Ramacher - Essential Healing Foods: A beginners guide to the Specific Carbohydrate Diet

Getting started on healing your gut.By bestselling author Sandra Ramacher - Healing Foods, Cooking for Celiacs, Colitis, Crohns and IBS

Published first in 2015
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Noosaville Qld 4566
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E-mail: sandra@elephantpublishing.com
Chief Executive: Sandra Ramacher
Photographer: Sandra Ramacher
Food Preparation: Sandra Ramacher
Recipes developed by Sandra Ramacher
Text, design and illustrations Elephant Publishing Pty Ltd 2015. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying recording, or otherwise without the prior written permission of the publisher. National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
Elephant Publishing Pty Ltd.
Essential Healing Foods - A Beginners Guide
Bibliography.
Includes Index
ISBN: 978-0-9803828-4-6 (mixed media)
1. Gluten-free diet - Recipes 2. Colon (Anatomy) Disease - Diet Therapy. I. Title
641.56318
IMPORTANT: This book contains recipes which are based on a diet which is to enhance health. The author recognizes that the treatment of illness and the enhancement of health through diet should be supervised by a duly qualified physician. Consult your doctor before starting the diet as proposed here. This book will be of particular help if used in conjunc-tion with the advice of a physician who is particularly specialized in the field of nutrition.

The author and publisher do not assume medical or legal liability for the use or misuse of the information and diet regimen contained in this book.

Those who might be at risk from the effects of salmonella poisoning (the elderly, pregnant women, young children and those suffering from immune deficiency diseases) should con-sult their doctor with any concerns about eating raw eggs.
*SCD and Specific Carbohydrate Diet are trademarks of Kirkton Press Limited

i

Essential Healing Foods is my new e-book that guides people through the Intro and Stage 1 of the Specific Carbohydrate Diet. It was born out of the need to share with others how easy it can be to take charge of an autoimmune disease that manifests it-self as a severe digestive disorder, and the medical society deems incurable.medical community is right about autoimmune diseases being incurable, but it doesnt mean they cant be managed with diet as well as orthodox medication, and, in my case, and many others, eventually diet alone.

I have been following the Specific Carbohydrate Diet way of eating for over 8 years now, and it has kept me in remission for that period of time. Except once I had a ma-jor relapse. I wont bore you with the whole story but will tell you why it happened, what I did about it and what the result was.

I may not be a medical expert, but I am an expert of my own body. I believe the re-lapse occurred for three major reasons: one I contracted a virus that threw me for a loop and I took some medication I shouldnt have, including anti-biotics, ibuprofen and other pain killers (I was desperate and my doctor has a two week waiting list); sec-ond, I had major stress in my life, and third, I had begun to supplement my diet with some crappy gluten free stuff (Ive learnt my lesson there).

My relapse was so bad my doctor immediately placed me back on Cortisone and Mesa-lazine. I bow to the god of Cortisone (a dangerous god), but it saved my life and al-lowed me to get my head around starting all over again with the Specific Carbohydrate Diet. I spent three months on Cortisone going from 60 mg down to 2.5 g and then none. I took another three months to wean off the Mesalazine and get back into full remission.

I began again with the Intro Stage of the diet and then moved forward through the stages over that period of time. I supplemented my diet with the recommended vita-mins and minerals, which were suggested by my bio-medical doctor (you can check out what Im taking here, but remember your bio-medical doctor should be consulted first http://www.iherb.com?rcode=KIG694)

I looked after myself, mentally as well. Stress is really just a frame of mind, so lots of relaxing through reading, watching movies and meditating. I got excited to write Es-sential Healing Foods, because after going through a relapse and starting all over again with the diet I could acknowledge again that this way of eating works. Perhaps the

iii There are 5 stages recommended on The Specific Carbohydrate Diet (SCD) Begin with the Intro Diet.

This book talks about the intro part of the diet as well as the first stage. The intro and
first stage are the most important aspect of the diet for several reasons. Firstly, the di
gestive system has been compromised for so long that due to inflammation and some
times ulceration it cannot absorb any kinds of nutrients from the foods you put into it.
To begin with we need to allow the inflammation to recede and the ulceration to start
healing. Therefore the foods in the intro part and first stage of the diet are gentle and
easy to digest.

It depends on how committed you are to keeping to the stages of the diet as to how
successful you will be to fully recover from your disease.

To determine when to introduce the next stage of foods, you simply monitor your di
gestive wellbeing. If you find that you are improving on one stage of the diet start to
introduce some new foods.

Generally speaking the intro part of the diet needs to be adhered to for at least 4 days
and sometimes up to two weeks. If dairy is no problem introduce the yogurt slowly as
bacterial die off will occur the first few days. This can cause bloating, diarrhea and
stomach aches. This should cease after a couple of days.

If you are avoiding dairy as well, please substitute the coconut yogurt for the dairy in
gredients. Even though The Specific Carbohydrate Diet recommends coconut milk
in the later stage of the diet I suggest you try a little to begin with and see how it sits
in your stomach. Coconut yogurt is a great alternative to dairy yogurt and my personal