The Experiment.

I am conducting a little experiment on a special test-subject... myself ;)

You see, I've been suffering with psoriasis which is concentrated on my torso, legs, and arms. Save for it clearly last summer, I've had it since winter 2009 and it doesn't seem to be clearing up. I've spent almost a year trying to find the root cause of this ailment, and despite trying almost everything, I have not been successful. This past winter it got really bad, to a point where only allopathic medicine could control it (namely corticosteroids).

Naturopathic medicine advocates that there is a root cause behind every illness. Even health issues that seem to be "genetic" or "in the family" more often than not are caused by something real and solvable. Something like psoriasis (which is an uncontrolled growth of skin cells) has been found to be caused by diet, stress, lack of vitamin D, vitamin deficiencies, dry weather, low fat diet, yeast overgrowth, fungal infection, decreased zinc levels, and/or low immunity. I've been "experimenting" on my own body since the psoriasis first developed (with the assistance of three NDs and at one time, an MD), but have had no luck. So, with few options left, I have decided to conduct one more--and pretty drastic--experiment: to eat some animal products.

A vegan eating eggs? Absolutely! Now, there is a method to this madness: first, other than the eggs I am living a vegan life. Even though I may eat organic, free-run eggs at home, I am not going to eat eggs in restaurants because I won't know where they come from. If I am going to eat an animal product as part of my experiment, I want to do it as ethical and sustainable as possible. Second, I choose eggs because I am nowhere near ready to eat animal products again and I don't believe that homosapiens should be consuming milk beyond infanthood, so eggs was my best option to consume some animal proteins. Third, I am deciding to introduce an animal protein into my diet because maybe my psoriasis is my body crying out. Maybe my body is lacking something that is better concentrated in animal products... Veganism is not for every body. Although I love my vegan diet, maybe my body doesn't, and thus I am choosing to listen to my body through the conduction of this experiment.

The "experiment" consists of me eating two eggs, every second day, for a period of one month. Unfortunately there are many confounding variables, such as the sunshine (psoriasis is thought to improve with high levels of vitamin D, which are produced during Summer months), so it will be difficult to tell if I see an improvement in my skin, if it is due to the sun or due to the eggs. (Eggs are also high in vitamin D, another confounding variable!).

So I ate my first egg the other day. It tasted like I remember eggs tasted ;). I had no digestive reaction to the egg, which was good, because my body could have reacted due to this "foreign" food :P

Anywho, just wanted to fill everyone in on my little dietary experiment. I'll report back once the month of egg eating is finished!