Hunger

I'm hungry.  I've been hungry since yesterday.  I think I didn't make enough juice last night and it triggered hunger pains which have continued to this morning.  I'll have to make sure to drink more juice today.  It's definitely harder to stay on the juice feast when hungry.  All sorts of things look good, even just the temptation to directly chew on and eat the veggies I'm juicing.

It's funny. I had lots of cravings for the first week.  They died down the second week.  It got to the point where I had dinner with my father on day 16 at a Vietnamese restaurant.  I had 2L GVJ and he had a vietnamese chicken and banana flower(!!!) soup.  It smelled wonderful, but I really wasn't tempted overly much.  But yesterday and today... boy.  I NEED to eat something solid.

I only got 3.5 hrs of sleep Monday night, because I'm trying to adjust my sleep schedule to wake up @ 630am in the morning.  Last night I got 5.5 hrs of sleep - better, but not great.  I am learning to take it slowly on days when I lack sleep.  The high energy bound of the two days prior is gone on these days, although at times I felt energized yesterday.  There were also long stretches of time where I felt tired and sleepy.

Yesterday's juices were nothing special.  I was extremely lazy so made lots of celery and cucumber and little else.  Mung bean sprouts tend to go sour within 3-4 days of purchase, so I'm only buying 2 bags of them from now on.

Asian veggies

Stopped by the Vietnamese market yesterday.  Everything there is super cheap, but I fear they use tons of pesticides.  There were so many things I wanted to get, but didn't: Pennywort, chives, pea sprouts, and various other leafy greens.  I also passed on a Jicama for fear of the sugar content.  I ended up with 2 daikon radishes, 12 bitter melons (bitter gourd), and 4 chayote.  I will peel and juice them.  The daikons are much less spicy than traditional radish, and I ended up juicing one whole radish and putting it in my cucumber/ginger/lemon juice this morning.  I juiced one bitter melon.  It made about two ounces of juice which I just took as a shot.  It wasn't that bad, but the aftertaste was strong.  I washed it down with Kombucha.

I went off my hypertension medicine a couple days ago to monitor my blood pressure.  It went up today, the systolic is normal: 130-145, but the diastolic was high: 85-100.  I also felt a bit of chest constriction I associate with hypertension.  I decided to go back on the medicine for now.  I also prepared a half a head of garlic juice with a full lemon.  I took that as a shot, and chased it with my cucumber juice and some Kombucha.  I will start taking the garlic regularly.  I'll also start doing some research into other natural options for hypertension.  I wish I could eat cocoa.  lol.

Sunday and Monday juices


I took it really easy on Sunday, making the following:
4L GVJ.
1L cucumber/ginger/lemon
1L mung bean stir fry.

Monday, I had to rush majorly to head up to Orange at the last minute, so I cheated.
I started the morning with 32 oz. of spinach/celery/cucumber/carrot juice from the local green lunch place.
Then I made 3L of GVJ for myself.
I then picked up 60 oz. of ginger/lemon/celery/cucumber/parsley juice from another local juice bar I just found.
The latter place is cheaper, but doesn't have spinach.  I'll probably be going there more in the future, though.  They do have ginger, lemon, and parsley, which are all great.

I skipped my skin cleaning/enema/contrast shower on Sunday, and I felt it in the evening.  I had gotten enough sleep, so it wasn't sleep deprivation.  But my skin got itchy in places, and I had to scratch at it for a little.

Sleep heals psoriasis?

Catching up on sleep these last two days.  I've woken up late, lazy, and still sleepy.  When I do, my skin loses a lot of the inflammation and redness.  Large sections of my shins this morning seem almost smooth when I run my hand over them.  Only when I run my finger over them and slowly, can I feel the small perturbations on the surface.  Those are accompanied by slight pinking, and not redness.

Emotional Flares and Physical Neglect lead to Psoriatic Flares

So I've been meaning to update the status on the psoriasis.  For awhile there, I was trying to remain agnostic about the situation, neither believing in nor disbelieving in whether it was improving.  I can't any longer.  It is undeniably improving.

My inner thighs almost cleared completely - they are 90% smooth normal skin, just a bit dark and red.  My upper thighs are 60-70% clear.  Those are the two most obvious areas of clearing.  There are smaller patches of clearing on my shins and torso.  My face has improved immensely, and I would tentatively say 80-90% clear.  There are still some areas of redness, but almost no scaling left.  Areas on my right shin that were thick and scaly when I started have now become smoother and have stopped scaling.

My arms seemed like they were clearing nicely.  Most of the redness had been leaching out of them, and the raised areas seemed to be getting smaller and less raised.  Then, I had 4 nights of upheaval.  Lack of sleep, emotional turmoil, anxiety and stress.  All enemies of health and psoriasis.  My arms flared up again, and got pretty red during from Wed through Fri.  But they've started calming down again now.  During the period of upheaval, I missed 1 skin brushing, 1 enema, 1 normal shower, 2 contrast showers, had one day of minimal juice, and lots of missed sleep.  I think it's the sleep that was the worst.  I would be up at 3-5am in the morning, and could feel my psoriasis flaring and getting itchy.  But everything's getting back on schedule now despite the late post time tonight ;-).

