Archive for Married-1 WFPB

“My life was managed from headache to headache.”

By Jane Birch · Comments (3)
Saturday, November 19th, 2022

By Ray Roberts

When I turned 40, migraine headaches entered my life. At first, I did not know that I had a migraine, as I had never experienced headaches. They were always on the same side of my head and lasted 36 to 48 hours, and they were devastating. They recurred about every 3 to 4 weeks. After each headache there was a two-week window where I was good and then I would start to worry.

I saw multiple doctors, had a cat scan, and started to take drugs for the pain, oral and then injections that I would self-administer. My life was managed from headache to headache.

I hated the drugs and was desperate to get off them. I scoured libraries and book sources for help and read and studied everything I could find. I tried various strategies, such as no sugar for a month (negative result) and exercising during a headache—I once went for a two-hour jog in the middle of the night (did not help).

Although there seemed to be various triggers, the only one that I could really control was what I put into my mouth, and so I would unsuccessfully change this or that in my diet. My weight started to drop from a high of 190 lb (I am 6‘1” with a medium build) to 175 lb.

After many years, a breakthrough came when I discovered a book titled Fasting and Eating for Health by Joel Fuhrman. This book was my introduction to therapeutic fasting. I had done many 24-hour fasts as an active Church member, but that was the extent of my fasting experience.

I fasted for 72 hours and then went on a strict elimination diet for 30 days, followed by another 72-hour fast. The elimination diet consisted of a limited number of foods, all whole food, plant based, although at the time I knew nothing of this type of diet. There was no headache during this period, and I was euphoric. I intended to fast for a week after the 30 days of the elimination diet, but my work was very physical, and I was forced to break the fast after 3 days.

I went 7 weeks without a headache, an amazing exhilarating experience. The headaches did return, but this success told me I was on to something. Something changed in my metabolism after this experience, and my weight dropped at one point to 144 lb within a few weeks. I started to eat differently realizing that this made a huge difference in my health and especially my battle with migraines. I felt amazing. My weight has now settled around 155 lb for last 18 or so years.

I started to study nutrition, physiology and fasting. I experimented briefly with keto diets on two different occasions, and both times had a very negative experience and felt ill. As my research broadened, whole food, plant-based (WFPB) eating came into my purview, and I spent many hours learning with diet gurus such as Michael Gregor (nutritionfacts.org), John McDougall, T. Colin Campbell (The China Study) and others.

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“I was in pain all the time”

By Jane Birch · Comments (11)
Saturday, June 4th, 2022

By: Nancy Jensen

I suffered the effects of a debilitating, degenerative, hereditary disease for 30 years, although I had never gotten a proper diagnosis. By the summer of 2016, I could hardly walk a block because of inflammation in my tendons. It hurt my arms just to hold a book, and the three hours of sitting at church were filled with back and hip pain. My passion was teaching the piano, and I had re-entered Utah State University 5 years before, working slowly towards a Piano Pedagogy degree, but I had to drop out in the spring of 2016 because by then I could only play the piano for 5 minutes at a time. I lost all my hobbies, and many other abilities, even cleaning the house, pulling weeds, or chopping vegetables. I was in pain all the time. I was exhausted all the time. I saw over a dozen different health professionals that year for help in managing the pain and disability. As I attended the temple (painfully), I wondered why I was not enjoying the blessings pronounced there of strength, speed and endurance, despite “perfectly” keeping the Word of Wisdom.

While I waited 5 months (!) for an appointment to see a rheumatologist, my youngest daughter convinced me to watch a documentary she saw in high school, Forks Over Knives. The documentary was about whole-food plant-based eating and how it could prevent or relieve many chronic or deadly health conditions, among them, arthritis. I contacted one of the doctors in the documentary, Dr. John McDougall, and he told me to try eating 100% plant-based for just a week. He said I’d quickly know whether it would help. Since I could see that whole-food plant-based eating matched the Word of Wisdom, I decided to try it. It was really tricky to learn to cook without meat, eggs, and dairy, but on day four, I experienced a massive drop in pain!

I read The China Study by T. Colin Campbell, The Starch Solution by John McDougall, Discovering the Word of Wisdom by Jane Birch, and How Not to Die by Michael Greger. Once I realized that this was a perfect match with the Word of Wisdom, I wondered why I had never had the faith to eat the way the revelation recommends without reading about all the science behind it.

