Naturopathic Doctors - Best Decision

The new clinic I went to was 180 Health Solutions with Dr. Steve Nagel and Dr. Cara Jahner in Mandan. I started with Dr. Cara Jahner first as she was a naturopath and focused on IBS, stomach issues, leaky gut, and candida. After my first visit with everyone at 180, I could tell that they truly cared about getting to the root cause/problem of my stomach issues and fixing it permanently rather than masking the symptoms with drugs. Dr. Cara immediately recommended running some tests to see what was going on with my gut and intestines.

The first tests I had were a blood test, food sensitivity test, and a stool test. The results of my blood test didn’t show anything abnormal, my food sensitivity test showed that I had a reaction to more foods than the last time I took a food sensitivity test. The stool test showed by far the most results though. On a scale of 0-10 (10 being the worst), I was at a 10 for inflammation. I was surprised that my inflammation was that high because I thought I was eating healthy since I was on a gluten-free and low-sugar diet for the past few years. Dr. Cara explained that even though I’m eating gluten-free items, they still have carbohydrates in them and that our body breaks carbs down into sugars. Since my inflammation was extremely high and I was still having stomach pains, she recommended a no-carb, sugar-free diet and to avoid the foods on my sensitivity list as well.

Since they wanted me to go on a no-sugar diet, this also meant cutting out alcohol for at least 30 days, since alcohol also turns into sugar. This was almost worse news to me than all the foods I had to cut out. I realize this might make me sound like I have a problem with alcohol, but this was the ONLY item I didn’t have to avoid up until this point. One thing to know about me is if I commit to something, I commit to it 100%. I cut out alcohol for a month, but was still having quite a bit of stomach pains, so I did bring alcohol back in, but very sparingly. The next six months were probably the hardest six months I have gone through. I literally had to think of food as fuel, as all I was able to eat was protein, vegetables, and water. I am a pretty sociable person and this made having a social life extremely hard. When we would go out with friends, I couldn’t drink anything besides water and there were only a few restaurants in town that had vegetables as a side. As a positive note though, I ended up losing over 25 pounds and was the skinniest I’ve ever been in my life. This was also a curse though because so many people told me I looked too skinny and unhealthy.