Around the summer of 2007 I began noticing a change in my body and the way
I felt on a day to day basis. At first I thought I was just getting older. I
was approaching thirty and I had always heard people talk about how your
thirties are the time when you begin to develop real health issues and things
start to decline a bit. Joints, metabolism, energy levels, etc. So I brushed
off the symptoms as being a normal part of the aging process and continued on.
Unfortunately over the next few months I became increasingly tired to the point
of lethargy. I would spend my days off lying in bed till the late afternoon
only to forcibly drag myself up and out of the house in order to accomplish
whatever things I simply couldn't justify putting off. I lived on a second story
and I began to dread going up and down the stairs because my feet were so
tender. I was constantly on the search for new shoes thinking I just needed to
find the right, comfortable pair. God forbid I had to put on a pair of heels.
When the pain and tenderness started presenting in just about every other joint
in my body and my hands became unclenchable I knew it was time to see a doctor. If
I couldn't hold a razor to shave my legs on certain days or put a pair of
earrings in there must be something wrong, right? I had done a bit of self-diagnosing on the internet and was prepared for
the worst when I finally got an appointment with a rheumatologist. She didn't
say it right away, but I knew what she was thinking, I told myself; Rheumatoid
Arthritis. The debilitating, degenerative autoimmune disorder that could
basically destroy my life. Dramatic, yes, but you know how your head gets away
with you when you spend too much time on Web-MD. I was tested and had been ruled out for RA (THANK GOD!) but over the next three
years I saw several different doctors, had numerous blood panels and had been
prescribed more prescription NSAID's that I can remember trying to manage the
pain and inflammation. By that time I had a perpetual low grade fever, chronic
joint pain, gastro-intestinal disorders that I didn't even realize until later
were abnormal because I had become so accustomed to them and this bloated
feeling that no matter how much water I drank or how much dieting I did never
seemed to go away. I looked pregnant on my worst days and just plain round on a
good one. I was tested for everything that could possibly cause one or more of
my symptoms: Lupus, Lyme's Disease, Fibromyalgia, RA, Crohn's Disease, Grave's
Disease and a host of other autoimmune disorders that I'm sure I'm forgetting.
They all came up negative and there was nothing to do but treat the pain. The
only problem was that none of these medicines ever worked for more than a few
weeks. Which resulted in my rotating through as many of the drugs as I could until
I just settled into the cheap regiment of a high dose of naproxen sodium
(Aleve) every day. It was the only thing that seemed to work longer than a
month. The only problem was that with longterm use of naproxen comes stomach
and/or esophageal ulcers, possible kidney damage, possible hearing loss,
dizziness, excessive sweating. I managed almost two years on it before I began
to develop the esophageal ulcer and realized it was absolutely imperative that
I find out what was going on once and for all. I had known Marisa throughout her acupuncture schooling and she had
encouraged me several times to use acupuncture as a means of pain relief. I
did, off and on, and it always helped alleviate some of the discomfort and
seemed to balance things out for a while. Inevitably the issues returned but it
was more effective than anything else and seemed to center and calm me enough
to make it a little easier to deal with the frustration of feeling like an
eighty year old, day in and day out. I also had a friend who swore by his
practitioner in helping with his chronic neck pain. So I booked an appointment
to start treatment thinking I would just go a few times a week to deal with the
pain since I could no longer take any drugs. On my first visit I sat down in Dr. Axman's office and filled out the
intake form. He came in, took a quick glance at it and told me it looked to him
like my problem was probably diet related. He consented to treat me for the
pain as long as I needed but suggested I try an elimination diet. Two weeks of
cutting out a certain food to clear out your system and then adding it back to
see how your body reacts to it. He wanted me to try the most common culprits
first; wheat gluten, dairy, eggs and soy. On a lark I started with wheat. Within three days I had lost 7 pounds,
bloating--check. By day five my stool was normal and the gas and abdominal pain
was gone, gastro--check. A week in and my joints were 100% normal and I had NO
pain or inflammation. My energy levels were through the roof. And more, my depression,
which I had struggled with for years seemed to be waning and just not really an
issue anymore. Could it be possible that gluten was causing not just my
physical problems but my psychological ones as well? You fucking bet it was. I had been stuck in this spiral that reminded me of an Albert Einstein
quote, "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting
different results". With the Western Medicine Protocol I was surely doing
the same thing over and over again and the outcome was always the same. Nobody
knew. No one could help and I felt I was on the verge of insanity. My
acupuncturist had figured out inside of ten minutes what was going on with my
body using an Eastern approach by looking for a cause instead of simply
shrugging and treating the symptoms. Not to mention the amount of money I had
spent on the specialists and medications over that time and now here was
someone who was willingly putting himself in a position where if he were right,
I wouldn't even have a need to see him and he wouldn't be making any money off
me at all. Quite the opposite from our Western Medical ideology that really
seems to serve to ensnare a patient into a lifetime of doctor's visits and
expensive prescriptions. It's been over a year since I was diagnosed Gluten Intolerant and I will
admit sometimes I flub and give into the craving for a sandwich or a slice of
pizza or birthday cake. When I do, I pay for it, but at least I know what the
cause is. As a food professional I am pretty consumed nowadays with what we have done
to our food suppy to create such rampant food allergies. I suspect it has
mostly to do with things like preservatives, pesticides, genetically modfied
foods and the monocultures of soy, corn and wheat that we have turned our
farmlands into. These allergies, intolerants and new diseases are not normal
and I expect that over time it will be an eastern approach that will help
identify not just the specific problems but the solutions to the epidemic our
current food industry has created. Much in the same way my western doctors
could not see the possible origin of my sickness and simply treated me with
more medicine, western scientists seem to ignore the almost obvious reality
that our nation’s health is being compromised by the way we are running our
food system and the only response they
offer, if any, is to use more preservatives and increasing amounts of harmful
and systemic pesticides. Were these scientist and doctors to ask the advice of
a farmer from a culture that bases diagnosis on the health of the whole
package, who acknowledge that if there is an imbalance in one place the entire
body (or industry) must be treated we might find that the life of American agriculture
could be changed in ten minutes. Just a thought. |
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CategoriesChinese medicineOn the other end of the needle Patients Random
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