My name is Stefanie Brand. I am not a doctor or a nutritionist. I have no special training or expertise in medicine, nutrition, or cooking. I am however an insulin-dependent diabetic. I was diagnosed in my mid-forties and my diabetes has been well-controlled now for over 15 years. My last A1C was a 6.0! I’m very proud of that. About seven years ago or so I started experiencing some pretty bad digestive issues. No need to go into the details here (I may do that in a blog post later) but suffice it to say that it was bad enough that I knew I had to figure out what was causing it. I had a series of tests but everything came out fine (apparently my colon is “beautiful”). I stopped some medications to see if they were the culprit, but to no avail. My doctors urged me to pay attention to what I was eating as they believed it was food related. Sure enough, over time, we figured out that the culprit was dairy. After much trial and error (which will most certainly be the subject of a blog post later) I have learned that I am quite definitely lactose intolerant. I also learned that the pills they sell to help with lactose intolerance do not help me at all.
So for the last 15 years or so I have been on a pretty successful journey to maintain my diabetic health. For the last 7 years or so I have layered on top of that a need to avoid lactose and the health effects it poses for me. I did all of that while working in a high profile extremely stressful job as an attorney and consumer advocate. I am also an avid cook and spent much of the pandemic cooking for myself and developing recipes for my favorite foods that meet my dietary needs. I have learned a lot. I learned that I knew very little about where lactose is hidden in foods that I never would have guessed contained milk products. I learned which diary substitutes I like best and which work best in recipes. This has allowed me to continue to enjoy foods I thought I was going to have to learn to live without. I recently retired and I thought it would be fun and hopefully helpful to others for me to share what I have learned. I was shocked when I started looking online and found very little to help people navigate these two conditions at the same time. While these conditions do not appear to be medically linked, they do seem to coincide on a fairly regular basis. My goal is for others to learn from my mistakes and triumphs. I sincerely hope this blog will be useful to those of you with either or both of these conditions and that it will help you improve your health and entertain your palate.
