Tag Archives: health

Why I Switched..

..to a mostly organic lifestyle.

IMG_0189In 1980 two life changing events took place. Our first child was born with Down syndrome and I was diagnosed with severe rheumatoid arthritis. The next twenty years of my life were all about conventional treatments: drugs, shots, surgery, drugs, shots, more drugs and drugs for the drugs.

In spite of all these ‘interventions’ my joints were on fire, cushioning between bones disappeared, tendons shifted, fingers and toes drifted out of place, neck bones began to shift and constant headaches radiated from the back of my head across the front. There were days it killed to comb my hair, button my shirt, hold a pen. Simple tasks became monumental. Pain dominated my life. Shoulders. Elbows. Ribs. Jaws. Anywhere bone met bone, pain and swelling existed. I cried a lot. I was angry a lot. I felt hopeless. A lot.

In the year 2000 we moved from New England to Florida. The sun and year round warm temperatures helped, but I was waking up to the idea that doing the same thing and getting the same results seemed stupid. I wanted to live long, especially for my son who will always need me. I needed to be healthy. What I’d been doing barely managed symptoms and I was afraid for the future if I continued down this road.

So I prayed. I asked God to help me. To show me what I was missing. What I didn’t know. A friend made an appointment for me at her chiropractor’s office and there I began to learn what the body needs to heal itself, to stay healthy. I started to exercise (carefully), cut many inflammatory foods out of my diet and had gradual success. I’ve been off all medications since 2005 and have learned I can live just fine without fast food, processed food, sugar, dairy and excess meat consumption.

Then in 2011, I started having reoccurring episodes of hives and rashes. Urticaria hives, an auto-immune condition, are large marble to golf ball size bumps that rotated around my body to any spot they chose. I could have one or ten of them at in a time in varying locations. They burned, itched and swelled my skin to uncomfortable tightness and would last 24-48 hours before vanishing. Then more would appear. Misery! I drove myself to the emergency room one night because I thought my throat was closing up. I had hives in my throat. The doctors didn’t know what was wrong with me and prescribed steroids.

Tiny, burning, itchy cluster bumps began popping up on my ankles, legs, arms and around my nose and mouth. I went to my primary care doctor and was sent to a dermatologist and an allergist. The dermatologist gave me steroid cream. The allergist ran all the typical allergy tests. Everything came back normal. When I went back for the follow up to discuss results he told me there was nothing he could do but give me steroids. He also told me I had about a 2% chance of finding the cause. By then I had totally lost faith in mainstream medicine. How can all these doctors not know the cause of so many chronic conditions? I thought they went to a zillion years of school to learn this stuff. I realized, once again, I was on my own. I’d have to figure it out for myself.

I began reading and researching and discovered how our food supply is being poisoned by large corporations. How the FDA, USDA, pharmaceutical giants, food corporations and chemical companies are in each other’s pockets. They do their own (not independent) short (not long) term safety studies then release demons into the food supply with no idea of long term intended or unintended consequences. They tell us everything is safe but the fox is guarding the hen house. Profit is more important than health!

I was eating all the right foods, fruit, vegetables, nut milks, lean meat and fish, but now I’m reading about gene splicing, genetically modified plants, toxins sprayed all over commercial farm fields and plants genetically implanted to withstand the pesticides sprayed on them. Wheat that’s sprayed with weed killer three days before harvest (gluten intolerance anyone?) and the animals who are fed GMO grains they’re not meant to eat in the first place (such as grass eating cows fed GMO corn and soy!) and then given antibiotics to keep them from getting sick from what they’re eating, not to mention the crowded living conditions of commercial stock farms. They’re given hormones to fatten up faster, probably so they can get to the slaughter house before they get sick! Then we eat the animals and the toxicity travels up the food chain.

The more I researched the more horrified I became! I realized my body was in rebellion against the toxic sludge it was ingesting, so I went on a total, organic only, plant only, eating experiment for three months. No cheating. And guess what, all the hives went away! After slowly introducing foods one at a time, back into my diet, I discovered I’m allergic to chemically grown foods. I made marinara sauce with GMO tomatoes and immediately got hives. Made the same sauce with organic tomatoes, no hives. I continued experimenting on myself until I was sure.

I remember asking many doctors through the years if what I was eating had anything to do with my chronic conditions. All of them said no. If only I’d known then what I know now. As long as I eat mostly organic, I’m inflammation, pain and hive free.

Is it expensive? Compared to misery, agony, and piles of medical bills? No. I’d rather forgo other unnecessary wants to have my health. If you see me wearing the same clothes over and over it’s because I’d rather spend money on good food.

Is it easy? Not at first. Old habits die hard. But the longer I do this the easier it is. It becomes a normal lifestyle after a while.

I’m sharing this for several reasons:

  • People need to know. We’re busy living our lives, trusting the government, medical community and those who are supposed to be smarter than us, but we can’t trust that anymore. We have to be aware, informed and educated. We have to take back our health and the health of our children. I don’t want my grandchildren or yours, to end up like me, years of misery and pain, crooked joints or worse, especially if it can be avoided by something as simple as what we put in our mouths. I want my family, friends, everyone I care about, to live long, healthy lives.
  • I post often about health awareness on social media. I am a living, self taught science experiment and this information is too important to keep to myself (those who are tired of it can unfriend me or call me crazy or tell me to go jump. I’m ok with that). If you have any chronic conditions from cancer to diabetes, I dare you to try it and see what happens. I’m not guaranteeing a total cure for all, but I’m certain of a large turn-around for many.
  • We can change the toxic stranglehold on the food supply with our buying power. If we all start buying more organic, if we all start demanding no GMO, pesticide and hormone soaked food, with our wallets, WE can change the grocery store shelves faster than those in Washington, DC, can even think about it. Supply and demand still talks in a capitalistic economy. We can make organic, toxic free food affordable for all.

