Another week of adjusting to my new normal has flown by.  My studies and my life are so intertwined now I can’t tell which is which.  My sweet husband, John, bought me a lovely gift this week.  It is from The Great Courses and is  called “The Science of Natural Healing” with Dr. Mimi Guarneri of the Scripps Center for Integrative Medicine.  She is a cardiologist who calls herself a “bridge” doctor because she bridges the world of Western Medicine, without which I wouldn’t be here, and the world of disease prevention supported by the “food is medicine and medicine is food” philosophy.  We can then combine this with the global healing traditions such as Chinese medicine and Ayurveda which have been around for 5000 years and our tool box is full of options that are more than just the diagnose and prescribe options we are all aware of today.  Just look at television ads and you will see there is a pill for everything and most of the ad lists the nasty side effects.  It takes work and responsibility to dig deep and find out why you are sick and then to figure out what you can do about it.  Sometimes a pill or an operation is the only option and I am so grateful that we have Western medicine available to us.  If you have a chronic disease, it just might be worth it to look for solutions by being a “body detective”.  Learn what your triggers are and eliminate them.  I have friends who get a headache from red wine.  Well if you do, don’t drink the red wine even if you have heard that it is good for your health.

When I was in the hospital one of the nurses said to John and me that “your genes are the smoking gun, your lifestyle pulls the trigger“.  I learned more about that this week.  Simply put there are genes – and then there is the epigenome which is a sleeve that covers the genes.  What we take in with our lifestyle, nutrition, environment, stress is communicated via the epigenome to the genes and it tells the genes what to turn on and what to turn off.  This appears to be the case with me.  I probably inherited the gene for coronary heart disease from my father. My lifestyle prior to three years ago was not good.  I was 50 pounds heavier than I am now, I ate all the wrong foods and though I exercised it wasn’t enough.  We won’t even go to the stress piece but that has been huge in my life for the last five years.  Probably the past three years just put off my heart attack. Maybe it gave me a bit of a boost to heal.  There was no damage to the heart muscle, thank goodness, so maybe I have a good chance to reduce the heart disease using improved nutrition, de-stressing, living in a clean environment and exercising more.  All of that ties into IIN and the four areas of Primary Foods:  Relationships, Career, Exercise and Spirituality.  Then we talk about nutrition.

Does the quality of the nutrition really make a difference?  This week’s answer is a resounding yes.  Our lectures presented both sides of the organic non-organic view and it also presented both sides of the GMO story.  You can judge for yourself but after what I have learned and studied, I am in the non-GMO camp.  The real problem is the fact that noone yet knows if GMO foods have negative side effects – yet.  What we do know is that more and more foods are GMO and there are many stories, anecdotal in many cases, of bad side effects.  I tried to listen with an open mind to Michael Jacobsen, PhD who is in the GMO’s are not necessarily a bad thing but what he was saying just did not resonate with me.  However, listening to Jeffrey Smith of the Institute for Responsible Technology, who is definitely in the no GMO category really did make sense.  Where do you stand?

We had wonderful lectures by Pamela Yee, MD who spoke as a physician who has her own small farm where she grows and raises all the food that she and her family eat.  Also a lecture by Daphne Miller, MD who spoke to us about Farmacology.   One of Dr. Miller’s comments had to do with babies brought up on farms being healthier than city babies because they were exposed to a more natural environment and therefore built up natural immunities to things like hay fever and asthma. Interesting stuff.  When buying your food:  Quality is paramount.  Know where your food comes from.  Be a smart consumer.

My journey is getting broader and the scope of what I am learning is much, much larger than it was when I started my course 22 weeks ago.  I could not have predicted where it would take me but what an interesting and fascinating trip.  I thought it would be enough just to write from Canada and that would change things up a bit.  Little did I know.  We have another exam coming up in two weeks.  That will be the half-way point of the course.  I can’t believe it.  I do believe we are able to begin taking on clients after we get through the next exam. Wonder where that will take me?

Have a wonderful week everyone.  My baby sister is turning 60 this week and we are going to celebrate with her.  I am off to watch Genetic Roulette.  You can now buy it at Whole Foods.

Happiness is right where I am, right now, and nowhere else.  I am so, so grateful.

Lou