Monday, December 12, 2011

When Spouses Come On Board

My husband got his blood work back from the doctor's office today. The first year they had him on the statins after a stent was installed in one of the arteries near his heart, his numbers were going upwards. They advised him to become even stricter with his diet and avoid all fats. They also advised him gently to quit smoking.

During the second year I went to the Weston A. Price Foundation Conference in Philadelphia and came home to start cooking with lard, pastured meats, real butter and whole, raw milk and pastured eggs. He worried. He said his doctor was going to have a fit. I told him he needed to quit smoking and it was the poisons he was eating and breathing that was causing the problems and if he would at least give real food a try, he might see some improvement.

He did try to quit smoking. In fact, he put them down for a couple of months. But this addiction is very difficult to overcome. I believe that as he gets healthier in other ways, and fewer and fewer of his friends smoke (or they die off), he will eventually find a way to quit.

In the meantime, I've been feeding him real food. It's a battle sometimes to get ferments into him. He has always liked sauerkraut, he just had never eaten it raw before. He doesn't flinch when I put fermented purple cabbage in his salads and he's come to love fermented turnip topping his mashed potatoes along with a dollop of butter and real sour cream.

Getting him to eat the pastured meat was a little tricky because I had to teach him how to cook it. He does the cooking Monday through Thursday at our house because I work and he is retired.

But we are now eating liver weekly and he's decided that liver pate is even better than liverwurst as a sandwich spread, so leftovers for him extend further into the week.

I've been cutting down on the carbs as I'm trying to lose weight. I'm sort of one of those folks who move into a new concept slowly, cut down, and cut down and will finally quit. I'm close to quitting carbs now but he still loves his potatoes and bread with his meat. We will get there.

In October he has been eating WAP food for year. Not with complete faith. But his consumption of junk food has gone almost to zero. He still cheats and eats a candybar a couple of times a month, but that's way down from all the crap he used to eat.

Guess what? He got his quarterly blood work back yesterday. His LDL is 66, his Triglycerides are 89 and his HDL is 85!. This is way better than a year ago. The doctor is impressed and told him to keep doing whatever he is doing.

I asked him if he told the doctor what we are doing and he confessed he did not. Poor doctor thinks he's following some highly restrictive, no fat, cardboard diet. At some point, he will have to tell him the truth.

In any case, I'm thinking his body is starting to heal. Now to get him off the statins.

If he could quit smoking, I think a lot of the inflammation that is causing the arterial blockages would eventually heal as well, but he's just not ready. 

He admits that he likes the "new" traditional food. Much of the food we eat reminds him of the food his grandmother in the UK used to make. He said it also reminds him of pub lunches. He talks up the real foods whenever we are with friends, so I think he is eventually going to become a real advocate.

I wonder when I will get him to drink Kombucha?




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