My New Website

Hi, healers! Starting tomorrow for Munching Monday, I am moving websites to The Illness Evolution: Turn Your Greatest Burden Into Your Greatest Gift. It's in its beginning stages, so I hope you will join me as I figure out my identity in cyberspace as a vegan and someone with a chronic disease.

 

Happy Healing and changes!

Thankful Thursday

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Massages. When you hear the word massage, images of relaxation and much-needed stress reduction enter into your mind, and rightfully so because these luxurious events seem to stop time and cortisol spikes just long enough to calm the mind-body-spirit. They are a coveted tool in my pain management box, and with the best, most amazing, incredibly talented massage therapist, why wouldn’t they be? E-mail me for more information because he is exquisite and his prices are very fair.

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Integrative Doctors. I headed back to my holistic MD after 6+ months away due to a combination of financial constraints and a desire to never see any kind of doctor ever again thanks to the last 8 years of my life deeply traumatizing me. I’ve had some serious setbacks after the stressful hell that was Hurricane Sandy: needing several rounds of antibiotics for UTIs, dealing with a repeat back injury that required a short stint of medications and neglecting my thyroid supplementation greatly. I’ve also developed hypoglycemia after Hurricane Sandy, which could be related to stress creating more endocrine dysfunction without supplementing my thyroid fully. I’ll know more after I run some tests to check EVERYTHING (adrenal function, hormones, vitamins, minerals, ANAs, rheumatoid factors, and all the usual suspects too)  on Friday (should be a good 12-15 viles of blood taken again – that’s always a blast). Hopefully, I will get my health back on track again, well, because I need to. I’m suffering.

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My family. For pulling me out of hopelessness and convincing me to go back to my doctor, promising unending support.

 

What are you thankful for this week?

Happy Healing! 

Life With Chronic Illness: Actually, I'm Not Always Fine & You Don't Have To Be, Either

 

Hi, healers! My new MindBodyGreen post, "Life With Chronic Illness: Actually, I'm Not Always Fine & You Don't Have To Be, Either", is live. Check it out!

 

 

Happy Healing!

Munching Monday

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This Munching Monday is dedicated to carrots, some of nature’s most decadent candy. Available throughout the year in most locations, this root vegetable, usually orange in color, though purple, white, red, and yellow varieties exist, is packed with beta carotene, which is converted to Vitamin A in the body, and rich in vitamins, minerals, dietary fiber and antioxidants that are anti-inflammatory and promote alkalinity. Though the root is most commonly consumed, the green tops are not to be ignored or discarded (they contain Vitamin K not found in the root) and are delicious as a juicing ingredient.

Once you’ve moved away from the Standard American Diet, with a clean and clear palate, carrots have such a wonderfully sweet taste that is to be craved just as one would crave dessert after a meal. I like to wash a few large organic carrots, cut them into pieces and eat them out of a bowl as a snack in between lunch or dinner, and the truth is, I so look forward to this tasty treat that I often fantasize about my orange-hued snack long before I feel the beginning pangs of hunger.

Clean up your diet and enjoy the crisp, candied taste that could only be a gift from Mother Nature herself and bask in the health benefits that come from something so naturally sweet it could almost be naughty.

 

Orange Juice

Makes approximately 16 ounces of juice

-4 large carrots
-3 large chunks of cantaloupe

Juice and enjoy!

 

 

 

Happy Healing!

Thankful Thursday

Are you ready for the weekly love list? Here you go!

 

 

 

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Green Smoothies. I’ve always been more of a green juice girl, squeezing the life and liquid out of those glorious greens and consuming them for a quick boost of alkaline energy, but lately I have really been enjoying daily green smoothies along with my twice daily juices. Typically, I might consume green smoothies maybe 2-3 times a week, but lately I have been seeing them as a way to get EVEN MORE green goodness in me (remember the Amazing Grass post I did on Monday?) and using them as a filling breakfast full of nutrients that are easily assimilated (the blender does a lot of the digestion work for you). Today’s ingredients were maca powder, banana, mango, vanilla Sunwarrior raw vegan protein powder, spinach, Amazing Grass Raw Reserve, water and stevia.

