In hindsight, I suffered many symptoms during my childhood and adolescents which could have been alleviated by changing my diet. At the time, however, I believed my symptoms were simply weaknesses I had been born with, inherited traits. The pharmacy or doctor always provided a simple and quick solution anyways, so I didn’t see any need to investigate further. According to my doctor and the Canadian Food Guide I was eating “a balanced diet”, and my symptoms didn’t stop me from playing sports or getting through school. In other words, my life wasn’t disrupted enough by my symptoms to search for other answers. I wasn’t aware I could do damage to my body taking pharmaceuticals; the pharmacy sold such things on the shelves and doctors would happily give prescriptions after 10min of basic questions.
Since I was very young, I started getting headaches often. By the time I was 14 or so I was getting true migraines (severe headaches with nausea and often vomiting). My dad had always gotten bad migraines as well, and I wrote it off to genetics. I remember being at school and taking 4 ibuprofens at a time to get through the day, twice the recommended dosage, 2 no longer had any effect on me. I also had skin problems, acne, which started when I was 11 and persisted for many years . Both of my parents struggled with acne issues as teens, I am certainly genetically predisposed to troubled skin, but that isn’t the whole story. At the time, believing it was simply genetic, I decided it was unavoidable for me, I needed a prescription. To control the acne the doctor placed me on birth control at 16. Birth control regulates hormones, and it is common practice for teenage girls with acne to receive this treatment. At 17 I was prescribed accutane, a fairly strong medication used specifically for severe acne. Accutane is also a common prescription, though the risk of liver damage is well known. In addition to the headaches and acne I also suffered major fatigue, and foggy brain and I often could only get through a school day by eating some kind of sugar at midday; though I was never tested or diagnosed, my blood sugar was likely out of control.
Despite these challenges, I was a productive child and adolescent. I was an “A” student, a competitive athlete, and had an active healthy social life. Since I was basically functioning and could manage symptoms through medication, I didn’t ask why I experienced such symptoms to begin with, they were my normal. My body was speaking, but I wasn’t listening for the first 18 years of my life.
The other strategies I used to silence my body were to not eat, or to eat in a compulsive way, or to exercise compulsively. I suffered eating disorders on and off. Though on the outside I seemed perfectly happy , inside I was often coping with experiences and emotions that overwhelmed me. I silenced my body with compulsive behaviors around food and exercise. That is the very root of addictive behavior, a symptom of something deeper being silenced.
After graduating highschool, I decided to spend a year travelling in Australia. I had gone there alone, but there I met and travelled much of the time with another canadian girl. She didn’t drink milk because she could not tolerate it well. It was the first time I was aware milk could be something unfavorable. I had always been told milk makes you strong. Instead of questioning my friend much, I decided to experiment. I cut out milk, and quickly noted differences in my energy. My skin looked better, and I was getting way less headaches. I soon discovered wheat was also quite an issue for me, and cutting back on cereals, bread and pasta improved my symptoms even more.
A year after this trip I started working in the fitness industry. I wanted to help people feel better. I was a personal fitness trainer for several years, and what I noticed was nutrition had far more of an impact on health goals than workout routines. After looking at the course outlines, I decided to study holistic nutrition rather than a traditional dietetics program, the holistic approach aligned with my beliefs and experience much more.
In my studies of nutrition, I came to see how misleading the information is in the Canadian Food Guide. These national food guides also exist in other countries by the way, and they are just as misleading. The reason for the similarity is they all come from the same source, the food and agricultural division of the united nations collaborates with governments around the world to create these food guides. They only differ in respect to the kinds of food people typically consume in the country e.g. Canada's guide would include peanut butter, and Australias has Vegemite. The general guidelines are the same however: high carbohydrate, high intake of dairy products, low protein (advocates beans be consumed more frequently than meats for protein) , and low fat consumption ( less saturated fats, more unsaturated fats, and margarine is advocated as a good substitute).
In contrast, in the nutrition school I studied at, we learnt how much food is changed in production, processing, and preparation. We learnt that most people could benefit from higher levels of fats and proteins, yet the food guide advocates the opposite. A higher carbohydrate diet may be acceptable but not if you do not properly explain how production, processing and preparation changes the effect of carbohydrates in the body. The same is true for proteins, fats, and milk products of course. The guide needs to specify how production, processing and preparation changes foods.
