With love,
Heather

Anything that creates an imbalance in the body digestively — leaky gut, IBS, celiac, diabetes, candida, gastroparesis, constipation — any of these can create emotional disharmony because of chronic physical pain. The same thing happened with ulcers — doctors were taught it was all in the person’s head, then they found the pathogen H. pylori and realized it was the pain that was causing the emotional symptoms rather then the other way around.

Sue, what a resilient survivor you are — to have made it through so many years of suffering before you got answers. I would be very interested in learning more from you and seeing if we can put some of these pieces together. Perhaps I could interview you for my research paper — I’m hoping to talk with some doctors and researchers who could help get more studies and information into the mainstream.

I am grateful for people like you who are so dedicated to finding answers!

With love,
Heather

I say: ABSOLUTELY. I also saw that ‘Something Fishy’ article, but disliked their suggestion that EDs cause CD. I say it’s the other way around. I had CD symptoms from early childhood, LONG before I began using bingeing and purging. Unfortunately my mom mistook my celiac bloated belly as ‘fat’ and ask my pediatrician for a diet. In the 50s no doc would suspect a child with chronic constipation had CD, but now constipation is a common CD symptom.

I binged and purged for 36 years despite therapy, learning nondieting and mindful eating and long abstinence periods from those habits. 2 years ago I was diagnosed with Celiac Disease with gluten, dairy and soy intolerances. I KNOW I used bingeing to cope with CD induced constipation and purging to relieve digestive pain for a few hours afterwards before the digested sugar/simple carbs from the binge burned up and dumped my blood sugar.

I alsomoderated a board for women recovering from ‘disordered eating’ (for the past few years). Several of those women were celiac. Others had lactose intolerances or food allergy/intolerance symptoms and possibility undiagnosed CD. CD is one of the most misdiagnosed diseases in this country. Average time from when a patient suspects CD until they get an accurate diagnosis is 11 years. I spent about 12 years being misdiagnosed with ‘IBS’ and given the IBS diet which recommended I eat more wheat bran and drink more milk (gluten and dairy!!). I would love to share my recovery experiences with you and other observations from women who struggled with ‘disordered eating’ and CD symptoms.
SUE

When I left after the first appointment, I had no desire to engage in b/p. It was amazing. The next two appointments, we went deeper into emotional healing. Take a look at her website for more information — and I just wrote about her in today’s blog entry, if that helps.

With love,
Heather

After that I had several ups and downs until I started The Body Ecology Diet. The first day I started it, I stopped b/p. I really was committed to making changes in my life, so that helped. And also, the digestive pain stopped. I was committed to not overexercising– and doing what felt right for my body. And I had removed a lot of stress from my life. All of this together really helped. For me, just the act of getting enough sleep was healing as well.

I do have a couple of posts about telling my husband:
This post was written by my husband regarding how he felt when I told him.
This post is about some of my feelings after talking with my husband.
This post is about reactions for others or a spouse when telling them — including Do’s and Don’ts

If you have any other questions that weren’t answered by they posts, let me know!

With love,
Heather

You can do a test on Donna Gates’ Body Ecology website (bodyecology.com) to see if candida may be a problem (or in her book). Brewer’s yeast does have a lot of B vitamins, so two things could be at play here: (1) you crave it because the yeast/candida wants to be fed or (2) your body needs B vitamins. It’s entirely possible that your body wants a source of B vitamins since bulimia reduces B vitamins in your body (as does leaky gut and malabsorption from food allergies).

Consider looking for some food sources of B vitamins, including fermented vegetables and sea vegetables (especially Nori for B12). B12 is in animal protein, if you eat that. If you are taking a B complex, it may help, although if you are like me, your body may not absorb it — even with supplements — until your digestion is fixed.

With love,
Heather

I was struck by a funny realization as I read the article you linked to: BED is the acronym both for Body Ecology Diet and Binge Eating Disorder!

Also, I have a question for you (I forget if this has come up before…): Have you done any research or do you have an opinion on the use of nutritional yeast? I find myself craving it and love to sprinkle generous amounts of it on my food. However, I sometimes wonder whether it may contribute to more water retention. Also, do you know if it would aggravate candida? Is there a differentiation between “good yeast” and “bad yeast”?

I hope you had a fabulous weekend!
love,
Emily