My physical foibles (labelled such things as EDS and chronic pain) don't render me unentitled to a gloriously reimagined health future but even more prone to be open minded and eager enough to embark on the journey because there are no rules where I dwell, it is all a giant leap in the dark so why not make it a leap towards what I prefer to envision and thus create. The first step is to make friends with movement...
Adopting healthy habits is the thing that will get us all through this challenging phase and so here's the point I'm making here: The religious practice I speak of here is nothing to do with attending "church" (we need to reclaim that association back, to re-empower ourselves), its to do with devotion…to one's self, one's life…and the conscientious, faithful practice of observances that affirm one's existence as spirit in human form (a long way around of saying “health”); and on this topic I have much to say.
Hard science has uncovered a mechanism whereby the same collagen abnormalities in EDS that make joints especially flexible seem to affect blood vessels, making those with it prone to accumulation of blood in the veins of the legs, an effect that may lead to exaggerated cardiovascular responses to maintain the output of blood from the heart. This and other foibles, which I feel are versions of the same response, put those of us with this issue under immense pressure and strain, all the time, as our version of "normal" so just imagine how much we then react to any additional triggers, to which we tend to be hypersensitive (I share my about theory about that too...), setting off our nervous system at regular intervals in a way that has nothing inherently to do with mental health...although, no surprise, it can start to manifest as anxiety over time. Joining some dots and celebrating just how much people with hypermobility type EDS deal with as their daily benchmark...plus some practical ways of making it better.
It can feel like a very long walk down a dimly lit corridor when you are trying to fathom your way out of a long running health condition such as fibromyalgia, as I expect others on the journey could probably relate to. From time to time, if you’re fortunate and diligent enough in pursuit of … Continue reading Ehlers-Danlos, POTS and Asperger’s…many lightbulbs go on at once
Why do we long for diagnosis, for validation, for something so fixed to get a grip on and is it always such a great idea? What happens when we court the softer possibilities, a nonlinear or quantum approach...or mix this up with a plan of action that leaves room for both? A personal review of these topics from a fibromyalgia perspective.
As expected, some new feedback on the usefulness of CBD for fibromyalgia is starting to appear. Sharing some of this feedback, the new science on this topic and my own anecdote as an opening for your own enquiries, if you think this might be useful for you.
A number of articles are springing up to discuss the interest in CBD from an irritable bowel syndrome point of view and I was curious about this due to my own experiences in this regard, which I will relate below. The reason why cannabis is theorised to be a new and appropriate means for tackling … Continue reading CBD for IBS, menopause and pain
There's literally nothing to lose and everything to gain from a healthier vagus nerve. Like all the best paths, it starts out a little mysterious but that's where its adventure lies. I've certainly had cause to explore it lately as its been found to have just so many links with the most chronic, mysterious, health conditions....and here's what I found out (to my benefit, maybe yours). So, having found it and become so much more aware of it, I like to think the vagus nerve is a path worth following as, so it turns out, it may very well lead us back to ourselves in more ways than one!
I don’t want to add to the mountain of anecdotal coincidences that already muddle the health-matters domain when they are treated as “fact” but I want to share these observations about my own hay fever symptoms in relation to gluten consumption in case they hold any substance. As celebrated in one of my earlier posts … Continue reading Some thoughts on hay fever and gluten
Where there is no joy left, we can be sure we have excluded the right-brained perspective. When all we can see is the hard wall of the corridor we are apparently walking and the printed signs and arrows on those wall saying we "must" go this way or that, we can be sure we have lost the over-view and its an imprisonment of sorts. "Down there' we can only go one or maybe two or three routes (some of its junctions are confusing thus they seem to offer choices...) but we have lost the very point of the journey if we no longer experience the very joy that makes us want to be here in a human body. So if diagnosis only brings limitation and fear, we need to make sure we don't lose sight of that other perspective...the broader perspective that allows us to see the whole point.
Living whole 