We Love Paleo

[Woman]

I had chronic brain fog.

I never felt rested

when I woke up.

I got migraines all the time.

I was hungry all the time,

and people feared

for their lives

when they were around

me when I got hungry,

because I crashed

and turned into a crazy person.

And just felt

generally cranky and...

bad, basically.

The outlook on life

prior to being diagnosed

and figuring out

what was going on

was pretty bleak.

I had chronic fatigue syndrome,

fibromyalgia.

[Woman] Chronic migraines,

that was a huge one.

I had chronic

gastrointestinal issues.

And I saw gastroenterologists

for several years,

and no one ever told me

it could be related to food.

I thought that I had

early-onset

rheumatoid arthritis.

I had chronic adult acne.

I had numbness in my feet

and in my limbs.

I was always cold.

Everything and anything I took

really didn't provide me

any relief whatsoever.

How I would I have been?

35, or 34, or something.

You're probably not supposed

to feel that crappy at that age,

right?

That's not old.

But I felt old.

I had come

to just really live with it.

It became part of my life.

[Man]

I remember feeling strange,

feeling weird

from very early on, you know.

Not feeling healthy.

Not feeling like

I lived to full capacity.

Even as a child.

And that's weird.

I mean, the thing is

everyone is so sick

in this country.

Our food system is so broken.

[Man] The solution given to me

by my GP was,

"Don't worry.

If you take these meds now,

"you'll be able to keep these...

you know, suppress these issues

that you're facing,

and you should be able

to live longer."

[Man] It's amazing...

You know, it's like

the human body

just gets comfy with stuff

or accepting of conditions

and just kind of like...

It's like,

"Oh, this is gonna hurt."

Or, "I have a bum knee,"

or I have a whatever.

"We'll just kind of

deal with it. We'll compensate.

We'll be fine."

And so, you get used

to those things.

And so,

the same thing happened with me.

I just felt horrible,

but did it for so long

that I forgot how bad

I actually felt

and how it felt to feel good.

I was never extremely sick,

but I was never well either.

I was vegetarian

for about six years.

I ate fish sometimes,

but was mostly vegetarian,

and also mostly dairy-free,

because the person

I was with at the time

had a dairy allergy.

So in addition

to being vegetarian,

I was also eating way more soy

than anyone should ever consume

over their lifetime.

Because we had

all the dairy substitutes,

like the fake butter,

and the soy milk, and the...

I don't even remember what else,

but it was all pretty horrible.

And I also worked

in vegetarian restaurants

at the time.

That was my life, basically,

and was eating seitan,

which is wheat gluten,

sandwiches

on rye bread.

So, I was just eating

a straight-up gluten sandwich.

So gluten and soy

were, like, my main staples

in my diet,

and I was completely

the angry chef that threw pans.

I was... psychotic

and not a happy person.

And of course,

there were other factors.

It wasn't 100% diet,

but that played a huge role.

I was definitely

the sickest I've ever been

and the unhappiest

I've ever been.

[Woman]

My husband was Paleo

for almost a year.

And through that year,

every time I ate,

I had just horrid pain,

stomach pain,

and he would say,

"I really think

that you have Coeliac,

and I think you need

to get it checked out."

And if you have it,

if you take about a pinch

of saffron, you'll want to...

[Michelle]

My specialty as a chef

was Italian.

After about a year,

we were having a celebration.

It was one of

the kids' birthdays.

And I was making, of course,

all of that,

and there he was,

making his own dinner.

And I looked at him,

and I said,

"You're, like, really never

gonna have my pizza

and pasta again, are you?"

And he goes, "No."

And he said, "I really think

that you have Coeliac,

and you really need

to go get it checked out."

They checked

for the wrong antibodies.

I checked out negative.

The doctor

that was sitting there

talking to me said,

"You're negative,

but you know

what we're gonna do?"

He said, "I really think...

From what you're telling me,

"I really think

you might have Coeliac,

and so, we're gonna do

a biopsy of your colon."

He starts telling me

how he's going to

cut into my colon,

and as he's telling me,

he's... nodding off,

falling asleep.

And I'm just like,

"Hmm. That doesn't sound

like a good option to me."

And I thought, "Why is

the next step so invasive?

"Why isn't it

just cut these foods

from you diet?

Why not start there?"

[Cain] I got diagnosed

with Coeliac Disease

about four years ago

and was lucky enough

where I had typical GI issues

and very physical manifestations

of that.

So, if I ate gluten,

I knew that I ate it

and felt horrible.

So, went gluten-free,

and that did not fix things.

We've tried gluten-free.

We've tried gluten-free vegan.

We tried all of those different

variations of it.

I ended up with no energy

and... puffy.

Is the only way

I can kind of describe that.

It's like my body fat percentage

took a nosedive

in the wrong direction.

And I was lethargic,

and I just didn't feel good

that way.

So we did that

for maybe six months or so

and then said

that's enough of that...

and went back.

[Woman] I grew up

in Olympia, Washington.

I grew up

in a totally normal family,

your standard, American family,

and grew up eating cereal,

and bagels,

and Subway sandwiches.

And there was no food

in the food that I was eating.

There was

no pasture-roaming animals.

There was no grass-fed meat.

There were no seasonal,

local vegetables.

It was like

whatever we could pick up

and throw in a plastic bag

at the grocery store,

and, like, whatever is on sale.

A general health consciousness

was very strongly present

in my life

because my parents

ran a pharmacy.

My father was a pharmacist,

which means that we ate healthy

according

to conventional wisdom

on what is a healthy diet.

So I ate very little meat.

No fat at all.

That was forbidden.

We had the fat substitutes,

of course, every day

on the table.

Margarine instead of butter,

the heart-healthy alternative.

None of us

in the family was healthy.

My father suffered

psoriasis heavily.

My mother had severe asthma.

My sister,

which I discovered now,

clearly had a histamine problem.

I had a number of health issues.

You know,

I had this asthma as well,

skin problems.

Major energy dips

throughout the day

as being a child.

Now, I realize

what was the reason for that.

I was never able

to wake up in the morning.

It was hell

to drag my body to school

and to pay attention in school.

I couldn't...

It was impossible.

I would fall asleep

in the first hours of class.

Nobody could tell me

why that was,

and nobody questioned it even.

So from this background...

You know,

it would have been different

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