To celebrate the launch of my new Healing Plan, I’m doing a mini-series of blog posts to introduce you to it. The book is chock-full of info I hope will truly help release you from the grip of chronic illness and get you back on the path to better wellness. It’s the path I used myself to get MUCH better.
Over the next few days, I’ll give you a flavour of what each step entails. I’ve adapted this from the first part of the book. The second part goes into a lot of detail about how exactly you work each step.
Here we go with the final step (catch up with all the steps here if you need to). This is the step I am doing most at the moment, so you do get there!:
Investigate and Treat Whatever’s Left
We reviewed your nutritional and medication needs at the beginning of your healing journey and you’ll need to do it here at the end as well.
At this point, you’ll be able to see more clearly what was emotional in origin, and what has disappeared or improved because of your healing work. You’ll be ready to start targeted testing and treatment to deal with whatever is left on a physical level. Some patients even find that they don’t need any further treatment at all.
After the core healing work…
When you get to the point where you are reintroducing foods, feeling like a normal person again and are reintegrating back into the world as a non-ill or partially-ill-but-it-doesn’t-matter-as-much-anymore person, that’s the time to start looking at your physical side again, at the biochemistry and thinking: what is still happening, could any of this be biochemical or nutritional in origin?
When I first worked through this step, the things I was left with were migraines and mouth sores. They were miles better and less frequent than they had been, so some of it was clearly emotional in origin. Of course, my own healing journey is still continuing, and I’m sure that more emotional stuff will come up when its ready. Do keep alert to that!
So, at this stage, you’ll need to analyse your symptoms. Here’s an example of how I’ve previously examined my migraines: I’d start by thinking, maybe it’s a chronic magnesium deficiency? And I’d keep analysing from there: if I had been able to take the magnesium at the start, the migraines may have got better more quickly, but at least I can take it now. A red blood cell magnesium test shows that my levels are on the floor, so I take a magnesium spray. Unfortunately, I forget to go slowly with substances that my body hasn’t seen in years; I take too much and get dizzy. I remember to do a hair test to check the balance of my electrolytes: results show that my potassium looks low, so I confirm with potassium test. Presumably the magnesium had pushed my potassium levels down. So, I stop magnesium and instead add coconut water—a new food—into my smoothies for a month. After a month, I restart the magnesium at lower dose. My migraines are improving.
Similarly, let’s try the same exercise with my mouth sores. Could this be a lack of zinc, needed for healing of the mucous membranes? Again, had I been able to take the zinc carnosine in the leaky gut protocol, perhaps this would have healed better. I check my zinc status; it’s very low. So, I start taking zinc and probiotics, made into a paste with turmeric, to strengthen the membranes and lower inflammation.
Do you see where I am going with this?
What are you left with? What could be wrong biochemically?
It may well turn out that my migraines are partly hormonal as I enter perimenopause. Perhaps part of the issue is neurological damage from the gluten? It might be my low iron status. It could be that toxicity overwhelms my liver and triggers an overload migraine. I am very much suspecting this last one as my migraines are triggered by chemical smells (but only if I’ve had another exposure, or toxin, like coffee or alcohol). It could be all of the above. Most chronic symptoms are chronic because they are not simple; they are usually multi-layered.
So, in this case, I should check my hepatic detox capacity. Can my liver cope with chemicals? What is my methylation status? Am I genetically weak at breaking stuff down?
Here you can see that I’m targeting my two remaining symptoms and working them out, and that there are several factors to check and target with each. Can you imagine what that would be like when you have ten or fifteen symptoms or conditions? This is precisely why I recommend you leave this investigative stuff until you can see what you’re left with after the main healing stage. Most people never get to the end of it as it is simply too complex and multi-factorial. They never really get well because it is too complex to unravel. Simplifying it really matters.
Summary
You need to support yourself, throughout this programme, with nutrition and functional medicine. Analysing the symptoms that you’re left with after the main healing work has finished is much easier: you’ll be working on a less confused and complex picture. Indeed, some people find that they don’t need any treatment at all in this final stage. And remember that healing isn’t linear; although this is the final stage of this plan, you may need to revisit earlier steps if further issues arise and need clearing. All you have to do is listen to your body, respond accordingly, and keep following the healing path towards better health.
So, that’s it, folks. We’ve been through all of the steps to healing and hopefully you now have a good idea of what the Healing Plan is all about. If you’d like to read more and get going on part 2 – how to work each step specifically, where I’ve included tons of tips and resources to use, see the Preview on Amazon here and get the book.
If you do buy it, it looks a tad lonely and unloved at the moment, so do please leave me a review. Thank you.
I hope you enjoyed that series and something, somewhere resonated with you and gave you hope! If so, I’ve done my job 🙂