As I changed my diet to strictly contain only those foods recommended in the Word of Wisdom in their most wholesome forms, mobility, energy, digestion, and immunity improved markedly. Muscle, joint, and headache pain dropped dramatically within that first week. Morning stiffness became minimal.

Since I had switched to a plant-based diet during the 5 months I waited for an appointment, I already had experienced enough healing to know it was the food making the difference. By the time I got my turn to see the rheumatologist in January of 2017 and finally got the correct diagnosis of Ankylosing Spondylitis with Enthesitis, I did not need expensive arthritis drugs with unpleasant side effects. He wanted me to go on a biologic like Humira (regular injections with a co-pay of $6,000 a month). I didn’t want another bunch of problems that they would bring me. I told him I’d take Aleve and just keep eating vegan. The Word of Wisdom had nearly healed me.

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“I dove into a study on the Word of Wisdom like I never had before”

By Jane Birch · Comments (3)
Saturday, April 23rd, 2022

By: Janeen Burke

My name is Janeen Burke. I’m 42 and a stay-at-home mom of four. We recently moved to Provo from Grass Valley, California because my husband got a job teaching at BYU.

My journey has been long, so I’ll try to keep this as short as possible. I gained a fascination for nutrition and health during a nutrition class in high school. I became fascinated about how what we eat determines so much of our health and how certain foods did certain things. Growing up in the Church, I always knew about the Word of Wisdom, but it hasn’t been until about the last four years that I’ve realized what it’s really saying and how important it is to follow it. I know now that it is truly all we need for health, but coming to know that has been a long and slow process.

When my oldest son (now 20) was four years old, he was diagnosed with “high functioning autism.”  I quickly dove into researching treatments that were natural as I didn’t want to medicate him. Coming to that personal revelation is a whole other story, but completely intertwined with this journey and story. In my research, it became clear that my son was an excellent candidate to try the GFCF (gluten free/dairy free) diet due to digestion issues he chronically had. My husband and I noticed immediate improvement in his behaviors, so we were confident we were on the right course. There began to be other things and other diets that we tried as we were going through ups and downs and with each diet, we saw different improvements and I learned different things.  Sometimes progression, sometimes regression, but I never gave up on researching, trying new things all the while seeking guidance from God. Time went by and I had twins, they each had their own issues that were helped with the knowledge I gained.

Then I had my fourth child, and it was a very traumatic emergency c-section to save my son’s life. My recovery was horrible, and I had pains that weren’t going away. I was using the knowledge of nutrition and essential oils that I had gained over the years and there was some improvement. But, I was still dealing with pain that wouldn’t go away. A chiropractor recommended a Paleo diet and I gave it a try. I was on it for a few months and noticed that there was improvement, but new problems started rising. I had horrible ringing in my ears that kept me up at night, heart palpitations and dizziness and then about two years later and worst of all . . . I started having depression and anxiety. I even started having suicidal thoughts out of nowhere and for no good reason because my life was good! I knew it had to be something physical/medical affecting my mental health.  I did not want to be on medication.  I knew there had to be an answer through nutrition, so I prayed earnestly to find it.  Then when my youngest son was also diagnosed with autism at age two, my prayers became even more frequent and passionate in finding an answer for both of us.

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“I enjoy my food now more than I ever have before!”

By Jane Birch · Comments (3)
Saturday, November 6th, 2021

By: Jason Jenkins

As an 11lb 7oz baby, I enjoyed robust health and had a Bruce Lee physique until I was 10 years old. The demise of “Bruce Lee” was precipitated by a family curse, of sorts––an invitation to stay at my cousin’s house. It was two weeks of pure, unadulterated gluttony. I had access to all the “good” stuff I never got at home. There was a bottomless cooler stocked with soda, a bounty of Twinkies, Ho Ho’s, Ding Dongs, and even little cheese-stuffed wieners. I was in hog heaven. By the time I got home I was wearing an extra ten pounds of blubber. That extra weight stuck with me for the rest of my school years.

I served a mission in Colorado in ‘92 & ‘93 and was well fed by the loving members there. One fast Sunday, my companion and I had dinner with a family that egged us on, encouraging us to eat seconds, thirds, fourths–––then dessert! Gluttony once again reared its frightful mien, and I ate far too much. When it was time to go, I realized that, quite literally, I could not sit down on my bicycle. I was so stuffed, I could not bend over. I had to ride back to our apartment standing up. I was so uncomfortable that the rest of the day was a complete loss.

