We are all so busy “doing.” We are busy raising children, or building a business, or out socializing with friends every night, or running off to the gym. Busy all the time. Busy, busy, busy….
We are stressed all of the time, often unnecessarily functioning in “Fight or Flight” mode, at hyper speed. We are not taking time for self-care and seem to think that would be selfish. We are not taking time to be quiet, and we don’t “listen” to our bodies.
Our discomfort may catch our attention for a fleeting moment, and then we resume being busy again. We have been deceived into believing that as we age, pain and pills are natural. We buy over the counter medications to eliminate headaches, body aches and pains.
We are always looking for the magic pill. When we go to the doctor, we get off our first complaint, and when the appointment is over 6 minutes later, we are on our way, and realize that we forgot to mention many of the health issues we had meant to discuss with our doctor.
We decide we don’t want to appear to be hypochondriacs anyway. We push aside thoughts that we have “dis-ease”; in most instances these thoughts don’t even register.
We are living in a toxic world. We are having a health care crisis as a nation. Our unawareness of our body is allowing toxic load to do damage to our health. Toxic load can take 20 years to rear its ugly little head. There are signs along the way that we are heading for “dis-ease”but since they are not registering in our minds, we don’t react until we are in full blown bad health. We are headed toward the tipping point.
What are 20 signs that you are not as healthy as you think?
- You hurt. You are taking more and more over the counter medications to “mask” the pain.
- You just don’t feel good.
- You are more tired when you get up than when you went to bed and you were tired then.
- You have anxiety and have tons of stress.
- You can’t lose weight.
- You are losing weight in spite of the high calorie diet you are eating.
- You are bloated and puffy.
- You have GERD or other digestive problems.
- You have gas all the time.
- You are constipated.
- You have skin problems, like eczema, psoriasis or acne.
- It seems impossible to get a good night’s sleep.
- You snore.
- You have irregular periods.
- You are always hungry and crave sugar.
- You are getting more and more headaches.
- You have bad breath.
- You are getting lots of muscle cramps.
- You have terrible hay fever.
- You are losing your hair.
You don’t realize that these are all signs that the toxic load in your body is building. Toxic load causes
inflammation(1) and disease.
- The USA is 37th in the world in health, but we spend more than any other country on health. The
solution is not to match the pill to the symptom. The solution is to clean up our own toxic load as a daily
ritual. - 53% of our children have some kind of chronic disease. Many times our babies start off right at
birth with a significant toxic load that they are inheriting from us at birth. - By the age of 5 children have ingested 7 pounds of chemicals.
- Millennials health peaks at 27 and then declines
The time to clean up the toxins in your life is now. Every toxin removed is a step closer to health.
Where to start?
1. Eat organic.
If you can’t afford to buy all your veggies and fruits organic, follow the Dirty Dozen/Clean 15 guidelines put out every year by the Environmental Working Group. I look at it as pay now or pay later.
Cleaning up your food is a huge step forward because you are eliminating all of the herbicides and pesticides that are sprayed on our conventional crops. And, you are avoiding GMO’s which often have toxins bred right into them.
2. Eat all of the colors of the rainbow,
from a source as close to the farm as possible. Each color has a “gift” for your body. Your body wants to heal, but you have to feed it the right nutrients so that healing can occur.
3. Cook.
This is the only way you can control what you are feeding your body and the bodies of your family.
4. Avoid processed foods and fast food.
They are made with synthetic ingredients that offer no nutrition to your body and often do your body harm. Read labels and find ingredients on line; if you can’t pronounce it, you don’t eat it. If you don’t know what it is, then you don’t eat it.
5. Detox off of sugar
especially corn syrup; this includes fake sugars which all do harm to your body. If you want a little sweet, use stevia.
[Read: How Much of Sugar Intake]
6. Surround yourself with supportive people.
For additional ideas on where the toxins are in your life and what to replace them with, read my book “It Feels Good to Feel Good, Learn to Eliminate Toxins, Reduce Inflammation and Feel Great Again.
”One last thought- it is really important that you make time every day to be quiet and tune in with your body. Your body will share when it is feeling great, and when it is feeling lousy. You need a space to quiet your mind so that you can “hear” what your body is saying to you.
This could be in meditation, in “Morning Papersii,”or by taking a walk in nature. Once you know what your body is saying, it’s so much easier to “stay the course”and live a healthy lifestyle. Your body will support your decision, and no matter what age you are, you will find the way back to feeling great and living life to its fullest.
About the Author:
Cheryl Meyer, MD
Cheryl wrote the manual she wishes she’d had when she got sick. In her award winning book It Feels Good to Feel Good: Learn to Eliminate Toxins, Reverse Inflammation and Feel Great Again, Meyer explains how she discovered she was suffering from inflammation and autoimmune disease, how she actively searched out, purged, and replaced toxins in her life, how she found the right doctor (a Functional MD), and how she finally returned to wellness and a life without pain.
