Physical health is like mother's love

Image by ithinkchaos via Flickrwhen we had it, we took it for grated, only when we lost it, we realized how important it was.

If mother's love is a foundation of our self-esteem, physical health is a foundation of our BEING - without it, our whole existence will simply collapse.

The Magic Honey

Image via WikipediaI heard "local honey" can cure allergy all the time but never get chance to local farmers' markets. Early of this year, I bought a bottle of organic honey from Food Lion. It was produced somewhere about 100 miles away from where I live. So I gathered it might do some good for me. Having been taking this honey for over two months (mostly I put it into drink) pretty fine during Spring. I even walked outside like I never did in past years.

So I think it really worked!

P.S. I must point out that my overall diet changes also helped my immune system.

I found a way to rest my brain

To be specifically: to rest my left side of brain.

As a person who enjoy thinking, I found I could not think as much during these years of chronic illness, as my body did not support hard brain work. Somehow about over a year ago, I tried a way that partially "inspired" by my Yoga instructor long time ago, and it worked very well to me. I almost use it daily, mainly when I took lap after lunch. Most of time I found myself refreshed after doing this, even though I did not really fall into sleep.

I figured that all this technique did was nothing more than numbing left side of brain. This makes total sense to me, because by my understanding about brain function , when we sleep, it was left side brain who takes off from its daily duty, our right side of brain never stop working. That's why doing meditation can let us feeling refreshed simply by stopping "thinking", or stopping using left side of brain, not by actual sleep.

Here is how I practice this "ritual": lie on bed face up without pillow. Take a towel, roll it up like a small ball shaped piece, about a tennis ball size (or smaller), and put it underneath somewhere at back of skull, just a little above the neck (as picture shows by red circle). Make sure it is slightly toward left side. Since lying down face up, the gravity will naturally drag head down and let the towel ball produce some pressure on that part of head. If the location of the towel ball is right, I would feel some strong nervous stimulation around that area followed by some sense of numbness in my left side of brain. Then I just let it go, feeling relaxed and dreamy. After anywhere about 20 to 40 minutes, I could feel refreshed and recharged.

Of course, it doesn't have to be towel, but I found it works the best.

A Support to Dominique, A Support to "CFS"/ME

Image by sweethardt via Flickr

I like to post this for Dominique - a "CFS"/ME patient who struggling with this illness by her own, like most of other patients. This blog particularly described one of her "bad" days. I suppose any one with a decent sense about "fatigue" can understand, that this is far beyond just "fatigue".

Dominique has been in this illness for over 20 years. She used to run 7 miles a day before she got ill! Now, after 20 years living with this illness, most time bedridden, she was not tired, not sad, but ANGRY. And I am on her side, whole heartedly, sending the anger to medical institutes who dismiss this illness just because this illness doesn't fit their "scientific" theory, also sending the anger to the society and the people who refuse to give any sympathy to CFS/ME sufferers just because their suffering is "strange" to their life experience, or "strange" to their understanding of "illness". In other words, I am helping her to send anger to the "ignorance", the ignorance that kills lives.

Here is Dominique's blog:
A Glimpse of Severe ME: Opening the Door

Fish Head Soup

I was terribly tired yesterday and realized that I had not been eating well for over just ONE day. During afternoon I suddenly felt the need of fish soup. So I pulled up a tilapia head from refrigerator and made my favorite fish tomato soup. It really restored my energy instantly!

I did not mean that this soup can work on any fatigue condition but it indeed worked for me at the moment.

Here is the recipe:

Fish head (I used one piece of Tilapia which was big enough), ginger root shreds, green onion, tomato, mushroom, tofu (optional)

1. Stir fry fish head with veg oil, until the color changes;

2. Add water and wait until boiled, then add ginger shreds, rice wine(optional), green onion; turn stove from high to medium;

3, About 5 - 10 minutes add sliced tomato, mushroom,

4. Boil the soup for another 20 - 30 minutes then it's ready to serve!

4 phases of my recovering

Image by Cornell University Library via Flickr

I figured, my recovering from the worse relapse to the normal health condition (by normal standard or normal people, not the "norm" of my own - which was virtually not normal at all) consists of 4 phases:

1, get rid of the worst symptoms. Since my worst symptoms are heart and breath problems, this phase required complete rest, and good diet. Any kind of exercises (even walk) is dangerous.

With good rest and good diet, I could get rid of symptoms from anywhere like a few days to a month.

2, energy restore. This, is a long term job. It requires lots of rest and good diet. Exercise is still dangerous. Depend on how serious my relapse was, it takes from anytime like a few weeks to several months.