Do yourself and your family a favor. Buy organic, non GMO as much as possible. As much as you can afford.

Eat For Health! It could save your life.

The Post No One Wants To Read

For years, after a diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis at the ripe old age of twenty six, I asked, begged, pleaded and tried to brownie-point my way into God’s good graces for a healing miracle. I doubt there’s ever been a call for healing or an offer of prayer in my life I haven’t responded to.

I’ve been prayed for, in the past thirty plus years, more times then I’ll ever remember and I still believe and know that I know that I know, God can and does miraculously heal! He can heal me right now while I’m typing this with two crooked fingers. No one knows how to make the crooked straight like my Heavenly Father.

But He hasn’t. Not yet anyway.

One day, I asked Him if he was tired of me asking for healing – again! I was tired of begging and told Him so. Seems as if most of my prayers were all about me and honestly, I was tired of me.

The thought immediately downloaded into my heart and mind. “Don’t you know your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit?”

For several days, I went to bed and got up in the morning with this question stalking me. I couldn’t shake it.

“OK, God. Yeah, I know that. I’ve read it a zillion times. So what are you trying to say?”

I went and looked up 1Corinthians 6:19. “Do you not know that YOUR BODY is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who LIVES IN YOU and was GIVEN BY GOD? You do not belong to yourself.”

“You do not belong to yourself.” The answer came in the gentlest way. “I could heal you today but you will be sick again in six months. You are not giving your body what I designed for optimal health. You are not fueling it properly.”

I was stunned. After years of expecting an instant fix, this was not what I had in mind. After all I had cut my teeth on living a faith-filled, easy believe-ism, ‘God said it and He’ll do it’, name it and claim it, speak it and see it Christianity, which included the doctrine of healing.

In the meantime, my ‘temple’ was systematically falling apart and in a severe state of disrepair.

I had a big decision to make; keep doing what I’d been doing and stay sick or make a drastic change and get better. I was set on a path of discovering what God’s Health Plan is and has always been for the human body, the temple He resides in, and I had a lot of work to do.

I could write a book about my health journey from that day until now but I will just say, life has changed for this gal. I’ve learned and am still learning much; reading, researching, praying and asking for discernment and wisdom.books

In this internet age there’s plenty of information out there, some of it misleading, but I’m encouraged to ask for wisdom from my Father (James 1:5). Who else knows better what my body needs to operate optimally but the one who made it? I don’t examine anything without first asking God to show me what I should accept or disregard. He’s been my best teacher.

Though still limited by severe joint damage, I’ve been off all medications for over ten years. Four years ago when I started having reoccurring outbreaks of urticaria hives, I kicked it up a few notches and went for a ninety percent plant based plate. The hives return only when I stray too far from this plan.

I’m now convinced many of the chronic diseases we deal with come from our SAD (Standard American Diet) way of eating. If I know I can’t fuel my car on anything but what it was designed for, gas and oil, why do I think I can continue to pack my body full of non-nutrient, processed, chemically laden, hormone and antibiotic induced meat, packaged food and obsessive sugars, stuff it doesn’t recognize as food or fuel, without eventually suffering a breakdown.

We are well fed, but not well nourished. We are stuffed, but not full of life giving, cell restoring nutrients. Yep, it’s certainly easier to microwave a hot dog and grab a cupcake then cut up veggies. It’s more fun to suck down a couple Diet Cokes then drink a glass of water with a lemon wedge floating in it.

But I am living proof that a lifetime of hot dogs, soda and their nutrient deficient relatives don’t make a body happy in the long term. I’m also living proof that reversing this trend keeps every cell inside me smiling and thankful. As my eating choices improve, I can almost hear them screaming to each other in pure exhilaration, “Hallelujah! She’s finally figuring it out!!”

Eating well is mostly common sense and I find many people instinctively know what they should and shouldn’t be swallowing. Following a healthy lifestyle is difficult, when tantalizing junk food constantly surrounds and entices us, but as my always wise husband says, “Everything that is worth it will probably be hard.”

Since my body ultimately belongs to God, I believe He wants my temple, the place where He resides, to be full of health and vitality more than I do. He says I am fearfully and wonderfully made (Psalm 139:13-16). He says this body He made for me is a miracle. I need to be a good manager of this miracle, which includes what I put in my mouth.

Healing can come in ways we don’t expect and good health starts with me. It begins in my grocery cart, in my kitchen, on my plate, with my fork and with grace and strength for every new day.

God and I will do this.

Together.

Genesis 1: 29-30 “ Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food.” And it was so.”

“Let thy food be thy medicine and thy medicine be thy food” ~ Hippocrates
”The doctor of the future will give no medication, but will interest his patients in the care of the human frame, diet and in the cause and prevention of disease.” ~ Thomas A Edison

“Sickness is the vengeance of nature for the violation of her laws.” ~ Charles Simmons