Things I’m learning in school…
I started school to become a Certified Functional Nutritional Counselor this last week. On first blush, this program is simply amazing.
This is an excerpt from the very first class of week 1:
“For most of the history of what we call “conventional medicine,” the 6 non-naturals were
the primary tools for addressing the body’s health. These non-naturals were first articulated over
six thousand years ago in Ancient Greece, and they included: diet, sleep, exercise, breath,
excretion, and emotions. Check it out… over half of these--diet, excretion, and emotions—link
directly to the digestive system. The idea that food, mood, and poop are critical to our health and
well-being has been a consistent part of both folk-knowledge and elite medicine for thousands of years.”
Too many people in modern medicine are trying to reinvent the wheel! How many times has your doctor asked you about your emotional state or what trauma you carry? How many times have they asked if you’re breathing well, even if your lungs are healthy?
Not enough.
We used to get by just fine without Pharmizer making trillions of dollars per year selling pills. We were more hale as a species, probably lived longer, and were much happier, too.
What happened?
We got lazy as a species.
We preferred greasy takeout to cooking a dinner from scratch. We began buying food at stores rather than growing it ourselves. We gave trust regarding our health to agencies like the FDA who approves things to be sold for consumption that should be NOWHERE NEAR a human body. Most of your cracker, cookie, candy and frozen food aisles are full of literal chemical garbage. And once you realize that agencies like the FDA and CDC get paid bribes by pharmaceutical companies to approve things for human consumption, you realize Pharma only makes money when people are sick. Therefore, go ahead and ponder the intentions of such agencies. Really consider if they are incentivized to feed you slow-acting poisons that only deteriorate your body when built up over twenty plus years.
Let me tell you a true story.
I traveled with my beloved husband out of town to stay with him a few days in a hotel while he worked on a construction project nearby. I generally make him sandwiches for lunch, and you can’t have a sandwich without pickles. According to my husband, there’s a law written somewhere that requires a savory sandwich have pickles, and this law comes complete with heavy penalties for failure to comply, according to the very real and serious research my husband has done on the subject. I mentioned in the last post how my pressure canning hobby all started with pickles, and dadgummit, I’m sure I started because of that very law. I’m not a troublemaker.
Since I forgot a jar of homemade pickles on our road trip, which was nearly unforgivable, I had to buy some at the local Safeway along with some other basic groceries for the trip.
I stood in that pickle aisle, I kid you not, for ten straight minutes reading labels.
Open Nature, I’m disappointed in you. Your products are supposed to be organic and not-toxic. You advertise “No artificial flavors” while including chemicals like Polysorbate 80 and Calcium Chloride in your pickles. For shame, Open Nature. For shame.
Horribly, most of the rest of the pickles were the same. Um, there should only be cucumbers, salt, vinegar, maybe a little sugar, and some dill/mustard seed/garlic. That’s it. THAT’S WHAT PICKLES ARE.
Finally I found one single jar from Seattle Pickle Company that was ten freaking dollars, but they included no chemical garbage additives. One jar, out of twenty five or so brands and varieties of pickles.
That’s what we’re dealing with, folks.
You need to assume that 9/10ths or more of the food available for purchase has some sort of chemical additive that will slowly poison you in some way so that in 30 years, you need a cocktail of regular prescriptions at fifty bucks per pop just to stay alive. Please buy your groceries accordingly.
Back to my original subject, we really don’t realize how much our mood affects our overall health. This is why it’s important to not bathe yourself in things that make you stressed out. Politics can really stress some people out. Listening to violent music can do the same, whether we know it or not. Reliving old memories and kicking ourself for not doing better? It’s doing the same thing. My nutritional teacher with something like 12 letters after her name professionally is absolutely right.
Everything we need to heal ourselves is found in nature. During the Covid lockdowns, people actually got sicker because they stayed cooped up inside and didn’t get sunshine or fresh air. Sunshine, fresh air and exercise will cure a lot of mental health problems, and you get positively abused on Twitter if you say so.
This goes back to- people have gotten lazy. They would rather get their stomachs stapled shut than go running. They would rather swallow pills than just eat less and do some pushups. I realize I might be speaking more to the under-50 crowd here (since we have more time to right the ship, as it were) but movement will extend your life. If you spent your life sedate, you need that movement twice as badly as someone who regularly goes for evening walks. And Ozempic? Gosh, people. There’s studies that it will make you go blind. If you’re young, please just eat salads with oil and vinegar and go running. I promise, slow and steady works better than blindness shots.
I am not about band-aids or get-fixed-quick schemes. I am about personal responsibility and personal accountability. Fixing yourself from the inside out isn’t easy, but with hard work and awareness, you got this.
One other thing I learned this week was about something called the GAPS diet. Gut And Psychology.
What is it?
The GAPS diet is a strict elimination diet that requires its followers to cut out:
grains
pasteurized dairy
starchy vegetables
refined carbs
In her book, Dr. Campbell-McBride states that the GAPS dietary protocol cured her first child of autism. She now widely promotes the diet as a natural cure for many psychiatric and neurological conditions, including:
autism
ADD and ADHD
dyspraxia
dyslexia
depression
schizophrenia
Tourette’s syndrome
bipolar disorder
obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)
eating disorders
gout
childhood bed wetting
When I was a child, I was squirrelly with lots of behavioral problems. Interestingly enough, the doctors were recommending this diet to my mother without it being defined as the GAPS diet when I was a child.
My mom is my hero, btw. She refused to let them put me on adderall.
So I went for most of my childhood with boxes of Rice Milk handy and not getting birthday cake at parties, which, trust me, I raged about as a child, but as an adult, I’m incredibly grateful my parents acted upon the hard rights instead of the easy wrongs.
I notice that it’s extremely similar to keto (which I already do) except it also excludes pasteurized milk and milk products. I’m going to be trying this modification to my already-existing keto diet and see how I feel. I’ll report back after I see how I feel!
Much to my chagrin, it appears triple-cream brie cheese is out for a while.
Excuse me while I fling myself onto a fainting couch and weep dramatically.