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Deep Breathing. The goal of my every single day is to breathe deeply at all times. I have developed this awful habit of holding my breath, and can you blame me? Over the last eight years, if I haven’t been in severe pain then I have been anxiously anticipating my actions causing severe pain, leaving me in a natural state of nervousness. I say that because anxiety has truly become my new normal, and I have to consciously attempt to find serenity, breathing deeply in the moment and saying a little prayer with every enthusiastic exhale.  This practice becomes even more important during a pain spike, which I am so ungraciously in at the moment. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. I am calm. I am peaceful. I am healing.

 

University of Miami Hurricanes are the ACC Champs! I don’t think I need to say anything besides that it’s great to be a Miami Hurricane! GO ‘CANES!

 

What are you thankful for this week? Please share!

Happy Healing!

I'm Not Always Fine

 

Take a look at this TedTalk on the condition I, as well as many many inspiring others, live with every single day. This doctor does a wonderful job of explaining the physiological mechanisms at work in a truly accessible and approachable way.

 

I don't talk about RSD/CRPS much. If you know me, you know I tend to savor the good days and hole up in solitude on the inexplicably impossible days, never really verbalizing much about either. This is my way of coping, but it also doesn't do me any favors because most people assume I am always doing well. Like waves in the ocean, the severe, severe, severe pain waxes and wanes, but just like the waves of the ocean, they always seem to come back and meet the shore no matter how good the sand feels when its not suffocating under the weight of the water. Truth is, I'm in quite a trying pain flare of my lower legs that started about 24 hours ago, and these annoying pain spikes do still occur, albeit less frequently than ever (mind you, I take ZERO medication, so when I say a trying pain flare, I mean holy-crap-this-sucks-and-I-have-no-way-to-escape-it type of trying), but they still occur. I'm upping the green juices and green smoothies, nature's liquid advil, and breathing, yes, just breathing, slowly.

 

(I could write more about the RSD/CRPS if that's what you'd like to read.)

 

So, anywho, if you want to understand me, you'll want to watch this. Short, sweet, and to the point

 

Happy Healing!

 

 

Munching Monday (And A Smoothie Recipe)

 

 

 

 

 

Along with Thankful Thursdays (started last week), where I highlight some of the aspects of my week I am currently grateful for, I am adding Munching Monday, where I will highlight something that I am consuming and why I love it at the moment. First up:

Amazing Grass, Green Superfood, Raw Reserve

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Amazing Grass, Green Superfood, Raw Reserve, is a raw, vegan and gluten-free powdered supplement that you can add to your smoothies (definitely, especially when the “grassy” taste is covered up by sweet and succulent fruit), juices (eh, not so delicious), or water (ick, do this when times are tough or while on the road without access to a blender).

You all know how I love me some greens, my longest love affair to date, but I don’t necessarily love the super concentrated “lawn-in-a-bowl” taste that green powders can tote with all their nutritious ingredients. (Forgive me, Amazing Grass) Paired with the right smoothie ingredients, you can learn to love this health enhancing magic powder, and dare I say, I am on the Amazing Grass train. Choo choo! Next stop, Alkaline Town!

Below is the smoothie I made today. I. LOVE. MANGO. And the tropical taste of this strangely pitted fruit really does a fantastic job of overpowering the overpowering. (Funny mango story – for someone obsessed with mangos, I found out, while living in Miami, FL, that I was severely allergic to the flowering mango tree! I’m talking swollen shut eyes and a nose I could barely breathe out of. After my freshman year, the severity subsided, but according to the student health center, it is the fate of many who come from areas not native to the mango tree.)

Happy Healing!

 

Amazing Green Mango Maca Smoothie

-2 scoops vanilla Sunwarrior raw vegan protein powder
-meat of one medium sized mango
-1 tablespoon coconut butter
-1 tablespoon Maca powder
-1 tablespoon Amazing Grass Green Superfood Raw Reserve
-Stevia, to taste
-Water, for blending

Blend and enjoy!