I have to find the time to go through the pics I've been taking and decide what to post.

OMFG LMAO

http://www.psoriasisfish.com/?p=cure_method

Today's juices:
1L: Cuc/ginger/Lemon w/ a tad of kale (I used it to push the cucumber through, but it tasted fantastic)
4L: GVJ: Cuc/celery/romaine/kale/chard/collards/sunchokes/burdock/arugala
1L: bok choy/mung bean sprouts/nori/hemp oil/phytoplankton/garlic/ginger/green onion

That standard GVJ is getting really easy and quick to make.  Honestly, the lettuce takes the longest.  I wash it fresh, so it takes washing, then stuffing it into the Omega 8003, and it gets backed up, so I need to feed the dry stuff though to clear it.

Delayed posting

As many of you have noticed.  I haven't been posting at all recently.  I've been deluged by a bunch of personal issues that have kept me up late at night and sapped my time during the day.  I've also learned a valuable lesson about sleep during the first phase of the juice feast - it is extremely important, - and I haven't been getting enough of it.  Quick summary of juices I've made the past 3 days:

Day11
1L: ginger, lemon, cucumber
2L of standard GVJ.
1L: Mung Bean + Nori + garlic/ginger/green onion + hemp oil: delicious
2L: 1/2 Butternut squash + 1/2 sweet potato + carrot + celery + base + cumin.

I wanted nutmeg, but only had cumin, so used that.  At first I didn't use base, but it was too sweet.
I then split the 1L into 2L's.

Day 12

1L: ginger, lemon, cucumber

3L: Standard GVJ

Day 13

1L: ginger, lemon, cucumber

2L: mish-mash of everything tossed in, including a beet and some fennel.  Not as bad as I expected

1L: standard GVJ

1L: cauliflower + celery + radish + various roots

The cauliflower was ... meh.  Very weird and not good.  Not buying that again.  Same with the squash (it was left over from before).  Neither cauliflower or squash juice well. They're both too dry.

Day 10

Quick notes.

I had 2 qts of juice from yesterday.  Drank them today, and 1.5 new qts.  That's only 3.5 qts.  I guess I don't need as much juice anymore.  Not thirsty or hungry at all.  I have 2 qts on hold for tomorrow morning, then.

It feels great to have 10 days under my belt.  No special juices today.  Just standard fare.

Juices - Day 8 & 9

Day 8
Since I had prewashed everything and had started a taste test, I took the whole day yesterday really lazily.  I kept the juicer out, didn't premake anything except all the stuff I had taste tested, and just kinda randomly mixed and matched throughout the day.  So, no set juices for this day.

I did try the seaweed out with bok choy.  It was wakame and kombu, bok choy, garlic greens, green onions, ginger, hemp oil.  It was weird at first, but once it warmed up to room temperature tasted decent.


Day 9
A: lemon, ginger, cucumber, water

B & F: chard, parsley, dandelion greens, celery, cucumber, lettuce

C: Kale, Pomegranate, Spinach + celery, cucumber
D: collards, parsley, celery, lettuce

E: Mung Bean Stir Fry: burdock, ginger, garlic, green onions, mung bean, carrots, celery, cucumber, hemp oil

I like the lemon, ginger, cucumber mix first thing in the morning.  It's easy and quick and allows me to hydrate.
I don't have anymore

Ferretting out a therapeutic regimen

http://www.greenmedinfo.com is a great site that Jason told me about.  It has links to positive scientific studies for natural remedies and diagnosed ailments.  Here are the links for my four chronic ailments:

Depressive Disorder
Laryngeal Pappillomas
Psoriasis
Hypertension (High-blood pressure)

---------------------------------------------
So far, promising supplements:

Fennel - in juice: Pappillomas
Curcumin (Turmeric) - in juice: Depression, Pappillomas, Psoriasis, Hypertension  <-- LOL. guess I should take some.
Coenzyme Q10: Psoriasis (w/E and Selenium) and Hypertension
Omega3 - EPA: Depression - mentioned on the talkpsoriasis forums, and also connected with my pappillomas iirc.
Aloe Gel, topical: Psoriasis
Indigo Naturalis, topical: Psoriasis

Lactoferrin: Pappillomas, and Candida (possible Psoriasis cause)

Looking at my nutritional profile for psoriasis, I think I need to supplement:
Vitamin B12
Vitamin D  (controversial, I'll write a post about this)
Vitamin E (From coq10 study)
Selenium  (From coq10 study and barney's formula) - I may get enough from my Vitamineral Earth
-----------------------------------------
I'll pick up some B12, E, and CoQ10 next time. I'll also be including Turmeric and Fennel into my juicing.
The Indigo Naturalis has been mentioned on the talkpsoriasis forums a lot, and I'm thinking of introducing that.  I'm kinda hesitant because I don't want to make the treatment too complex.

Possible source for EPA/DHA Omegas: http://www.v-pure.com/omega3/

Juicing and Nutrient digestion

MadCat found this quote on the talkpsoriasis forums.  It's from

http://www.living-foods.com/articles/benefits.html:

“Juicing removes the indigestible fiber, so nutrients are available to the body in much larger quantities than if the piece of fruit or vegetable was eaten whole. For example, because many of the nutrients are trapped in the fiber, when you eat a raw carrot, you are only able to assimilate about 1% of the available beta carotene. When a carrot is juiced, removing the fiber, nearly 100% of the beta carotene can be assimilated”.

