Gywneth Paltrow has opened up on the dramatic moment she thought she was "going to die" and how that health-scare meant she had to make some big changes to her family's eating habits. In her new cookbook, It's All Good, the Oscar-winner reveals how doctors put her on a very strict new diet after a scary incident, which the star initially believed to be a stroke.
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"One sunny afternoon in London, in the spring of 2011, I thought - without sounding overly-dramatic - that I was going to die," the Iron Man beauty writes. "I had just served lunch in the garden at home…I had a vague feeing that I was going to faint, and I wasn't forming thoughts correctly. "I got a searing pain in my head, I couldn't speak, and I felt as if I couldn't breathe, I thought I was having a stroke. "Doctors diagnosed that Gwyneth had suffered from a migraine and a panic attack - and also found that she was severely anaemic and vitamin D-deficient.That meant the star had to overhaul her diet, "tough words for a foodie to hear", and she was banned from eating eggs, sugar, shellfish, deepwater fish, potatoes, tomatoes, bell pepper, eggplant, corn, wheat, meat and drinking coffee for three weeks.Gwyneth also decided to have her family - husband Chris Martin, daughter Apple, eight, and Moses, six - tested for allergies. She reveals that "everyone in my house is intolerant of gluten, dairy, chicken's eggs, among many other surprising foods", and so avoids feeding her children certain foods.
"Sometimes when my family is not eating pasta, bread or processed grains like white rice, we're left with that specific hunger that comes with avoiding carbs," she writes.In the cookbook, which includes a number of recipes to 'Make You Look Good and Feel Great', Gwyneth devotes an entire chapter to grains, but remains deeply skeptical about them. "Every single nutritionist, doctor and health-conscious person I have ever come across…seems to concur that (gluten) is tough on the system and many of us are at best intolerant of it, and at worst allergic to it," she says.
