My homeopathic life…

This post was written several days ago and I just got to loading it now. Sorry for the delay!

A friend of mine has told me several times in the last few weeks that she thinks I have lost weight. Personally, I don’t see it. I have, however, noticed that some of my other chronic conditions seem to be improving or have gone away.

I first noticed the other day when I realized my butt and legs weren’t falling asleep at work anymore. This has been an ongoing problem for me for quite awhile now. Thanks to tight muscles in my lower back, the nerves in my gluts kept getting pinched, which caused numbness and tingling all down my legs. I can’t remember the last time this happened.

I have also noticed that the acne on my face seems to be clearing up. Yay! There is nothing more annoying then being 36 and still breaking out in pimples.

The other things that have been improving are a little tmi. I have debated back and forth whether to mention them, because it is a little embarrassing. Let’s just say that Johnny Cash is no longer singing about me 🙂 If you get that, then sorry for the over personal information LOL

I am not sure whether it is the food or the homeopathic remedies that are making the difference. I like to think it’s both. I have briefly touched on some of the remedies I am adopting into my life, but have never really said what they were. Here is my most recent list from my Naturopathic Doctor:

• Drink a glass of water with a freshly squeezed lemon first thing in the morning. This is meant to help detox my liver and jumpstart my metabolism.
• Morning smoothie with fruit, coconut milk, cinnamon, hemp protein powder, chia seeds and flax seeds
• Supplemental regimen which includes:
  • EstroSmart: helps to bring my estrogen/progesterone levels into balance
  • D-chiro inositol: helps control my insulin levels to reduce my insulin resistance
  • Vitamin B Complex
  • Vitamin D (3,000 u/i)
  • Vitamin C
  • a really strong Probiotic
  • 2 fish oil capsules with dinner
  • Magnesium and Triphala (an ayurvedic medicine) before bed, along with my anxiety meds and hormone therapy.
• I also take 30 drops of a herbal tincture 3x a day in water. This is meant to help clean some of the toxin build up in my system, as well as help jumpstart my metabolism
• 1-2 a week I do a Castor Oil pack on my stomach to help reduce bloating and get things moving in my stomach, bowels and colon area

So there it is, my homeopathic regimen. Some people in my life think I am crazy for all of the things I am doing, but like I said something is working. I may not be losing weight yet, but some of the benefits I have had outweigh weight loss for me right now. Eventually though, let’s be real, we gotta start shifting the weight. But for now, I am just gonna go with it.

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The $24,000 question

I am an addict, and have been since I was a child.

Now, before you start having images of a 9-year old me sitting in a corner with a rubber band wrapped around her arm and needle sticking out of her, l should say I am not now, nor I have ever been, an intravenous drug user. In fact, other then a little dabbling with some green herb-like substances, I have never been a drug user at all. They always scared me.

So what then do I mean when I say I am an addict? Webster’s dictionary defines an addict as: “A person who has a compulsive need for and use of a habit-forming substance (as heroin, nicotine, or alcohol) characterized by tolerance and by well-defined physiological symptoms upon withdrawal.” I think this is the definition most people think of when the hear the word “Addict”.

However, the definition I use is “the compulsive need to use anything (food, alcohol, sex, whatever) to fill a void or that allows me to remove myself from whatever it is in my life that I deem unacceptable” or “something I do to excess as a means to avoid looking at what in my life is making me feel unloveable, unfulfilled or just plain unhappy”. By this definition I have a lot of addictions.

This past weekend I spent the weekend downtown at a conference with others who are exploring a spiritual way of life. Now don’t go getting all freaked out, by spiritual I don’t mean religious. Trust me, I am one of the LEAST religious people you will ever meet, ask any of my friends. My definition of spiritual is living a life where I am emotionally connected to the world around me, and by extension the people in it. I attend this conference every year, and it always an experience that gives my emotional and spiritual gas tank a top-up.