Juice tasting time

So it occurred to me that in order to actually make recipes that taste good, I needed to know the flavors of the food I was juicing.  Everyone knows what spinach tastes like right?  Well, I didn't.  Raw juiced spinach has a very different flavor than cooked spinach.  So without further ado, here's my juice taste test.

Cucumber:  refreshing, light, sweet, touch of sour.  the skin has a mellow earthy bitter.
Romaine: 2 parts acrid bitter, 1 part smooth cream, 2 parts neutral/light/refreshing
Spinach: salty, savory, smooth richness, an almost metallic sharp aftertaste
Swiss Chard, Red: salty, buttery, complex Herb-spicy, light bitter, much saltier than spinach.  spinach tastes smooth and clean in comparison
Collard Greens:  overpowering, bitter, earthy, salty, pungent
Celery:  yummy! lol. initially salty, then a complex, savory full-bodied nutty richness, filling
Dandelion greens: extraordinarily bitter, earthy, sharp, acrid
Kale: bitter, broad-spectrum grainy enveloping bluntness
Beet greens: salty, rich, very similar to chard, except smoother and more neutral
Beets: sweet, salty, complex, rich, full-bodied

That's it for today.  Time to finish juicing and get on with my day.

Day 7: WTB: moar time

Yes, another time QQ post.  Deal with it.  My blog, my rules.

Today's timeline:

8am: wake-up, still sleep deprived and tired from 3 nights ago.
8:15am: IDF
8:30am: Anusara Yoga
10:00am:  20 oz. of juice from a local shop!!  3-4 carrots, spinach, lettuce, celery, and possibly some other greens.  Yes, I know it's more carrots than I typically alot myself, but I'll be skipping my apple today, and I think I really need the energy boost right after yoga, rather than waiting to get home and start juicing before drinking.
10:30am: Morning life practices: skin brushing, enema, contrast shower, haircare, psoriasis skincare
11:55am: Begin juicing
2:45pm: Finish juicing and start cleanup
3:20pm: Finally done in kitchen
3:20pm: Login, check email, some errands, a couple blog posts.
4:50pm: Here I am now.  2/3rds of the day gone.
Tonight: Whole Foods and I plan to buy 3 days worth of juice.  I then plan to prewash EVERYTHING.  I had been hesitating on prewashing all the stuff that needs to be torn apart (eg. celery heads, lettuce heads, cabbage heads, etc.), but I'm going to go ahead and do it.  Chain-washing everything before I even store it in the fridge should speed up juicing.  Leaves of lettuce can survive 2-3 days in the fridge without the lettuce heart/root right?  I also have more storage space.  My mom sent me some insulated storage bags I can use along with gel ices to store produce.  If I can reduce the number of shopping trips and the amount of washing time, it will help A LOT.

Today's juices
------------------
Base: 4 cucs, 2 celery, 2 romaine
A: Base + Beet, burdock root, sunchoke root, kale, parsley.  (the first 3 come out really sweet allowing me to offset the kale).
B: 8 oz cup: ginger, lemon, sprout salad - NB (no base)
C: 1 carrot + 650 mL of base (mixed in with the vitamin. earth/greens)
D: Arugala + chard + base
E: Escarole + Spinach + base
F: Mung bean Stir Fry - NB (Juice E from yesterday without the base)
G: Aloe + Sprouts + base

I found a different method of dealing with cucumbers today.  They are so watery they tend to jam up the Omega 8003.  However, if I feed them alone, they do ok. I was able to juice all 4 cucumbers and create 1.2L of juice.  I ended up with a decent amount of fairly wet cucumber pulp (it's always wet).  Since it was only cucumber pulp, I made the decision to feed it all back through.  Ugh.  I extracted another 0.2L of cucumber juice, and took an extra 20 mins doing so.   The juicer backed up like crazy and it took forever to refeed all the pulp through.  I also had to add a carrot since it creates one of the driest pulps.

Why the sugar restriction?

Someone asked me that on the talkpsoriasis forums, and I answered the following:

Firstly, there's the whole insulin/sugar theory promoted by Archael:http://www.talkpsoriasis.org/showthread.php?t=39171

Secondly, there's a correlation between diabetes and psoriasis, as well as a german study Archael linked that found 88% of psoriasis subjects had hyperinsulimia.

Thirdly, there's a lot of studies pointing to candida as a cause for psoriasis. Controlling sugar intake will starve candida and help eliminate it from your system.

Fourthly, if you look at the profile of diets that have had success, there's a strong profile of low-sugar diets. Typical raw-food vegetarian diets are fairly heavy on fruit intake. However, the Pagano diet, for instance, emphasizes vegetables over fruits.

Fifthly, there is anecdotal evidence from people who have said that fruit juice seems to stimulate their psoriasis.

