That's holistic medicine for you.
No, I'm being serious!
This is a huge revelation for me and I hope this post can help at least one other person discover this simple way of living, too. (Okay, it's actually complex, but at the same time super simple.)
Let me preface this with the disclaimer of: I'm still learning. I'm like a little child. Excited, eager, but with huge gaps of knowledge.
I haven't tried everything, but I am more than willing. It has more to do with time and money for some aspects of holistic medicine (acupuncture, for one) and yes, a little skepticism others (energy healing). But I'm willing to try it.
So the big question you're probably asking is: What is my problem and how is it being solved?
Well...it's problemS (with a big S) and it's still in the process of being solved because I'm stoopid and didn't try these things until just recently.
Of course, as most of you know, my main problem is Crohn's Disease. It's a evil little monkey on my back that just won't. go. away.
As I told my mother the other day, I am sick and tired of feeling sick and tired!! (Yes, the second exclamation mark is necessary.)
There are days I feel okay. Days I can pretty much ignore any minor symptom like general fatigue or a little tummy ache. Then there are days where I feel like I've been hit by a bus. Then there are days that start out okay and end in a lot of unpleasantness. Or start rocky and end decently. It's never completely consistent and I've been wondering for YEARS how to make it better.
I'm not very good at committing 100% to any extreme health measures. I'm not going vegan or raw or paleo or only drink bone broth for a week. It's not in my personality at all to even attempt something like that. So I need things that I can integrate into my normal routine that will make me feel better.
Wait. Scratch that.
I need things that I can integrate into my normal routine that will make me heal.
Remember that. It's a hugely important difference.
The question remains. How can I solve my problem of Crohn's? What are the problems of Crohn's? It's different for many of us diagnosed...
Wait. Scratch that.
The symptoms each of us feel are the same, but at different levels. But the REASON is the same.
Want to hear the ridiculous things doctors have told me about my disease?
1) Food has nothing to do with your symptoms.
2) You need to take 6 iron supplements a day.
3) Steroids have very little side effects.
4) Steroids will make you better.
5) You will need surgery at some point in your life.
And those are just the ones that stuck with me all these years. I haven't seen a doctor for my Crohn's for....uh....seven or eight years. I just suffer through it on my own. I have seen doctors for a myriad of other issues (some listed below) but not the gastroenterologist specifically for Crohn's because, frankly, most are useless.
So, the main problems with Crohn's are:
1) Anemia.
This means low iron. Like, dangerously ridiculously insanely low. After I had Nova my doctors couldn't understand how I was still conscious, let alone walking and talking because my iron levels were so low. By all accounts, I shouldn't have been able to function. Yet I did! Take that, Anemia.
2) Inflammation of the gut...somewhere...anywhere.
Crohn's is chronic. That means when I end up needing surgery (because that's how doctors word things: when), the Crohn's will just move to a different place in my gut. Yippee skippee. Inflammation is the main source of the pain because food just makes it angrier.
3) Immune system overload (AKA failure)
My stoopid immune system get's kind of confused when I get sick and thinks that my body and my healthy cells are the intruder and attacks itself. Go home immune system, you're drunk. This also means I will catch every cold, every time.
4) Because of the inflammation in my gut, I barely absorb nutrients from solid food.
And don't even get me started on vitamin supplements or iron supplements. If I can't even absorb apple juice, I can't absorb iron supplements (which is one of the hardest things to digest...see the humor?). Because I'm not absorbing nutrients, I end up with deficiencies in...everything. When you have deficiencies in everything then your body goes...wonky.
So they tell me to take a million iron supplements a day and guess what happens? Gold star for anyone who guessed pain! So my choices are no iron and be anemic, or yes iron and be curled in bed in pain.
Also, remember #4? How I can't absorb nutrients? This is why I never need to exercise. Because I'm basically starving all the time. Not that I don't eat, I do. Plenty. My body just doesn't know it so I don't gain any weight.
I will eat, get a pretty intense stomach ache (thanks, inflammation!), not receive any nutritional benefits from the food, and feel exhausted from the anemia. That's my basic day.
On top of it all, I barely sleep. More on that below.
How does holistic medicine help?
Well, as I said I'm pretty new to this so some things I still need to try. However, it's helped about a billion times more than conventional "western medicine". AKA Just-Pop-Those-Pills-And-Shut-Up medicine.
I have yet to find a conventional doctor who will listen to my symptoms and problems and recommend a way to heal my body. They always, always, always, prescribe pills to mask or suppress the problem.
As an animal behavior person, I know how dangerous suppressing the problem can be. This is what punishment based training does, suppresses the problem until the dog bites someone in the face. It's basic psychology.
