Shake it up: Ten Ways to Embrace Change in Your Diet and a Raw Strawberry "Milk"Shake

I am excited to be part of the continuing 30 Days to a Food Revolution blogging event initiated by Diane over at The W.H.O.L.E. Gang. Inspired by Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution to make a difference, she asked 30 different bloggers to share ways to shift from processed foods or unhealthy foods to the foods our bodies need and love.  From April 26-June 4, her blog was filled with these amazing bloggers sharing their wisdom, and it was such a pleasure to read! Since the event was such a hit, Diane wanted to extend the event past the original 30 days and recruited more bloggers to contribute for ongoing posts.  I happily volunteered, and am so excited to be contributing to the growing real food movement. 

My tip: Embrace change and shake it up.

My recipe: Raw Strawberry "Milk"Shake

Everyday, I try to shake it up a bit.   Maybe I sit in a different bus seat.  Maybe I jazz up an old dress with a new belt.  Maybe I try out a new recipe. Sometimes it is a larger decision, like choosing to take part in a new volunteer event, starting a new writing project, or making changes to my educational or work timeline.  Anyone who knows me will tell you: I thrive on change. 

When I was diagnosed with multiple food allergies and intolerances, a Candida albicans overgrowth, and chronic Lyme Disease, I was forced to confront a lot of changes.  Not the least of these changes was reinventing my diet - I needed to eliminate gluten, sugar, yeast, and my many allergens, and make a full transition to whole foods cooking.  I knew I had two choices:  fight change and be miserable, or embrace change and discover joy in the unexpected.

In short? I could either get crabby or get creative.

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Book Review // Healing Lyme Disease Naturally: History, Analysis, and Treatments, by Wolf D. Storl

Every well-stocked purse should have a BPA-free water bottle and a book.

I just finished reading Healing Lyme Disease Naturally: History, Analysis, and Treatments, a new book by anthropologist Wolf D. Storl.  I was totally obsessed with this book and couldn't put it down. It contains so much information about the history of Lyme, various theories on the disease, as well as treatment methods. Storl's experience as a well-seasoned anthropologist is evident in his exploration of the relationship between medicine, culture, and politics.  He is fairly radical in his assessment of the way that Lyme Disease and ticks are portrayed and the way that the relationship of epidemic disease, advances in medicine and technology, and general cultural trends have effected our relationship to nature.  At times, he is quite esoteric, discussing the possibility that ticks are really messengers from the Earth, encouraging us to listen more closely to nature and return to the wisdom of the ancients.  He even dives headlong into a discussion of shamanistic tradition, mythology, and the planetary bodies.  This book is all over the place - and yet, I think it is totally approachable.

Storl is no stranger to Lyme Disease. He contracted it and suffered all the classic symptoms.  As someone intolerant to antibiotics, he sought out care using herbs. Eventually, he found his way to teasel root, and found it to be a vital part to his recovery.

Click to read more ...

Tune into "Voices of Lyme Disease" on Sunday, co-hosted by me.

Lyme Disease is more complex than what the back of the bug spray can suggests. Spreading at a rate 7 times faster than that of AIDS, it is estimated that as many as 300,000 new cases will be contracted this year alone, but only about 10% of us will be properly diagnosed and treated. That means that man of us could end up with serious illnesses. 

May is Lyme Disease Awareness Month.  On Sunday, May 16 at 6 pm Central Standard Time, I will be hosting a live radio program with fellow fierce Lyme warrior Jeanne Marie Bain to help spread awareness.  We will hear stories from adults, teens, and kids who have been fighting for years to get the right diagnosis, and were surprised to learn that a little tick was responsible for all the chaos in their bodies. They will share insights, humor, and resources they've learned in their fight with Lyme disease and other Tick-borne infections.

If you live in Minneapolis, MN listen on 90.3 FM and in St.Paul, MN on 106.7 FM.  If you live anywhere else, you can stream it live online at http://www.kfai.org/ through Windows Media Player or iTunes.  If you miss the live broadcast, the episode will be available online after the the broadcast for 2 weeks at http://www.kfai.org/waveproject.