In the nutrition school , we also learnt that there are many benefits to saturated fats, and they are not the cause of cardiovascular problems. Saturated fats heal the lining of the cells in the body, they cause a feeling of satiety and regulate blood sugar. Vegetable oils and carbohydrates, if not processed with care, in fact are the culprits behind many health problems including diabetes, irritable bowel syndrome, and even cardiovascular disease. Vegetable oils, for example, which are heated too much in the extraction process, or when used in cooking with heat, become free radicals which damage artery walls. Cholesterol repairs torn artery walls. If the arteries were not damaged by free radicals, cholesterol would not be problematic, you could eat as much as you like. Margarine is also one of the most highly processed vegetable oils and should not be consumed, yet it appears on the food guide as a healthy option.
At minimum, the food guide needs to properly inform the public about : pasteurization of products, the use of pesticides, hormones, antibiotics, genetically modified foods, and the difference between canned and fresh food. It is clear that the food guide has economic benefits in mind rather than the health of the public, as the current recommendations have detrimental impacts on health.
I still continue to struggle with digestive problems until this day but listening to my body and applying what I learnt in the nutrition school has eased my symptoms a lot. The school also taught me about vegetarian diets being difficult for many digestive problems, because the proteins found in the grains reacted with an already damaged intestinal lining. I was in fact a vegetarian for nearly a year. Despite preparing my beans and grains properly, soaking them etc, I could not digest them and suffered a huge decline in my health. I have slowly integrated more beans and grains back into my diet, but it isn’t possible for my body to function on a vegetarian diet at this time. For this reason I eat meat. Of course I must prepare the meat properly, marinating it first to begin the digestive process before I even consume it. I am also sure to buy organic meat without hormone/antibiotic, that has not been raised industrially, but rather in its most natural environment.
For some time I was very frustrated at the notion that despite having found and followed a very good diet now for years, my symptoms are better but still present. What I came to realize is how much my digestive issues are connected with the psychological and emotional aspects of my life. We have to ask how we are digesting and absorbing our life as well.
In my early twenties, I saw a psychologist, and she wanted me to take medication for depression. I refused it. I instead went on a 10 day vipassana meditation retreat. This was my first experience ever with meditation. I thought I was going on a nice retreat or vacation, I really had no idea what it was. It was 10 days of silence with something around 8 hours of seated silent meditation a day. It didn’t change everything for me, but it began an important transformation that I continue to cultivate now 10 years later.
I am not advocating that vipassana meditation should be substituted for antidepressant medication. What I am saying is that medication isn't the ultimate solution, but rather management of symptoms so that one can begin to address the root cause of suffering. For me the negatives of taking the medication outweighed the benefits.
After the nutrition program, I studied psychology in university, I wanted to go deeper in the roots of healing the body. It reached a certain depth, but I still felt it didn’t get there. In fact I always knew it wouldn’t get there for me, but again this was a part of learning to listen to my body, to myself. I thought I had to have a university degree, or I wouldn’t be a success. I did graduate, but I didn’t continue in psychology. Around the time I was graduating, I went through some difficult experiences, and I began my journey in yoga. I wanted to reach into the subconscious, yoga and meditation got there. As Candace Pert say's "the body is the unconscious mind" , the body manifest the unconscious.
Symptoms in the body are stories, personal, inherited and collective stories. Genetic predisposition might be considered just that, an inherited story which needs healing. We don’t need to understand the exact story or explain it in words. What I need is to feel my body, listen, respect it, serve it what it needs in every moment and in this way I heal the stories that are manifesting in my body. The practice of the 8 limbs of yoga gives us the ability to hear the body deeply, sit with what arises, and release what is not ours.
The 8 limbs of yoga described in my blog “What is Yoga” work integrally. If we only work at one limb we really limit ourselves. If I only work at my nutrition I will certainly feel blocked at some point here and unable to progress. Yoga, transpersonal psychology, meditation, self reflection, work on my relationships have all helped in my process of healing. In many cases food will solve a great deal of your digestive issues or other body symptoms, but in other cases the psychological and emotional levels will play a larger role. Continue to work on all dimensions and remember to ask for help if you can’t do anymore alone. Over the years many people have helped me in many ways, and I think I have served to help some too. We are not alone in our healing, though in the end it is us who must do the work. Healing is an ongoing process, and it requires daily commitment.
“Do your practice and all is coming”- P.Jois.
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