Home » Encouragement » Health (Page 4)

Category Archives: Health

On quitting smoking.

Posted on by | Leave a comment

Many people stop doing something bad or start doing something good for their New Year’s resolution. Why not combine the two? If you are going to stop smoking, I suggest you start walking.

Take the time you were going to use on your smoke break and go for a walk instead. Many people take a 15 minute smoke break. 15 minutes is a great amount of time for a walk – but even 10 or 5 minutes is good.

Walking does for you what smoking does, but better. It is calming. It is a mental break. It takes you away from your problems, both literally and figuratively. But while smoking takes away from your health, walking adds to it.

Walking clears out your head like nothing else.

You can walk anywhere. You don’t have to have a walking path around your workplace. You can go for a walk inside your building. While it is better to go outside and get some fresh air and sunshine, it is important just to walk. Walk up and down some stairs. Walk around the hallways. Get outside and walk around the building. But just walk. If you limit yourself to walking outside, 90% of the time it will be too hot or too cold or too wet. Rarely will it be just right. Savor those days when it is nice outside, but don’t just walk on those days. Walk every day.

You don’t have to walk fast. Just walk. Ambling is fine. A stroll is good.

Think you are too out of shape to walk? All the more reason to walk. Just get going. Do what you can. You’ll get stronger. People don’t walk because they are in shape. They walk to get in shape.

Some people use this as an excuse – “I’ll walk a mile and then I have to walk a mile to get back where I started.” Walk in a circle. Find a path and loop around.

You may be self-conscious at the start when you are walking. That is normal. You are doing something different. You are taking care of yourself. The shame you felt from sneaking away to smoke will be replaced with pride that you are doing something to help yourself. Try to recruit others to go walking with you instead of smoking. That way you have a group. You can cheer each other on.

Realize that every excuse you come up with is your unhealthy self trying to stay that way. Your healthy self is really weak right now and you can’t hear its voice very well. See those excuses as a sign that you have to stick up for your healthy self. Just go ahead and do it. The more you put it off, the longer it will be before you start feeling better. Every little bit you do towards the good will give you energy and momentum to do a little bit more.

Go walk instead of smoking. Your life will thank you for it.

Size

Posted on by | 1 Comment

I resent that women’s clothing manufacturers have unreasonable sizing. I came to understand this when I tried on a women’s extra large shirt and it was too tight. Then, from the same manufacturer, I tried on a men’s medium and it was very roomy.

Why are women’s t-shirts different from men’s t-shirts? Women’s shirts are tight and short. Men’s are loose and roomy.

Women are taught conflicting messages. Be sexy, but don’t be slutty. Show off the curves of your body, but only if they are hourglass shaped. No pears or apples need apply.

The focus needs to be on health, not weight. Everybody needs to eat well and exercise. Everybody needs to learn healthy ways to deal with stress and difficult emotions.

Stressing about how much you weigh isn’t going to do anything about it. Wishing you were skinnier won’t make it so.

As one coworker says “the only thing for it is to do it”.

Being healthy is a lifelong thing. It isn’t something you do for a week before you get married so you can squeeze into your dress. It isn’t something you do just after New Year’s Day and then drop it in February.

Getting healthy is a gift to yourself. It is saying that you deserve better.

Perhaps that is the problem. Perhaps people don’t take care of themselves because deep down they don’t love themselves. Perhaps deep down they treat their bodies badly because they thing they deserve this.

There is no shortcut to health. It isn’t like you can just eat a grapefruit and the pounds melt off and the muscles come on.

How much of women’s self image comes from clothing designers who try to convince us that we are larger than we are?

High end clothes manufacturers market differently. Their clothes are marked at least two sizes smaller. So you think you are smaller than you are.

Perhaps the sizes need to be like men’s sizes. Just do it in inches. That isn’t an arbitrary thing.

Now sure, American health is terrible. Obese is just considered overweight. People don’t seem to know what healthy looks like. And they seem to think “exercise” is a dirty word.

We need to focus not on weight but strength and endurance. If we change the focus not on how much you weigh but are you healthy – do you eat well and do you exercise – then weight will improve naturally. But who cares what you weigh if your heart is in bad shape and your muscles are weak?

