Let’s start with mental health. Sometimes I feel like if I read those words one more time, I’m going to explode. Everyone is talking about it, but what’s everyone doing about it? You’ve got anxiety and the doctor prescribed you some sort of sedative (generally speaking). Okay. But what about what causes it?
I chose anxiety because that is as common of a word as the phrase mental health. Replace anxiety with any term you like- depression, lack of focus, fatigue, weight loss, weight gain, thyroid problems, type 2 diabetes, autoimmune disorders, malaise, brain fog… you know, the crap we all have.
So, what’s causing all of this? Yes, we can be sedated or stimulated to counter these symptoms, but, like, what if… we got to the root cause? 🧐
I feel like I have a bit of a say in this chaos, as a patient, because I have had a hell of a go with all of this health. I have an autoimmune disease that ate 2 of my teeth this year. And I am here to tell you- I felt every single “chomp” of my cells eating my teeth, bone, and tissues. I don’t wish that on anyone. Well, almost. Anyway. The first surgery was successful 🙌🏼 Second one is in 5 weeks. In other health news, I also have chronic migraines. In the 18 month journey of the teeth, the migraines got worse, and then became daily and more crazy after the surgery. Living with the mouth pain, and brain pain, I was at the end of my rope. I was either going to make this better or I needed to be in another universe.
I’m allowed 9 migraine pills a month. Great! That’ll get me through 9 days. I’ll just take off of work and vomit and be blind the other 21 days each month- no big deal. 🙄 I wanted more than medicine, obviously, so that I could freaking live. I wanted the answers! The reading began. I read about 4 hours every night. Every. Night. I read about diet. I read about blood vessels. I read about pain. I read about food and what it does (and doesn’t do). I read about chemicals in the food, preservatives, artificial anything. I read about cancer. I read, and read, and read. For 2 months I read about histamine, what histamine does to blood vessels, and what foods release/trigger histamine. I decided to try the low histamine diet, to see if it would help my migraines. And there was certainly a difference. I was still struggling. I went more in depth about the chemicals and all of the artificial crap. I quickly realized that some of my worst migraines were being triggered by artificial sugars- sucralose was a huge offender. I would annihilate that from the earth if I could.
Every time I had a migraine, I would write down everything that I had eaten, which now was getting easier to track since I was attempting to adhere to the low histamine diet. After a couple of months, pretty much everything was falling in to a few common denominators:
- Preservatives such as sulfites/sulfates, nitrites/nitrates were a big huge no no. This is smoked meats and deli meats. BBQ at Jim n Nicks? Hell no.
- Artificial sugars such as aspartame or sucralose. Very painful. These are in anything, absolutely anything that says “diet” in the name.
- Anything fermented- yogurt, sauerkraut, beer, wine, pickles, anything with vinegar such as hot sauce. Nope.
Reading labels is a real pain. But, I’ve figured this out- in general (not always, but usually) if the label/title says gluten free, natural, organic, paleo, etc … these foods/products are going to have a much shorter ingredient label and are generally something that I can eat. If I pick up something with a paragraph long label- just put it down. No need to read all of those chemicals that are LITERALLY destroying your blood vessels in body and brain.
I chose to follow a paleo diet. Meat, and vegetables. Nothing processed. I am also attempting to be totally gluten free to see what affects that will or won’t have. The paleo is great for me and my head. It’s working. It’s easy. I know exactly what the frick it is. I’m pleased with it. Finally. Something is easy. I was tired of feeling like shit. Being in excruciating pain. I was ready to save my life.
Back to mental health. During the era of the teeth, I was a totally different person. I could sleep all of the time. I could take 10mg of adderall and sleep 20 hours (when I say sleep, I mean it). My inflammation was nuts. I didn’t want to ride, teach, barn, nothing. And yes, I was very sick and in a lot of pain. But it was more than that. I didn’t feel like me. All of this was running deeper. It wasn’t until months of my nightly “studies” and some simple changes that it all started to come together.
Mental Health is HEALTH. If you are unhealthy, particularly in your gut (which controls more than we know), then it is likely that your brain is suffering some how, some way. If you are suffering from autoimmune disorders, I would bet that you have a “mental health” problem. I’m here to tell you- that is very likely just a HEALTH PROBLEM. And, it’s very possibly highly linked to diet. Lack there of diet or too much diet. If you don’t eat, you’ll be crazy. If you eat too much, you’ll be crazy. If you only eat chemicals, sho nuf going to be crazy. [and y’all know me- when I say crazy I mean “not right”… something affecting you.] I’m not a doctor but I am patient that is PRESENTLY going through this journey. And I know people and listen to their stories of how they have healed. We don’t all have to end up with cancer. We don’t all have to be ADHD or somewhere on the spectrum. We can be healthier, or just plain healthy. But, we have to do better by ourselves. Our bodies deserve it. Our heart deserves it. Our brain deserves it. If we could just live by our spirit and our soul, that’d be great. But we have to have our body to LIVE. And I want to live. A long time. And feel good. I’m going to keep reading. Learning. Trying new things. Figuring it out.
I’m going to heal.
Health, Life, Dogs, and Horses 