Making Bread without Catching the House on Fire

Update: November 16, 2015

Since I have been posting about breakfast foods for the past week, I thought you might enjoy this blog post from last year when I first attempted to learn how to make bread in a bread machine. As I reread the post, I noticed that I shared I had been free of symptoms for a year and a half. I'm thrilled to report that next month I will celebrate three years of being symptom free from fibromyalgia. Even if your attempts to move toward a healthier lifestyle are filled with setbacks and culinary disasters, it is so worth the effort. Happy baking and hope for healing to all!

Whole Wheat Oatmeal Bread

Over the past few years, I have been replacing processed food with whole foods as part of my plan for coping with fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome. My symptoms disappeared when I got chemicals out of my environment, stopped eating processed food, and started eating whole foods rich in antioxidants and anti-inflammatory nutrients. I haven't had any fibromyalgia pain or CFS symptoms in over a year and a half. 

My goal is to eat 95% real food. I use a few processed prepackaged items for the remaining 5% of what I eat like mustard, ketchup, pickles, and until recently - bread. Packaged bread is probably not nearly as full of chemicals as industrially produced cookies, candy, soda, etc. - Right?  That's what I thought until I read the label on the bread package and saw that the list of ingredients includes: sodium stearoyl lactylate, calcium stearoyl lactylate, monoglycerides, calcium peroxide, datem, ethyoxylated diglycerides, high fructose corn syrup, azodicarbonamide, and enzymes. 

Since I don't want to eat chemicals, I decided it was time to learn to make my own bread. I've been making muffins for years so it was no problem to make a few batches to put in the freezer. So far I've made blueberry, banana walnut, and apple oatmeal muffins.

Blueberry Muffins

I had an old bread machine collecting dust in the attic and an old bread machine cookbook shoved to the back of the cookbook shelf in the kitchen. So one day when my schedule was completely free and I was feeling adventurous. I decided to tackle making bread. My first attempt was a stellar success. The cinnamon raisin bread made my kitchen smell like a bakery and it was absolutely delicious. And I knew exactly what was in it: water, raisins, cinnamon, butter, salt, organic raw sugar, flour and yeast.

Cinnamon Raisin Bread

And then I had a great idea. I noticed that all of the recipes in the cookbook were for one pound loaves and my bread machine could make up to a two pound loaf. Hmmm, let's see:  to make twice as much of most recipes you multiply times two and - Voila!  I should have twice as much bread. So I doubled one of the recipes in the cookbook, dumped all of the ingredients in, and pushed the start button. The bread machine was churning merrily away when I left the kitchen to go tend to some other chores. About an hour later I smelled something burning. I went back to the kitchen to investigate. It looked like the bread machine had exploded. Dough was running over the top of the bread pan and oozing out of every seam in the machine. Globs of sticky dough had trickled down on to the heating element, and caught on fire. I yanked out the plug, poured water over the smoky mess, and stood gazing at the sad remains of the bread machine as it quietly died. 

I learned something. If the bread recipe says it makes a one pound loaf, DO NOT double it to make a two pound loaf. I ruined a loaf of bread and murdered a poor innocent bread machine. Since I am quite stubborn and persistent, I just bought a new bread machine and started over. I have been making delicious homemade chemical free loaves of bread ever since. 

I have had fun recently making bagels and sandwich buns.

Bagels

Whole Wheat Sesame Buns

I have learned a few things about making bread in a bread machine.

Measure all ingredients exactly. 

Make sure all of your ingredients are fresh.

If you use bread flour, choose a brand that is non bromeated with no xanthum gum. 

Do not double the recipe.

Have all ingredients at room temperature.

Heat the milk or water until it is warm but not hot.

Put all of the liquid ingredients in first.

Add all of the dry ingredients next.

Spread the dry ingredients evenly over the liquid ingredients so that no moisture can get through.

Make a small indention in the dry ingredients with a spoon.