Exercise disclaimer.

Posted on by | Leave a comment

Have you ever read this? “Before doing this exercise or participating in any exercise program, please consult your physician.” They wrote it to cover their butts. Really, they should write “Don’t sue us if you hurt yourself doing this” because this is what they really mean.

People aren’t very good at thinking ahead and thinking for themselves. Remember we live in a time where you can win a lawsuit against a fast food company because you spilled hot coffee on yourself.

It doesn’t do you any good to consult about exercise with your doctor. Western doctors treat symptoms rather than cause. If you started exercising and eating well, you’d put them out of business.

Rather than encourage my father to stop smoking, his doctor gave him a pill to stop his coughing. Rather than connect patients with nutritionists and exercise coaches, doctors give out diabetes medications. There are ads telling us that we can “eat like a kid again” meanwhile the person is at a state fair eating corn dogs and funnel cakes. It may be fun to eat this, but it isn’t food. Doctors should not be enablers. Doctors should “Do no harm” like their oath says.

I went to an ENT this year because my throat and neck hurt. He put a tube down my nose to look at my throat and saw evidence of acid reflux. Rather than suggesting lifestyle or diet changes, he put me on an antibiotic and an antacid. My neck still hurt, and obviously the acid is still there. He didn’t even want to tell me what the problem was. He didn’t want to spell out my condition, which was a symptom, not a disease. He wanted me placid and docile. He wanted to be in charge.

It took a trip to my chiropractor (who is also a nutritionist) to find out that I have arthritis in my neck. I now use a special pillow for my neck. What a simple fix. A comment to him about my experience at the ENT resulted in his entirely different theory that the problem isn’t too much acid, but too little. He says that we produce less acid as we get older and we need to supplement it or our food does not properly digest. I did a simple vinegar test and now know how much acid I need. I feel a lot better, and I’m even losing weight.

I wonder if Crohn’s and IBS and many other digestion maladies can be solved in this simple way? I doubt that regular doctors will even entertain this idea.

More doctors need to engage their patients in their own health care. More doctors need to understand that they work for the patient, and stop treating us as if we are ignorant children.

And we need to wake up. We cannot be passive about our lives. We can’t keep on thinking that we can eat whatever we want and not exercise and we won’t get ill. We know what we have to do. It isn’t a surprise.

It isn’t easy to switch from drinking sodas to water. It isn’t easy to switch from all meat to mostly vegetables. It isn’t easy to go from fried to steamed or baked. But it is worth it. Food does indeed taste better when it isn’t salty, deep fried mush. It takes about a week for your taste buds to relearn this.

It isn’t easy to start exercising. It isn’t easy to stick with it. But it is worth it. You won’t see the benefits right away, but the payoff is better energy, better rest, and better strength. The payoff is a stronger heart and increased resistance to disease.

If we are concerned about changes in health insurance, then we need to do what we can to improve our health so that we don’t need it. We have to stop thinking that doctors have all the answers. We have to stop thinking that we can do whatever we want and then just take a pill or have surgery to counter our mistakes.

You know how Jesus said “Go forth and sin no more”? That. But with health. The “sin” is continuing to eat whatever we want and refusing to exercise and then thinking we will be rescued by modern medicine. It is far better to not need to be rescued at all. There is no diet. There is only what Michael Pollan suggests in his book “Food Rules”. His mantra? Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. For a further explanation, read the book. I suggest getting it from your local library.

Recommit

Posted on by | 2 Comments

Sometimes my energy gets really low. It isn’t a great feeling. I don’t want to be up all the time, but I certainly don’t want to sink into the doldrums either.

I have let my flame get really low the past two weekends. I have noticed it and recommitted myself. I find it is important to commit to a practice of mindfulness, of intention, of purpose. When I stray from that practice I don’t notice it right away. I notice a week or two later when everything starts to not work correctly.

Perhaps some of this comes from being bipolar. Perhaps it is normal for humans to have mood swings that can leave them feeling so worthless they don’t want to get out of bed. I don’t know. I know I’m bipolar and I know that this is what I experience.

