Thursday, September 25, 2014

Entry 27: Simplifying Self Help Management of Complex, Chronic Health Conditions.


Disclaimer A

Dec. 29. 2012

I have been down the road of supplementing. It can be very expensive, exhausting and bewildering. There are products out there that can help, but it is tireless, searching to find the few that are vs. the many that aren't. Unfortunately, the Wellness industry's intentions can be a bit tainted with greed, and they often do prey upon the desperate…the thousands of people being let down by mainstream, medical healthcare.

Knowledge of nutrition is very important, and trying to find a natural form of a medication needed to treat a specific condition, especially if you already know you have the condition and have the option of it or a drug. Don't feel guilty if you need to take a drug, just try to look at your other options with curious discernment.  Try and find out all you can about interactions and safety, even if it means popping into a naturopath for one single visit.

You might find a treatment, even conventional, where the benefit outweighs, and the side effects are fairly nil… but those do tend to be more unusual, in highly sensitive especially. I have to be on a medication for gut motility. It's a small dose with dinner, but without it the muscles in my digestive system don't work right and that in itself can cause me a lot of internal havoc. Imagine when stuff that isn't supposed to stay inside you, does. Eek.
Sensitive people do seem to usually respond better to things that are closer to their natural state. For example, I had a thyroid imbalance that was quite intense for a while. I didn’t take synthroid but rather,  a small amount of the natural thyroid glandular in which I ordered form the USA quite inexpensively. It helped a lot, and I don’t seem to need it anymore, though I still support my adrenals and take herbs for balance. Synthetic forms of things tend to affects me too dramatically. That’s just a personal example.

It's best to just learn about nutritional values of foods, and tailor a diet to health needs; then maybe using 1-4 quality supplements that you have narrowed it down to/ it’s preferable to do this with the help of a good and honest naturopath, if you can scrape together some funds. I say honest because, sadly, many wellness practitioners are quite greedy, or they can further overwhelm you with a million theories. It’s good to find one whose concrete, and can help you simplify, and yet is still holistic. The problem with conventional medicine is that it’s too compartmentalized; not taking into account how several co-occurring conditions can affect each other.

I've been down the road of visiting a vitamin store in a state of feeling unwell and desperate; and being given so much exciting and over-stimulating info that my head, and gut intuition for that matter, wanted to simultaneously explode! I'm tired of it and I don't have more than a couple hundred at most, to spend per month. Also, when you overwhelm your body with too many "supplements" it'll get confused with all the “signals” and they won't work accordingly.
It could even overwhelm your liver and kidneys, which can backfire in many ways.

I think quality is so much better than quantity. If you're on a budget, you will only be able to choose you're best small few of quality anyway, or even just a quality diet and one or two extra at best. All of the above is always better than buying a bunch of crappy "vitamins" from the drugstore.

Also, for a multi vitamin, I'd say get one good, normal potency multi vitamin that is organic and from food. Do not use a synthetic one. For example, the calcium in it comes form coral, the vitamin C from orange peels. I'm a bit of a hippie this way. I believe what's from the earth, the body will more naturally recognize.

Science is in debate about this, with one side saying it is shown that the body responds more positively to the naturally sourced, and the other side saying it doesn’t matter. I lean heavily toward the first hypothesis. Autistics and highly sensitives tend to fare better with the naturally sources. In my case, synthetics make me feel sick. I have genetic mutations that cause me to not process synthetics very well, especially B-vitamins. Many autistics/sensitives are likely the same.

I know what my body can’t handle, because it tells me! I think it could be because I'm autistic, and quite reactive. If one doesn't have any specific health issues and just wants to be preventative, or is feeling generally run down/fatigued, my suggestion would be to just get the one good multi vitamin, and eat a good diet avoiding simple sugars, wheat and most preferably dairy, at least in excess. Studies and empirical accounts have reported that most autistics don't process dairy and gluten well, and in turn gluten and casein, (which is milk protein, not the lactose FYI) into opiates/toxins. There’s even info about that on wiki.

Anyways, I speak from my own experience dealing with "fibromyalgia" as they're calling it. FM comes with “the works”; pain, IBS, chronic fatigue, brain/memory fog, anxiety, sleep issues, blood sugar instability and many more. I also have premature-onset osteoarthritis. However, I've come to a point where I'm on a quest for simplicity.

Maybe I'm a bit of a “mad scientist” in such matters but I'm seeking out that effective and sensible, not overly and unnecessarily complex, formula that'll help me heal. I actually raised my white flag, many times before and especially more recently. I realized that all my own aspie minded knowledge can simply bite me in the rear and exhausting me to hell...especially when I'm dealing with my own body.

It's harder to see sometimes, when you're lost in a first-person complexity. I decided it was time to invest in a few visits with the right naturopath, for sensible guidance and an outsiders' view, would be the best way to move on from chasing my tail.

With chronic health issues that are systemic, it gets very complicated. You can get very lost in your symptoms. It can become necessary to somehow set aside some funds (somehow; even if it's just for a couple of visits) for an astute professional, a naturopath or herbalist even, whom you trust and click with, to help you discern and heal. There may even be options for free or sliding scale student clinics, and whatnot. If you can’t do that, take it easy, and just try to be as simple as possible. Allow your body to tell you what’s up, by sticking with simple health routine, and observing symptoms as they come up.

I'll be seeing someone soon, just for a review. The goal is to simplify everything and identify the underlying issues in the right order. I love it when things make sense to me and I don't have to be the one exhausting myself. So, that's my experience on all this self-help supplementation stuff, and where I currently stand with it.



Scarlit-Rose Ashcraft
aka "Rosie"


No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.