Sprinkle the yeast into the little hole you have made for it.

Follow the directions on your machine.

The new bread machine is working great. And I haven’t caught anything else on fire. 

5 Ways to Cope with Depression in Chronic Illness

One of the hardest things about dealing with fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome, or any other chronic illness, is trying to wrap your head around the idea that this terrible disease that has invaded your life is never going to go away.  

I am by nature a positive person. I usually can find some sliver of light even in the darkest situation. When I was diagnosed, I was told that there is no known cause or cure for fibromyalgia and CFS.  I don't think I truly believed that in the beginning. I woke up every morning expecting to feel better. But day after day passed and I still had severe pain and debilitating fatigue. After a whole year went by with no improvement, reality hit me square in the gut. I might feel this horrible for the rest of my life. I was forced to add a new symptom to my fibromyalgia pattern:  Depression.  

If I was going to cope with chronic illness, I had to learn how to cope with the depression it caused. Like every other aspect of the disease, this became a process over time. If you have found things that help you deal with the depression that comes with chronic illness, please share in the comment section so that other folks dealing with this can be encouraged. Different things help different people.  

Here are some things that helped me cope with the depression chronic illness caused.

Exercise 

The pain from fibromyalgia was so severe that my muscles and joints screamed at even the thought of movement. My fatigue was so debilitating that I considered walking from the couch to the kitchen a monumental triumph. Then I heard a doctor describe an exercise program designed for people with chronic illness that started with walking just one minute a day. I thought even I could handle that. So I walked around the inside of my house for one minute once a day for several weeks. After I got used to that, I started walking two minutes each day. I added minutes every few weeks until I was walking fifteen minutes at a time. When the weather was nice, I walked outside. I wasn't race walking. I was strolling and meandering. Moving around in the sunshine is a great mood booster. I gradually added swimming, light weight lifting, and stretches to my routine. Not only did this help with my physical symptoms, it also elevated my mood.

Books

I read my Bible, devotional books, books about dealing with chronic illness, books on depression, books about coping with trauma, books about eating good food, books about learning to be thankful in difficult circumstances. The words dancing across all of those pages encouraged me. Here are a few suggestions:

• Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People?  by Harold S. Kushner
• Eating on the Wild Side by Jo Robinson
• The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom
• Learning to Pray When Your Heart is Breaking by Denise George
• A Place of Healing by Joni E. Tada
• Foods That Fight Fibromyalgia by Dierdre Rawlings
• Recovery from CFS - 50 Personal Stories by Alexandra Barton
• Help.Thanks. Wow by Anne Lamott
• One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp.  

Prayer  

I am a woman of faith so bringing the darkness that enveloped me to God was a natural response for me. I asked God to show me ways that I might be able to feel better. I asked him to help me develop good coping mechanisms to deal with the reality that I might not ever feel well. I asked for enough strength to simply put one foot in front of the other and somehow manage to survive the day. Sometimes my prayers were along the line of: 

"What in the world were you thinking to allow this to happen to me?" 

"I'm mad, tired, and discouraged and don't really feel like talking to you today." 

God loves us like a dad loves his family so he patiently listened to my complaints and questions. I had dealt with all kinds of trauma before fibromyalgia appeared in my life. There is a verse in the Bible that has encouraged me in dark times and I held on to this thought. 

"I am convinced that neither death, nor life, neither the present nor the future, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord." Romans 8:38-39

Gratitude

I needed a way to shift my focus from my current negative circumstances to more positive thoughts. So every day I tried to think of at least one thing that I could be thankful for. This was not always easy.  But it helped. I expressed thanks for all kinds of things.

• This morning I took a shower and brushed my teeth before I had to sit down. Yay!
• I drove to the supermarket and shopped for fifteen minutes all by myself.
• My pain level is an 8 instead of a 10.
• I am surrounded by family and friends who love me.
• My husband encourages and helps me every single day.
• I saw a red cardinal sitting on a bare tree limb in the middle of January. It was beautiful.

