A Holistic Approach to Chronic Conditions

I am currently reading a book by Dr. Gabor Maté called When the Body Says No. In this book, he discusses the key factors related to chronic disease being multifaceted and largely lost in the midst of Western Medicine and the modern pharmaceutical model. The original wisdom of holistic care was replaced with scientific understanding that was "reductionistic" in nature, focusing only on part of the problem and not taking a look at the whole person and the environment and circumstances surrounding that person's life.

My own journey with chronic disease revealed the pitfalls of this reductionistic approach. Despite my career in healthcare, I was still lost in the attempt to navigate my chronic conditions through a very narrow lens. It wasn't until I charted a path of increasing awareness in a holistic way that the doors towards taming the fire fueling my conditions opened and revealed themselves. Expanding my knowledge and putting that knowledge into practice slowly started to transform the way I looked at my conditions and eased the grip they had over me. While these conditions do remain a part of my life, it's with less intensity and frequency.

My career as a physical therapist in the hospital setting for many years also showed me how illness hit as a warning sign that something needed to be addressed. At the same time, the role of stress was hardly addressed by the physicians or nurses, and the more I understood the role stress played in my own illness cycles, the greater capacity I had to become curious with my patients. This primarily revolved around my care of those who had suffered strokes and heart attacks, but then quickly transferred to those with autoimmune exacerbations, recurrent UTI's, and chronic pain flares. Almost every patient I became curious with admitted there was some emotional or physiological stressor that preceeded their need to be hospitalized. This curiosity also offered them an opportunity to connect the dots between their lifestyles and their body's response to that lifestyle.

Awareness: Connecting the Dots

Let's face it. Our society today has been dissected and disconnected from deeper wisdom in truly remarkable ways. The industrial revolution taught us to focus more on external productivity than inner awareness or wisdom. When we started moving away from working the land and shifted to working in factories, we lost our deeper connection to the sustaining and nourishing aspects of nature.

As time has gone on, we have been further disconnected through emotional suppression, division, and the loss of a greater connection to community. Social media was supposed to be this great connecting force, and yet, we are more depressed, anxious, and lonely than even 25 years ago. So much more is falling onto individual families that no longer have a village of support, and the impact that is having on our mental, emotional, and physical health is significant.

There aren't any magic answers for the societal impact on our health, but becoming aware of why we may be experiencing more disease can help us seek ways to reconnect to that ancient wisdom even if it is in small ways.

In your own life, have you experienced:

• an increase in pain symptoms when external stress or pressure has been present?

• illness hitting when you have been overwhelmed?

• increased sugar cravings that seem to offer support in getting through your to do list?

• a family member suddenly fall ill after a stressful event?

The role of stress on our body and cellular functioning cannot be understated as it is a key driver of increasing inflammation and reducing the immune system's capacity to function normally. External stress is felt in the body on a deep, cellular level, thus fueling disease processes within the body.

All of the above scenarios have been directly experienced by me. One of the realizations I had at work was how my exhaustion and overwhelm led to my feeling the need to reach for the candy jar to simply get through my day. I know my pain will be more when there is an external stressor. And, if I don't take time to pause and find solitude, my body will ultimately give out.

This was prominent in India. I had 47 hours of travel, less than 3 hours of horrible sleep, then was on the move again for nearly 3 days nonstop with significant difficulties sleeping in a challenging environment. By the time I got back to the hotel room after the 3rd day of activities, I could feel every cell in my body vibrating chaotically, then the diarrhea hit with a force! I ultimately ended up in the ER in India because I had become deeply dehydrated. It wasn't anything I ate because the diarrhea would have lasted longer than it did. I deeply understood my body said no and forced me to stop. I was down for 3 days, but without much sensory relief due to the external chaos of construction and road noise outside my room.

Despite my knowing, I still failed to take a day for rest in between events, and I acutely felt the impact of that misstep. It was a good reminder that even on vacation I need to schedule in downtime to allow my body and senses to rest.

My own mother has had issues with a condition called atrial fibrillation (a-fib) which has been directly linked to physical and/or emotional stress. She did end up having a procedure to help the a-fib, but the more important factor in managing her condition has been recognizing the various stressors and applying tools and resources to prevent those stressors from hitting. There was even a subconscious stressor we found that was fueling her episodes: she was worried about having a stroke and had forgotten the reassurance the doctors had given her.

How much does that play a factor in our lack of awareness? You hear a diagnosis, your brain focuses on the diagnosis, or a risk of potential harm from the diagnosis, and you can't process any more. Has that happened to you? This is a normal reaction to a shocking conversation. And yet, we are now in a day and age where you get maybe 10 minutes with the doctor. How can anyone process information adequately in such a short period of time?

This is where taking time to become curious and increase your own awareness and understanding of what is going on can truly help you figure out how to manage from holistic perspective. It takes time, effort, and a willingness to traverse this path, but ultimately, it will pay off in greater sense of health and wellbeing.

