How many times do I hear this in my office: “My bloodwork is perfect, and the doc says there is no pill to fix me? But, my stomach hurts, I have no energy, suffer from constipation or diarrhea, and feel I might faint several times a day.” They get sent away, as I was, with instructions to take four 800 mg Ibuprofen 4 times a day for 6 weeks.
Last week, I talked with someone who had perfect bloodwork but was diagnosed the next day with stage 4 cancer!
Back in the ’90s, this sounded like me. I was divorcing, facing custody battles, and eating poorly. My back hurt, I was constipated, and I kept losing weight. Eventually, my solution came through changing my diet and adopting yoga and meditation, but this knowledge was slow in coming. When I got my energy back, I vowed to help others learn how to practice self-love and self-care. I read every book on the market (see a list at the end of this article).
We are all connected. We are all connected, not only with all humanity but also with all there is. As our world influences us, we in turn influence our world. Yet, for 100 years as we have migrated away from the land, we have lost much of the knowledge that our mother's mother took for granted. As factory farms and long-distance transportation have replaced the monthly trip to the market, pharmaceutical companies and chemical manufacturers have replaced a common knowledge of plants and herbs . . . and common sense. My grandmother found her chicken in the yard. My mother found her chicken wrapped in plastic in the grocery. I find my chicken grown locally, in free-range, and in organic. We have moved far away from the sources of our sustenance, and we can't all go back to the land, but I believe we can turn the corner and regain balance and find a more natural harmony on Earth, one choice at a time.
. Twenty years ago, people smoked in stores and offices, putting out cigarettes on the concrete floors of grocery stores and lighting up in reading sections of libraries. Today we are appalled at the suggestion as a major shift in our thinking has occurred. The United States in 2022 should be a country where everyone can get organic foods, where herbs and food are the preferred remedies for illness as well as for the promotion of health, and where the lesson that "giving really is receiving" is accepted by all.
Today, the average American faces a food desert in the local grocery store where most of the foods are chemically laced with pesticides and are genetically modified.
The new wave has begun as medical doctors are joining the forces of naturalists and using complementary healing modalities. There has been a paradigm shift, and change is happening quickly. We even have icons of medicine branching out into the “gut/brain connection” and the “candida problem”: Dr. Andrew Weill, Dr. Mark Hyman, Dr. Axe, and Dr. Jerry Tennant. But what about the person on food stamps or the ones whose grocery store is Family Dollar? What about the wealthy consumers whose cabinets are full of supplements and yet sometimes they are feeling worse than before they started their healing journey?
Then there are the prescription meds to suppress natural processes: put out the fires of digestion with the purple pill, add something to sleep and something to wake up, or take a popular laxative propylene glycol, providing dehydration and further inflammation as the body tries to handle the toxic load. A client has a 6-year-old who has been on Miralax for months – the label reads under ingredients: “polyethylene glycol 3350”.
Are our homes one of the sources of many of our illnesses? Xenoestrogens, found in man-made products such as Carpet Fresh and Pine Sol, flood our indoor environments and therefore our bodies. New carpets, blinds, and polyurethane coatings exude harmful artificial estrogens into the home air.
Consider not only where we live and what we eat, but also what we apply to the hair, teeth, and skin. Imagine that everything we put in our bodies is absorbed and enters the bloodstream to be handled and eliminated by the lymph. The fluoride and sodium laurel sulfate in toothpaste and aluminum in antiperspirants go into the body. Doesn’t a warning not to swallow what you brush your teeth with seem like a red flag to you?
I was speaking to my vet the other day about my dog’s diet. She suggested that the indoor environment and the commercial food might be the reason for his skin problems and lethargy. “Put him on this organic, natural food with omega threes... and take him outside as much as possible.” Have you been advised to consider these factors in your own health? The vet knows that the hormones and pesticides might be harming the pets, yet humans are drinking milk from cows that have been shot full of hormones and fed on genetically engineered grains to fatten them up. Then the milk is homogenized and pasteurized to be sure that nothing could live in it, not even the good bacteria necessary for digestion and absorption of nutrients.
What part do emotional patterns play in the
inheritance of illness? Anger, hatred, resentment, and jealousy – do they stress us to the point of physical breakdown, and can we break these patterns in this lifetime so that our children do not have to inherit them? In a family, there might be a pattern of false judgment in the parents, for example.
So “issues are in the tissues” and “our biography becomes our biology” – but where can we turn for the knowledge, we all crave? Right now, for the most part, it is up to each of us to practice our own self-care, to live in love and light, to express and accept gratitude, and to be a light unto the world.
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