Research
I started looking for answers and possibilities. There is a wealth of information in books and on the internet. I read all kinds of theories about what causes fibromyalgia and CFS. I searched for things I could do to feel better. Even before I discovered a single thing that helped, I felt my depression lifting. I was finally actively taking charge of this chronic illness instead of passively allowing it to take charge of me. Looking for information made me feel hopeful instead of helpless.  

Over time I developed a plan that involved three lifestyle changes.  I eliminated chemical products from my home environment, stopped eating processed food, and started eating whole foods rich in antioxidants and anti-inflammatory nutrients. I hoped this would help me feel at least somewhat better. I was utterly amazed that it eventually led to compete recovery. I have been symptom free for 14 months and 10 days.

Well, Then: What Can I Eat?

Hmm...No processed food at all sounds impossible

Okay. By now, I had eliminated tons of chemicals from my environment. I had been on a mission to eliminate chemically laden processed foods from my diet.  I was eating a lot of fruit and vegetables and other whole foods.  But there was a potential glitch looming ahead. I didn't always have the time or the energy to prepare every single thing that I ate completely from scratch.  I needed either a personal chef or a new idea. I couldn't afford a chef so I went with the new idea.  I felt that being able to use some packaged foods would help me make this a lifelong lifestyle change instead of a temporary experiment.  

I wanted to feel as well as possible despite having this awful disease. My fibromyalgia pain was actually getting better. Some days I didn't have any pain at all. This was an exciting and unexpected development.  Although I was still having a lot of chronic fatigue symptoms, there were some days when my energy level kicked it up a notch. I certainly didn't want to do anything to hinder my progress.  But in order for me to stay consistent with this plan for the rest of my life, there had to be some way to make the process more  practical.

I decided to see what happened if I ate mostly whole foods, but occasionally used some prepackaged products. My formula would be to eat whole, natural foods 95% of the time and use some packaged products for the other 5% of what I consumed.  All packaged foods are not the same. There is a big difference between something that comes prepackaged and items that are overly processed. There were some non negotiable qualifiers for any packaged product I tried:

no preservatives 

no food dyes

no trans fats

no chemical additives

no artifical sweeteners

no excessive sugar, fat, or salt

the fewer ingredients the better

read all the labels all the time

The prepackaged foods I added to my diet included: dried fruits such as raisins and cherries, canned low sodium chicken broth, canned tomatoes, canned beans, plain saltine crackers, graham crackers, Greek yogurt.  I love granola but this was a particularly tricky item. Just because the word, "natural" is on the box, that does not mean the food item has no chemicals.  But there are some packaged granola cereals that meet the criteria above. I always read every item on every label of every product so that I have the facts I need to make an informed decision.  

I subtracted a lot of negative chemicals from my environment and from my food.  That left plenty of room for a lot of positive choices.  A little flexibility has made it possible for me to continue a healthy lifestyle.  I feel great and am greatly grateful!

If I Had the Energy, I Would Go Sit Down.

Constant fatigue was making me feel really tired..all the time.

They don't call it chronic fatigue syndrome for nothing.  I was one of the many fibromyalgia sufferers who also had debilitating fatigue symptoms.  Feeling so wretchedly tired all the time was a prime motivator for me to find some way to get better. The constant severe pain was awful but the unremitting fatigue was even worse.  When I first started on this quest, I was merely looking for a way to cope and improve enough to be able to get through the day.  It never occurred to me that the symptoms could be completely eradicated.

By now I had made my home environment as chemical free as possible.  I had stopped eating foods that contained trans fats, dyes, additives, and other chemicals.  I googled all the super foods lists I could find.  I started adding foods to my diet that were thought to help pump up the immune system, had anti inflammatory properties, and were in general supposed to be good for my body. 