On Sunday morning, I had the opportunity to hear three amazing speakers who shared their personal stories of struggle, tragedy and triumph as well as their personal experiences with addiction. I heard a lot of great sound bites, and nearly wet myself from laughing, but there was one thing that really resonated with me, and that I have been thinking about since.

I was reminded of the definition that I use to describe being “sober”, at least as it pertains to me.

“the abstinence from any substance which would affect me from the neck up”.

Please know that I do not take any credit for this definition, it was something I borrowed several years ago. However, one gentlemen spoke about how we conveniently always seem to leave sugar, nicotine and caffeine out of this definition – three substances that I use to varying degrees on a daily basis.

It got me thinking. How extreme does an addiction have to be before I am willing to surrender it? Drinking was a no brainer, because I was so emotionally unwell by the time I gave it up. Yet, when it comes to food, I am still struggling to remain abstinent from wheat and sugar, despite all my health issues.

What is it going to take before I give it up completely? Diabetes? Cancer? Complete muscle deterioration? Honestly, how bad does it have to get before I surrender?

Or better yet, what benefit am I getting from it that outweighs my physical and emotional health? I guess that would be the $24,000 question I need to answer.

New Beginnings

I started this blog back in 2010 but never took it anywhere. Like a lot of things in my life I was full of big ideas and poor follow through.

I originally started this blog because I was having some health problems and was trying to find a way to chronicle my journey in getting better. However, I didn’t realize how serious my condition was and eventually just went back to living the way I was living. Fast forward three years and here I am in worse shape then I was before. Slowly my body is shutting down bit by bit. Doctors and Naturopaths haven’t been able to figure out what is wrong with. However, they have narrowed it down to two possibilities – PCOS (Poly Cystic Ovarian Syndrome) and Severe Adrenal Fatigue. One is curable but controllable (PCOS) while the other is curable but harder to do so. For both I have been told to do that same; avoid grain and sugar, exercise more, control my stress and hopefully lose weight. I say hopefully lose weight because unfortunately both conditions make it extremely hard to do. In addition, with adrenal fatigue, I have to be careful not to push myself too much because that could only make my condition worse.

Sounds like fun, huh?

The whole thing has been very frustrating and overwhelming, especially the uncertainty of it all. I don’t like uncertainty. I am the type of person who likes to know what is wrong, how to fix and then goes about getting it done. I like consistency. I like structure. Without both of them I feel lost. Unfortunately with life, and especially with my life right now, there is no certainty. That really pisses me off lol but I am slowly learning that there is nothing that I can do about it.

And so every day I get up and put one foot in front of the other and try to keep an optimistic point of view. I try to stay strong and not complain. I am the person that people look at and say she is “strong”. I am the person that people come to when they need help, advice or just an ear to listen. I don’t like to “bother” other people with my problems. Even my best friend of 22 years don’t know everything that goes in my head. I don’t like to be a pest, or at least that’s how I look at it. And so I keep shoving everything down and trudging forward. Unfortunately, there is only so much the emotion and physical body can take before it begins to crack. And I have cracked a few times.

Right now I am on the verge of cracking again. I have been feeling overwhelmed and annoyed by everything. I am trying to stay positive, look on the bright side and keep my stress and anxiety in check (oh yeah I also have an anxiety disorder  – I am real catch huh?) but have been really struggling. I know that I need to start talking about my struggles and getting it all out there. Otherwise I will stay locked up inside the bubble I call my brain and get so overwhelmed that I can’t deal anymore. I am the kind of person who can only ever see the hurdles in front of me and never the ones behind me that I have already cleared.

And so I am laying it all out on the table for all to see, assuming of course that anyone actually reads this. And if nobody does I am ok with that as well. If nothing else I will have a chronicle of my journey – the good, the bad and the ugly – for me to look back on and see how far I have come. I will have a record of my success, my failures, how far I have come and the things I still have to work on.

And so it is a new beginning – of my new blog, of my journey to health, of treating myself better and hopefully of my new life.

 

This post had to be rewritten since I accidentally reverted to an old draft copy. It is probably not exactly the same as the first one, but I tried to express all the same sentiments.