Hello y’all!  I know it’s been a while but sometimes life just steps in and calls the shots.  So, hmmmm…. where were we? Hahaha!  Oh yeah!  I left off harping about diet for narcolepsy right!?  Been preaching on that for aaaawhile now.  In 2016 I spoke at the Narcolepsy Network Conference about WHY dietary changes are so important for symptom management (watch this video OR read Posts 1, 2, and 3 in the 30,000 Foot View Series).  Then in 2017 I spoke again at the conference about some easy dietary changes you can make… but there was so much to share I just couldn’t go into extreme detail and still stay inside my allotted time.  So to remedy this I’m introducing the Madcap Diet for Narcolepsy – Diet Basics Series.  Well y’all, this means that if you have been on the fence about making some changes in your diet, now’s the time to take action!  It’s time!  Time to get down to the nitty gritty of making dietary changes to mitigate your narcolepsy symptoms same as my family and I have. NOTE:  Please, pretty pretty pretty please, be sure you have at least watched the two videos of the presentations because knowing WHY dietary changes are important is almost as important as knowing HOW.  The two videos can be found here. In this series I will detail to you the actual steps you can take to make impactful changes to your diet so you can have greater wakefulness, clearer thinking, and less of the extreme shifts in energy that are part of dealing with narcolepsy.  STEPS is the key word.  See, my family and I follow a ketogenic diet.  “Keto” diets and “Ketogenic” diets are getting quite a bit of attention in the diet culture these days.  Of course I’ve been a fan of it, have talked extensively about it to anyone that will listen, and run the Keto PWN group on Facebook as well.  But do me a favor and take a peep at the “beginner plans” for keto and, I kid you not, you are going to go cross-eyed.  Great information but tons of new stuff to learn and integrate into your diet…how in the world is THAT supposed to work if you are having a hard time staying awake and focused?  And get this, it is a diet that is almost completely opposite of what you’ve done in the past so EVERYTHING about it will be new to you.  How in the world, when you are so tired and can’t focus, are you supposed to make all those changes?  Well, I’m here to tell you that you don’t have to. My family and I have succeeded and failed at this diet for about 7 years now.  We are fully aware of how difficult this diet is.  BUT we have spent the last 7 years making it narcolepsy friendly.  We put in this effort because, darn it, the diet works and is worth doing.  In order to stay on the diet and reap its benefits we HAD to find a way to make it sustainable and EASY… narcolepsy easy.  By this I mean that each step of this diet has been broken down into bits that are easy to understand, easy to integrate, and easy to build on.  We have cut corners everywhere possible so that we get the core benefit without the extreme focus and exhausting effort.  I call this the Madcap Route. “Madcap?”  Wha-huh?  Check it… My nickname has been Madcap Miss since before I can remember.  It’s because I’m always coming at things in zany, eccentric, and unconventional ways.  ALWAYS.  I’m no different in my approach to diet changes.  If going from A to Z won’t work for me who says I can’t go from B to X to O to A, etc., etc.?  If it works, why not?!  So that is exactly what I did with the ketogenic diet.  I flipped it on its ear and broke it down into the steps that would impact me the most without having to make the sweeping changes the full on diet requires. Before I can share with you the Madcap Route to this diet, you are going to need some simple basics of the full on ketogenic diet.  So here is the A to Z way of the keto/ketogenic diet:

• The ketogenic diet drops your carbohydrate intake to 20g of carbs or less per day.  There are big carb counts in foods like bread, chips, pasta, desserts, pizzas, sodas, potatoes, fries…. wow…. that’s most of the stuff an average person eats these days.  With all that stuff and then some, the average American consumes between 150-300g carbohydrates per day, imagine how hard it would be to drop it down to 20g carbs a day.  What the heck are you left with to eat?  Uhmmm, that would be “real food” y’all.  🙂
• When you drop carbs that low, you essentially remove all sugar, veggies that are high carb (corn, potatoes, carrots, etc), most fruits, and pretty much all grains (Eeek!  Like pasta and bread?  Yep.)
• Because you have removed all those carby foods, you gotta eat something and that something is REAL FOOD.  Low carb stuff like above ground veg, greens, berries.
• A ketogenic diet flips your idea of fat on its ear.  The new focus is to, wait for it… EAT.  The.  Fat.  No kidding. Wait… all your life you’ve been taught to eat a low fat diet…so how in the world are you supposed to undo the decades of “low fat” eating habits?  I tell ya, it takes a mega shift in mindset but it can be done and eventually you learn the science that supports this and all that jazz.  But in the beginning it’s just plain weird and feels like you’re cheating.
• Following keto rules means eating a moderate amount of protein… ok that seems easy, right?  Um… kinda.  Protein is generally zero carb and many “keto” folks think eating mounds of bacon is totally diet friendly.  Not so much… this needs to be done in moderation, hence the “moderate protein” rule in the Keto diet.
• In the ketogenic diet KETONES are King.  It’s these little lovelies that work magic in the body.  ESPECIALLY in a person with narcolepsy because ketones mimic some of the things our medications do.  But to get to a “ketogenic state” you have to do the diet PRECISELY and without error.  Doing it perfectly will get you into ketosis and producing ketones within about a week.  Wavering somewhere in the middle is pure H-E-Double Hockey Sticks (come on, you know what I said but I gotta keep this PG).  This middle ground is full of cravings, detox from the sugars we eat so much of, and something called the Keto Flu (totally feels like you have flu symptoms)…yuck.  Seriously though, who in their ever loving life has ever been PERFECT at something?

