It's a protein thing

Last Sunday and Monday, cycle days 1 and 2, I noticed that I had quite blurred vision. I may or may not have had blurred vision on previous cycles, and put it down to needing new glasses, but this seemed different. A weird blurred. Not everything was blurred, but only when I tried to concentrate on it. And then it stopped. And I thought: "huh, I wonder if that was connected to the start of my period and not to needing new glasses?"

And then I remembered from reading in The Infertility Cure that one of the case studies talked about a woman whose vision dimmed and had floaters around the time of her period. Yes, I have read or browsed The Infertility Cure so many times that I remember shit like that. So I dug the book out, and started thumbing through all the case studies. I couldn't find it at first, but I kept looking. And there it was. And it meant Liver Blood deficiency. Because the Liver directs blood to both the eyes and the uterus, according to Chinese medicine, and if there isn't enough Liver blood at the start of the period, because all the blood has gone to the uterus, the eyesight can be affected.

So I started googling Liver Blood deficiency, and it seemed to fit with some of my other symptoms, and was related to just plain old general Blood deficiency, which has always been one of my Chinese medicine diagnoses. I figured I may as well google Blood deficiency too, while I was at it. I started trawling through websites. And then I found it. An article that talked about how many vegetarians have Blood deficiency because they don't eat enough protein. It was like a light went on in my head. I mean, it's one thing to read about these Chinese diagnoses, but then you think, well, how did I end up with that? Why did that happen? I don't eat a bad diet, I've always been fairly healthy, why am I such a mess? Because you see, I have had so many diagnoses that it just didn't seem fair - Kidney yang deficiency, Spleen qi deficiency, Blood deficiency, Blood stasis, Liver qi stagnation and possibly Heart deficiency. But then it clicked. Decades of inadequate protein intake could easily cause problems. And the first time I went to a naturopath, she told me that I wasn't metabolizing protein properly, so what little I was eating wasn't even all getting absorbed.

And so, because I need a "thing" for every cycle, this time I resolve to try to eat 60g of protein a day. And if I have to live on Quorn cutlets and whey protein shakes, so be it. I had a feeling that the whey protein I took last time was doing some good, but I think it was too little too late. This time I'm going to give the protein intake a real college try.

I told the acu about my blurred vision, and she immediately said, in a somewhat excited voice "that's Liver Blood deficiency!" and then asked if I was ready to go back on herbs. I said I was, so she made me up a tea formula. I hope there's lots of blood tonifying herbs in there that'll help, along with the protein. I hope this'll perhaps finally be the piece of the puzzle that will enable things to work properly.

I feel a bit of optimism creeping back in. I hope it hangs around.