Recovering from serious food intolerances

More specifically, this is about how I recovered from severe intolerance to chicken I had for about 20 years.

Since 2002 until just this week, I had avoided chicken because I had repeated episodes of severe food poisoning every time I encountered it. It began around 2001 when I made chicken broth and left it out to cool overnight (bad idea – always refrigerate).

In 2002 I ate a chicken sandwich with some fellow non-profit volunteers at Outback Steakhouse. As far as I know, no one got sick but me. That officially marked the end of me eating chicken. Any food that had even touched chicken or been cooked in the same oil that chicken had been cooked in would make me sick.

The episodes were severe, flu-like. Fever, body aches, bedridden, unable to eat much of anything. My stomach would not be triggered to vomit by the offending food. Instead, I absorbed it into my system. I ended up at my homeopath’s office with this trouble. He gave me Pyrogen 30c and Pyrogen 200c. Pyrogen is made from beef left out to fester with bacteria.

In 2003-04 it was at its worst. I got sick with extreme episodes that would take me 2 weeks to recover from. The worst episode happened when I was already sick with the flu. It took months for me to feel ‘normal’ again after that one.

I’ve only had one reaction like this to any other meat.

I thought of it as a hole in my immune system that would take time to patch up. But I had no plans to ever eat chicken again. It had burned me too severely too many times. I’d lost my taste for it entirely.

Reovery

Things changed after I found my life mate, Heather, in 2009. We’ve lived together since spring of 2010. March 2009 was the last time I had a full-blown episode of this kind of food poisoning (from another type of meat/grease).

Since then, my stomach has been triggered when I’ve encountered anything that I later suspected to be cross-contamination of my food with chicken. I would vomit and within a couple hours it would be out of my system and I’d be okay — the way it is normally supposed to go with food poisoning. I had a couple episodes of this between about 2011 and 2014 or so.

Love and support from Heather has helped tremendously.

The stomach is very involved with our feeling of nurturing and being nurtured. The immune system is very much influenced by our feeling of strength to fend off things that do not support our health as individuals. When we are emotionally healthier, our digestion and immunity function better.

Herbally, I’ve used a Reishi mushroom a lot (for up to several weeks at a time) over the last few years because I’ve also had seasonal (spring) allergies that indicated the need to modulate my immune system. Before that I used Ashwaghandha off-and-on. These are immune system modulators.

During the episodes of infection I’d also take Activated Charcoal to absorb as much of the offending matter from my GI tract as possible.

I also took Japanese Honeysuckle: Lonicera japonica, the kind of honeysuckle with the white flowers, because it was growing on my home property and was easy to harvest. Both the flowers and stem (vine) can be used, just as indicated in the TCM materia medica: https://www.americandragon.com/Individualherbsupdate/RenDongTeng.html
https://www.americandragon.com/Individualherbsupdate/JinYinHua.html

Homeopathically, I made a mother tincture of dodgy chicken years ago in anticipation of making a remedy. However, the Pyrogen 30c and 200c worked well enough that there was no need for it. I’ve not had to use the Pyrogen remedy since at least 2009. It helped during recovery from infection, but also helped build up some tolerance.

During these years I was very careful about cross-contamination and washed my hands immediately after having any contact with chicken (or other meats). In the last few months as my immunity gained greater strength I noticed greater confidence in making chicken brother for my older dog. I’d get my hands fully involved, whereas before I’d just use utensils.

Recovery Complete: November 2023

A couple days after Thanksgiving I had a dream of eating two chicken patties (like you’d have on a chicken sandwich). There was no worry or issue and in the dream it felt completely normal and appropriate.

So I made chicken stock from a leftover carcass of a roasted chicken my wife had eaten. I boiled it for a few hours, then poured it into a quart jar and put it in the fridge overnight. I then scooped the fat that had risen to the top and used the hardened, gelatinous stock to make a soup with vegetables, sage, and bay leaf. It was delicious and I had zero problems.

This is one example of how recovery can happen naturally, in time and with completely natural remedies.

Not once did I ever use pharmaceutical anti-biotics!

This is very key. Anti-biotics use would have really messed up my gut flora and immune system. They would have made full recovery much harder if not impossible.

The only anti-infection agents I needed were herbal and homeopathic.

The only immune system toners I needed were also natural.

I haven’t had a single dose of Rx antibiotics since I was about 17 (about 36 years as of this article).

Now let me be very blunt

If your herbalist runs to the MD for antibiotics when they get sick or says that such pharmaceutical antibiotics are best in those situations … YOU NEED A BETTER HERBALIST!

A real herbalist knows that Mother Nature has multiple remedies for anything that can ail the human being (or any other animal). It just takes time and study to find them.

I have learned from all my bad experiences so that I can better help family, friends — and you!

I wish you healing and happiness this holiday season.

The herbal brands I recommend

People ask me what brands or companies I recommend for herbs and supplements. There are lots of good companies out there. So here’s a list of the ones I can recommend based on my experience over the last 30 years.

#1 is Nature’s Sunshine Products – they’re the longest running big herb company (since 1972) and their line of Chinese constitutional formulas is excellent. They set the standard for lab testing and quality control. Yes, they are MLM in their marketing, which I don’t like, but their products are very well put together — top notch. You can start taking one of their herbal blends and use it as a model to replace the formula less expensively.

Nature’s Way, Solaray, Solgar, Herb Pharm, Pure Herbs, Oregon’s Wild Harvest, Hawaii Pharm are all good for encapsulated herbs or tinctures. I’m sure there are others I’ve forgotten. I think Avena Botanicals should be good as well, since they sell a freshly tinctured Skullcap. At least they’re the only company I’ve found so far that sells it.