Sometimes getting out from under this funk feels like pushing a rock up a big hill. It feels like I never get anywhere. It feels like it is all work all the time and it never gets easier.

But I’ve been here before. I remember. It is slow going and requires patience and discipline, but it gets better. The problem comes when it gets going really well and I stop doing all the things I know I should do and I start to slide back down that hill again.

I was off last Friday, as usual. I didn’t have any solid plans. This is always a bad start. There were some things I could do, but nothing I had to do. I was tempted to skip yoga, but I knew that would mean I would stay at home and the funk would get worse. I pulled myself out of bed and went. My heart wasn’t in it but I knew that I was doing something good for myself. Just doing that gave me a little more energy.

A Hasidic Rabbi pointed out once that you can’t burn down a tree with a match, but if you chop the tree up into little pieces, you can. This is a useful thought. In part it means that it is OK to break up tasks into little pieces. Sometimes we think that if we can’t do it all, we shouldn’t even do a little bit of it. It also means that just doing a little bit of something can give you enough energy to do a little bit more of it.

When my flame is low and I’m recommitting myself, I have to be very intentional about what I do.

I avoid all fried food.
I eat no meat.
I skip spicy food.
I go back to my exercise routine – walking, yoga, water aerobics.
I craft in some way – bead, draw, paint.
I write.
I avoid processed sugar.
I avoid “retail therapy”.

I already have given up smoking and caffeine. These two are really bad for mental health.

Sometimes something as simple as washing the dishes or doing the laundry can be healing. It is something that when I notice later I’ve done it, I feel better. Vacuuming doesn’t seem to have this affect – it doesn’t produce a visible result. Sometimes just noticing that there is less clutter helps my head.

What is it about doing these things that makes me feel better? Is it eating vegetarian that makes me feel better, or the fact that I have chosen to do something that I feel is good for me? Half of this is getting past what the Buddhists call “the monkey mind.” That is the part of your mind that is all “gimme gimme gimme”. It doesn’t care about what is healthy or right or good. It is your inner toddler.

It is hard to fight the monkey mind. It makes you think it is you.

I try not to go overboard on this. I have learned to have patience with myself. It is a slow process of re-entry. It isn’t wise to swing the pendulum too far one way or another. When you are sick, you don’t want to run a marathon. It is good to do things carefully.

It is just like driving. If you notice you are getting out of the lane, you don’t want to yank the steering wheel too sharply. You are better off gently steering back into the correct lane. If you yank the wheel, you might veer off in the wrong direction.

If you are in a yoga pose and you notice you are getting wobbly, you don’t want to over correct. You are better off making micro adjustments. If you overcorrect you’ll likely fall.

This is exactly the same thing. The only problem is that when your mind gets out of the lane or wobbly you don’t have a lot of feedback. You don’t have a way of noticing it. You notice when you crash into the guardrail. You notice when you fall on the floor. Good mental health requires you notice before that happens.

Friday wasn’t a 10. It was more like a 5. But I know if I’d not paid attention and started to steer things in a better direction, it would have been a 2. I’m ok with a 5. And I know that tomorrow I’ll try again.

Recovery – you have to want to get well.

Posted on by | Leave a comment

I know a lady who spent $8,000 to learn how to eat.

She went to a group of chiropractors who have cross trained in nutrition. I’m not sure why this particular paring is becoming common these days, but it is. It seems odd that regular doctors don’t seem to care about nutrition, but chiropractors do. Mine does. I’ve heard of others who do. This seems odd because chiropractors aren’t seen as “regular doctors” in many people’s eyes, so even going to them for what they normally provide is seen as suspect.

Sadly, the nutrition part isn’t covered by insurance, so it was all out of pocket. This too seems odd – it is far cheaper to teach someone how to prevent disease rather than “cure” it after it has set in. But this is a foreign concept to insurance companies. They would rather pay to get you well than to keep you well.

She didn’t have to spend any of that money. She could have done what they did for free. They put her on an elimination diet. Strip away all the stuff that usually causes problems, and stick with that for a few weeks to get all the junk out of the system. Then start adding back suspicious things and see if there is a problem. The usual stuff is all processed food and anything with gluten.