Meanwhile, I kept coming across articles that said even whole, real, natural foods contained chemicals.  Fruit and vegetables are sprayed with pesticides.  Beef and poultry are stuffed with hormones and antibiotics. I thought, "Oh great!  What in the world does that leave for me to eat?"  Starvation didn't seem like a logical option so I searched for a better way.

I learned that washing fruits and vegetables thoroughly with soap and water gets rid of some of the pesticides. Just giving them a quick rinse under the faucet will not do the trick.  Peeled apples have less chemical residue than unpeeled apples.  I started looking for places that sold organic food.  Some organic foods can be found even at the big chain stores.  Local farmer's markets sell fresh produce.  Although it may have been sprayed with chemicals during the growing cycle, at least it does not have the added preservatives often used when foods have to be shipped long distances.  And some vendors sell truly organic chemical free food.  

Certain fruits and vegetables are not as readily penetrated by chemicals. Fresh pineapple, for example, has such a thick hard skin, that the fruit itself doesn't absorb as much chemical residue as say strawberries which have no protective skin, absorb anything that is sprayed on them, and are impossible to scrub.  So I eat fresh pineapple almost every day but strawberries only occasionally and preferably when I can find ones that have been grown organically.

Even if you live in an area without much access to organic food, you can still make smart food decisions.  Fresh blueberries, even if they have been chemically sprayed, will be a better choice than blueberry flavored something that comes in a box. 

Later I will discuss specific anti inflammatory and immune boosting foods.  For now maybe it will be enough to share that my mantra became:

Eat whole foods

Eat lots of fruit and vegetables

Eat less non organic beef and poultry

Add nuts

Dried cherries are my friend

Buy locally grown produce

Use fresh ginger and fresh garlic in everything

Do Not Put That Processed Food into Your Mouth!

Processed food is full of chemicals

I was on a mission to deal a knock out blow to my  fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome symptoms.  I was committed to getting as many chemicals out of my life as possible.  I had already eliminated scented products, started using more natural ingredients in my cleaning routine, and changed my personal grooming supplies in an effort to get toxic substances out of my life.  Check out my previous blog entries if you would like more information.

Now I started thinking about the things I was putting into my body every time I ate.  I examined the labels on all of the processed and packaged foods in my pantry and refrigerator.  These products were loaded with artificial dyes, artificial sweeteners, preservatives, and chemical additives with names I could barely pronounce.  I grabbed a garbage bag and started the great food clean out.  I tossed everything that was processed and/or had added chemicals.

 I made a list of foods to remove from my daily diet.  Here are a few examples:

lunch meat and bacon - full of nitrates 

hot dogs - chemicals, dyes, nitrates

sodas - little more than chemicals in a can

packaged cookies and candies - dyes, preservatives, additives

artificial sweeteners - not a natural product

Some of these items I liked - a lot.  Sometimes I was tempted to consume them.  Then I reminded myself that I wouldn't eat arsenic or drink strychnine.  For me, chemically laden foods were potentially just as toxic.  I confess that over the past two years I have eaten an occasional hot dog and washed it down with a soda at a picnic. I have taken a small bite of something else on my forbidden foods list at a party.  But this happens only once every few months, not once a day.

By this point in my quest to get better, my fibromyalgia pain was improving.  Some days I had only slight discomfort. This encouraged me that I was heading in the right direction.  But I was still having acute flareups in which the pain became quite severe.  There had been no improvement in my chronic fatigue symptoms.  Most days I was still having difficulty putting one foot in front of the other. I had taken a lot of things out of my life. I discovered I was going to have to put some other things into my life before I got better.



.   

Toxic People Will Drive You Nuts

Some people are toxic

I am blessed to have a great support group of family and friends who helped me when I was too sick to help myself, encouraged me when I started investigating ways to get better, and who have celebrated with me as I have recovered.

However, there are also a lot of negative people in this world who can be as toxic to your well being as the chemicals in your environment. These may include coworkers, friends, acquaintances, medical personnel, family members, or opinionated strangers.  You will have to decide how to deal with these people and the situations they create in order to maximize your recovery possibilities.  These folks fall into several categories.