Sixthly, green vegetables are alkalinizing, whereas fruit juices are not, and some may even be acidizing. Pagano stresses the importance of the alkaline-acid ratio of the diet, and imo, keeping a strong alkaline-acid ratio is one of the most difficult things to do on his diet. It's easy to restrict foods out of the diet, much harder to say you can eat nuts and grains, but only in a very limited amount at such and such ratio to greens and other alkaline-forming foods. I know I couldn't observe his suggeted 3:1 ratio when I was on his diet.

Seventhly, there are anecdotal reports of people who have juiced heavily and/or juice-feasted with fruit juices and have not cleared. The blog mentioned is one of them. It seems you're another.

Honestly, I may be going a bit too extreme in my restrictions of one beet, one carrot, and one apple a day, but I'd rather clear and reintroduce than struggle to clear.

I guess I'm a Chinese cook after all.

Day 6 juices:

CCR base

Juice A: apple + kale + base

Juice B: argala + base

Juice C: beet + dandelion greens + base

Juice D: carrot + base

Juice E:  2 cloves shallots, 4 garlic greens, 1 chunk of ginger, 12 oz. mung bean sprouts, 1/2 head napa cabbage,  2-3 celery stalks, 3/4ths cucumber.

I made Juice E when I got back tonight @ 9pm.  It almost tasted like a stir fry.  I've been thinking of trying some mushrooms.  A shiitake or two would've made it really yummy.  Green onions, too.  I added some phytonutrients for salt in the mix, and my tablespoon of hemp oil.  I think I'll try some seaweed, too.

It made me realize that with a little effort and creativity the juices can taste really yummy, and they don't have to taste bad.

Sleep is good, dumbass!

So I stayed up until 6am on Tuesday night, resulting in posting delays both yesterday and today.  I got up and did yoga @ 7am both days, and I was reasonably awake yesterday save a couple short cat naps, but today I really got hit with exhaustion despite sleeping 7+ hours last night.

So I'm learning a few things about the diet:  I don't really get hungry anymore.  I get cold and tired.  I've learned that if I'm cold or tired, it means I need to drink.  If I drink some room temperature juice when cold I actually warm up and wake up, too.  However refrigerator temperature juice doesn't warm me, and makes me colder.  After yoga yesterday, I came home and made a ginger zinger for myself.  On only 1 hour of sleep, I drank it ice cold without thinking, hoping the spice in it would give me energy.  It did the opposite. I got frozen and cold and huddled in bed for an hour.  At night, I made a super-garlicy juice, too, and the same thing happened - except this time it was room temperature.  I've got to cut back on the amount of strong spices like garlic and ginger I put in.  I figured more was better, right?  No.  Too much of either is too much for my stomach to handle.   A shot or two of something that strong is ok, 800 mL of it is not. Without further ado, here are my juices from yesterday.

Day 5 juices:


Juice A: ginger, lemon, mustard greens, parsley and base. 800 mL.
Juice B: apple, bok choy, and base 1.5L.
Juice C: Arugala, spinach and base. 1L.
Juice D: Aloe, carrot, broccoli, cilantro, and base. 1L.
Juice E: garlic greens, burdock root, sprout medley, and base. 1L.

The thing about the feast is that I'm losing weight.  Not obscenely fast, mind you, but I'm losing weight, which means my body is using up its energy reserves.  Since it's winter, I'm constantly cold.  I'm working on adjusting my caloric intake.  I'm taking in a lot fewer fruits and root veggies, so I think my caloric intake is lower than typical juice feasters.

I posted the following on the Green Room forums:

I started making nutrition calculations based on the unjuiced weight of veggies using www.nutritiondata.com, as suggested on Day 26 of the 92-day course. However, we obviously don't ingest the full raw vegetable, so these data are inaccurate. How much nutrition gets lost with the pulp? Can I simply pro-rate all the nutrition by weight and attribute the lost calories and nutrients to the pulp?

A different way of asking the question would be: What should I target as a total daily calorie count for the unjuiced raw fruits and vegetables. I find I am juicing approximately 12 lbs of greens and that comes to 1600 calories according to www.nutritiondata.com.  That is a bit low, so I'm guessing I have to up my intake.

Day 4 Juices

Base: CCR (celery, cucumber, romaine) + swiss chard base

A: persimmon, 1/3 sweet potato, dino kale

B: lemon, ginger, mustard greens, arugala, parsley

C: beets, collard greens, parsley

D: carrot, garlic, spinach, arugala

G: aloe, parsley, garlic, onion sprouts

-----------------------------

Big cucumbers are big.  The base got too watery and wouldn't pass through the juicer, so I had to add a batch of chard into the base.  I only used one head of Romaine.

I forgot my slippery elm bark tea in the morning, so took it in the afternoon.  I really have much too long of a pause between my morning MSM (~8:45am this morning after yoga) and my first L of juice (A, above): ~11:30am this morning.  The reason for the pause is the following:  drive home, take veggies out of fridge, skin brushing, enema, shower,  skin care, wash veggies, start juicing.  I don't know how to cut that time short. I can pre-wash veggies the night before, but I did 80% of my prewashing last night already, and it still took almost 3 hours.  I'm thinking of pre-making some sort of veggie juice I can drink in the mornings from the day before.  It'll have to be something that can stay fresh ~20 hours though.  Not crazy about that fact.  But it'll allow me to drink veggie juice shortly after yoga rather than go a solid 4.5 hours in the morning before my first juice.

