Friday 14 June 2013

Nine week update
View at the back of my head

View from the top of my head

Hi all 
I am now nine weeks into my auto immune Paleo experiment. Since the last picture was posted at five and half weeks I have seen a lot more white fuzz appear. As you can see from the photos below. 
Food wise  I have not been as super strict as the first few weeks allowing myself on occasion the odd cup of decaf coffee with a small bit of milk or I had a total blowout one night and had some strawberries and double cream ....mmmm delicious. Apart from this and the odd indulgent spoon or two  of hazelnut butter I am sticking to it and plan to go back to super strict for the next few weeks. 
As you can see from the photos below the fuzzy hair is multiplying which is very encouraging and helps to keep me motivated to stick to this way of eating. I have so much hair now, lol, that I am going to have to shave it off. I wear a suction wig and because of the fuzz it is not sticking as well as it should to my head. A good complaint I think. 
So what am I eating? My diet mainly consists of some type of meat chicken, fish, lamb, steak, rashers etc. Luckily I am living in Ireland which has lush green fields and animals are raised mainly in a traditional way, being grass fed in summer and fed silage (fermented grass) in the winter. I am eating  vegetables such as broccoli, spinach, rocket, asparagus, cauliflower, avocados etc. I also on occasion will scramble the yolks of eggs, these are fresh from a local farm. After that I try to fill up on fats such as ghee, coconut oil, olive oil, fish oil, fat from meat and some butter. 
I have recently purchased a Kuhn Rikon pressure cooker and am making bone broth from that. Also I just got a delivery of Pickl It jars and am going to make some batches of fermented vegetables in these to increase the beneficial bacteria in my gut. 
I would love to hear from others who are following the autoimmune Paleo protocol, so that we could share our experiences and the challenges we face eating in this way. 
My hopes are that eating this way I will heal my gut and my hair will grow back and that in time I will be able to eat a more liberal diet, always sticking to Paleo principles but perhaps being able to follow Mark Sisson's 80/20 rule. 
Please feel free to add your comments below and I will update you again in a couple of weeks...

Thursday 23 May 2013

Alopecia-strict autoimmune Paleo- my history

Hi everybody,
My name is Hairless Mary, hairless because I have suffered from alopecia universalis/totalis since I was 18. I am now 34 and have been completely bald for the last 16 years.

I have experimented with the Paleo Diet in the past and have had some success with it, regrowing some hair on my head on two occasions when I was following the strict autoimmune Paleo protocol. Sadly I fell off the wagon and the hair that had regrown fell out again.

So here I am back on the autoimmune Paleo protocol for the past six weeks and am already seeing some regrowth. Yay exciting. I am going to use this blog to post pictures of my progress and to blog about my experiences on the Paleo diet. I will post more about my history in later posts, diets, potions and pills that I have tried throughout the years.

Below you can see my progress so far                   

Before commencing Paleo
Four weeks in 


Five and half weeks in