A long time ago (2018), in my first blog post, I hinted at my many years of struggle with health issues and I promised some personal backstory so here it is. Hindsight is so illuminating and some of my health issues were evident in middle school and high school. I think everyone, including myself, felt the myriad of symptoms came from stress rather than from a medical issue. I hear stories of people seeking answers and if their doctor can’t find a solution that entails a medication or modern medical treatment they often determine that the patient is stressed, depressed or assume they are a hypochondriac. The doctor might then suggest a therapist or antidepressant and send them on their merry way. Not that this isn’t the correct diagnosis at times, and I don’t fault all doctors for this as most are trained to test for certain known markers, prescribe a pill or surgery for the marker or condition then lather, rinse, repeat.
It would have been really nice to know back in my 20’s what I know today, as I could have avoided so much pain and frustration by asking for the correct tests from doctors and playing a much more active role in my health. You might think my situation is extreme and you don’t or could never have any of these issues, but I think that some ailments can slowly erode your health over time and we often don’t recognize that we are hurting until until it becomes debilitating. It really is the classic Boiling Frog scenario. “The boiling frog is a fable describing a frog being slowly boiled alive. The premise is that if a frog is put suddenly into boiling water, it will jump out, but if the frog is put in tepid water which is then brought to a boil slowly, it will not perceive the danger and will be cooked to death. The story is often used as a metaphor for the inability or unwillingness of people to react to, or be aware of sinister threats that arise gradually rather than suddenly.” (1)
The first time I ever received some sort of an actual medical diagnosis of an issue came at 18, while I was a runner at UCLA. A doctor was doing a bone density study on female athletes and I was part of a group who participated in blood tests, exams and had our bone density measured by all this neato hi-tech equipment. One of the blood tests came back that showed that I had something called hypothyroidism. The doctor running the study immediately called me in a prescription for something called levothyroxine so that I could begin treatment. Some of the common symptoms of this thyroid disease are weight gain, fatigue, depression, joint pain, hair loss, cold extremities, brain fog and difficulties concentrating. Of course I would have never known there was an issue because as an athlete I was working out intensely twice a day and because of this I didn’t have weight issues. Any of the other symptoms I had from the thyroid disorder were written off by me as due to being a young, stressed student athlete. Follow up tests were run and it turned out I had a specific type of hypothyroidism called Hashimoto’s which is an autoimmune disease where your body treats your thyroid like the enemy and attacks it as a foreign invader.
Some common examples of autoimmune diseases are:
- Celiac Disease
- Multiple Sclerosis
- Type 1 Diabetes
- Hashimoto’s Thyroditis
- Lupus
- Rheumatoid Arthritis
- Psoriasis
You might be surprised at how many common diseases can be caused by our own bodies immune system. Some of you might be wondering why our bodies are frequently turning against us at all.
What caused this specific autoimmune disease in me I will probably never know for sure, but there is information on some of the possible causes of autoimmune diseases here. If you viewed the link you can see how many of them are environmental toxins or additives in the food we eat and many of products we come into contact with daily. In the second part of this post we will come back to why this is so important and what you can do to avoid the slow but inevitable decline in your health and happiness by limiting some of these external factors.
Several years after my diagnosis of hypothryoidism, I stopped running track and field due to a spinal disc injury. For a good 10 or so years I was basically sedentary which wasn’t a good thing for my body either, but I wasn’t feeling much like doing anything as my body was slowly turning on me with one problem after another. I was seeing doctors and telling them about my symptoms of intense fatigue, hair loss, night sweats, all over body and joint pain, migraines, depression and multiple stomach issues. They could not diagnose a single thing wrong with me and claimed that everything in my lab work looked fine.
Knowing that there is something wrong and feeling like no one is listening, or believing there is an issue is one of the most infuriating things you can go through. Doctors prescribed me pill after pill of things that masked one symptom, but caused nasty and sometimes painful side effects. The side affect from one medicine created another issue and they would prescribe me another pill to treat the side effect from the first drug. Does anyone notice an infuriating pattern? I was on the modern medicine hamster wheel, running really fast, getting dizzy trying to find a solution, but getting nowhere and exhausting myself emotionally and physically in the process. The root causes of my problems were not being diagnosed.
I was fed up, angry and ready to try anything. I know many people look down on people who research or attempt a self diagnosis via the internet. Searching the internet for health info is often linked to folks who are hypochondriacs and crazy people. If you walk into some doctors offices with health information on hand it can get pretty adversarial really quickly. I think if you find something on the internet in your quest for health you should always talk to your doctor and push for any tests if it is something you feel strongly about. If your doctor dismisses your perspective or at any point questions how you feel, it might be time to find a doctor who will work with you. With that in mind I often tell people that if I had found something on the internet that said Panda urine would cure me of all my ills, I would be completely on board with it. Don’t worry, it wasn’t a Panda cure that I discovered, but information on probiotics that set me on the path to recovering my health. I discovered a specific probiotic meant specifically to make it through the digestive system and repopulate the gut with healthy bacteria and weed out the nasty ones. I purchased the supplement and thankfully it was what started my healing process, but more than that, it started me on my alternative romance.
As mentioned previously, autoimmune diseases have a lot more to do with what our environment around us looks like than most of us realize. More and more we are learning that what we eat, drink, breathe, wear, use can be linked to these sometimes debilitating illnesses. We often try to find one single cause for any one illness, which is an effective way of not finding a solution. Many of these diseases have no one cause, but a combination of them that can be triggered based on what your individual weak spot is in your genetic makeup or current health state. They can be triggered when the body is overwhelmed with either a virus, bacteria, toxin, heavy metal or any combination when the timing is right or more appropriately when the timing is wrong.
Since my first forays into the world of self health and alternative treatments I have learned quite a bit that has made me both angry and thankful. In my next post, you might go through what I did when I started much of my research, which was to panic, get angry and word vomit to anyone about what is really in our air, food, water, makeup, deodorant, medicine, cookware, plastic, shampoo, carpet, beds, wifi, perfume, clothes and many, many, many other common items. I can tell you that once you learn about some of this information, you may feel like preaching to the masses, but you may look like the lunatic yelling at people on the street corner about the end of days. It is a recipe for disaster as I can attest to personally. People will start to ignore your angry conspiracy ravings, true or not. This information can be overwhelming and many people confronted with these unfortunate truths will often decide that it is too much, too daunting and easier to just ignore.
Another thing to know before taking the red pill and going on a lifelong journey of health and wellness is that it can be an extremely painful process. A lot of people give up on changing their healthy behaviors as often a true cure involves more pain before the healing. This healing crisis phenomenon is called a Herxheimer Reaction. Depending on your level of health, the healing process could cause enough discomfort to make you assume that the healthy things you are doing are actually hurting you. The pain or negative reactions some people experience will often make them quit treatment or healthy behaviors when that may not be the right decision. Often the more unhealthy, inflamed and toxic individuals will experience the worst symptoms so it can seem like a no-win scenario.
Like the Kobayashi Maru test, sometimes trying to be healthy can seem like a no-win scenario. I believe that when you decide to improve your health, even small victory’s should be counted, and the only time you really lose is if you choose not to try. If you don’t know what the Kobayashi Maru is, then you are not geeky enough to be reading this blog post. Come back when you have seen Star Trek….ALL OF THEM! Except Deep Space Nine, which isn’t really a Star Trek since they are just sitting there in space and not trekking anywhere….but I digress.
Part 2 of this post will be about the small changes you can make on your way to becoming your healthiest self.
Fine! I will start a blog. 