The Unbelievers

Because fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome have no obvious outwardly identifiable signs of illness, there will always be those who refuse to believe you are really sick.  They try to cajole you into going on a shopping trip on days you barely have enough energy to get out of bed and take a shower.  They suggest you get up and clean your house on days you are having so much pain that it takes every ounce of strength you possess to keep from crying and screaming.  They tell you that your fatigue and pain are all in your head and you just need to shake it off and move on.

The Know-It-Alls

Some people are incapable of hearing about your illness without announcing that they have the perfect solution to your problem.  If you would only try this medicine, take this supplement, do what their cousin's husband's next door neighbor did, you would feel better.  I always appreciate hearing other sufferer's thoughts and ideas and collecting information about things to try that might help me feel better. But people who are not sick, have no background knowledge of this disease, and yet insist they have the perfect answer for your every need can be quite irritating.

The Polluters

Other people will refuse to cooperate in your quest to remove chemicals from your environment and diet.  They will demand you eat food that you have determined is not good for you.  They insist that one bite can't hurt you.  They will drench themselves in perfume after you have politely explained you need to stay away from scented products.  They will smoke around you even when you have asked them not to.  Cigarette smoke contains over one hundred toxic chemicals.  It is essential that you do not smoke yourself and that you avoid second hand smoke.

The Blockers

And then there are those folks who will throw obstacles into your path.  They make negative comments about you and your illness.  They find something wrong with every single thing you try to do to move toward recovery.  They discourage you by their words and actions and attitudes.

What can you do about those people who are not helping you at all but are in fact driving you more crazy with each passing day?  

This depends on who the person is and what the situation is.  But it is important to remember that you are the one who holds the keys to how much control you allow negative people to have in your life.  Here are a few ideas.

If your doctor is skeptical that your are sick or has no helpful suggestions regarding your treatment, look for another doctor.

If your aunt adamantly refuses to quit drenching herself in perfume every time you see her, limit your visits to her house.

If your coworker will not quit smoking in the break room, talk to your boss about instituting a no smoking policy in your office.

If your neighbor constantly puts you down, offers offensive opinions about your condition or is always negative about your illness, curtail the amount of time you spend with her.

If a stranger makes an inappropriate comment, decide in advance that you are going to smile and be kind even if they are rude.  No one has the power to make you feel bad about yourself unless you allow them to do so.  When my disease was at its worse, I always used the handicapped stall in public restrooms because my pain was so severe I needed to hold on to the bars in those facilities.  I was greeted with disapproving stares on more than one occasion when I emerged from the stall because I didn't have a cane or a wheelchair.  I always gave those scowling faces the most radiant smile I could muster. 

If the discouraging, uncooperative, negative person is a close family member and limiting contact is not an option you may have to try a different approach.  Information and patience are two good strategies.  The more the problematic person understands about your illness and the things you are trying to do to get better, the more cooperation you may get.  This often will not happen overnight so you have to be patient while waiting for that person to see the light.

Ultimately, I had to assume responsibility for my illness, my response to it, and my efforts to move toward recovery.  After all, making drastic changes in my lifestyle was my decision, not someone else's decision.  Sometimes I had to miss a party, avoid eating at a certain restaurant, avoid an event, or not attend a family gathering.  I recognized that every single person in my life was not required to make changes just because I was making changes.

I hope you have more positive people in your life than negative people.  I encourage you to find creative, helpful ways to deal with toxic people as you move toward healing.

The Chemical Connection

Chemicals Contaminate Everything

You will never change how you interact with the chemicals around you
until you change your attitude about the harm they can cause.

Even after I read article after article about the possibility that chemicals could be the culprit for my devastating fibromyalgia pain and debilitating chronic fatigue syndrome, it took several months for me to summon up the will to radically change my lifestyle.  I kept trying to rationalize.  After all, if this was the root of my problem, why weren't more doctors recommending this course of action?  Why weren't more people getting rid of things in their environment that could be making them so sick?

