Did I ever tell you about that time I followed the latest health “trend” and made myself sicker than ever?
I don’t talk about this much, but lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the difference between the kind of deep healing that I advocate for and the kind of “health trends” that can easily seduce people down paths that aren’t truly right for them. It happened to me—and I really don’t want it to happen to you.
Today’s episode is all about the deeper kind of healing work that makes you “fad proof”, and I’ll also be inviting you to a free teleclass I’m doing on this subject next Wednesday.
Here’s what happened to me:
After I graduated from college, I went to India for a theater fellowship for a few months before returning to the D.C. area to be with my then-boyfriend who was attending medical school at Georgetown. I was on top of my game in so many ways, and I was thrilled when I landed a massage therapist position at a physical therapy center in downtown D.C. I’d just started this great new job and I was getting ready to move in with my boyfriend into an awesome new apartment.
There was just one problem. I was starting to have a lot of digestive problems. I knew that the diarrhea, pain, and bleeding that I was having were all symptoms of my Ulcerative Colitis, which had been diagnosed years before.
I wasn’t an herbalist yet—-and I didn’t have health insurance, either. I had the instinct to try to take my health into my own hands, as I had done with my PCOS in the past with really great results.
With no professional guidance or support, I made what seemed like a good decision at the time. I decided to go on a diet of exclusively raw foods.
The “raw” lifestyle exuded purity, cleanliness, and “detoxification.” The cookbooks were beautiful. The people following the diet were beautiful. The food was beautiful—and yummy.
But the longer I stayed on the diet, the worse my symptoms got. I could barely eat sometimes because my stomach would hurt so much afterwards.
I wish I could tell you that I listened to my own body and stopped this craziness when I noticed that I was feeling worse, not better, on my new regimen. Unfortunately, the only thing that stopped me from pursuing a 100% raw diet was the worsening of my illness to the point that I was unable to eat. (I was living off of orange juice, peanut butter, and Mocha Mint Lattes from Starbucks—-because the sugar, fat, and caffeine were condense forms of fuel that somehow got me through my 4 hour shifts at the clinic before I collapsed into bed and ran my nightly 104 degree fever.)
I was losing a pound a day. I was barely functioning. And when I finally got state-sponsored health insurance (that let me buy a plan even though I had a pre-existing condition) my doctor said that if I’d gone another two months this way, I would have likely died.
What would have happened if I had followed appropriate dietary advice when I first got sick? I don’t know. But I do know that following the trend without any deeper understanding of what it’s good for (and what is it NOT good for) was disastrous for me.
My story had a happy ending. I took medicine. I got better. And this experience was what motivated me to actually become an herbalist.
But a lot of my suffering was needless—and the direct result of my willingness to follow an appealing trend instead of listening to my own body or seeking appropriate help.
Have you ever fallen prey to a health trend? How do you sort through the conflicting information out there to find what’s right for your body?