We have a winner. She was gluten intolerant. The funny/sad part is that she had figured that out on her own years back. She had gone gluten-free and done much better. Her weight had gone down and her joints didn’t hurt. But she had dropped it. She thought it was too hard.

She did the same thing this time. She said that it was too hard to go gluten free on a fast-food diet. She drives a lot and works a lot. She is too tired to cook when she gets home so she gets food on the way. But this makes no sense. There are plenty of gluten-free options these days. Everything is marked whether it is gluten free or not. It isn’t a special diet – it is pretty mainstream.

The point is that she wanted a magic pill. She wanted something simple and fast and easy. It requires work and sacrifice to make any important change, and that was the part that she found too hard.

It reminds me of when people started to notice that I’d lost weight. They (always large themselves) asked me what was my “secret”. I told them – eat better and exercise more. Their faces always sunk. They wanted it to be something simple like “eat two grapefruit a day and keep on doing the same old things you were always doing”. It doesn’t work like that.

Anything worth having requires work. The easy way is rarely the healthy way.

The point is that if she wants to get well, she has to choose. Her health has to be the winner. If she cannot eat healthy and work the way she is working, then she has to find another job. Or she has to figure out that she can cook up a large pot of food that is healthy on her days off and freeze it and reheat it at work.

The point is that she doesn’t want to take care of herself. She is a miserable person. She sleeps all the time on her time off. She has admitted that she hates everybody and has no friends.

I cannot imagine living this kind of life. I cannot imagine anybody wanting to be in this life, just going through the motions. She goes to work and hates it. She goes home and sleeps. She is escaping everything. She is trapped in her body and in her life. I can’t comprehend why anybody would want to stay in this situation. By her choice she has said that miserable is better.

She was hoping to be able to retire when she gets to be 50. She didn’t check the retirement rules correctly. Sure, she can retire, but she won’t collect her pension until she is 65, and then it willl be greatly reduced because she didn’t work long enough.

She wants to retire early because her husband is significantly older than her. She is concerned that by the time she is able to retire, he will be dead. She would like to spend time with him now. The problem is, the way her health is going, it is highly likely she will die before him. The sad part is, she already has, she just doesn’t know it. By refusing to take care of herself and sleeping all the time when she is home – she has already decided to not participate in life. She is already not alive.

I hate this. I hate all of it. There is no reason for any of this. There is no reason for her to be miserable.

Sure, it is hard to swim upstream and take care of yourself. Sure, it would be great to have everything done for you, and done well. It just doesn’t happen. Nobody is going to exercise for you. Nobody is going to turn off the TV for you. Nobody is going to make you take care of yourself.

She reads a lot of books about health and talks like an expert on it, but still won’t do it. I feel like I’m just standing by, watching her drown. I can’t save her. I want her to choose to live, and live well. Right now she is just mimicking life, just going through the motions. She has to want to live. I can’t instill that in her.

I’ve realized that this situation is just like any other addiction or mental illness. If you don’t want to get better, no amount of outside intervention will help. You can only be committed to the mental hospital if you are a danger to yourself or others. Nobody can put you on the path to recovery – you have to do it yourself. This applies to regular life as well. She has to want to get better. I’d hoped that spending all that money would be the incentive to start taking her health seriously, but it hasn’t worked.

So I wait, and pray.

Life wasn’t made to be endured.

Occupy your health

Posted on by | Leave a comment

Perhaps the Occupy movement needs to teach us something else – don’t wait on the government to take care of us. We need to do it ourselves. While we are all holding our breath about the Affordable Care Act and whether Congress will get over its collective snit fit and start working again, we can do something ourselves.

Let’s not wait for tragedy to strike before we take care of ourselves. We’ve already seen that the government doesn’t really care about taking care of us. Instead of getting upset about it, use it as an impetus to not need to be taken care of. Remember, prevention is cheaper than cure.

The insurance companies, sadly, don’t think like this. Yet.