Even with all that said about keto, it is STILL growing in popularity because when you DO get it right it is so.  freaking.  good.  Energy in spades, cravings fade, quality sleep increases, and mental clarity shines through the brain fog. I don’t know about you but I am certainly not perfect and I’m a certain level of lazy in that if it’s not easy to do, I’m just not gonna do it.  Nope.  But… I did do it, right?  I did actually do the diet right and get the benefits or I wouldn’t be writing this post.  It took a whole lot of falling on my face and existing in that awful middle ground before I got it right. I don’t want that for you.  But I DO want you to get those benefits. What if I told you that out of the hundreds of people with narcolepsy that I’ve worked with these past 7 years, my family included, that over HALF of them don’t have to do the full on ketogenic diet to get some relief and benefit?  WHAT!!!!???  Nope, they benefit from making some changes to what and when they eat AND by hacking the whole “KETONES are KING” thing… they do this in steps… this is what I’ve now titled The Madcap Route to the keto diet.  This is exactly what I plan to do for you in this series of posts…. I’ll get you some benefits without the full monty.  But what about the other half of the people I’ve worked with?  Most of them used the tools they learned in these first steps, in The Madcap Route, and then made a few easy tweaks and refinements. And guess what? BAM, they are right in the full keto diet without all the “perfection” that would be needed if they had jumped right in at full bore. So what’s the plan on the Madcap Route?  What’s the B to X to O to A, etc., etc. route to getting more wakefulness, energy, and mental clarity?

1. Right off the bat we gotta get you thinking more clearly and with a tad more energy.  We will do that with something called MCT oil.  High quality MCT oil actually turns to ketones even without other dietary changes. This means we get some of the benefit from the full on keto diet without doing all the those pesky diet changes all at once.
2. At some point you have to address what is actually going in your mouth and how it is affecting your symptoms.  But change, especially sweeping change, is hard.  SO… I developed a process called the 3R’s.  REPLACE, REDUCE, REMOVE.  This process eases you into making changes without all the heartache of yanking all of your favorite foods from your menu all at once.
   1. REPLACE:  In this step I educate you on which foods are good and which foods are bad.  Then I teach you how to find yummy REPLACEments for the “bad” ones.  In this stage, you can still eat the bad versions but you will eventually find a REPLACEment for all of them.
   2. REDUCE:  Now that you have found some yummy REPLACEments, you can begin to REDUCE your intake of the bad versions and instead eat the yummy, good versions.  The good news is that when you have been finding REPLACEments you are naturally nudging the bad versions off your plate and have already begun this step before actually having to enforce it.
   3. REMOVE:  Here is where you buck up and get rid of the bad versions altogether.  Buck up Buttercup!  But see, there’s a secret here… you have already REDUCED your consumption of these so it is WAY WAY WAY easier to take this final step where you REMOVE them.
3. Each step of the 3R’s will get you higher levels of energy and wakefulness, and less brain fog throughout the day.  But if we applied the 3R’s to everything you eat all at once that is still too much change at once so… we break it down even further into food groups that work well together when making changes.  You will apply the 3R’s to each food group and won’t move on to the next one till you are a master in the current group.  By the time you get to the last food group you will be a mega pro at this and it will be super easy.
   1. Snacks and Desserts
   2. Protein and Dairy
   3. Veggies and Fruit
   4. Beverages and Alcohol
   5. Corn and Potatoes
   6. Misc. Grains, Rice, and Beans
   7. Breads and Pasta

Baby steps all the way BayBee!  Just a few things to focus on each step of the way and all the time you are making forward progress and adding to your wakefulness, energy, and mental clarity.  That’s a WIN in my book. Ready for the next installment?  Check out MCT Oil:  The PWN’s High Octane Fuel Source.  This will be your first BIG step in your dietary journey.  I can’t wait to see how surprised you’ll be at how good you feel with this one simple change.  Will you join me on this journey?  I hope so! Your Madcap Miss (a.k.a. Gina Dennis) BE SURE TO CHECK OUT THE NEXT POST IN THIS SERIES:  MCT Oil:   The PWN’s High Octane Fuel Source (Step 1 in the Madcap Diet for Narcolepsy) Let me be totally up front here…I AM NOT A DOCTOR, nor am I a nutritionist, I only have a tiny amount of formal training in such things as a Health Coach.  But I am a person with narcolepsy who uses dietary and lifestyle changes to mitigate my narcolepsy symptoms.  I’ve been experimenting with these changes since July 2011 and have successfully maintained a high level of narcolepsy symptom management since that date.  And so has my family with narcolepsy.   This website contains our personal stories, failures, and experiments.  In this website I will share with you the information that I have found most credible and some practical ideas for mitigating narcolepsy symptoms.  I beg you to check with your doctor before initiating any of the dietary changes I speak of, especially if you are taking any medications. Madcap Disclaimer