It's dangerous to suppress and mask things, that's how bodies end up breaking without warning, because the problem (pain, usually) is being suppressed.
Anyways...holistic medicine aims to correct the underlying issue, to heal, instead of looking at the problem as something to put a band-aid on and then claim it's "all better".
Here are (some of) the things I've discovered and tried (or will be trying very soon):
1) Chiropractic care
Holy moley, I can't say enough good things about going to the chiropractor. did you know conventional doctors will just brush it off? But if you go to a doctor with back pain, what do they recommend? Muscle relaxants and surgery. Instead, consider the chiropractor. You've got nothing to lose from trying it and everything to gain. Ask for a referral from a friend (like me!) and try it. When I went in and had my x-rays, the chiropractor asked if I'd ever been in a serious car accident because that's how screwed up my back and neck were.
After 6 years, it's probably the main thing holding me together. It helps me sleep better, it makes the pain in my hip (after years of retail and standing for 8 hours, you develop some issues) go away. When I clench my jaw at night, he adjusts it back in place. When my knee twists out of place, he adjusts it. When Mike's shoulder kinks up from hours of pest control, the chiropractor adjusts it. The spine is connected to every part of your body, if it's messed up then you're not going to feel so great. This is so obvious to me, now, but I was definitely a huge skeptic before Mike
2) Angstrom Iron and Vitamin C
Angstrom minerals are minerals in their tiniest and purest form. They are liquid and can pass through the stomach wall without the need to be digested. Instant absorption. Did any of my doctors know about them? Nope. But holistic medicine did. I've been taking angstrom iron for about a year and even though I'm not totally consistent (I should be taking it three times a day...most days it's once) I have zero pain from it and more energy than without it. It's been a miracle supplement.
3) Probiotics
My poor gut. It's pretty sickly. The first thing I discovered to help was probiotics. Some of you are probably nodding as if this would be an obvious thing to try. Did any of my doctors recommend it? Something so simple and universally accepted as important to our health? Something that would obviously help me, a person with gut issues? Nope, not one doctor brought it up. They just kept pushing the steroids. I'm kind of stoopid and didn't start probiotics until last week. That's mostly due to the fact that when trying to buy probiotics you're bombarded with about two thousand options. I got overwhelmed and placed my head in the sand for a while hoping my body would just heal on it's own.
But then I got desperate (not absorbing nutrients from food and being in a fair amount of pain after every meal will do that) and really dug into the research aspect. I've started with a powder probiotic of the strain b-infantis which is usually used for babies, kids, nursing mothers. However, my gut has almost zero useful or helpful bacteria/gut flora so I need to start with the basics for a few weeks, then add in some adult strains slowly over time. Powder, also, is easier to absorb than capsules. So there ya go. We shall see if this helps, but I predict it will.
4) Getting more sleep
I haven't been able to sleep for years. Since about my first semester of college, when my Crohn's got serious. I wake up, on average, 10 times per night. Those are just the times I can clearly remember. It could be more. I predict that I only get between 3-5 hours of real sleep per night. For the last 10 years. I'm surprised I haven't been admitted to an asylum. Anytime I've brought this up to a doctor, guess what they respond with? Pills. They don't try to solve the underlying issue or think about why this could be happening. They just want to give me pills. Sometimes they give priceless advice like "try not to use electronic devices before bed" or "don't eat for a few hours before bed". Yea...tried. For years. No difference. Guess what I just found out? And this is mind-blowing to me because it's so obvious now...
Lack of calcium and magnesium absorption can lead to insomnia, restlessness, and anxiety. There are so many other symptoms linked with a calcium or magnesium deficiency that really add up for me, too. And guess what? There is angstrom bone health with calcium and magnesium! That's my next thing. To try that and see if my sleep improves. I'm excited but blown away that no one, not one doctor, ever mentioned this as a possibility for sleep issues. There are so many documented studies where adding more calcium and magnesium to the daily diet solve serious insomnia cases. I barely get any calcium or magnesium so this definitely is an issue for me.
I'm hoping these few things will start to make a big difference when all put together. I hope the probiotics will allow me to eat a meal without instant pain. I'm hoping the iron will continue to help with my energy level so I can keep up with Nova. I'm hoping the calcium and magnesium help me sleep more, therefore giving me more energy and less headaches.
My next big step is ridding my life of chemicals found in make-up, skin and hair products, soaps...and food. This is a long process, but one I've already started. I've been slowly collecting natural products over time. Replacing one thing here and one thing there and soon my whole inventory will be clean of chemicals. That will help my long term health- and my family's.
