How does chronic illness relate to hibernation and what can we learn from that? Importantly, what key part do glutamates play in both, leading to a far better grasp of how to approach your own recovery protocol?
Learning to live with any of the syndromes (CFS, POTs, fibro, CSS, EDS, MCAS, to name but a few) can be incredibly tough. From dealing with doubters and denial, discrimination, misunderstanding, thoughtlessness, rejection, loneliness, fear, self-doubt and all the other rigours of long term chronic illness, this post takes a look at it all.
Here's my update, after almost 6 months of following a mega-dose thiamine (B1) protocol, and its good news so far...
It may seem like a reasonable suggestion, that you increase your exercise to recover from chronic illnesses such as long covid or CFS...or is it really a terrible mistake that could make things much worse? Exploring the paradoxical role of exercise for recovery from these highly contrary conditions.
Perhaps more than any other aspect of chronic illness I have ever had to deal with, including chronic unrelenting pain, dysautonomia has the ability to throw your entire life into disarray, permeating every single aspect of your life in ways that can be as invisible to the casual bystander as they are devastating. Is there a bright side, things we can learn, ways of living with it better?
Illnesses stop us in our tracks and call time on the old ways of being that no longer fit who we are. Often, they are an invitation to look deep into the corners of our life and do some real work…the kind of work that brings us into love and acceptance of who we really are, beyond the stories and expectations that get overlayered by our crazy and demanding lives. Often, there is an opportunity to be found in our own disarray and, once we find it there, it doesn’t stop giving…not ever, for the rest of our lives.
The effects of vitamin B1 (thiamine) deficiency are widespread, sometimes bizarre, much-more common in the western world than we think...and look a lot like certain chronic conditions we all know so well in this space. So, what does saturating the body with high dose B1 do? I'm about to find out...
Introversion, visual or non-linear thinking, social anxiety, chronic or social fatigue, autism, high sensitivity...looking at all the many, often overlapping, factors that might make writing preferable to conversation for a lot of people and considering is this wrong, of just wonderfully different?
When one small thing breaks the camel's back, its usually time to stop and pay full attention. So often, its a clue to how we have been giving ourselves to everything, and everyone, else and not to our own needs...a key trait to notice when we have chronic conditions (because there seems to be a link)...
I am reminded by what I am about to share (a transformation in progress) that slow-steady transformation on the inside happens in just the same way, in tiny increments, and more so without the burden of high-expectations, the deadly weight of huge targets or imperatives...just simply rising up and making that small effort, day after day, with steady faith in the outcome.
Living whole 