The Global Health & Healing Summit starts August 30th with a line up of wellness experts you’re going to want to check out. My interview will air on September 9th. You will hear about my recovery from sugar addiction by using food as medicine. I firmly believe that if I hadn’t discovered the true power of food and its healing properties that I would have continued to get progressively worse with my illnesses.
After being diagnosed with the autoimmune conditions of fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome as well as a heavy metal toxicity, my health journey proceeded to spiral downward. I had spent five years struggling with these conditions and following the conventional treatment including medications that did nothing to make me feel any better. If you read my About section you will get a taste of my health struggles. It’s hard to cover all that happened during that period of my life in one page! One of the major things I learned is that traditional medical practice treats the patient based on an “average person.” I don’t know who this “average person” is but it sure wasn’t me!
I started with my primary care physician who had no clue what I had. She referred me to a rheumatologist who referred me to a pulmonologist who referred me to a cardiologist who referred me to a neurologist who referred me to a psychiatrist who put me on anti-depressants to help me cope with the pain. None of them were able to help me with my actual problem. They all reviewed my “symptoms” through their own narrow window of their specialty. And when they couldn’t pin down a diagnosis, they referred me on because it was “out of their specialty.” I did manage to accumulate quite a few prescription drugs along the way. This process took years and in the meantime, I grew worse and worse.
I truly believe that my unhealthy eating habits had pushed my body to the brink (coupled with overworking and excessive stress). My body started to break – first with a ruptured appendix that required emergency surgery – that was in August. Then I developed what I thought were migraines in October. The pain was so intense, I would have traded it for another round of childbirth. Long story short – those migraines were the result of recurring acute attacks of glaucoma. It took five trips to the ER in order to get a diagnosis. And that only came because my husband acted as my health advocate.
Each time I went to the ER, I was totally incapacitated. I was doubled over vomiting my guts out – for hours – with the most excruciating migraine headache I have ever experienced. Even though I would be able to tell the ER doctor that the pain was in my eye, no one looked in my eye! I had a series of CAT scans, MRIs and even a spinal tap (lumbar puncture). Everyone wanted to look inside my head and see if my brain was bleeding but no one was looking into my eye where I experienced the pain. I later found out that ER doctors are not trained specifically on the eye. So, it wasn’t on their radar. So, I was pumped full of heavy-duty pain meds (Dilaudid for over 12 hours on one occassion!) and sent home even though the problem was not resolved.
On the fifth trip to the ER, my husband addressed this directly with the neurologist. Although the neurologist wanted to do another round of imaging my head, my husband – God bless him – insisted that they call in an ophthalmologist to actually look at my eye. When the ophthalmologist arrived, within minutes he diagnosed acute narrow angle glaucoma. This was the first time in two months that someone had looked in my eye and I finally had a real diagnosis. To his credit, since this was outside office hours and about 7 pm at night, he offered to take me to his office and perform a procedure that would instantly lower the pressure in my eye and relieve the migraine. I am and will always be truly grateful to Dr. Jerome Ross for his care and concern.
It was now December and I had lost sight in my right eye. I then had glaucoma surgery. Fortunately, I was able to restore 10% of the vision in the right eye and now my left eye had to be treated to prevent an attack in that eye since I had glaucoma in both eyes. If I had not had my husband as my health advocate, I am not sure what the outcome of this situation would be. I venture to say that I would not have been as fortunate as I was.
What does this have to do with the food I ate? As I began my journey using food as medicine so I could recovery from these autoimmune conditions, I replaced the food I had been eating, which I call CRAP food, with whole foods and slowly but surely my body responded. As I said before, conventional medicine treats the “average” and I wasn’t average. I believe that my sugar addiction had pushed my blood glucose levels too high (for me) even though my blood tests didn’t indicate that I was diabetic. I now maintain a steady blood sugar level so I don’t experience any side effects from high blood glucose. We now know that the appendix is a storehouse of good bacteria and has beneficial probiotic colonies. I think my sugar addiction damaged the proper working of my appendix to the point that it ruptured. There’s no way I can prove this theory but I know that my body has given me symptoms and signs over the years that if I paid attention to them, I was able to heal myself. But if I didn’t (and I didn’t when I was eating sugar – everyday, all day) then I suffered the consequences.
I have learned over the years that the body is a marvelous miracle and we need to stay in tune with it. It gives us clues every day as to what it needs and what it doesn’t want. It’s up to us as the stewards of this vessel to listen carefully and respond kindly.
I invite you to register for The Global Health & Healing Summit to hear the process I used to heal from my sugar addition. Now that I am free from the clutches of sugar, my body works as well as it ever has. I wish this for you too. Use food as medicine – listen to my story and hear a testimonial as to how real food heals!
Comments