I'll Give You Something to Cry About!!

This classic parenting comment is called invalidation.  “Your sadness or upset is not appropriate,” it says to the little one.  Meanwhile, the child feels certain their upset is very real, and very important!  

What does this have to do with you and your health?  I see it every day.  Grown adults being told their symptoms are not real...that there is “nothing wrong.”  

Your doctor is “Dad.”  You are the child…Dad reports that your upsets (symptoms) are not valid.  “Look at this test… I can prove your symptoms are not real.  You are supposed to be feeling just fine.”  

It has the same authoritarian feel too!  Does it feel like two adults talking about solving a problem?  No!  There is one “superior being” invalidating another person’s experience.  Meanwhile, you are certain your symptoms are very real, and very important!  

Here’s the good news…you are an adult.  You can choose a different “Dad.”  Maybe you choose someone who is not a dad at all, but an equal human who will get involved in solving a problem with you and for you. 

Not to make light of the pain of your experience, but I find it hilarious that people come to me after “experts” find nothing wrong with them…and I easily find sooo many things wrong with them.  So many things that are easily measured and evaluated.  But not measured if you are evaluating “by the book.”  (What insurance protocols allow)  

Maybe ridiculous is a better word than hilarious!  

How about an actual example…I had a patient recently suffering with IBS symptoms, chronic headaches, and severe fatigue.  Full medical work up (15 years worth!) revealed nothing wrong.  Let’s look at the list of measurable and verifiable “wrongs” we came up with…

Thyroid problems…they never checked because she was an “IBS” patient and not a thyroid patient.  And it was the basic thyroid problem that they would have picked up on, but GI specialists don’t check for endocrine problems.  It would take another 3 month wait to another specialist to check that box on a lab test.  

Intestinal parasites.  Yes, the GI specialist missed checking for intestinal parasites in a GI patient.  Hmmm?

Very low cortisol production from the adrenal glands.  Cortisol is one of the stress hormones, but it functions in healthy people to balance blood sugar (chronic fatigue and headaches??), and has a powerful effect on regulating Intestinal motility (yes, that’s moving the bowels).  

High adrenaline.  Think about the adrenaline rush of a close call or “almost” accident.  If you had to go to the bathroom prior to the close call, it either goes away altogether (constipation) or you soil yourself right there in the car (urgency).  That is IBS by definition!!  

Those were the biggies.  And there were several more imbalances we noted.  I got a kick out of her reaction to the parasites…she was relieved, almost excited, almost happy!!  Was she thrilled to have a parasite?  No…she was thrilled to finally, after 15 years (next stop was the psychiatrist…seriously), BE VALIDATED!  It was real…it was important.  She could PROVE it!  

If you have a symptom…and I mean ONE little symptom…that is your body trying to tell you something…something important!  DO NOT let anybody tell you it is nonsense.  If someone tells you there is nothing wrong, and you CLEARLY feel something wrong…there IS something wrong, and you need someone who will listen to that message(symptom)…listen to you…be willing to dig deeper and ask MORE questions and test MORE systems and organs!

IF you ever want to feel validated!  And…if you ever want to put this health problem behind you!

Case Study of the Month

Patient Name:  Eva

Condition:  Medical diagnosis is Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis, resulting in a variety of symptoms, including digestive problems, insomnia, right arm and shoulder pain, brain fog, and lack of energy.  

Functional Diagnosis:  What is actually CAUSING her problems…sensitivity to gluten, intestinal infection, overactive immune system (High T-Helper Cells), adrenal fatigue (low cortisol), and thyroid function all over the map.

Treatment:  We began with our usual AutoImmune Protocol…including avoiding dietary stressors, especially know sensitivities such as gluten in her case, along with transdermal glutathione, vitamin D, and high dose fish oils.  We also used botanical medicines (natural) to remove intestinal infections.  In fact, we are using the whole “4R” approach to healing the intestinal environment.  1R = Remove infections  2R = Replace digestive enzymes  3R = Repair the intestinal lining and  4R = Reinnoculate with healthy probiotics bacteria.  Each visit, which is every other week, we reset her meridian system, muscle imbalances, and treat her physically.  

Results:  After 8 weeks, she reports that her digestive problems are gone, her pain is gone, her sleep problems are gone, her brain fog is gone, and her energy is 80% improved.  

Comments:  Eva is a responding very well to our treatment choices.  She still has imbalanced lab findings, so we aren’t sure if she is feeling as well as she “rates,” or if she is just so happy to finally be seeing some results.  Obviously, we only have ourselves to compare to when rating things like our energy…she may still be at 30% of someone who is very healthy, but to her, her energy is so much better than it was…it must be 80%.  Hopefully we will surprise her with improvement to 200% of what she was!! 

What is the source of her improvement?  As you can see, we are treating multiple systems, including immune system, digestive system, meridian system (as in Traditional Chinese Medicine evaluation), and her Musculoskeletal system.  All systems affect all systems…and that is a concept foreign to most doctors who practice specialization.  Her adrenal hormones showed some of the best lab changes in her initial retesting, and we didn’t do anything specific for her adrenal glands.  However, the immune system is a powerful stimulator of the adrenal stress response, so after years of infection, eating foods she is reacting to, and attacking her own tissues, her adrenals were fatigued.  So, removing these immune stimulants, and soothing the immune system, along with physically treating her pain, another powerful stimulator to the stress system…that was enough to change hormones, and let her enjoy sleeping through the night.