7:45pm: Juice B

Organizing my Juicing

All I do is pass gas all day long.  It's endless.  I started juicing a month ago, but never had this much gas.  It's kinda insane.  And if I'm not passing gas, I'm running to the bathroom to pee. I hope this phase passes soon.

I need to rethink my whole buying produce, storing produce, juicing produce system.  I talked to People's this morning.  They can only give me a discount on a whole case of celery: 30 heads, a whole case of romaine: 24 heads, a whole case of cucumbers: 40 fruits.  Yikes.  Firstly, even @ 4 celery heads a day, that's still 8-9 days worth, hardly fresh.  Secondly, I don't have the room in my fridge to store that much.  I did go ahead and order a whole case of cucumbers.  He said the cucumber case is much smaller.  But 40 of them.  That will last me 10 days.  I am to pick it up Wednesday morning.  All the rest of my veggies I will have to rotate.

So I have two things to do:  Firstly, find out more consistent quantities to juice each day.  2.5 L one day that needs to be augmented in the evening, then 6.5 L the next day isn't cutting it.  Secondly, I have to figure out a produce purchasing rotation.  Whole Foods, People's, and the farmer's market.  I've pretty much figured out that there's a pretty significant price variation, and it's kinda randomly spread among them.  So I need to start doing some price comparisons, and rotate my buying and buying trips.  That allows me to purchase ~5-7 days worth of one veggie at the lowest cost vendor while making sure that my fridge never is at max full.  I'm still worried I won't have enough room once I start buying for multiple days.  At the moment I haven't really figured out multi-day volumes, so I'm kinda buying for 1-2 days at once, just making lots of trips to the market.

This morning, I went through 2.5 heads celery, 2 heads romaine, 4 cucumbers as my base. That seems like a decent daily base.  Tree of Life recommends the celery and cucumber as base @ 80% juice.  Pagano is a huge fan of romaine for cleansing.  So I'll keep those 3 for my base, but I think 60%+ of my juice will be enough.

Kale is really bitter and I think I'll juice it in the mornings with an apple and parsley.  So 1 kale, 1 apple, and 1 batch of parsley per day, too.  The parsley can be spread out in other juices.  I want to take aloe every day, so half an aloe stalk/day.  Not sure what juice to put it in.  I take half a lemon squeezed with the MSM in the morning, and I put the pulp and the other half in the juicer w/ginger.  I really like the sharpness of the lemon ginger parsley zinger.  I can include special strong stuff in the zinger like the occasional mustard green.

I want to start juicing garlic, but I'm worried about breath.  My grandfather used to eat raw garlic, and he had the worst dragon breath.  I'm thinking maybe I'll put garlic into my last juice of each night.

I think I'll allow myself 1 apple, 1 medium beet, and 1 carrot per day.  The beet and carrot can come in the afternoon and evening juices, so C and D.  If the psoriasis seems to be clearing slow, I'll revisit that.

So that leaves some missing ingredients in the zinger, and lots of missing ingredients in juice C, D, and E, assuming I drink the juices alphabetically.  I can fill in those ingredients with stuff I buy:  collard greens, spinach, bok choy, cabbage, napa cabage, dandelion greens, arugala, etc.  Not sure how many bunches of these I will need per day.  I'll have to test it out and see.

Daily Juicing Ingredients (so far)
2.5 celery  (base)
2 romaine  (base)
4 cucumber   (base)
1 kale   (juice A)

1 parsley  (juice A, B, and ?)

1 apple   (juice A)

1 lemon  (juice B)

chunk of ginger (juice B)

1 beet  (juice C)
1 carrot (juice D)
1/3rd garlic bulb (juice E)

1/2 stalk aloe (juice C, D, or E)

Currently drinking:  Juice E w/1 Tbsp Hemp Oil and 1 cap probiotic

Day 3 Afternoon 2

For supplements, I'm going to call the following the Super Supplement Set

Super Supplement Set
Vitamineral Green: 2 Tbsp.
Vitamineral Earth: 1 tsp.
Vital-Zymes (Klaire Labs) - 3 caps
Chlor/Spirulina: 7 tablets
Marine Phytoplankton (Ocean's Alive) - 1 dropper
Flower Essence (FES) Magenta Self-Healer - 4 sprays
Benazipril 20 mg
Intestinal Movement Formula - ?? caps

The IMF I am adjusting so that I'll have 2-3 regular movements.  This afternoon @ 4pm I took the whole SSS, with IMF @ 3 caps in the L of Juice C.

I have salsa @ 6pm.  So basically juice feasting stuff and yoga and this blog took up almost all my time.  I'm going to have to find a more efficient way to do all this.

Day 3 Afternoon

Holy crap.  Just spent over 2 hrs juicing:  6+ liters made.
I tweeted the juices.  Let me expand.

