How can we go day after day for years—decades—consumed by busyness—without really focusing on true health and wellness?
Flashback to my days when education and career took center stage. All my focus and energy went into graduate school. During an externship, I followed and observed an ENT doctor in a large VA hospital. Veteran after veteran would enter his office and face him across a wide desk. The conversation was pretty much the same. The doctor would tell him he had oral cancer or throat cancer and surgery would be done and then he would die.
His wife would hold back tears. The vet was stoic. Really, there wasn’t much conversation. Few questions. He knew the doctor was right. It was all because he smoked and drank. I remembered the mutilated patients in the ICU. This vet would likely have the same fate. He and his wife would get up silently and leave the office. The door shut.
The doctor opened his desk drawer and took out a cigarette. I counted the hours until I could leave the hospital. Then he would summon the next patient.
Those memories still come back to me. But they never changed me enough to put my focus on my own wellness. Never changed me enough to change my own addiction—my behavior with food. Emotional eating. For years I tamed it with compulsive exercise.
I’d been a sugar addict since childhood, and I believe that’s one reason why I’d lived most of my life with a low level depression. Certainly, well able to function, but happiness or joy was rare.
From time to time, I considered how to feel happier. My solution—maybe yours too—was to stay as thin as possible while pursuing career success and social life. Joy? Well, not sure about that one. I’d have chocolate chip cookies. For a while that would suffice.
Looking back now with awareness of the microbiome and its impact on our health, despite my trim “healthy” body, it would only need a course of a powerful antibiotic to send me into a downward spiral. A tipping point. And that happened many years later.
The antibiotic set off the ravages of Inflammatory Bowel Disease. In the throes of IBD, despite brain fog and fatigue, I knew—I decided—I wanted to be healthy. To have a life of purpose, as God intended for me.
I was wary of the heavy-duty pharmaceuticals doctors wanted to prescribe. After all, I was in this condition as a result of taking antibiotics. It seemed to me that approach would be inviting death by another means. Reading the literature told me the side effects could be daunting, or fatal.
Food as medicine. I’d heard stories of people who had cured themselves of disease with food. My intuition told me this was the way to go. My gastroenterologist and my surgeon told me food has nothing to do with IBD. I couldn’t believe that.
I decided to forgo the heavy-duty pharmaceuticals and took a prescribed medication that seemed to do nothing but contribute to joint pain. It was like playing “let’s make a deal” with my doctor. Having drawn my line in the sand, I began to look for more holistic solutions. Eventually, I found The Specific Carbohydrate Diet and experimented with that. It worked.
Though The Specific Carbohydrate Diet includes meat, I cut way back on it. A plant based, whole foods diet is anti-inflammatory. Fruit and vegetables do wonders in bringing down inflammation. Getting rid of sugar, flour, and junk food quenches cravings and allows the excess weight to melt away.
My experience may not be yours. But if you’re not living the life you want, don’t put your head in the sand like I did for so many years.
I’m hoping today is your epiphany. You can feel better. Just make the decision. Everything starts with a decision.
