I’m so sorry you and your partner went through that 😔❤️‍🩹
I do very much hope the whole foods are successful in helping you.
Big business for food has a lot to answer for, I think internationally, along with other manufacturing or supply chains that results in toxicity in environments that supply water and contaminate soils beneath housing and crops used for human consumption.
From as far back as I remember, I have not consumed any carbonated flavoured drinks (cola, etc), and only 100% juices, or water. I just did not want that in my body, only having it very rarely (maybe once a year) when there was nothing else to access (and it made me feel unwell, so I really don’t know how people feel if they drink these types of liquids regularly). My brother used to use cola for cleaning rust and tarnish off his bike - there was no way I was going to be drinking it.
Unless without other choices, I’ve always tried to eat whole unprocessed foods, and most recently I was on Entyvio infusions for colitis, however I kept having significant medical reactions to it, so I had to stop. It only helped minimally initially and then stopped working anyway - so the doc wanted to double the dose..with having to take steroids and high doses of antihistamines to control throat and airway issues for at least a week after each dose, I found this to be unacceptable clinical reasoning, and I stopped the drug. I then researched how to heal my bowel from the lymphocytic colitis that was throughout the entire large colon. It took 9 months of strict and gentle changes from surviving on a liquid supplement diet of Nestle Resource/Fortijuce/Fresubin, because that’s all I could hold for more than half an hour, to eating all whole foods now. I ate whole foods beforehand, and I don’t know what caused the colitis but I suspect it is not primarily colitis but a reaction of my immune system to the bowel content or wall or bacterial array, that set it off. I had a recent colonoscopy and besides polyps and the diverticulosis there was very little lymphocytic colitis present. And I feel so muc better not injecting myself with Entyvio anymore due to the difficulty it causes in my lungs and ability to breathe, as well as having high doses of steroids IV and oral antihistamines that were making me feel unwell.
Despite a whole food diet within what my bowel can tolerate, I do have changes progressing, and this is what I wanted to share: https://ashpublications.org/hematology/article/2020/1/380/474349/Monoclonal-gammopathies-of-clinical-significance in case this is interesting..MGCS is where secondary issues arise to MGUS, and the symptoms cause significant illness.
I called my disorder MGCS and continue to explain this article/give them a copy whenever I see a new doc and I want them to know the significance of this ‘undetermined’ condition, hoping to illustrate the gravity of impact of these symptoms which aren’t cancerous, as well as demonstrate that dismissiveness and apathy will not be accepted while I am in the room with them, because I have presented reasonable corroborative medical research along with my objective test results to shut down any ambiguity that may arise regarding my genuineness. In other words, don’t tell me I have munchausens, ever again. Now, they seem to think I have MGRenalS with light chain disease of some sort, or I’ve morphed into SMM (in two years after MGUS diagnosis).
There’s other bits of research out there regarding formally investigating and accepting that ‘MGUS’ isn’t the zero effect/symptom disorder that some medics try to erroneously train us to believe, and that it’s worth reviewing the entire clinical approach towards the false belief that it is benign in all ways - if that was the case, then it simply wouldn’t exist. You can’t have a disorder that is known to cause some non-cancerous effect and have the progression (fast or slow) to cancer, and then consider it to be of no effect; that makes zero sense. Why monitor it if it does no harm? Nonsense like this must come to an end - it’s an avalanche of perpetual gaslighting! 🤭
I’m being facetious here, however I think there is weight to the underlying reasoning of stopping the concept that MGUS is a mostly homogenous disorder that isn’t seriously potentially harmful in and of itself.
The other component I want to see researched is retrospective longitudinal investigations (adjusted for confounders like limited data when MGUS wasn’t as widely known or tested for), to illuminate the question of whether MGUS/MGCS is growing across populations (sex, genetic background, age, geographical location, chemical exposure, and financial access/nutritional profiles, etc), and then determine rates of increase (if so) in societies across these populations. Then I want to see detection methods improve, and preventative research undertaken (how to stop it developing in a high risk individual per the data). But this will need to start with the medical and research professions acknowledging the magnitude of the problem first and foremost, and for funding entities to grant access to the funds required to conduct robust research and development of detection and intervention methods.
Take good care and I wish you all the best at your next appointment 🌺