1/7/11 Friday. Just read that American's life expectancy continues to fall behind other countries. Interesting.

It’s snowing outside.  The whole world is quiet.  I love the snow.  

Feeling pain.  Slept like I was awake and thinking all night, and woke on several occasions with tension throughout my whole body.  Like I was squeezing all my muscles.  I’m sure that’s what the pain is from today.  Why does that happen?  I went to bed nice and relaxed.  My man gave me a nice, er, uh…massage.  We fell asleep (too late) around 11:30 and I woke around 6:30am.  Did NOT get through the morning routine.  I did abhyanga and 15 minutes of…let’s call it stretching with yoga poses incorporated.  I feel funny calling it my yoga practice when it’s such a short time.   Although, if you have tension, stiffness, or any chronic pain issues…even 15 minutes a day makes a WORLD of difference.   Over Christmas vacation I didn’t practice for 5 days in a row and I felt like I was 75 years old.  (An old 75, unlike some of you. ;)  It seems counterproductive, but if you have pain…you have to move.  If you are having a severe pain episode, then I would recommend waiting until the next day, first taking a long shower or bath, and then immediately doing some light stretches, yoga or whatever you feel up to.  Don’t overdo it, but even just light stretching, circling the joint areas or walking is better than nothing.  

My good friend’s cousin is a doctor in California.  He was trained in medicine here in America and in Armenia.  My friend grew up in Armenia as well.  She has often told me she thought this country was backwards in many different ways, but medicine and health being a big one.  Speaking of backwards, I found this article on American's life expectancy and how it continues to fall behind other countries.  Funny, we are so advanced in so many ways...or so we think.

http://www.biologynews.net/archives/2010/10/07/americans_life_expectancy_continues_to_fall_behind_other_countries.html   This article suggests that our health care system could be a reason, but can’t help but wonder if it is because of our current practice of popping a pill to cure whatever ails.  We don’t know how all this medicine affects us down the road.  I know how it affected me.  

When I called my friend’s doctor cousin and told him my symptoms he immediately rattled off the natural medicines I should be taking, and the changes I should make to my diet to combat these problems.  (I’ll list below.)  I already knew about a lot of his suggestions because I had searched online for natural remedies many times.  But he knew them off the bat because he was trained to seek a natural remedy first, something our young country is just beginning to understand the benefits of.  His information was an additional help because he knew which companies were best for which products.  

It’s been 3 years I’ve been dealing with this stomach issue and the doctor cousin said that it’s important to address these things because they can lead to serious problems such as cancer or other diseases if left untreated.  He said the bacteria will eat away at the lining of the intestines and cause Leaky Gut Syndrome, where your food starts to leak out into the rest of your body.  I wonder if THIS is what causes Fibromyalgia.  I’m not going to worry, but I am going to go against my initial declaration of only using Ayurvedic medicine to treat.  I’ll let you know what happens.

9:00 pm Feeling achy and tense.  Going to go to sleep tonight without the Ayurvedic sleeping pills.  Speaking of which, these pills have a very subtle effect when it comes to sleeping pills.  Much more subtle than Melatonin.  But maybe they are causing the night tension in my body?

12:00 midnight.  Going to sleep now.  Way too late.  Not feeling too much pain.  Stomach feels bad still. Mood--upset and angry.  Will detail tomorrow.

Treatment Plan and Natural Med Recommendations from the Armenian doctor:

Eat only organic foods.  Just to recap, he is an MD, not a homeopathic doctor. Funny he should say the same thing as all the other homeopathically inclined health care specialists I have seen.

Cut out all corn and wheat products.  Cutting out corn, never heard that before.  I'll follow it though.

Use organic olive or coconut oil for cooking

Take Seagate brand grape seed extract and olive leaf extract I bought from Amazon.

Take NSC-100 from the website NSC24.com I will try this but didn’t like the website.  Not sure how legit this company is.

Take caprylic acid.

Food:

Breakfast: 7:45 am Rice and Shine Again.  With walnuts, ghee, syrup, cooked with raw milk and topped with rice milk.  I can’t help but eat it every morning.  It cooks while I do yoga…or stretching, and it is so tasty!   That whole raw milk makes it so rich.  It really does feel like it is nourishing my body. 

Lunch:  12:45 Rice with shrimp, gluten free roll with chive cream cheese, grilled zucchini. All from Whole foods.

Dinner: 7:45 Thai Salmon curry over Jasmine rice.  Found the recipe here  http://www.food.com/recipe/thai-salmon-curry-87877  It was pretty good.  A nice change of pace to the way I usually cook salmon.