In 1999, at the age of 64, my dad suffered a heart attack and had a 5-way heart bypass. The doctor told him he would have another ten years. Watching him go through that sternum-splitting surgery––and painful recovery––I knew I wanted to avoid the same fate, if at all possible. I thought that if I could just exercise enough, I could stay in good shape, inside and out. My dad lived another 20 years, before suffering a major plaque eruption that he did not survive.

When I got married in 2001, I was still searching for the secret to becoming “addicted” to exercise so I could avoid gaining the “newlywed 30”––A fate that had befallen many fit and trim friends. As the years went by and our family grew, my time and energy seemed to shrink, while my waistline expanded, and it became harder and harder to maintain good health.

In 2011, my wife’s aunt suffered a heart attack. I felt at that time that I needed to go vegetarian. It was something that I had been thinking about and it just seemed to be the right time. My hope was to be a good example for her and to follow my own impressions of a healthier path. I ate a vegetarian diet for several years, but gradually lost motivation and started eating meat again.

In 2016 I found myself really struggling. With everything. I was serving as a bishop, working a full-time job, plus a side job, with a wife and five kids, ages 1-10. I even tried to go back to school during this time, but my energy, focus, and productivity hit rock bottom. Brain fog, fatigue, anxiety and overwhelm were daily companions. I was overweight, depressed, and worried about being able to keep my job.

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“I feel like I found the fountain of youth!”

By Jane Birch · Comments (9)
Saturday, April 10th, 2021

By: Sandy Larson

In 2012, my mom died suddenly from a major heart attack after decades of heart disease, diabetes, and being overweight. She was 69 years old, and my five kids were young. They didn’t get enough time with their sweet grandma. Her health had not been good for many, many years. She would get out of breath climbing a flight of stairs and have to stop and rest. It was rare to ever see my mom eat fruits or vegetables. She ate a lot of fast food, drank a lot of soda, and took a ton of medications and pills. It was hard to watch her health get worse over time, and heart-breaking to lose her when she passed away.

A few years ago, in the spring of 2017, I wasn’t sleeping well and felt exhausted during the day. I had gained weight and had a closet full of clothes that didn’t fit. The idea of buying all new clothes in bigger sizes was very depressing for me. Logically, I knew I should eat less and exercise more, but it was extremely hard to avoid or limit my favorite foods, and I didn’t have the energy or desire to exercise. I found myself getting out of breath climbing stairs too, just like my mom, which was scary.

I felt like I needed to get in shape and start eating better, but it was really hard to do. We were eating lots of meat with every meal, plus lots of cheese, butter, eggs, ice cream, and desserts every day. Cutting down on portions or trying to count calories didn’t seem to work, and I felt like a failure. While we cooked most of our meals at home and we did eat fruits and veggies, we loved to get pizza or fast food several times a week and go to restaurants and ice cream shops to celebrate birthdays and any kind of special occasion.

I wanted to lose weight and have more energy, but I wasn’t sure where to begin. Everyone I knew was on a different diet, and I felt confused about what was healthy and what was not. There were just too many conflicting opinions. It reminded me of Joseph Smith’s words, as he was searching for the truth about religion. He said, “In the midst of this war of words and tumult of opinions, I often said to myself: What is to be done? Who of all these parties are right; or, are they all wrong together? If any one of them be right, which is it, and how shall I know it?” (Joseph Smith History 1:10.) I started praying for guidance and understanding. I needed to know how to get healthy and help my husband and kids be healthy.

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“Even the doctors joked with me about my superhuman ability to recover”

By Jane Birch · Comments (4)
Saturday, November 14th, 2020

By: Emily Olsen

Growing up I was always overweight. I still have quite the sweet tooth. There was a time I ate a bowl of ice cream every night. I’m also sure I was addicted to cheese as I would put cheese on anything, and a lot of it. I was raised with the belief that a meal is not a meal unless it revolved around some form of meat. 

Other than being overweight, I was lucky to not have many adverse health issues. I don’t recall going on “diets” or other fad regimens. 

A few years before my diagnosis with Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 2018 I became extremely concerned with diet. I wanted to be healthy, and I wanted my family to be healthy. When I look back at that time, I’m sure it was the spirit preparing me for what was about to happen. 

I searched the Word of Wisdom and read up on all the diets I could find that supported it, but I couldn’t find much. Frustrated, I googled Word of Wisdom diet and found Jane Birch’s Discovering the Word of Wisdoms support group on Facebook. From there my studies led me to all the different whole food, plant-based (WFPB) doctors, books, documentaries, etc. I was convinced this was the right path for me.

