Why Regarding Unknown Illnesses As "Mental Disease" Is Offensive

 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Since most people take modern medicine as "absolute" (by saying that I mean, people believe modern medicine can take care of all physical illnesses, except fatal diseases like cancer), they easily consider the cause of unknown illnesses as "mental". This is why we often see people try to "encourage" those who suffer invisible diseases to work "harder", to push through, as if they are mentally weak individuals. I still remember once a kind lady's first words to me after hearing my brief story: " be tough." I have to say, not only this is a wrong approach, but also offensive attitude toward those patients. Why, because one of primary reasons these people got so sick is precisely because they are mentally tough - so tough that they overdrew their energy, and their illnesses are nothing but the consequence of their mental toughness (physical energy overdrawn).

Vegs From Backyard

 It seems ages ago that I ate sweat-potato leaves. Earlier this year I planted some sweat potatoes. For a while I thought them dead, but later they grew up, strong and healthy! I made salad (scald them in hot water first) with some of them today and they were delicious!

Water spinach? They grow fast. I usually make salad with them or stir fry.

Gardening

I started liking gardening since couple of years ago, and this year, I enjoy it much more than pretty* years. Spending time with all these green is my greatest pleasure during daytime, it makes me feel healthy and alive. Most of vegs look greet so far. 
Below are the photos of one side of my backyard. 

*  "Previous" was mistyped as "pretty". But i guess every year is pretty, so I decided to keep it that way:-)

Yoga on Time Square, NY

On June 21, thousands of people gathered on Time Square New York to welcome Summer Solstice.

Some Pole Bean from Backyard

A Cute Little "Thief" In Backyard

This tinny hare kept perfect still just until I got a clear shot.

My doomed 2009 -- A lesson was learned

Image via Wikipedia

In 2009, I met the toughest challenge in my life: jobless paired with terrible health condition. While I poorly "conquered" the first one during the first half of the year, the later one remains problematic.

CFS (chronic fatigue syndrome) is really a monster. It doesn't kill you like some cancers, but it makes you to be only half of yourself, or even less than half. You may suffer symptoms of heart diseases, or of diabetes, or of many other diseases but as matter of fact, you have none of those diseases. The causes for CFS are still unknown, or too complicated to be detected. For sufferers, this means there is no cure for you. Or, as many doctors claimed, "you are fine".
The worst part of CFS is that it is the most misunderstood thus the most commonly misdiagnosed and mistreated illness ever. Usually it starts with normal tiredness, gradually gets severe until it's too late. During the course, patients inevitably and frequently feel inadequate, which is exactly how people with depression would feel. Thus CFS are often diagnosed as depression and given anti-depressants. However there is no study shows the effectiveness of these treatments. On the contrary, there were plenty cases showed the opposite (A young lady Sophia Mirza was one of the victims who DIED under mental treatments: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mZMpvtD3rg). To clear this confusion, people (esp. doctors ) should know that it is chronic physical illness cause depression, not the other way around. However I don't mean that depression doesn't cause ANY physical problems at all, it only means that it is not most CFS sufferers' cases.

As a longterm sufferer, I personally diagnose my CFS as "energy overdrawn". By Chinese medicine, our energy is like a bank: we make withdraw everyday also we make deposit everyday. When we make withdraw but not make deposit, we bring ourselves troubles.
How do we make deposit for our energy? Answer is: Foods, sleep and exercises. These 3 things are the most important "deposit" we make for our energy bank. They together make a concept called: "positive life style". If we keep these things on going everyday, we should have no problems at all.
So my personal conclusion on the cause of CFS is " bad lifestyle", which mean failed on these 3 things. For CFS patients (not real depression sufferers), making effort on changing your physical life style would do much better job on recovering than focusing on what's wrong with your mind (like doctors said).

As a person who never cared about my physical being, this is the biggest lesson I learn in very hard way during my struggling in 2009. I had to shift my whole interest from "spirit" to "physical matters", such as cooking, sleep, exercises, etc. (the first one --- cooking --- is very hard for me to do because my stomach doesn't like American food so I have to work very hard to please such a patriotic organ!)

Of course, there is one thing I did not mention on my good life style menu:good spirit. I used to think this one is the most important thing and it is above all physical issues, but after physically problematic for so long, I had to doubt my former belief. All I can tell now, is that we must take care of every aspect of ourselves: body and mind. Being balanced is the key.

May I have a blessed 2010! And you too!


01/01/2010

CFS and Yeast

Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is a relatively new name. Earlier in last century 70s, an allergist Dr. C. Orian Truss found that the over increased population of yeast --- a normal parasite in human body --- would stress our immune system and causes lots of symptoms. He gave a name to this disease as: Yeast-related Syndrome.
According to another Docter M.D.Elmer M. Cranton:
"Yeast and fungal infections of the skin, mouth, nails, vagina, and digestive tract have long been recognized and are easy to diagnose, but a relationship has only recently been discovered between yeast colonization, often sub-clinical and otherwise unapparent, with a wide variety of disabling symptoms. "
http://www.drcranton.com/CFIDS.htm

Chronic problems caused by this yeast include (given by the article linked above):
Anxiety (acute or chronic)
Arthritis (osteoarthritis especially)
AsthmaNasal and sinus congestionAttention
Deficit DisorderLearning and behavior disorders
Bed wetting
Bloating
Bronchitis
Celiac Disease
Non-tropical sprue
Ulcerative colitis
Chronic Fatigue
Constipation
Cystic fibrosis Depression
Diarrhea
Gastritis
Headaches
Hyperactivity
DisorderInflammatory
Bowel Disease
Insomnia
Irritable Bowel Syndrome
Itchy skin problems
Malabsorption
Migraine
Sleep disturbances
Water retention
Weight control problems
Sexual dysfunction
Infertility
Menstrual disorders
And many more...

The cause of this over grown population of yeast, by my understanding, is mostly bad life style: bad food (junk food) and lack of exercise.