I remember one time when I lived in Chattanooga. There was a tree that was leaning too close to my house. I could see that any time now the thing would topple over and destroy my roof and everything under it. I called the insurance company and asked if they would pay to have the tree cut down. Nope. They would pay to repair the house and for a hotel room for me to stay in while the repairs were going on. But prevention? No. Prevention was a lot cheaper and faster. They would rather wait for the inevitable to happen and clean up the mess.

Insurance companies are doing the same with our health. Let’s spend a lot of money on a cure for cancer. Let’s spend a lot of money on diabetes supplies. They don’t think to encourage exercise and eating well.

If the government really wants to regulate health, it needs to ban cigarettes and vending machines. Ideally, we’d have enough self-control to know that we need to not smoke and not eat processed “food.” Obviously we don’t. So we have way too many people dying of entirely preventable diseases.

Sometimes the government does us a favor. Remember when you would go into a restaurant and they would say “smoking or non-smoking”? It really didn’t matter what section you went to – if there was smoking in that place, it travelled all over the whole restaurant. You were in the not-as-much-smoke section, but not the smoke-free section.

Sure, people have the right to smoke. They have the right to kill themselves that way. But they don’t have the right to take other people out with them when they do it. That is where the government stepped in and made it illegal to smoke in public buildings, and for that I’m very grateful.

I remember a lady who got really upset when she heard that she was no longer going to be able to smoke in restaurants. She got mad at the government telling her what to do. I was glad that finally they did something to protect me. But we can’t expect the government to take care of us all the time. We have to step up.

This should be an idea that will appeal to all the people who think government needs to get out of our lives and let us live the way we want to. This should be an idea that will appeal to all the do-it-yourselfers.

Let’s not sit around and wait for the government to do anything for us in regards to our health. We see what they have done with education. Why let them dumb down something else? We don’t need our health reduced to the lowest common denominator.

If health insurance is going to live up to its name, it needs to insure health. Paying money to restore what has been lost is backwards. Health insurance should pay us to go to the gym and eat well. We should go to nutritionists and personal trainers more than we go to doctors. We should all get stress-reduction training before we even are stressed.

We go to the dentist every six months to get our teeth checked. This prevents bigger problems. We brush our teeth three times a day to prevent problems too. Why are we so reluctant to take care of our bones, our muscles, and our hearts? We can get replacement teeth. Replacement bones, muscles, and hearts are another matter entirely.

People say they don’t have the time to exercise. That is all in your head. You have the time. You don’t want to do it – just be honest. You’d rather spend the time playing videogames or drinking beer or watching “reality TV”. I do all of these things to – well, except for the TV part, but I do them in moderation. And I exercise. I realized that my health was more important than my leisure time. If I didn’t take care of my health, I wouldn’t have any leisure time in a few years.

We have to change the way we think.

People say they don’t need health insurance and they shouldn’t be forced to buy it. OK, so do they have a card on them so that when they are in a car crash that they don’t get rescued? They don’t get their bones set? They don’t get a blood transfusion? If we all don’t pay into it, then we all don’t get to benefit from it. That only seems fair. But it isn’t the way we do things.

We have a way of thinking in America that if someone is hurt, they will be taken care of and that we’ll just sort it out later. So do you need health insurance? Yes, but not the kind that we currently have. Take matters into your own hands. We need insurance for accidents, but not for the things we can do for ourselves.

We are looking at the problem backwards.

The cyclical effect of pain – stress/pain/tension/pain

Posted on by | Leave a comment

Our bodies feel pain in ways other than pain. Pain is the last part. Pain means that the problem has popped the fuse and we are now desperate.

When a baby is hungry he will make signs. He’ll smack his lips or suck his fist. Crying is the last thing he’ll do. If his mother doesn’t notice the signs in time he will get frustrated. His needs aren’t being met.

Pain is the same way. It has subtle signs at first. Our body wants to protect us from pain. Our adrenal system races to the rescue when we hurt so that we don’t feel it. This is backwards, because then we don’t know that there is a problem. We find out later when the adrenal system gives up and we are just like that baby, crying and miserable.

