bloated it seemed like it was hard to breathe, and I've been sleeping a little (emphasis on little) better. I'm also going to start taking milk thistle capsules since per my research it's supposed to be good for improving liver function. I splurged for a good brand, so we'll see if that makes a difference.

One Size Does Not Fit All, Part 4760

For a few months I've been following a "zero carb" board where it's advocated to eat nothing but unseasoned red meat (preferably really fatty ribeye steaks, hamburger and chuck roast) and water. I endeavored to do so and succeeded much of the time. But on the few occasions I weighed myself, I found myself gaining weight, not dropping like crazy like other people were. In addition to the cankles mentioned my stomach is bloated and to be honest I feel like garbage a lot of the time.

Back when I first read Protein Power the Drs. Eades mentioned arachidonic acid, which is found food-wise in ... fatty red meat. They said that it was inflammatory and if patients were having problems in losing on their diet they would recommend cutting out red meat and cutting down on egg yolks. Later on Mike Eades said that AA wasn't as horrible as once thought and they've toned down on the warning. But it always stayed with me regardless, and so I started Googling and researching. Sure, it might not be bad to have a steak once a week or some eggs, but a diet of NOTHING but fatty red meat? The cankles/swollen feet are a relatively recent phenomenon. I was looking through my personal journal and saw where I'd written an entry on "WTF is up with my feet, the tops are all swollen." The date? Roughly two weeks after I started the new dietary regime. AA plus liquor? The clicking you hear is the sound of the pieces falling into place. When I read in several places that AA is considered a good supplement for bodybuilders to help them get puffed up plus Pooti's response to my previous entry, it made perfect sense.

To clarify, I was NOT powering down two-pound ribeyes three times a day. Normally I'd eat once, maybe twice a day and the servings were pretty normal, but obviously it's taken its toll. When I delicately tried to bring this up in the ZC forum, I was of course immediately told that I hadn't given the plan enough time to work and I had admitted I didn't stick to it so it was probably the other stuff I was eating. All I know is what the dates tell me ... and I wasn't feeling this stuffed and bloated and headachy before I went to All Red Meat All The Time. Maybe like a lot of other plans it works for some, but this particular one doesn't work for me. I'd already discovered a problem with pork so I pretty much have given that up anyway. Fortunately there's a lot of chicken in my freezer. I've missed chicken. And salads. And broccoli. And cauliflower (no, I don't make pizza out of it). In the original PP book it said "when in doubt eat meat, fish, fowl and salad."

Can't hurt. Might help.