I used the following as a base for all juices except 1L (no room):
Celery, Romaine, Cucumber, Sunchokes

Juice A: Kale and Asian Pear ~750 mL
Juice B: Lemon, Ginger, Chard, Parsley: ~1.5L
Juice C: Bok Choy, Asian Pear, Sunchoke, Aloe, Spinach: 1L  (no base here - Bok Choy makes lots of juice)
Juice D: Aloe, Spinach: 1L (unintended liter here - leftover from the Juice C)
Juice E & F:  Beets, Spinach, Collard Greens, Parsley: 2L

I drank the initial 750mL + 0.5 L of Juice B.  I also drank an extra 250mL of random juice siphoning from other stuff.  I've been kinda hungry the past few days.  6.5L of juice today should be waaay more than enough.  Sugar sources: 1 huge asian pear, 1 beet, sunchokes (?).

I need to look into the sunchokes.

Oh, this morning, I had 2 Tbsp. Slippery Elm Bark Powder Tea, too.

I did skin brushing before yoga, but haven't gotten to anything else.  So up next: Enema and Shower.

Jivamukti was absolutely incredible this morning.  I loved it.  But next time I'm getting up early, making juice and shower and then doing yoga.  I prefer to do yoga before my shower, but not when it's going to cost me the whole morning, and part of the afternoon.

Day 3 Morning

9am:  2 level Tbsp. Intestinal Drawing Formula
10am: H20 + 2 heaping Tbsp. MSM + lemon
1030am: Jivamukti Yoga

Notes: Woke up late this morning because (a) haven't gotten enough sleep recently, and (b) late yoga class. My body actually wanted to get up at 8am. lol.

Day 2

I had to use up the mustard greens and a turnip and since it's all so nasty and strong, I decided to just make something as strong as I could.


10:30am:
500 mL: mustard greens, turnip, lemon, romaine, ginger, garlic.  <-- it was like drinking green salsa.  Super spicy.


11am: 750 mL: napa cabbage, cucumber, dino kale, celery, parsley, swiss chard
     Supplements: 1 Tbsp Hemp Oil, 1 Tbsp Green, 1 tsp Earth, 2 tsp Spirulina, 1 cap probiotic, 1 cap IMF, 2 slippery elm bark pills, 20mg Benazipril(hypertension med).


2pm: 1L: aloe, pea sprouts, napa cabbage, spinach
    Supplements: 1 dropper phytoplankton, 4-5 caps spirulina/chlorella, 1 Tbsp Bee Pollen


remaining: 1L: napa cabbage, cucumber, dino kale, celery, parsley, swiss chard


I'll save that L for bedtime.


I still have 3 pomegranates, 2 apples, 2 asian pears, a grapefruit, a yam, and a persimmon to juice, so I can't eliminate all sugars immediately.  I'll throw a pomegranate or apple into an afternoon juice of celery, spinach, and kale.


Pia suggested I go with apple in the morning, beets in the afternoon, carrots in the evening if I feel like I need to supplement all the green juices with higher GI foods.


MOOD:  energetic.  a 180 degree turnaround from the lethargy of yesterday - a good night's rest will do that to you.  It was still hard to get up in the morning, but I made it to 8a yoga.  YaY.  Btw,  I am tweeting here - especially short diet items and recipe stuff.  I'll see how it goes with the tweeting alongside the blogging.  If it doesn't work well, I'll repost all my tweets in the blog.

Nightcap Juice

As I mentioned, I ran out of juice in the evening.

I ended up making almost 2 more L's, which was too much, considering I still had 0.5 L of the apple/asian pear juice.

Collard Greens, Romaine, Cucumber, Carrots, Celery, Cilantro, Arugala, Spinach

I initially drank half of the fruit juice I had left, then put the rest into the green juice above.  I also took my bee pollen and 3 caps of probiotics.  I had forgotten to take probiotics since my colonoscopy.

My stomach's been gurgling all day.  I had a very minimal bowel movement.  I wonder if they're all gonna be so tiny considering there's no fiber.

The juice really invigorates you.  After yoga, I was exhausted, but I went home to get my last L of green juice from this morning, and then left for whole foods.  I needed to buy enough greens for tomorrow and also pick up some raw food for kitty.  I drank the L as I drove, and by the time I got to Whole Foods, I was alert.  I still felt physically sore and a bit tired, but I felt 10x better than the exhaustion I had felt earlier.  I was up till 6am last night talking to my cousin, so very little sleep for me left me dead today.

Anyways, signing off tonight - Early morning tomorrow hopefully.  If I can get yoga, juicing, and farmer's market done by midday, I might take off for LA.

More on Psoriasis

I found Ben's Juicy Conspiracy blog today via the Juicefeasting.com blogroll. Ben went on a 92 day juice feast for his psoriasis.  He says his psoriasis made great progress, but the juice feast wasn't a cure-all.  This solidifies my decision.  I will have to modify David and Katrina's base juice feast recipe a bit for my psoriasis.

I have read from multiple sources that fruit juices are a problem for the psoriatic.  I know that one of the issues during my Pagano diet was probably that I ate too many fruits.  I did not juice them, but only ate them.  There have also been theories linking psoriasis to blood glucose and/or insulin levels.  I had a blood test done for my 3 month blood glucose level done.  It was in the "normal range," whatever that means.  After talking with Pia this morning, she suggested that I keep to only green juices.  I think she's right.

