Food has long been a passion of mine. Cooking food, eating food, trying new foods and ways of preparing. Although I do believe that the food we eat affects our general health (and certainly our weight) and have tried to hold to a reasonably healthy diet, recent events have opened up a new lens on food for me.
For the last five months I've been hobbling with a longitudinal tear in my posterior tibial tendon. It makes it painful to walk, garden, work around the house and just about anything else that involves a lot of ankle motion. I've been through a round of physical therapy, numerous weeks in a boot cast and/or an ankle brace along with my custom orthotic. I haven't had any shoes on the affected foot other than my ASICS stability walking shoes. ( Not the most fashionable look with dress up clothes.) But my ankle is still swollen and although I can walk around the house without much pain, my ventures to the mall and the market downtown have been a lot less successful.
My doctor has informed me that if we can't get the inflammation under control, I'll be looking at a major surgery with a very long recovery period if I ever want to get back to my daily exercise walks, gardening in my hillside garden or navigating the hills in the community in which I live (required to walk just about anywhere.) Yuk. For the last few months not only have my restrictions on walking been difficult but thinking about potential surgery and another year of impact on my life has been less than uplifting to say the least.
Then recently I came across an article in our local paper about an anti-inflammatory diet (The Abascal Way). I remembered a friend who had a bout of polymyalgia who talked about how she was able to mitigate her symptoms with a similar diet. But could an anti-inflammatory diet really help the inflammation from a torn tendon? Enough to avoid surgery? My very rational, technical husband was skeptical. "Just another fad diet" he says. But in addition to being a foodie, I'm also an engineer by training. Rather than just trusting something is true or assuming it's not, I believe in testing things out. I want to see for myself Thus was born this little experiment. My goal: over the next 6 weeks stick with this anti inflammatory diet and see for myself what it does--both for my ankle injury and the rest of me as well. This is my place for documenting what I'm eating, what's happening with my ankle, capture favorite recipes and note anything else that's happening with my body.
As some background, I'm a 57 year old woman who's been pretty healthy most of my life. I've eaten a mostly vegetarian diet with some fish and in the last few years, chicken and turkey. Most people would say my meals are healthy ones but I have been snacking more than I should (popcorn, chips, homemade pretzels, good quality dark chocolate and salted caramels and more ice cream than I care to admit.) Yogurt and grains as well as cheese have also been a pretty significant part of my diet. Can an anti inflammatory diet make a noticeable difference for someone like me? Stay tuned.
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