#NerdsUnite: With love from Lillian & her food allergies
<editorsnote> Nerds, meet my buddy Lillian. She and I met at SXSW this year where she gave me this EPIC STRAW COWBOY HAT!!! I swear, I heart it so much it hurts. Either way, Lillian is a big food nerd with oodles and oodles of food allergies. She's here to talk about her life, love, and all things through her two sometimes four eyes. I only have one more thing left to say ... HIT IT LILLIAN!!! </editorsnote>
#TalkNerdyToMeLover's @lilstestkitchen
When I go to the doctor one of the first questions I ask about an issue, is always:
“So, is this normal?”
I know what I’m really asking. I’m asking whether or not whatever is going on is healthy. I know that. But that’s not what I ask. I ask if it’s normal. As if it’s the same thing. But it’s not and I know this.
The way I eat is definitely not “normal” (grain-free/gluten-free, dairy-free, cane sugar-free, and soy-free) but it sure is healthy (for me). I’m much healthier than I was when I was eating a more “normal” diet. That is been obvious. And so this concept of “normal not being necessarily healthy” should be pretty clear to me. And yet, I guess it’s not, because when I go to the doctor, I don’t ask if something is healthy. I ask if it’s normal.
When I ask if something is normal, I’m asking whether or not it is common. And how common it is has absolutely nothing to do with health.
So what’s going one here? What’s with the importance of normalcy? Why do I care so much whether or not “it’s normal” to have reactions to cane sugar? Why would thinking “everyone can eat soy but me.” and “But it’s supposed to be this magical health food!” stop me from taking my own reactions to it seriously? Why is this such a quagmire?
One of the clearest places that I see this conflation between what’s “normal” and what’s “healthy” is with farts. I have gotten into quite a few arguments about this: whether or not farting a lot is a sign of digestive distress or if it’s not a sign of anything at all. I’ve had (at this point) this conversation so often that I did some research on it. And this is what I have found:
The average and therefore normal amount to fart is around 14 times a day. To be clear, farting in and of itself isn’t necessarily unhealthy according to wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatulence), or Dr. Oz:
But according to Dr. Ben Kim over at http://chetday.com/digestiongas.htm super smelly farts can be a sign that you aren’t digesting your food properly (which would be unhealthy). And that there is a “toxin formation occurring inside your gut from rotting of incompletely digested food, and some of these toxins are entering your blood stream and contributing to the development of long term disease.”
So, depending on what kind of farts you’re pushing out into the world, your very normal 14 daily farts might be a sign of digestive distress and possible sickness, and therefore are not healthy at all.
Now, I know that this may be a fine line to be climbing all over, but the point is: just because everyone else has the same problem, or that it’s a common problem, that doesn’t mean that it’s not a problem.