Help or hindrance: do IgG tests throw us off track?

Are IgG tests really the be-all-and-end-all of intolerance testing or can they take us completely off our healing track. My own experiences suggested the latter so I began to formulate a theory why this had happened...and then I read the very same theory from someone whose opinions I respect mightily - Anthony William, the Medical Medium. Here's the conclusion I've reached about the pitfalls of IgG and how, or whether, we should use (or even avoid) them.

The point of a holiday – and the hotel that reminded me

How do you reconcile a desire to "tread softly on the earth" and all your particular health requirements and preferences with the unpredictability and other variables of travel when you go on holiday? And what is a holiday or vacation meant to do for you? La Vimea is a unique "biotique" hotel in the South Tyrol that helped me to find out what was possible to achieve now and (hopefully) even more easily in the future...

Wanting to land: working with a vata dosha

If you have a vata dominance, how do you ground that airy, high-spirited, out-there, mercurial constitution long enough to find your way about in a physical body...and then stay there in a way that feels comfortable and sustainable? Here's what I've learned so far:

The electrolyte connection

I thought I knew about electrolytes but this feels like a whole new breakthrough in my understanding of fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue...and it was right under my nose all along. Get to know your electrolytes (and how to replenish them) to deeply energise your life.

Super-sensitive abroad

Travelling away from home can be an extra-challenge for those of us with health challenges and sensitivities of any kind because it takes us out of our routine. It's not so much the distance but the upheaval that can be difficult to cope with (on top of the extra tiredness that comes with travel) when you probably have well-established survival tactics in place at home that enable you to cope pretty well with your health most of the time. Booking a holiday can feel a bit like planning to blow all that carefully created homeostasis to pieces in the name of having fun and there have been times when I wonder why I do it; is it even worth it (the answer, by the way, is yes). Changes in sleep arrangements and diet can throw health into disarray when maintaining that balance has become a finely tuned thing.

More energy…not less

It's a truth I've come to own over years of learning to hold the equilibrium of my physical body that allows me to lead a normalish life - akin to countless others who think they have a shortfall of energy, I possess almost too much energy inside my cells rather than too little. Those waves of crashing exhaustion that periodically seem to want to floor me are because my tank is overspilling with energy, not running dry. And its a trait I notice about a lot of so-called energy-depleted people, especially women....

Knowing your sugar tolerance

The extreme effects that resulted when two of us revisited eating sugar after a long break from it reminded me that these are the normal outcome of sugar consumption for all people. So the variance isn't in the biological effects but in how much people notice them or have adapted to shield themselves from, or absorb, the backlash (though the resultant health issues are seldom avoided so much as redirected into another form of expression; often a more severe health issue, further down the line). Most people push on through the effects of sugar without really acknowledging that they are there; as I know I did, for years. The more we consume the crazy amount of sugar our modern diet makes almost compulsory and extremely (shockingly) normal, the more we become (ironically) immune to it as the nervous system is pushed over the limit to where it has no choice but to turn down its own sensitivity to everything, even those things we want to experience, in order to cope; like a form of self-created paralysis. Its as though sugar only knows one setting - one that makes us receive more sensation, delivered in the most abrasive way possible and it is more than our nervous system, which longs to experience many things but wants to be way more discerning than that, can cope with. We become over-stimulated...and so we break down or are forced to buffer ourselves like we are under constant attack and, of course, some of us stop feeling at all.

Is “gluten free”a distraction from health?

Is "gluten free" a distraction from health as suggested by this article? I think so; not that its a bad idea but its the way we go about it, focussing on the avoidance and not on what is actively most healthy for us to eat. There's such a core life lesson in this....a reminder to focus on what we DO want, to embrace what is POSITIVE for us, rather than being in resistance mode, avoiding what doesn't work.

Itchy skin – putting out that fire

An article I chanced upon suggested olive oil for menopausal itch because of the oleuropein that olive oil contains (I take a daily capsule of olive leaf for that very reason as its an excellent antioxidant). Stood in my bathroom this morning, my eye falling on that unused bottle of argan oil, an instinct suddenly told me (as I recalled that olive-like smell..) that argan oil may also contain oleuropein if that's the thing that smells like rancid olives...so I slapped some all over my calves, my hips and especially my chest, which has been feeling like I have a third-degree sunburn for three days now. Voila - pain gone!

Because B12?

Last year, I had cause to learn all about vitamin B12 deficiency. One of the big things I learned is that it doesn't only affect vegetarians and vegans, at all; in fact it is an extremely widespread and insidious cause of a whole range of chronic health issues...and it is very easily remedied. Here's what I found out...