As you may have noticed in my previous blogs, I’ve tried to learn as much as possible about how COVID-19 affects me personally because I’m considered to be at the highest risk due to my age. It was made worse by a near-death cardiac event during this pandemic. So, I have scrambled to find natural and holistic ways to strengthen and rebuild my well-being.
Fortunately, I was brought up in a household that didn’t focus on processed foods. I’ve also learned to be more conscious of what I eat and food sources, such as non-GMO, local, or organic. As I mentioned in my previous blog, I have been motivated to grow some food on my property. I enjoy the noticeable delicious taste of homegrown produce, along with the knowledge of it being more nutritious and health-full without toxins.
My medical crisis was and has been a real eye-opener about Western medicine. While I’m grateful for how pharmaceuticals addressed my medical situation, disturbingly, I learned the physical price I would pay while on them. As long as I remained within normal limits on lab tests, Western medicine was not concerned with my trending toward abnormal. Yet, I’ve been able to learn from online pharmaceutical resources the unhealthy trends which can be anticipated through prolonged use. This was never emphasized in my 50 years of healthcare, nor was the untoward effect of compounding multiple medications. I discovered recently that 5.5 times the half-life of any medication (each is different) could indicate, under optimal circumstances, when that medication could be expected to be out of the human system. Delay in expelling the medication may be related to impaired kidney, liver, digestion, food source, and the aging process.
Long ago, I had learned that medicinal herbs could be effectively utilized to meet health needs before the halfway point of typical lab results. This philosophy is generally accepted around the world, except here in the U.S. For example, in Japan, what is known as Kampo is utilized by Western medicine-trained physicians who have permission from their government to use numerous Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) herbal formulas in their practice.TCM shuns single organ-focused treatment, as practiced in Western medicine; instead, it incorporates a full mind-body-spirit assessment. Treatment strongly emphasizes patient education on activity, diet, emotions, and prevention. Therefore it’s telling that U.S. health outcomes rank 11th among 11 industrialized nations and 79th among a larger similar group. As you may suspect, I’ll be studying TCM’s 1500 year wisdom for practical applications.