“I was in pain all the time”

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.

I had always joked about vegans. And when my son went vegan, I stressed about whether he was “getting enough protein.” It was so ironic. I prepared myself for all the comments from friends and neighbors. When my friend’s slightly snarky husband said, “So, I hear you’ve gone vegan. How’s that going?” I was prepared. I answered, “It seems to be working; I feel more self-righteous already!” That made him laugh out loud, and he never gave me a moment’s trouble about it.

It was really hard to learn to cook and love plant-based food. To start with, it requires a lot of chopping. I had a lot of arm pain. I had to have my children chop the food for me. But I’d lost all my hobbies and had dropped out of school, so I had plenty of time to learn a new way of cooking. It was so hard to give up dairy products—I loved them all! They didn’t have good vegan ice cream yet, and I really missed creamy ice cream. I thought almond milk tasted like wood. And I noticed that all vegetarian recipes were loaded with butter and cheese. But the pain came back immediately if I cheated, so I persisted.

I found more and more recipes I liked and my family like them, too. Our favorite recipe, Hummusapien’s lasagna, is always requested at our family reunions. It’s the recipe that people cannot believe doesn’t have cheese in it. Two of my (non-vegan) brothers have added it to their own recipe collections. My favorite cookbook now is Chloe’s Kitchen by Chef Chloe Coscorelli. (I omit the oil in all these recipes or make substitutions.)

Today, 2022, at age 58, I can hike at a moderate pace, I can sit in church without pain, and I can practice the piano for an hour a day. My vision has improved so much that I have had to get new, weaker prescriptions twice. I don’t need glasses to read anymore at all! I have finished the coursework for my college degree and am preparing my senior recital.

I have all the energy I need. I do still have bone spurs, fused neck vertebra, and tendon damage that was done before I changed my diet, but I can work around them. I have a little bit of pain most days, but I have my life back. I do yoga, I walk 10,000 steps most days, I press out muscle knots (one of the challenges of my illness) with pressure on a tennis ball, I hop in the hot tub every few days. I take an NSAID. My X-rays have shown no increased damage since 2016.

I love my colorful, flavorful meals. I love grocery shopping and meal-planning. My husband now does all the cooking since he no longer travels with his work. (Piano lessons happen at dinner-prep time.) Even though his lunches are the cheapest junk food you can buy, those dinners still dropped his stubborn cholesterol from 210 to 175 and the HDL/LDL ratio is perfect—something running marathons had not succeeded at doing. We have our in-town children and grandchildren over for Sunday dinner each week and it’s almost always 100% plant-based. They always love it, even though they don’t eat this way at home. No one resents my diet because they know how much pain I was in before. I don’t push anyone to go plant-based unless they are asking for help with health problems and then I testify! I’m a big time missionary for the healing properties of Word of Wisdom foods!

I no longer like the unhealthy foods I liked before. Even Thanksgiving turkey tasted like nothing to me—I tried it a couple of years ago and was very disappointed. The butcher section of the grocery store gags me now—these are body parts! Ew! I am finally friends with my food. I know everything I eat is good for me. I am in charge of my health and healing. I know I’m helping the earth by not supporting animal farming, and I really love that no animals die to feed me. As an added benefit, it’s easy and inexpensive to build food storage if you don’t bother with meat, dairy, eggs, and highly-processed foods like oil.

And I never get tired of telling people where I get my protein!

Nancy Wyatt Jensen is 58 years old. She lives in Logan, Utah with her husband, Gary, a space systems engineer. They have 7 children and 7 grandchildren. She will receive a bachelor’s degree in music from Utah State University in August. She teaches piano students of all ages and abilities (or disabilities) in her home studio. Her hobbies are traveling, sewing, watching movies, and being outdoors. She loves studying, speaking, and writing about the gospel of Jesus Christ (websites: Gospel Doctrine Plus and Notes, Quotes, Anecdotes) and serving in any calling in the Church.