Honestly, I was hoping to avoid this.  Fruit juices are 10x more palatable than green juices.  Green juices are lovely... but 1 gallon of them today is A LOT.  I also think fruit juices have more calories.  This morning I made 2.5L of green juice and 1L of apple/asian pear juice.  I know it's not enough juice for the day.  I set out the rest of the greens I have in the fridge to come to room temperature for tonight.  My green juice this morning was a mess: mustard greens, broccoli, spinach, arugala, lemon, ginger, cucumber, collard greens, celery.  I had 1.5L of the green juice.  The mustard greens are really overpowering, and I felt a bit nauseous afterwards.  That's when I decided to make the liter of fruit juice.  I couldn't really stomach the idea of drinking 4L of green juice a day.  Now I think I will have to suck it up and learn how.  A lot is going to start coming down to food combinations.  Cucumbers, I think, may have to be a staple.  I also may allow myself 1 apple per L of green juice.  I don't know.  Perhaps I will limit it to 1 apple, or 2-3 carrots, or 1/2 a yam, or something like that, limiting the foods with high GI.

At this point, it seems like the only source that has said that it is ok to take lots of fruits and fruit juices for psoriasis is MadCat on the Psoriasistalk forums.  She's wonderful, and totally cleared her psoriasis via juicing, but at this point I'm going to go with the theory that she's the exception to the rule, and so I will be limiting my fruits and fruit juices.

I won't be able to take it easy for these 60+ days.  I will have to research and learn and figure things out.

PS> I just had a second meal:  0.5 L of apple/asian pear juice with supplements: 2 Tbsp Vitamineral Green, 1 tsp Vitamineral Earth, 1 Tbsp Spirulina.  Funny, the Vitamineral powder tasted really good.  Off to yoga.

Why am I Juice Feasting?

(1) Traditional cleanses all require a water or juice fast to initiate a cleansing reaction in the body.

(2) On a traditional cleanse, you take in so few calories that you feel weak and can't do much, especially in the way of normal work.

(3) Enter the juice feast - rather than limiting your intake of calories via juice, lift them entirely. if you only drink fresh juice, you have to drink enough to meet your caloric, protein, carb, fat requirements for the day, so you drink 4-6 quarts of fresh juice. You drink enough so you don't go hungry and meet your energy needs throughout the day.

(4) This slows the cleansing reaction, so you extend the length of the feast. Hence 30, 60, or 90 days. The increased caloric requirements technically allow you to extend it indefinitely, but you will lose weight on the feast, so you don't want to lose too much weight. People have stopped feasts prematurely due to too much weight loss. On the other hand, severely obese people have been on the feast for over 150 days.

(5) For P, it's a much easier way to take in an enormous amount of alkalizing nutrients. I plan to limit my intake of the acid forming juices, at least initially, and will reintroduce them depending on the progression of P. Several different CAM theories of P also place a heavy emphasis on toxins within the blood, so the cleansing reaction helps eliminate these toxins. For P, I also want to initiate the cleansing reaction to improve my overall health, and hopefully re-regulate my immune system.

(6) Time wise, it actually isn't that bad. It takes ~1/1.5 hr in the morning to make 4 quarts of fresh juice. When done in a 2HP+ blender (with nutmilk bag to juice) or a masticating juicer, the juices can last the whole day. This means you can drink the juices you made in the morning for lunch and dinner, saving you time and prep time for both of those meals. What it does is shift a lot of the time burden of eating and meals from midday and evening to the mornings. People with very flexible schedules actually find that it saves them time.

Final solid foods

Rather than having anything special, I've just been cleaning out the fridge of stuff.

It looks like I'll be left with one silken SprouTofu and a lot of walnuts I can't finish before the feast.  The walnuts will keep.  The tofu... oh well.  Had a tofu, walnut, arugala, avocado salad this morning.  Cheated on a tiramisu and a mini-eclair plus a quarter cup of decaf coffee for lunch.  Dinner was some seitan non-chicken salad and avocado with some persimmons.  No room for juices today, and I feel deprived.  After having juiced regularly for many days, I've only had 2.5 quarts of juice the last 4 days.  I'm feeling the lack of energy in my system.

I can't wait to start tomorrow.

Tomorrow is the big day!

I went out and got a lot more stuff today.  Add that to my trips yesterday and the day before, and I've got most everything I need.

Things I have
Vitamineral Earth
Vitamineral Green
Intestinal Movement Formula
Intestinal Drawing Formula
Spirulina
Zeolite
Bee Pollen
MSM
Hemp Oil
Coconut Oil
Dr Bronner's Soap
Apple Corer
Tongue Scraper
30-day JuiceFeasting subscription
Blood Sugar Tester

Things I still need
Digestive Enzyme: Vitalzym?
Break-Stone Tea  (no rush)
Kelp Granules
Intestinal Parsite Formula (no rush)

Gem and Flower Elixir (recommended by Pia @ www.welovesuperfoods.com)
Probiotics (recommended by Pia)
pH testing kit (recommended by Pia)

Peoples had Vital-zyme, a copy of Vitalzym, which I opted to pass on, and it had kelp tablets that were kelp suspended in a chlorophyll tablet with other tablet specific stuff.  I'd rather just have the pure kelp.
Pharmaca had the Break-stone tea - I'll pick it up on Monday.
I'll pick up the last 3 from Pia when I see her.  I'll also ask her about kelp granules.
The vitalzym and parasite formula I'll have to buy online, it looks like.