3, continuing energy restore and strengthening immune system. In this phase, I do need to continue to save my energy, and be very careful not overdraw. Also it's the time to start some light exercise to help metabolism and immune system. This phase is also a long term, takes about several months.

And this phase is also the trickiest period of my recovery, because, if I don't do any exercise, my heart would suffer from slow blood circulation and causes symptoms like palpitation; but on the other hand, if I do exercise, which seems no problem at all, I have to be extra careful not overdo, otherwise I would suffer serious relapse which draw me straight back to phase 1..

In fact, this phase triggered my worst symptoms countless times during my past years, and was most responsible for my endless circles of up and down. The tough part of this phase is, that my energy limit is very hard to foresee, because the symptom doesn't show up during my exercises (or any other physical activities), but usually after. So when I exercise, if I felt tired, it usually meant it's too late.

4, back to "norm", in need of maintenance and improve to real norm. This means my condition finally back to my normal health condition (I did in 2005-2006), which is the "normal" condition before I got serious trouble (over 10 years ago). It is still "sub-health" condition (because at the time when I was younger, I was never healthy). So when I reached this stage, I will need to fully engage in a healthy life style, which contains lots of physical activities, in order to boost me up to reach a real normal health condition.

Time to "kill" parasites!

Image via Wikipedia

After more than 5 months "natural" diet I put another several pounds on my body, but my energy is getting much better so it's "Ok". However, I started to have muscle pain and extreme tiredness (different from my major symptom such as heart and breath problems which I have not suffered for 5 months), and my experience told me this typical CFS symptom usually caused by my over-grown parasites (especially yeast. As I gained weight those parasites also grew). I used to "kill" those parasites by vegetarian diet, plus reduced carbs intake. Massive amount of water with some lemon works well too.

I have been doing the cleansing for several days and the change is discernible! I knew this treatment long time ago and it worked wonderfully couple of time, unfortunately I either had other issues going on or, I overdid it, so my symptoms came and went. This time I hope I do it in a moderate level and pay more attention to my body's needs. Hope it will work better and bring me out of trap eventually.

In Between the Best and the Worst

Having not suffered any major relapses and crashes for about 5 months, I feel very grateful. However, my energy is still not enough. I say I am about 50% of myself, in between my best and the worst.

Diet is still my priority and it affects my sleep directly. Keep myself away from computer is also important. I should avoid any heavy exercise and at the same time, avoid sitting still.

I expect some essential change this spring, but I cannot predict future, of course.

Happily Bored

Most CFS sufferers were forced to live a lonely life due to lack of energy to social. And this fact gives people/doctors an impression that CFS sufferers' illness is mental - their depression caused their physical troubles. But most of us (CFS patients) know that the truth is just opposite - the physical disability causes lonely life style (and of course depression as well), not the other way around.

I recently found myself feeling bored often - I was constantly stuck in empty moments and tried to find something to do. I may feel sorry for myself but as matter of fact, I found myself surprisingly happy about this, because this means I started to have extra energy, and no longer (at least until now) struggle with all those incomprehensible symptoms.

Progress has been made!

2010 - my body's victory over my mind

Image via Wikipedia

It's the third day of new year, I got to write something here! I like to put it in brief: The best thing I had in past year is: my stomach was finally liberated from the dictatorship of my mind!

After I was "forced" by my stomach to change my diet back to my "normal" - that means to follow my stomach, NOT so much to follow my mind - which was "armed" with "modern scientific nutriology", I finally stepped out of my worst 2 years' (2009-2010) energy struggle - I am able to do lots of things each day.

Also, I stopped worrying about gaining weight. This stress-free state of mind let my body finally had freedom to "speak out loudly" to my once "despotic brain" about what it wanted! Prior to this point, I always "carefully" and "wisely" chose foods that were "nutritious but less fattening", or the foods that "yeast candida' wouldn't like, or the foods would kill yeast candidas, etc. The consequence was serious - the more purposely I chose foods, the less energy I had and the more sick I was!

Of course, I only speak for myself. I learned that everybody has different health problems with different causes, so everybody does have (and should have) different solution on diet.

For this reason, I doubt that modern medicine could have some good ideas to cope with Chronic fatigue - if it continues standing firmly on its foundation: semiological and mechanical approach toward human. I even doubt that the new discovery of XMRV could do much good about CFS/ME, because it is still a theory/discovery that based on semiological view - and CFS is just NOT about symptoms but our body's inner harmony.

Still, I am not anywhere near my best health condition yet. I am still in the need of much rest and good diet. I don't know how long it will take to make myself in a completely good health but I do see the light.

Meanwhile I will just focus on my each day and each meal.