How am I doing with diet and avoiding estrogens and xenoestrogens?

This is the end of my first full week after learning that I do, indeed, have a meningioma. It was suspected three months ago but now it is sure.

In priority order:

My religion calls for no coffee, tea, alcohol, tobacco so it’s not hard to avoid the coffee, tea, and caffeine foods! Unless you count chocolate, which <sigh> is going to have to go

I’m already a vegetarian so it’s not hard to avoid beef, pork, and chicken. However, I’m not meticulous. If someone brings in quiche with ham as an office treat, I might have a bit. Being a vegetarian is all about being peaceful so with the little flavor bits, I usually don’t avoid it if someone has made it for a special celebration. But from now on, I will be meticulous and find other ways to support and not offend.

I’ve been EXCELLENT at avoiding sugars all week! I’m a chocoholic and eat sugar under stress and this has been an incredibly stressful week at work. My staple at happy hour every Friday has traditionally been a root beer and a large chocolate smushy ice-creamy brownie thing. This week, all I had was water with lemon and some of the cheesy h’ors d’hoevres like nachos and fried cheese.

I’ve made a conscious shift away from soy. I usually have a breakfast drink made of soy. Not any more. No fruity Odwalla soy protein drinks, either (used to be my favorite).

I never use shampoos or conditioners with parabens but I have very expensive, mail order cosmetics that need to go. I haven’t used them all week and plan to stop by the natural grocer to pick up something without parabens. I know from experience that it’s very difficult to find foundation makeup (that’s any good) without parabens so I will have to write about my success or failure with that one. Meantime, I’m going au naturel!

No commercial laundry detergents. I’m doing my laundry today at my brother’s house (plumbing at my house is broken). I am washing my whites and light colors today and am only using 2 cups of vinegar per load. They look fairly clean and smell very fresh, not like a salad! I’m using double rinse and double agitation just to be sure they get clean. My brother is off running errands and asked for a list of what I should be using for laundry detergent. My non-estrogen list says “trisodium phosphate from Home Depot” so we’ll see if he’s able to find it.

I bought some Progestelle cream and Indole-3-carbinole and am using them almost religiously. (I forget in the morning and apply the cream or take the pills mid-day).

I realize that you would not expect to see any change from these actions for three months, but at that time, I will be due for another brain scan (no X-ray, maybe just MRI) and maybe a review of my uterine fibroid tumor situation and I’m expecting that they will show a marked reduction!