I am honored and excited to have the opportunity to work with Jeanne on this broadcast, and am excited to be able to participate in sharing valuable and meaningful information through the forum of community sponsored radio.  

If you have the time or the interest, please tune in and listen to the broadcast.  You may learn something new about Lyme Disease, you'll hear meaningful personal stories, and you'll get to hear my radio voice, which I'm told is very nice.  ; )

Voices of Lyme Disease

Live Radio Program with Kim Christensen and Jeanne Marie Bain

Sunday, May 16, 2010 at 6 pm CST on KFAI: Radio Without Boundaries

Minneapolis 90.3 FM   St. Paul  106.7 FM  

Online Live Stream:  http://www.kfai.org/

Download after the broadcast: http://www.kfai.org/waveproject

PS - I will also be on the radio June 19 - check out my Events page for all the info!

How to Remove a Tick and Get it Tested For Lyme Disease

I subscribe to newsletters from Greg Lee, a licensed acupuncturist, Chinese herbalist, and Master Sufi Healer in Maryland. He is co-founder of the Two Frogs Healing Center, and has helped clients to heal Lyme disease chronic pain, fatigue, and mental fogginess. He sends out lots of great newsletters about Lyme Disease, and I got this one recently. He allows all his articles to be republished in full form, and I thought that it was a great article to share.  It is Lyme Disease Awareness Month, after all, and the start of tick season.

Please take the time to read this article. Properly removing a tick and getting it tested for Lyme Disease may save your life!

How to Remove a Tick and Get it Tested for Lyme Disease

For people who find a tick embedded in their skin

By Greg Lee, co-founder of the Two Frogs Healing Center

"Uh oh," I thought as I discovered a small embedded tick on my daughter's head. My second thought was, "Did it just give her Lyme disease?" Here is what you can do when you find an attached tick.

How long does it take for a tick to transmit Lyme disease to a person?

Deer tick nymphs can be as small as a poppy seed or a little larger than the size of this period ".". The adults can be about the size of a sunflower seed or about the size of the letter "o". The tick on my daughter was an adult deer tick.

Some experts say that it needs to be attached 24 hours or longer to transmit the bacteria. Others say that you can get infected as soon as the tick bites you. The truth is that no one knows for sure how long a tick has to be attached to infect you. Also, only 50% of people who get infected ever develop a bulls eye rash. My daughter had a raised bump where the tick was attached and did not develop a rash. The first thing we did was to get the tick out.

Click to read more ...

Guest post on Lymenaide: "Lyme-friendly Food: What is There to Eat?"

I'm excited to announce that I am a guest blogger on Lymenaide, an excellent Lyme blog started by fellow Lymie Ashley Von Tol.  Her vision is for Lymenaide to become a great source of information for Lymies, written by other Lymies, and I'm honored to have been invited as a contributor.  

I will be doing regular posts about Lyme-friendly food and will share recipes, as well as provide some Lyme-specific and general healing dietary advice garnished from my own experience, practitioner's advice, and obsessive research and reading.  I just posted my first post, "Lyme-friendly food: What is there to eat?".  It is just an introductory post to kick off my article series, briefly discussing some of the struggles with the Lyme diet, and features a number links back to recipes on this site.  

After being diagnosed with Lyme, I was thrilled to find out the diet I had intuitively settled on for myself fit in line with Lyme treatment protocol.  Without knowing it, I had been addressing Lyme from a dietary perspective all along!   My naturopath believes that is one of the reasons that I was able to return from the teetering brink of disaster I was at a couple years ago and manage my symptoms fairly well, and not continue to get even worse.  Truthfully, I feel like I saved myself from a whole world of trouble that I can't even imagine.  It scares me to think about, and I'm thankful that I will most likely never need to visit that place.

Be sure to check out Lymenaide for lots of great posts on various aspects of living with and treating Lyme.  Earlier in the week there were posts about the potential dangers of electro-magnetic fields and another post about the benefits of infrared saunas during treatment. I'm hoping to be able to get a feed set up on this blog to import posts, but in the meantime, I'll be calling out when I post a new article!