Clear Juice Feasting is Hard

I went on a clear liquid diet for my colonoscopy.  I had one scheduled for this morning.  It was excruciatingly difficult.  After having been on a daily diet of fresh juices, I missed them incredibly. I felt weak an anemic and STARVING all day.  I finally cheated a little bit and drank the juice of one apple and 2 cabbage leafs.  I also cheated a bit by taking some olive oil with chicken broth and some coconut oil with honey.

This morning I went for the colonoscopy.  I'm not quite sure what I was expecting, but mostly it was clear pink with red veins.  I had a healthy colon. The doc even checked all the way to the small intestine to check for Chron's disease.  My brother had it.  I did the colonoscopy without any pain meds.  Typically they put you under mild sedation with an opiate and benzodiazepene, but apparently the hospital legal protocols don't allow anyone to leave the hospital alone, even in a cab.  You must have accompaniment.  I even cleared that I'd be taking a cab 2 days before with a nurse.  So I went in without pain meds.

After the colonoscopy, I was ravenous so I hit up the hospital cafeteria.  Had some cooked veggies, a tad of salad, a vegetarian vietnamese tofu roll, and a chicken tomatillo soup that's anti-Pagano, but was delicious.  I then decided I only had 2 days left of solid foods so could really splurge.  I went to a cafe and picked up a chocolate croissant.  Butter and white flour.  yay.  A few hours later I ended up at People's. The whole foods and raw foods there were so much more satisfying than anything I had earlier - I ended up eating stuff I intended to take home and save for the evening or tomorrow.  Weird - my body had adjusted so that what I thought was comfort food that I craved - the croissant, just wasn't that fulfilling, and the whole vegan foods were better.

The Pagano Regimen

Timeline:

Started Pagano Diet in April, 2009.
Dietary options on the Pagano diet:
 - Gluten-free
 - Dairy-free
 - virtually no lamb (2x/6 months)
 - ~4 oz. chicken, once/mo.
 - ~4 oz. salmon or other sashimi once/wk.
 - The most difficult aspect of the Pagano diet was preserving a 3:1 alkaline-forming to acid-forming ratio.   I dealt with this by practically eliminating acid-forming foods altogether, and substituting neutral foods such as almonds, amaranth, quinoa.  However, I don't think I ever maintained the proper ratios.  My ratios were much closer to 2:1.5:1, 2 parts alkaline-forming, 1.5 parts neutral, and 1 part acid-forming.

Herbal teas:
 - started June, 2009
 - Slippery Elm Bark tablets in the morning
 - American Yellow Saffron at night, occasionally substituting Chamomile
 - Slippery Elm Bark powder started August 2009

High Colonics:
 - One administered during 3-day apple cleanse in April.
 - Hot water bottle enemas administered other 2 days of cleanse.
 - Enemas continued ~ 3/month for first 3-5 months, then discontinued.

Chiropractic adjustments:
 - none
 - yoga substituted - very irregular
 - yoga practice would be 1-2 months off, then 1-2 weeks daily, then 1-2 months off
 - nightly spinal twists

Results:

If I were to characterize my psoriasis before as 100, and full remission as 0, I think the severity of plaques went from 100 to 40.  That is to say, 90% of the itching was gone.  70% of the day to day scaling was gone. The occasional burning, cracked fissures were all gone.  The color went from bright red with white scales to pinkish with little scaling.  The need for heavy ointments or lotions applied at 2 hour intervals was replaced by once or twice/day normal lotioning.  This happened over the course of the first 6 months, from April through September.  Over the course of the last 3 months, the severity has see-sawed between 35-45, with perhaps a very small downward healing trend.

A doctor characterized the coverage of psoriasis as 45% of my body (see pictures).  This has not changed significantly on the Pagano regimen.  It may have gone down a little to 40%, but it is unclear.

Cheating
I did cheat on the diet here and there.  The cheating usually coincided with emotional low-points and severe depressive episodes, so it was very difficult to tell whether my skin would get worse from the cheating, from the depression and stress, or from the lack of sleep and shifting sleep patterns.  I'm sure all contributed.  During these episodes my skin would inevitably get worse, and that would trigger more negative emotions, resulting in a feedback loop.  I would never stray off the diet for longer than one, maybe two major meals, and 2-3 smaller snacks.   This happened perhaps only three times over the course of the regimen.

Official Start Date

The official start date of the juice feast is Saturday, January 9th, 2010.  My relatives just left today, and I have one week to get everything ready.  I have to clear out some of the old non-juiceables that remain in my fridge and pantry: tofu, nuts, nori. I have to buy all the implements necessary for juice feasting.  For those of you who aren't familiar with the term juice feast, David Rainoshek has a site devoted to explaining everything about it. I still haven't picked up a subscription, but I will be tonight.  His free resources are more than enough to get anyone started juice feasting, but I'm hoping the paid subscription and the Green Room will give me some more in-depth advice about juicing, juice combinations, as well as effects I should expect.

The following posts will enumerate some of my past history with psoriasis up to this point, including my work with Dr. Pagano's regimen, what I've set up so far for juice feasting, and what I plan to be doing this week.