Best title ever, right?

It was nearly mid-May and I started getting severely sick everyday. I wasn’t eating dairy or gluten, so they couldn’t be the culprits. My diet was very clean at the time: no dairy, no gluten, no sugar… very little fats or carbs. The only foods I could eat safely were apples and cucumbers, they were great on my stomach and on those days I didn’t got sick.

For over 3 weeks I ate very little and at the end of the day would drink copious amounts of ginger tea, as that would slightly ease my stomach. Again, the only days I didn’t feel depleted of all energy were days I ate apples and cucumbers. Not only did I lose my appetite because of getting sick, there were times I actually felt afraid to eat.

I didn’t feel as though this was a medical emergency, I figured my body was trying to get rid of something. Eventually, I realized this wasn’t going to just pass and needed to do something. Turns out, I needed to receive hydro-colonic therapy for parasites. This happened a week ago and I can say that I’ve successfully been able to eat and not get sick, woo! While I was there I was instructed that I need to wash all my produce with lemon water. It seems as though my method of washing and soaking wasn’t good enough. Clearly, because I got a parasite.

I would use baking soda and hot water or the all organic produce spray, but occasionally there were the moments when I’d use my dish soap…hey, they use Dawn to clean off the animals caught in those horrendous oil spills!

Moving forward I will wash my produce with the following concoction:

Juice of 1 lemon, 2 Tbsp. of baking soda, and 1 c. of water

You can put this together and funnel it into a spray bottle or if you are cleaning berries I’d put them in a bowl with the mixture. It’s the best natural way to kill anything that may get on the outside of your produce, even your organic produce. I know 😦 , that’s not even safe!

You can use white vinegar or apple cider vinegar, however you want to dilute it as to not have the taste of vinegar all over your produce.

You can always Google having parasites and read all sorts of information till the cows come home, but I particularly like reading Organic Olivia‘s blog and prior to finding her on Instagram I (and my mom) have had most of the books that she’ll reference.

I hope you aren’t too grossed out, but that you’re also informed that this can happen to ANYONE.

(The sad/interesting part of this: at the time when I got sick, all my food was prepared by me. I wasn’t going out to eat. I bought my food at my local farmer’s market and stored it on my fridge, cleaned it, prepared it, ate it… like I have for all these years)