I've always been apprehensive of ready-made pre-packaged foods. Also, of ready-made, pre-packaged solutions to life's many problems. This is, in a way, about both.
I've always enjoyed great health, with a strong immune system, which I guess is fortunate, considering I wasn't a fan of the hospital world even before the pandemic hit, and much less now. Nevertheless, I'm what you'd call hormonally out of whack, which obviously caused quite a bit of concern for me. A few months ago, I was chatting to a friend about this, and she said "Oh, just go see someone."
A future doctor herself, my friend's the sort of person who goes to the doctor every month or so for some reason or another. To her, the answer was very simple. Something's amiss? You go to the respective doctor, they write out a prescription, and it's all good. Needless to say my friend hardly ever researches the drugs she's prescribed, or strays from the doctor's word.
Being who I am, I was apprehensive, so I started digging around the possible outcomes of a doctor visit. And what worried me was that, this sort of hormonal imbalance always gets treated on its own.
It's almost never recognized as a mere symptom of a larger issue.
I'm someone who's big on the why, so I kept asking -- okay, but why is this happening? See, I'm sure there are plenty of pills and medications that make your body make more of the right hormones, and less of the bad. But those aren't really answering the question of why your body's producing said hormones, in the first place. For women, the most popular answer to hormonal irregularity is the infamous Pill. I, however, don't think that's a desirable outcome for a woman, so it was a no-go for me, as was going to the doctor.
After all, why go see someone, when you know they won't see you? They'll see a textbook, they'll see an easy and clear-cut answer that doesn't address the individual. And I can't afford that. So I started looking into alternative ideas, instead, so that I could treat the root cause, and not the symptom itself.
To say it was an 'aha' moment would be a colossal understatement.
See, once you begin looking at the larger picture, and you stop treating different areas of your life as different, things began to make a lot more sense. And that's because your hormonal output (like everything else health-related) is impacted by the air you breathe, the time spent in sunlight, the stress levels endured, and so much more.
I couldn't believe the amount of crap I ate.
Even before this, I wasn't someone who reached for chips, or guzzled soda after soda. Never been one with a notable sweet tooth, nor am I a stress-eater. In other words, I thought I was good.
But because a bunch of people I was following at the time were proponents of certain diets, that was my first stop, as well. You could say I jumped head-first into a mainly carnivorous diet, though one that also focuses on a lot of veggies (seasonal, if possible). The main focus, however, was cutting out processed foods, breads, artificial sweeteners, and all those other little things we don't notice but that add up, in the end.
It was only when I cut out all the crappy foods in my diet that I realized how much of it there was. Like cookies. You don't think of cookies as a bad food, per se. Not particularly toxic, and kinda wholesome, right? Not really, when you think of all the added flavor, artificial sweeteners, sugar, and preservatives they contain.
So I don't think I follow a particular diet, just stopped eating what sounds crappy/unnatural to me, and already, I saw a difference in my health. But what was really interesting was that it also opened up a bigger, more complex rabbithole.
Simply changing your diet is great, but once again, it's only addressing one part of the puzzle.
How much do you really like your body?
Because that dictates how understanding you'll be towards it. At the start of 2023, I made a 'resolution' to practice yoga every day. Mostly 'cause I wanted to be more flexible, and it's a low-key kinda sport that I like. More fool I, thinking I could do it as a standalone, no-spiritual-strings-attached thing.
One part of yoga that's been tremendously helpful to me is that it's taught me to have patience with my body, to observe the subtle differences between the left and right part of myself, and to let go. It's only when you let go that you properly get into a pose, and through yoga, I've gotten to understand that I'm working with my body in this life, not against it.
It's also made me more attuned to my own needs -- the need for rest, or patience, or compassion, or a stronger outlet. Needing to rest and be quiet doesn't make you weak, just like being a "gym rat" doesn't equate taking care of your body.
It seems to me we treat our bodies like an invalid, a problem that "we need to do something about". In 2023, there's very little trust that your body is actually this spectacular organism with self-healing and self-regulation pre-programmed in it.
Cutting out stressors, and trauma-healing.
Another realm where patience for yourself goes a long way is in reflecting on the past, and the things you've so far experienced. Far too often, we push ourselves to get through life, to survive and overcome, that we downplay aggression, or suffering. And it ends up coming back to bite us tenfold.
There's tremendous power in saying:
We're out of the woods now. We're safe. We can afford to process what happened, and begin healing.
A lot of people just don't, and end up repeating the same toxic coping mechanisms and patterns over and over. Which creates extra stressors, both physical and psychological, which in turn cause more hurt.
Understanding stressors has also taken a lesser, day-to-day form. I forced myself to stop working so I could write a book, and only then did I appreciate how hard I'd been driving myself. And how detrimental that was to my wellbeing. I've also been prioritizing sunlight, movement, and trying to move away from aimless scrolling, and staring at that damn screen. You know, little things that on their own probably aren't what's hurting you. But they add up.
A wall of text for something invisible?
I look at how much I've written on here, then I think what would've happened if I had gone to a doctor. I really doubt that someone would've looked at the stressors/trauma I carried with me as a reason for imbalance. They most likely wouldn't have addressed diet, either.
Why? Because that's an industry. And because it's not what you want to hear. It's very easy to pop a pill, and it gives you a subtle air of victimhood. In a world where it's trendy to have some sort of health issue, no one wants to be left out. Changing habits, from binge-eating to toxic relationships, is fucking hard, and takes time, and patience, and grit. Most people don't wanna cultivate that.
Anyway, I'm not trying to bash the medical profession, the big food corporations or anyone else, really. I'm just saying think of all the problems we could solve if we zoomed out off a particular symptom, and looked at the entire image, instead.
Our easy-fix society exists with this peculiar, unhelpful belief that what you eat, how you sleep, who you interact with and how you interact with them has little to no bearing on your health. And I'm sitting here, wondering, well how the fuck does that work?