Pain has a cascade effect. It affects everything. It is kind of like dominoes. One thing leads to another. If we are in pain, our stomach will get in knots, our teeth will clench, and then we will get headaches. Our breathing will get shallow. We will become irritable. Then the tension from all of that will only make things worse.

Tension causes pain, and pain causes tension. Anger can cause tension which causes pain. Pain can cause irritability which leads to anger. It isn’t just a domino effect, it is circular.

You can feel pain in other areas than where the actual pain is. Acupuncture teaches us this. If you’ve ever gotten a tattoo you know this. If you get a tattoo on your ankle it can hurt on your lower back. If you get a tattoo on your upper arm it can hurt on your face. So be mindful that just because you feel pain in one area doesn’t mean that is the source of the pain.

You can head things off at the pass. You can learn to recognize the signs of pain before they are off the charts. You can stop the cycle.

Do a body scan every now and then, several times a day. Just pause for a moment and see how you are feeling. This is useful to do at least once an hour. You won’t remember to do it that often to start with – that is normal. Just do what you can.

How is your breathing? Deep or shallow? Fast or slow? You can change a lot by changing your breathing. Intentionally breathe in slowly through your nose, on a count of ten. Exhale slowly through your mouth on a count of ten. Do this for a minute at least. See how you feel. Do it again if necessary.

How do you feel? Do you have tension in your back or shoulders or face? Are you clenching anywhere? Intentionally release it. We tend to hold tension in our bodies. Tension raises our blood pressure.

Check your tongue. Are you pressing it up against the roof of your mouth? This is a sign to your body that you are under pressure. It will raise your blood pressure the same way that breathing shallowly or clenching your muscles will. Do your best to relax your tongue from the roof of your mouth as often as possible.

Remember that whenever you are checking your breathing or tension, you are making a positive change for yourself. Don’t get mad at yourself for having shallow breathing or clenching your muscles. This is totally normal. To get mad at yourself only causes more tension. Instead, focus on the fact that you are doing something good about it. Every little step towards health is something to celebrate.

Find activities that you enjoy to reduce stress. Do something creative. Draw, paint, bead, write, garden, cook – the list is endless. Pick one, and if it doesn’t work for you, try something else. Get regular exercise, and don’t make it “exercise”. Children don’t “exercise”, they play. They are better off for it. If you find some way to move your body that you enjoy, you are more likely to do it.

Look at the things that cause you stress. What can you do about it? Can you make a change? Can you ask for assistance? Can you tell someone that what they are doing is harmful to you? People can’t read minds – you have to ask for what you need. Sometimes just thinking about this can make you feel more stress! Pick a book in my “survival” books list and read it. They are lifesavers.

I wish you well on your journey. We will never be stress-free. Life is all about challenge and growth, and stress gives us opportunities for that. Stress and pain are just signs that we need to slow down and reassess things. In this way, they are blessings. Otherwise, we’d not grow, we’d not ask for help, and we’d forget to be thankful for all the many gifts that we have.

“Do no harm” – on grocery stores and the American diet.

Posted on by | Leave a comment

There is a grocery store near my house that has a health food section. All the healthy options are put together in one little area. This section is to the far left of the entrance, tucked behind the pharmacy. The ceiling is low, the walls are dark, and the lighting is bad. It would be easy to never even notice there was a healthy-option section. When you do notice it, it isn’t inviting.

In one way it is good to have a separate section. All the different healthy options that you might want are put together. You don’t have to go all over the store to find them. In another way it is bad. Regular shoppers won’t know of these options when they are shopping. They won’t be able to discover a different brand of toothpaste or compare prices or ingredients on juice or breakfast cereals.

Why are healthy options marginalized? When they are mixed in with everything else they are often on the bottom shelf where they will not be noticed. All the popular options are at eye or at least chest height. They have bright colors and clever marketing. The healthy options sit quietly, gathering dust.

Grocery stores should stop getting bigger and start getting better. They should stop selling fourteen different brands of cheesy poofs for starters. In fact, stop selling cheesy poofs altogether. It doesn’t matter that people want them. Perhaps grocery stores should adopt the “do no harm” oath that doctors have to take. But then again, we see how well that has done us. Treat the symptom, not the disease.

