Adopting a whole food plant-based vegan lifestyle, eliminating artificial fragrances, sweeteners, colors, etc. from hygiene and cleaning products and everything I apply, breathe, and ingest, eliminating caffeine and alcohol, and making it a point to move in some way every day, even if it's low impact and only involves stretching, have been the only things I've found to offer significant and lasting relief. It also helped me lose 110 lbs. However, none of that was ever suggested by doctors or medical staff.
Hot epsom salt bath soaks a few times a week, dry brushing my skin before showers, essential oil blends for topical application and aromatherapy, acupuncture as needed, chiro as needed, applying castor oil and magnesium gel rather often, and monthly massage therapy to keep the fascia flowing also help. It takes a village, indeed. I live in an area where many practitioners barter, making it possible to utilize these healing avenues. Otherwise, many things would be way out of reach.
Prior to adopting those cleaner consumption and multiple self-care habits, I was making a conscious effort to only eat local meat, local dairy, and local eggs based on educating myself about factory farming and all the crap that's injected and fed to the animals being exploited. We are what our chosen food selections eat, too. Prior to that, I was a hardcore fast food eater, freezer meal and microwaved meal eater, had to have meat cheese and bread for damn near every meal, drank sodas and beer and sweet tea and coffee very often, and ice cream, starbucks, and reese cups were my most often sought after "treats" for myself. I was too busy and too tired to cook, so I had to reach for the things I could work with. Little did I know, I was steadily being the main contributor to most of my own suffering.
However, the inflammation, morbid obesity, pain, brain fog, and fatigue was still overwhelming and ongoing, even with choosing local meats and animal products. It wasn't until I totally eliminated the animal products, gluten, caffeine (mainly diet sodas and coffee and sweet tea), alcohol, and highly processed "convenience" foods that I began to notice significant and lasting improvements. Learning where the animals received their nutrients did a lot to open my eyes. Eliminate the middle man, so to speak and go straight to the source, the plants.
Endocrine disruption is another thing you occasionally hear of but is never really talked about in any great detail. I used to be an avid burner of yankee candles, scentsy stuff, bath and body works lotions, sprays, deodorized trash bags, glade plug-ins, etc. and would febreeze the f*ck out of my furniture and such when I was still a smoker over 11 years ago. Learning how those ingredients interact and affect our bodies as they're being absorbed into our system was eye opening, too. But I never noticed just how much until I cleaned up my own act from the inside out.
I was diagnosed with severe fibro and severe osteoarthritis, among many other things, several years ago. I still suffer from pain quite a bit on a daily basis, but can recover from it and better work with it and through it simply by adopting this new lifestyle. I no longer take prescriptions for pain or any of the other diagnoses. It's created difficulties in other areas, however, as I seem to be the only one within close proximity of this Big Ag area who wishes to actively practice these things and am often mocked and have to work hard at staying prepared everywhere I go, but as long as I feel and see the results, I'll continue practicing.
My heart will never allow me to partake in the purposeful demise of other living things again, willingly. We obviously digest more than just the product we purchase, also the energies of everything those living beings used as products have experienced, as well as the energies of those preparing the products. It's no wonder there's hardly a healthy human left once you look at all the dots that connect. Everything is energy and we must carefully select what we choose to digest and immerse ourselves in.
Now that I've learned more in depth info about the food and beverage industries we feed on, and lived the results of not consuming them for a couple years, I can't simply choose to un-see the path most things take to get to our forks and such and go back to the same old choices. There's a very real and clear connection between how I feel and what I consume and surround myself with, but no one ever taught me to look any deeper, rather they'd continually offer even more sweets and "treats" to hopefully ease my suffering. A vicious cycle indeed.
Many feel that's just crazy talk and that diet changes like that are simply too drastic, too expensive, and too much work, but I view repeatedly and blindly prescribing random meds that further deplete my systems in often irreversible ways and suggesting surgical procedures to try to temporarily "fix" me by removing vital parts of me to be drastic. However, as we know, everyone's mileage and experience varies. I wish you effective and lasting relief in all ways however you choose to address it.