And you can rely on the Planetary Herbals brand, which is Michael Tierra’s east-west line of products. He’s probably the leading ND in the US as far as publishing and teaching, and has been for decades.

Chinese herbs

I work closely with Golden Lotus Botanicals and get many things from them, not just TCM herbs. For bulk TCM herbs, Plum Dragon and Plum Flower.

And you can rely on anything sold at ITMonline.org as that is Subhuti Dharmananda’s organization and he is an authority on purity and contaminants in imported herbs. He’s a PhD chemist and OMD here in Portland.

Bulk single herbs in powder or C/S form

I buy mostly from Monterey Bay Spice Company (herbco.com). But Mountain Rose Organics, Mountain Maus, San Francisco Herb Co., Starwest, Frontier Co-op, and Herbs First are also good. I buy from the wholesaler who has the specific herb I’m looking for. If I’m satisfied with the quality I keep ordering from them.

Just don’t buy the store brands at any drug store or Walmart — please!

They’re terrible. Many of these cheap brands have been found to have sawdust and similar trashy contaminants in the powders of their encapsulated herbs. You want a company that deals directly with the farmers or their distributors in the various countries where the herbs are grown and is dedicated to quality herbal medicine with quality control people in place.

That makes the NOW brand a bit suspect, because they don’t seem to like quality control and have been known to hang up on people calling to inquire about it. I will use this brand occasionally for some things, just not any new type of supplement and not their Spirulina or Blue-green algae stuff.

Any brands or sources that you’ve had good experience with that you keep buying from?

More on constitutional health

There are lots of fad diets and health trends out there. 90% of them inevitably come to an end with no real lasting benefits to the individuals who tried them.

Unfortunately, even scientific research contributes to this. I use St. Johnswort herb as an example of this. It was never a very good antidepressant. (It is more an anti-inflammatory, anti-anxiety nervine with diuretic properties.) It certainly is not very effective for the majority of persons diagnosed with ‘clinical depression.’ What happened is that the scientific researchers, for whatever reason, got focused on St. Johnswort as a trendy herb to investigate. This can create an illusion that the herb was a good antidepressant because of how many studies were done pursuing that idea. It is really no more effective than placebo for treating depression.

The research was aimed at a condition, a medical label of ‘clinical depression’, which is not a person. That label immediately groups people together who may have little connection in terms of their core constitution or how they are experiencing depression. So the individual (constitutional) differences in the subjects of the various studies was not taken into account.

For herbs to be consistently better than placebo, and to avoid potential drawbacks in taking them, it is best to take into account the person’s individual constitution. To do that, you have to possess a basis for evaluating it. That is what I have learned from Subhuti Dharmanandha’s book Your Nature, Your Health (taken from Chinese medicine) — and from homeopathy. The two of those together have given me many insights to apply.

It is very important to listen to and understand the person experiencing the illness or dis-ease in order to help them towards genuine healing.

I have found this to be the best approach to helping people with selections of herbs and remedies (even dietary suggestions). Sometimes I hear enough from a person just in a casual conversation to be able to make a recommendation that can help them significantly. Sometimes it takes a more purposeful effort and more time listening.

I strive to remain a people-oriented herbalist. This allows the room for each person’s uniqueness to reveal itself, along with positive, empowering steps towards healing.

So beyond being an herbalist who turns herbs into fluid extracts or tinctures, being a constitutional herbalist means I am looking to understand the individual before me. That means their pattern, their health history, etc, so as to fit them with herbs that will be of most value to them long-term, as well as those herbs that will give them the most relief now.

Announcement: change of content/work

You may notice that I have removed all astrology links in the navigation of this website. You can still access that content by searching for it with the term ‘astrology’ or more specific terms within it.

My work is now shifting completely to health and healing.

The focus will be on herbal medicine and related natural healing modalities. This change is long overdue. That’s the new content coming.

There will be new content soon that will help you better navigate the best options for you within natural healing. Many modalities within natural healing are very effective. The problem has always been lack of knowledge, training, or adequate explanations for how laypersons can pick the best modes or select the best options from within the various modes of natural healing. Some areas of TCM, for example, have been neglected in transplanting it to the west.

Plant Medicine is Still King

Herbal medicine has been one of the most dominant forms of medicine throughout human history — and it is more developed and deeper than ever. The issue is not its effectiveness, but the effectiveness of the way in which we employ herbal medicine through the selection of the herbs or formulas we use. Laypersons need better guidance on this.

The most important remedies to this problem is better understanding of the individual, ourselves or others, before we select herbs or therapies.

There are two main factors in natural healing:

– The person in question, their body, their constitution, and their own intuition.
– The external factors of the various modes of therapy, the plants, practitioners, etc.

We often focus too much on the external options, the myriad of herbs, supplements, etc, with too much guesswork or too thin a scientific/medical basis for selecting them.

Understand you better: your constitution.

This will be the first emphasis to my added health-related content. Better understanding of the constitution of the individual. I will be giving you descriptions, illustrations, images, checklists, and questionnaires designed to better categorize and understand your constitution so that you and I both have better pointers to what herbs, therapies, or modes of healing will work best for you. I am developing these tools carefully so that they create clarity in your mind one step at a time, leading to decisive choices for the betterment of your health and well being.

This will start with an explanation of constitutional health. We need better, clearer understanding of the strength of our constitution and the elemental nature of our constitution in order to make choices and build habits that consistently improve our overall health and well being.

I welcome feedback

Please, give me feedback so that I can keep improving the usefulness of these tools. I am working on them, but the test is how useful you find them.

In peace and healing,
Kannon