One of my coworkers was told by her nutritionist that she needed to skip everything that was in the center of the store. Skip everything that is prepackaged and filled with preservatives, and buy fresh real food. Let’s add to that. Skip everything that has labels on it with ingredients you can’t understand and can’t pronounce. Skip everything with an ingredient list that is longer than the “food” item itself.

Convenience foods are killing us.

Fast food equals a slow death.

I understand. We live busy lives. Who has time to bake their own bread? Who has time to grow their own food? Cooking takes time, time we think we don’t have. Yet we have time to check Facebook and Twitter and time to watch reality TV and talk shows.

The old adage is true. We are what we eat. And we are eating junk.

The perspective of pain.

Posted on by | Leave a comment

I’d forgotten how exhausting pain is. Perhaps I never really knew. This experience is giving me a whole new perspective on compassion and empathy.

Remember how you are supposed to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes to understand them? What if it hurts too much to even bend over to put on those shoes? That too is a teacher. That too is a way in.

I’ve decided to bring back the term “lumbago”. I love it. It is so poetic. It is an old fashioned way of talking about lower back pain. Not many people use this term any more. I envision some old guy in a plaid shirt and brown pants hitched up a little too high. He’s got both arms held akimbo, hands a little further back, palms flat over his kidney area. He’s leaning back a little. “Ooh, my lumbago!” he moans to anyone who will listen.

“Lumbago” sounds so much better. The pain is still the same, but the word is better. Lumbago kind of sounds like a dance, but dancing is the last thing you want to do.

So. My lumbago. I don’t want to identify with it, but I do want to learn from it. I don’t want it to limit me, but I still want to be mindful.

I’d written a lot last night while sitting at my computer. It turns out this wasn’t the smartest move. I’d not made time to write enough yesterday and I’ve learned that writing helps my head quite a bit. It is creative and cleansing at the same time. So I needed to write, but sitting there for over an hour wasn’t the best idea. I’ve been doing a lot better, but it still has only been a week since I slipped a disc. I hurt quite a bit, and it took a long time to relax enough to go to bed.

This is a whole new experience for me. I’m not sure how to navigate this new territory. I’ve entered into this country without a phrase book or a pocket guide. So I forget every now and then that things are different, and I need to act differently.

Some things I’ve learned from my chiropractor. I’m heartened by how many people I know who go to him and trust him. I’ve heard such disparaging things about chiropractors all my life that I didn’t want to go last week, but now I knew I made the right choice. He is also a certified nutritionist, so I’m learning all sorts of useful tips in addition to getting my back adjusted.

I’ve learned from him that if you want to lessen inflammation, eat a vegetarian diet. I’ve learned that omega 6 increases inflammation, while omega 3 is healing. I’ve learned that a homeopathic muscle relaxer is more useful than a prescription one because it doesn’t make me have brain fog. It is also used for anxiety.

I’m meditating on that – do we tense up because we are anxious, or are we anxious because our muscles are tense? I’ve already written on this a little, and I think it is a key point.

I’ve learned things on my own as well. Pain shows up in ways other than pain. Sometimes the body tries to shield us from pain and so we don’t know we are hurting. The adrenal system is a great thing up to a point, but it can handle only so much. I’m learning it is important to recognize the signs of the adrenal system trying to take over and masking the pain before things get out of hand.

Pain makes me hungry. I crave salty snacks a lot right now. I’m hungry when I shouldn’t be hungry. I suspect this is a lot like when I realized the connection between PMS and cramps many years ago. Yield to the cravings and have terrible cramps. Notice them, but don’t succumb, and have a pain free time. I’m trying to do this now but the pain induced craving is really sneaky.

Funny how my body is trying to get me to eat the very things that will actually make things worse. Salt causes inflammation. Inflammation causes pain.

Our bodies don’t always know what is best for us, so it is up to us to use our minds. The bad part is that we don’t always know we are being misled. We think we are legitimately craving something we need, and we don’t. Our minds have to be the drivers, but sometimes our bodies carjack us.