Awareness Leads to Empowerment

Whatever lives in the background of our lives has influence over our lives. If we remain in ignorance of the ways life's circumstances are impacting our bodies on a cellular level, then we run the risk of allowing the those circumstances to have control over our lives through manifestation of disease and chronic conditions. Therefore, the more we can bring to light the real impact our conditioning and environments have upon us, the greater opportunity we have to make conscious choices that support our own healing journey.

How often do you feel powerless and helpless within the various conditions you are facing?

How often do you fall into resignation, believing your condition may never improve?

This resignation further fuels the stress cycle that then allows the disease process to take over. Research has shown that those who are stuck with repressed emotions or stuck in highly stressful environments had greater risks of autoimmune disease flare ups and cancer shifting into malignancy quicker than those who were in healthier emotional states and supportive social environments.

In the book, You are the Placebo by Joe Dispenza, the idea of our beliefs shaping our reality is highlighted. Gabor Maté also highlights the ways of pre-industrialized physicians tapping into their own intuition to support a person's ability to tap into hope as a critical source of healing capacity. This was the same tactic used by St. Hildegard of Bingen in the 12th century, as she intuitively supported her patients in finding their own inner awareness, wisdom, strength, and empowerment. She also tapped into the healing power of nature as she added specific herbs to tamp down the inflammatory cycle, boost the immune system, and support healthy emotional regulation.

Other aspects of her healing wisdom revolved around tapping into community, creativity, music, and movement to cultivate a holistic environment where our minds, bodies, and spirits could renew on a daily basis. Consistently tapping into these holistic resources is key in truly finding the body's inner healing capacity.

What happens when you get into an environment where you feel free to be yourself, safe enough to share your emotions, and able to speak your story? How do you feel when that happens? Where do you feel it in your body?

You feel lighter, right?

Maybe more free and energetic?

How about hopeful?

This is the power of feeling seen, heard, and validated. Empowerment naturally springs up from bringing the hidden aspects of our human experince into conscious awareness, shedding light on the wisdom that supports our forward movement.

Chronic disease is rough! It impacts our lives in ways we never anticipated and it often requires us to make adjustments to our lives we never thought we would need to make. My mother has made many adjustments to what and how she eats, finding the right balance of fiber to support her gut health so that her physiologic trigger is minimized. She has also put in the work to understand how the fear of a stroke was actually creating more a-fib episodes and found ways to pull out of that fear. She now recognizes that she has the tools needed to address the episodes quickly and has tapped into confidence that those tools will work. And, guess what? They have!

Despite there still being reasons for stress and anxiety to be present in her life, she's tapping into her wisdom and inner resourcefulness to remain grounded in hope. This has made such a huge difference in her life, not only from her own medical condition standpoint, but also in the ways she's navigating life's ever changing circumstances with greater trust in herself, trust in a bigger plan, and ability to adjust her own thinking before her anxiety takes over.

What did it take to get her there? It took gaining knowledge. It took speaking her fears to someone who could both hold space and shed light on those fears in a way that instilled hope and confidence. I am grateful for the ways I have been able to support her journey through tapping into her own inner resources and offering her freedom to explore various tools and techniques that would best work for her and she could tap into consistently.

Empowerment Leads to Taking Action

From this empowered space, there is a capacity to pause and become curious about what our bodies are trying to tell us. Tapping into curiosity has helped me navigate my own headaches with greater wisdom directing my actions. Recognizing the activities that would bring about the headaches helped me adjust how long I participated in those activities or would help me remember to pre-medicate with ibuprofen if I needed to push just a bit to get a task done. I also learned to adjust my schedule to ensure there would be adequate rest time after exertion. This is a critical factor not only in headache management, but in chronic pain, chronic fatigue, and autoimmune disease management.

Our bodies don't know the difference between environmental, emotional, and physiologic stressors. Therefore, understanding the particular stressors for your system can help you tap into ways you can start adjusting how you approach your life. The goal is to work with our bodies cues with wisdom guiding the way. How might that wisdom show up?

• Tapping into daily grounding and body awareness techniques

• Recognizing where our emotions and stress are located in the body

• Recognizing food sensitivities and adjusting our nutrition accordingly

• Organizing our days that allow for pacing of activities

• Learning to say no and taking time for self-care

• Finding a creative outlet

• Scheduling time to reconnect with nature

• Developing a new life vision rooted in expressing our natural talents

Curiosity is key to empowerment. When we are afraid, we run the risk of falling into despair. When we become curious, despair falls away and hope has a chance to enter. Curiosity taps into our ability to see from a bird's eye view. Curiosity allows resources hiding in plain sight to reveal themselves. Curiosity seeks knowledge and that knowledge put into action offers wisdom that supports our forward journey.

Want to learn more lifestyle medicine tools that can support your body's capacity to heal from the inside out? Please join me on Thursday, May 21st at 4:30 pm MDT for my next free Group Workshop!

We will explore the ways lifestyle medicine can reduce the impact of chronic conditions on your life. You will learn simple lifestyle adjustments you can experiment with to see what works for your unique body, condition, and life circumstances.

Let's journey together and see how we can empower and encourage one another!

Please register here: www.nourishedheartswellness.com/events

Have questions? Please email me at: nartaki@nourishedheartswellness.com