I decided maybe one reason this hasn't happened on a large scale is because not enough people have been willing to alter the way they live.  Sometimes we are too ingrained in our routines to be willing to make drastic changes. Getting rid of the chemicals around me couldn't hurt anything so it met my primary requirement of "First do no harm."  Resigning myself to feeling horrible all the time was not an option.  So in January of 2010 I made a commitment to find out where the chemicals lurked, how to get rid of them, what to substitute in their place, and wait and see what happened.  

I did not expect this to be a quick fix.  After all, I had been exposed to hundreds of chemicals every day for decades.  It made sense to me that it would take time, maybe a long time, to notice any difference.  I had nothing to lose and potentially everything to gain.  

I started with what I felt would be the easiest group of chemicals for me to eliminate:  anything that has a scent.  I had already removed a good many of these types of chemicals from my environment due to previous allergic reactions.  So I was surprised how many things in this category I still needed to get rid of.  Scents are created by adding chemicals to products.  Even so called "natural" scents require chemicals to bind the scent to the product.  It is relatively easy to create a scent free environment in your home but it may require that you change almost every product you use.  

Scented products you will have to eliminate include:

perfume

air fresheners

incense

scented candles

potpourri 

You need to check the labels of other products to see if they contain a scent including:

makeup

hairspray

deodorant

laundry detergent

cleaning supplies

bath soap

shampoo

hand lotion

Fortunately, almost everything on this list comes in an unscented version.  There are hypoallergenic, unscented makeup lines and laundry detergents free of perfume and dyes.  Shampoo and soap that are white tend to have less scents and less chemicals than those that have color.  There are natural cleaning products you can buy or you can make your own cleaning products using natural ingredients.

There would be many more things I would eliminate and many more things I would add before I recovered.  But this was the first small step.  I felt a small stirring of something I hadn't felt in over a year: hope.  

Have you had any adverse reactions to scented products?

Is There a (Caring) Doctor in the House?

Finding a doctor who cares

Finding a physician who you can trust,
who will listen to you, believe you, and support you is essential .

Fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome have no known scientifically verified cause nor no known scientifically verified cure.  There are no outwardly obvious symptoms easily identified by others.  So your friends, family, and coworkers will not know how traumatic it is to feel so ill all the time unless you make them aware of what is going on in your life. This is understandable.  What I have difficulty understanding is the number of people I know with this horrible disease who cannot find a competent physician who believes they are sick.   I am shocked and astounded at the things I hear from fellow sufferers. They have been told by doctors:

You are just tired and overworked

It is a mental problem.  You are not physically sick.

You are just depressed and feeling blue.

I can't find a single thing wrong with you.

I don't believe fibromyalgia exists.

And I want to say.  "Oh really.  One day I was a perfectly healthy, active, energetic woman and now I am in so much pain and so constantly fatigued I can't function.  I am extremely sick.  And you are an incompetent, unfeeling, uneducated, unaware discredit to your profession.."

Fortunately there are also a lot of understanding, caring physicians who listen to their patients, believe their symptoms, and treat them with care and respect.  If you have been unlucky enough to have encountered a bad doctor, please don't despair and give up.  Keep looking.  Ask for recommendations from friends and family.  Find out which doctors other patients with fibromyalgia recommend.  Keep making appointments until you find the right doctor for you.

I have been blessed to have great doctors.  I am married to a family physician who is the smartest, kindest, wisest, most caring doctor I know. It is possible I am a little biased about that but I don't think so.  My current internal medicine specialist listens and responds to my questions and concerns.  My doctors support me, encourage me, and have helped me navigate the multilayered realities of dealing with a chronic illness.

Have you encountered people who do not believe you are sick?

Do you have a kind, caring, compassionate doctor who is helping you with your illness?