Pain makes me tired. I never knew how exhausting pain is. I was absolutely wiped out last Tuesday. I was really bored being at home by myself. I’d been home from work for five days and I hadn’t been alone all of that, but enough that it was getting old. I went to eat at a buffet and it was very hard. It was hard to get there. It hurt to sit. I’m starting to think the Roman idea of reclining to eat has a lot of merit. When I was done I went to my car and just drove home. I’d had other small errands to do but I didn’t have the energy to do them.

This morning I was trying to write while sitting at the computer and I had the same problem I had last night. My lumbago was getting worse, and the pain was spreading to my side. I got up to lay down in the living room and nearly blacked out.

I’ve recently learned that too is part of the adrenal system. When I was at the chiropractor’s, the assistant took my blood pressure while I was sitting, and again while I was standing. The first number should be 10 points higher when standing. It was just 2.

I took a “body scan” of myself at that time and analyzed how I felt. Anxious. Unsettled. Nervous. A little dizzy and spacey in my head. Turns out that is the adrenal system covering pain. I felt pain and didn’t even realize how bad it was because my body was covering up for it.

Meanwhile the pain kept going on and I kept not getting relief for it. I didn’t know I needed relief. I didn’t know I was in pain.

How many people do we encounter who are in pain and they don’t even know it? They are irritable and difficult to deal with and they don’t even realize why? Whether the pain is physical or emotional makes no difference. Pain is pain, whatever the source. I’m of the opinion that the line between mental and physical is blurry at best.

I think I’ve found the tip of the iceberg. I think I’ve found a piece of the puzzle. I think I’ve found part of my calling, part of what I was created for.

I’m grateful for this pain, this experience, this lumbago. I’m grateful for the lesson this pain is teaching me. It took laying on my back to see things in a whole new way.

Fear and ignorance could have killed me.

Posted on by | Leave a comment

I can’t let other people’s fear keep me from taking care of my health.

I didn’t get a mammogram for years because everybody told me how painful it was. Friends and comedians would joke that getting a mammogram was like slamming your breast in the freezer door, or putting it in a vise. Who would want to do that?

I didn’t go to a gynecologist because my mother never impressed on me that I should. She never went as far as I knew, once she had stopped having children. She thought that sex was dirty. Sex was something you did once a week as a duty to your husband. So she certainly didn’t teach me how to keep my female parts healthy.

Also, friends talked about how uncomfortable it was to go to the gynecologist. Awkward, unpleasant, strange – they really weren’t selling it as something I should do. They always talked about going for a checkup as a chore, kind of like how my Mom talked about sex. One even said she’d rather have a root canal than go to the gynecologist. Either she has a great dentist or a terrible gynecologist.

Then three years ago I read “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” and I realized that a woman in her 30s could die of cervical cancer. For some reason I thought that was an older woman’s disease. So I went for my first checkup in 20 years. I found that I had moderate to severe cervical dysphasia. Not cancer, but cancer’s next door neighbor. I had surgery to get it removed. If I had waited, I’d be dead by now from something totally preventable.

Fear and ignorance could have killed me.

Now I’m going to a chiropractor. My friends are now saying what they’ve always said about chiropractors. They are quacks. They insist you come a lot and they don’t promise anything. They heard of somebody who got paralyzed by one. But if I’d gone to a regular doctor for my slipped disc a week ago I would have been given pain pills and muscle relaxers. I still would have had a slipped disc. I just wouldn’t have cared.

I’m sure there are true stories of chiropractors who have accidentally harmed patients. But how many regular doctors have perfect records? There is a reason medical malpractice insurance is expensive. Nobody is perfect.

My chiropractor has a good point. We get our teeth checked twice a year, and if one of them goes bad we can get a replacement. We can’t replace our spine, yet we never check it.

Sure, I’m not happy about having to go several times a week, but it isn’t forever. It is just for a few months, then it won’t be that often. Plus, it feels amazing.

I like to think of my back as like a bonsai tree. Change can’t happen overnight. When I had braces it took 4 years to get my teeth straight. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and my back won’t be healed overnight.

Meanwhile I’m going to try to unlearn a whole lot of nonsense that I was taught, and try not to spread any more of it around.