I quit milk right off. That was easy. And we’d already been cutting down on meat.  It was a slow process, but I cut out different foods and products and over the space of several months. I went from 186 lbs to 163 lbs.

Then in 2018 we all came down with a cold, except when everyone got better my cough never went away. I also became itchy. Both symptoms became worse over time and nothing worked. I visited the allergist and the dermatologist and even my doctor for answers. Finally after suffering for about six months, and a round of antibiotics that didn’t work, I had an x-ray that showed a mass in my right lung.

After more tests and a lymph node biopsy, the diagnosis was Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a cancer of the lymphatic system. I was sad, thinking how I had found a way to eat to be healthy and now I had cancer. But of course I realize that you typically have cancer for years before you find out. This is when it dawned on me that it was the spirit who led me to a way of eating so that I could have the healthiest means of enduring and surviving the treatments I was about to get.

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“At the end of my 30-day experiment, I could never go back to eating the way I used to”

By Jane Birch · Comments (9)
Saturday, October 31st, 2020

By: Rachel Echols

I grew up in a typical Latter-day Saint family in Orem, Utah. We ate the standard American diet. We always had a garden and fruit trees, but we ate a fair amount of meat, cheese, and other dairy products and our vegetables were always covered in butter or cream. When I got my patriarchal blessing as a teenager, I remember being surprised that it specifically mentioned the Word of Wisdom and that I should be careful about what I take into my body. I had never had a problem with the Word of Wisdom, which I considered to mean abstinence from drugs and alcohol, and I wondered why it was specifically mentioned. It did not occur to me at that time that it might not be referring to drugs and alcohol, but to food.

I was always thin until I got married, but soon after I started having problems keeping a healthy weight. After having my two children, I struggled to get the weight off, especially after the second one, and as the years passed, I become more and more overweight. I also experienced frequent migraines, sugar addiction, and food cravings.

I knew the Word of Wisdom counseled us to eat meat sparingly and that grains are the staff of life, but I often tried diets that did not go along with that counsel. I always excused it and thought it was a short-term thing just to help me get back down to a healthy weight. Some diets worked and some did not, but whenever I lost weight, I could never keep it off. I tried Weight Watchers, Sugar Busters, the hCG diet, and eating as little as possible while exercising excessively. Over the years I started using food as a crutch. I was addicted to sweets and other rich foods and was an emotional eater. If there was chocolate anywhere in the house, it never lasted long around me. Sometimes my husband would buy treats and hide them from me because I would finish them off while he was at work.

At one point I remember following the hCG diet and I absolutely knew I should not be doing it. I had read about several women following the diet that ended up having heart problems because of it. My mother and my maternal grandmother both had some heart problems, and I knew that it was not wise for me to be following that diet. Every day these thoughts plagued me, and I felt I was doing something Heavenly Father would not approve of. But I desperately wanted to lose weight and told myself that after I got some weight off, I would stop the diet. I thought I would be able to maintain my weight loss, but that was never the case.

I decided to start a new career after many years of being a stay-at-home mom and ended up starting pharmacy school at the age of 40. I found that my weight problem got worse in grad school. I sat all day in class, then came home and sat all night to read and study. I was staying up late to study for exams, and I was stressed out. I was also working a part-time job, and we ate out often. At school, they fed us unhealthy foods, like pizza, subs, cookies, and chips. By the time I graduated in April 2017, I had gained another 35 pounds. I was at my highest weight ever.

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“I realized I loved how I was feeling”

By Jane Birch · Comments (4)
Saturday, September 5th, 2020

By: Kimberly Smith

In May of 2015 I found myself at the ER with a kidney stone. After a couple of weeks, imaging, and doctor appointments, it was determined the stone was too large to pass on its own. I was scheduled for surgery, shockwave lithotripsy. This surgery failed and a month later I had another surgery, ureteroscopy. A few weeks after the surgeries I had a follow-up doctor’s appointment. I was surprised to learn that lab results showed that my kidney function was less than optimal.

This was a little shocking to me. I had always been health conscious. As a nurse I had worked in long-term care facilities and realized I wanted to take care of my health so I could enjoy my later years. Never had I not followed the don’ts of the Word of Wisdom. I ground my own wheat, had meatless meals regularly, and fed my family as well as I knew how. The one health problem plaguing me had been GERD, and I had taken proton pump inhibitors regularly for a while and then off and on for years. Looking back, that probably played a role in my kidney problems.

