The Overshare

I come from a, um, potty talk family. I also have quite literally shoveled horse crap the majority of my life. Add to that regular lengthy discussions about stool with GI doctors, nurses, nutritionists, and embarrassed med students and sometimes I forget that not everyone thinks that poop talk is normal.

So when I actually took a picture of James's poop last week, I feared I may have crossed a line. So I reined myself in and only sent it to my mom and husband. They were suitably impressed though, and here's why:

About two weeks ago I was shamelessly eavesdropping on some other moms at James's school. They were discussing how this one mom has totally turned her son around through diet with his failure to thrive, bacterial overgrowth, and leaky gut. Oh, and they were discussing poop. I was hooked. Anyway, I have started emailing regularly and at length with her. I really haven't hooked up with a holistic type nutritionist I think because I was a little afraid of them wanting to experiment with eliminating things from his diet and I just don't think he can handle that. This mom had the same concerns and she basically has taken different parts of all the gut healing diets out there that she thought her son would partake in and truly helped him. Things that included raw milk products, coconut water kefir, and sprouted grains and flours. I jumped right on the bandwagon and we are already seeing big results.

The idea is to crowd out the bad bacteria with good while also providing nutrient and calorie dense food. But also the idea is using whole foods rather than synthetic crap made in a lab. It takes time to work them up and there is a die off effect that is a little rough. And we saw that and continue to see it as we add different things in. But before I added more good bacteria in and things started...um...moving more, he had the first normal poop of his life! I was thrilled! Hence the picture. Which I will not post. I will not post. I will not post.

Funny that on the same day Tom had been talking to a woman about joining a cow share and all the health benefits of raw milk as well. See, we have a jersey cow, and she has a calf at her side, but she's not trained or very tame. You can pet her, but I ain't milking her. No way, Jose. Plus we have no idea what we're doing in that department, yet. Fortunately she has had a baby girl, who I've named Butter. A Wagyu/Jersey milking cow...eventually. But for now, we thought we'd learn through Rucker Farm which is located 8 minutes from our house. ( www.ruckerfarm.com if you're interested)

See, it's illegal to sell raw milk in Virginia, and most other states I believe. But you can buy a share in a cow, and then receive milk and share with other families that own a share. This works great because one cow gives a lot of milk! Pasteurization kills bad bacteria in milk, yes. But it also kills most of the nutrients, enzymes, and probiotics in it as well, making it really not that good for you or easy to digest. In fact, I know several people who can drink raw milk and not store bought.

At our new shared dairy we can also get cream (it is amazing), yogurt, cottage cheese, cheese, butter, and cultured butter (which is apparently amazingly good for you), AND she will teach us how to make it all, which really fulfills my need to make everything myself, which is almost getting out of hand. You can go to www.westonaprice.org and that has a lot of interesting information as to the health benefits of heading back to nature. Don't get me wrong, as the granddaughter of a doctor and a sister to a doctor, I'm a fan of modern medicine, but there are irrefutable benefits to eating naturally that a laboratory can't beat. And I have to say, Tom and I feel so good physically and mentally from these changes we have made. There's still a lot of work to do to heal James's little system, but I finally feel like we are on the right road and doing something proactive for our whole family.




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