SI Pain: 0/100 | Rib Pain: 7/100 | Concrete Back: 7/100

Thought I would do a quick diary entry today because I think I’ve had a couple of mini findings.

The first is around chocolate.

I’ve been eating a lot of chocolate courverture drops recently.

They are to replace the sugar free, dairy free chocolate bars I usually have (and was getting addicted to).  They were unbelievably expensive so I wanted to explore some alternatives.

I had never heard of courverture drops before but they came recommended as not containing any nasties and they are delicious. Sort of creamy and almost milk chocolatey.

Here are the ingredients…

Organic cocoa mass, organic coconut sugar, organic cocoa butter, 67% cocoa solids.

I was interested to see if they had any obvious impact because. Even though they should be ‘safe’, you don’t want to be eating too much of this kind of thing on the diet.

Pain-wise I have felt great today, much like I have the last few days. The diary / wellness plan is still in bright green territory, which is exciting.

However, I had quite a lot of these chocolate drops after lunch, and I noticed that 45 minutes later, I had a little bit of rib pain.

Nothing major but noticeable.

I also found that my cough increased a bit this afternoon as well, which could be linked. It was almost non-existent this morning.

Other factors which could be involved are that I had some alcohol yesterday seeing friends. However, I didn’t have any problems in the morning or at lunch. So the correlation does seem to be with these chocolate drops.

I just thought I would note that as a finding.

Overall, everything is going great, and I just need to stick with what I am doing. Maybe it’s just a reminder to have things like these treats in moderation.

The other thing I wanted to note is that yesterday after having a beer, I got quite a flushed, reddish face. This has happened a few times recently. It doesn’t seem to be every brand of beer that causes this. So I am wondering whether the link here is gluten. I have cut out every other source of gluten in my diet apart from this.

Red Stripe seemed to be the trigger for face flush the other day. Yesterday, it is hard to tell, but it might have been Moretti or Camden Pale. It will be an interesting test to see whether gluten-free beers don’t cause this or whether there is some other ingredient involved.