Day 18 (whoops!)

So, guess who got behind on her MCAT studying (hint: me). That resulted in a self-imposed ban of "fun" internet until I got caught up again. There's been not much new in the past four days, though. I ate meat, drank sparkling water and heavy cream, and studied almost eleven hours each day. My Crohn's has been basically non-existant, and.... now you're caught up.


To get back on track with the two-month-long food diary:

Breakfast
3 slices of bacon. It kind of tasted funny, so I didn't eat it all.
A café creme with only one shot of espresso

Lunch
The most amazing college-student steak I've ever had in my life. I took pictures while making it, so look for a how-to-make-it post soon.

Mid-day studying
Coffee
Some jerky

Dinner


Drinks
Selzter water (ingredients: carbonated water)
Coffee
Café creme with more cream than coffee.

Energy level
Ridiculous as of late. Yesterday during study breaks, I reorganised the entire kitchen, boxed up food (the canned soups/canned milks/pantry "staples" that I'll no longer be using) to either give to my Mum or take to the food bank. Outside of that, I studied for 9 hours and still had energy to hang out with friends in the evening. Sheesh.

Cravings
More steak!

Overview/Crohn's symptoms
Here's a strange thing. I used to buy lots of high-quality imported chocolate when visiting home (we have a lot of quaint specialty shops for things like chocolate, coffee, spices, and so on) and store them in my pantry here. Yesterday, while sorting all the stuff to get rid of, I came across a Ziploc bag holding one square of a Brazilian 90% Cacao chocolate bar. Nice, high-quality chocolate. Without thinking, I popped the square in my mouth to "finish the bag off." It was nasty. The chocolate hadn't gone bad -- I mean, the taste was still what I remembered in my brain -- my body simply completely rejected it. So I did the only sensible thing and spit the square into the trash.

That's not all. A few seconds later, my throat started itching. Then my whole mouth started to dry out. Aaaaand then my throat started to tighten -- not drastically, but enough to be noticeable. I spent the next three minutes alternating between cough spasms and chugging water.

Weird, huh? This is purely theoretical, but here's my guess on what's happening. When your body senses an invader anywhere in your body, it ramps up your "anti-invader" antibodies. After the invader is defeated, your body stops production of anti-invader antibodies and returns to a new baseline (a low level, but a higher concentration of anti-invader antibodies in your blood than before the invasion). But, if the invader returns within a certain window of time, your body ramps up anti-invader antibodies to an even higher level than during the first attack. This is why hepatitis vaccines, for example, are given in a series.

I'm wondering if my body naturally attacks carbohydrates (for example, in my intestines -- which then get caught in the crossfire? Hm.), and since I've never taken a break from them before, I've never noticed. Then, when I let my body return to its "new baseline" (the 17 days without carbs let my body think it had "won"), it majorly overreacted to what it thought was the "invader" trying to make a comeback. That resulted in the classic food-allergy reaction + psuedo-anaphylaxis-symptoms.

Weird.