I also need to read more about holistic medicine and listen more to people who are smarter than me and be willing to try something new.
I have clients all the time NOT try something with their dog (something that will dramatically help the issue) because it sounds too easy. It's all too common with us, not trying something because it's too easy. It's an epidemic among humans. We say "no, this is a serious problem. I need serious medicine or a complex answer." I think that's why we're so easily swayed by pharmaceuticals. It's the perfect balance of easy and complex. The pill itself is made of complex elements, so it must work, but it's so easy to take and it makes us feel better in the moment, therefore I must be better.
Unfortunately, that's not usually the case.
Now don't get me wrong, not ALL pills are evil little pieces of poison. Some have their purposes. There are some benefits to western medicine, like life-saving surgery and emergency care. But they are limited and I truly and strongly believe it should be very limited and selective in our lives.
The more I think about moderation in all things, the more this applies to every aspect of my life. It makes perfect sense to me. As someone who believes in God and creation and evolution all at the same time, it makes sense that the plants and minerals found naturally on our planet would benefit us in a much more meaningful way than chemicals created by man.
I think the more we advance medically, the more we need to do to heal our bodies from the damage being done by our advancements. Look at c-sections. They save lives, but they also strip the newborn baby's body of almost all good gut flora (biodiversity of intestinal bacteria) that helps develop the immune system. So we need to add probiotic supplements to the baby's milk because something unnatural happened and threw off the body's natural path. Breast milk helps a ton, but from my reading, additional probiotics are still needed if a c-section occurred. I didn't know this until recently!
Look at other medical interventions. I hesitate to mention some because of backlash buuuut....look at vaccines. They also strip your gut flora and add heavy metals and virus's into your body in an unnatural way. Detoxification must take place in order for the body to heal from the unnatural chemicals we humans force upon them. I think we have good intentions, but you know the popular saying with that, right? All things must be in moderation and there must be balance.
Our food, too, is being genetically altered. It blows my mind that people don't think this would be an issue. OF COURSE it would be an issue. If you believe (like me) that the plants and minerals naturally found on our planet would be best thing for our bodies, then it would only make sense that altering our food at the core level would mess things up. A lot. Especially if it's being done to almost everything we eat. Not to mention adding antibiotics, preservatives, unnatural emulsifiers...it's a miracle the human race hasn't just crumbled to pieces with all this junk we cram into our bodies.
Even when you use "healthy" ingredients like veggies and whole grains, you're still most likely putting weird and trace amounts of dangerous chemicals into your body.
It's enough to make someone want to live in the Canadian wilderness and grow their own food.
This will be Mike in a few years.
But seriously....
Paradise.
To end my very long propaganda message, I'm going natural. Or trying to. I still have my weaknesses, like cheeseburgers, fries, and Jack in the Box, and I'm not all anti-corporation (I shop way too much at Target for that to ever happen...) or anti-government or a crazy hippie. I just wholeheartedly believe there is a better way to treat your body than with drugs and unnecessary interventions by conventional medicine. There always have been better ways, but then it became about $$ and other things rather than healing and health and those better ways were discounted and presented as "junk science" or "crockery" or "placebos". Just like people discounted a lot of other true things back in the day as "witchcraft" or "devil-speak" or just plain "nonsense". Washing your hands is beneficial? Shut your crazy mouth, Semmelweis.
The human body in infinitely complex, saying the science regarding the body and health is clear is foolish and naive. We need to remember nurses and doctors are humans, too, and don't know everything about their field. This is why specialists exist and why there are always studies happening about every aspect of the human body. Am I grateful for health professionals? Of course! Do I think they are all-knowing demi-gods? Sadly, no. But that would be cool. Do they know more than me? About some stuff, for sure! Might I learn something they don't know? It's possible. Occasionally, people come in with new behavioral research I haven't seen. That's the neat thing about information availability, nowadays. It's there, just waiting to be read and absorbed.
Here are some cool things I found on google:
Nifty, right? Of course, you can use both forms of treatment, but don't discount homeopathic and holistic medicine. It's easy, much cheaper, much healthier, and works wonders. I used clove, oregano, and olive oil on a severe tooth ache recently and it worked wonders. Oregano is a spectacular healing agent. So is coconut oil. Seriously, I've learned so much and have used many suggested holistic treatments with shockingly great success. I'm a convert and trust me, it took years for my stubbornness and skepticism to be overpowered by my desperation and I wish I'd tried these things sooner.
Well, all I can say is...
Happy Healing! I bet you didn't even know you could feel better. I didn't.
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