The advice from my nephrologist rang familiar. He said, “Don’t drink alcohol, don’t smoke, limit your caffeine, eat less meat, and follow up with me in a year.” I walked away from that appointment thinking, “What more can I do?” I’ve never had alcohol or smoked. I haven’t had soda in years and purposefully don’t drink anything with caffeine. I had limited my red meat consumption to about once a week. What I didn’t know was that dairy is essentially “liquid meat.” I had replaced most of my meat with cheese and was eating a lot of high fat meals which was causing weight gain and GERD.

The same week that I had that doctor’s appointment, my then 14-year-old son came bounding down the stairs on Sunday with his scriptures in his hand. He had been reading D&C 89, the Word of Wisdom.  He asked me “Mom, why do we eat so much meat?” I looked at him, he looked at me, and I said, “I don’t know.” Later that day I reread D&C 89 and started researching.

I don’t know which came first, finding Dr. McDougall and watching Forks Over Knives or finding Jane Birch and reading Discovering the Word of Wisdom. It was likely all in the same week. I had taken two nutrition classes in college and was stuck on the concept of needing to eat meat for health. I realized I needed to take it to the Lord. After praying and pondering for a few days, I reread D&C 89. When I read verse 13 I felt the spirit flow through me:

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“This whole experience has been guided by an angel”

By Jane Birch · Comments (6)
Saturday, April 18th, 2020

By: Ellen Bench

I was born on the island of Mauritius, surrounded by the Indian Ocean (1,200 miles east of Africa). Our diet there was mainly grains, fruits, and vegetables. We ate meat or fish on the weekends only.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was not in Mauritius when I lived there, so none of my family were members. I went to England when I was 18 years old to study nursing. I met the missionaries there and joined the Church. Three and a half years later I was called on a mission to Tahiti. After serving in Tahiti, I moved to America. I married at age 28 and had my first child at age 29.

I started having serious health challenges in my late thirties, some of which included hay fever, insomnia, pre-diabetes and a tumor in my uterus! Those health challenges were not fun. I just did not feel good most of the time.

I prayed to know how to get healed, and it was given to me slowly and surely. I first felt impressed to give up carbonated drinks. Then God guided me to be vegetarian. My diet changed even more when I met Tom Rodgers. He was a vegan who gave lectures weekly at the Bountiful, Utah library. I prayed to know if it was true and right for me. I decided to be totally vegan too. Fortunately, it was not hard for me to eat this way. Slowly and gradually, my health challenges dissipated.

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“I asked Heavenly Father to help me find a cookbook that fit the Word of Wisdom”

By Jane Birch · Comments (9)
Saturday, February 29th, 2020

By: Tamara Curtis

I have always wanted to be the parent that was able to run and play with their kids. I wanted to have the energy to get out and play tag or kick a ball around. Problem was, even in my youth, running just didn’t happen. I felt miserable anytime I made an attempt to exercise. It wasn’t just that I didn’t enjoy it, every time I tried, I couldn’t breathe, I felt pressure in my chest and neck, and I felt as though my heart would either explode out of my chest or the vein in my neck would burst and I would die right there on the spot. Ok, maybe I am exaggerating a little, but not as much as you might think.

My mom was always good about making us home-cooked meals. It was rare that we ever went out to eat growing up. I think the most fast food we got was the occasional day when mom needed a break during the winter, and she would buy a large French fry for all 5 of us kids to share so that she could let us play on the play place while she visited with a friend. It was rare that we got to have a soda, and we obviously weren’t eating a lot of French fries.

When I got out on my own, I most definitely started eating out a lot more. My mom always cooked for a large family so that’s how I cooked, and I could make something for just me, but I often ended up with large amounts of leftovers that would go to waste. It was so much easier for me to just pick something up on my way home. My eating habits obviously declined at this point in my life, and between poor eating habits and not knowing how to plan ahead, I had created a recipe for disaster.

The Word of Wisdom has always been something that stood out to me as a recipe for health. I have always trusted in the teachings of the scriptures, so it only seemed logical that the Word of Wisdom as written in Doctrine and Covenants 89 would have blessings for me. I always obeyed the don’ts: I never smoked, drank or did drugs, I didn’t drink coffee, and only drank herbal teas when I was sick. I thought I was doing pretty well, but when I came to the verses about what was “ordained for man” I became lost and hung up on various verses about meat and grains. I just stopped trying when I got to those because I wasn’t doing anything wrong. I mean really, if it said not to do something, I listened, so I just kept on my merry way.

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