Dr. Crippen is the author of this book and also a practicing chiropractor. His journey into a cure for his migraines led to his expertise on holistic health. This form of medicine treats the body as a whole, instead of just throwing medications at symptoms and hoping they go away.

Anyone who has had a health problem that doctors were unable to help you with can strongly relate to Dr. Crippen’s story that he tells in this book, of searching for answers and being unable to find them in a broken system.

I can strongly relate to this. When my health fell apart in 2014-2016, I had all sorts of crazy symptoms. Thankfully, I had one provider who thought outside of the box. If it weren’t for this one cardiologist I had, I would have never figured out that it was one part of my diet causing all of my problems. (In my case, it was gluten, and you read more about that here.)

So without further ado, here is Dr. Crippen. He is sharing with us a snippet directly from from his new book, Timeless Youth.

***Disclaimer: If you purchase through Amazon links on my site, I do collect advertising fees.***

“Most of the fundamental ideas of science are essentially simple, and may, as a rule, be expressed in a language comprehensible to everyone.”

ALBERT EINSTEIN

Dr. Lisa Saunders, a medical doctor, journalist, and professor at the Yale School of Medicine, whose New York Times column “Diagnosis” was the inspiration for the TV show House, wrote:

“A decade ago, I stood alongside my 99 fellow freshmen as we were welcomed into the ranks of medicine in a ‘white coat ceremony.’ Here, on our first day of med school, we were presented with the short white coats that proclaimed us part of the mystery and the discipline of medicine. During that ceremony, the dean said something that was repeated throughout my education: half of what we teach you here is wrong – unfortunately, we don’t know which half.”

That quote, often repeated by the Dean of the Yale School of Medicine, was originally spoken by Charles Sidney Burwell, a past Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at Harvard, over 50 years ago. It is just as true today as when it was first spoken.

This book will explain why half of what is taught in medical school is wrong.

What if there was a better way? What if, instead of starting with disease and the parts and pieces that make up the body, we started instead with the principles that were true in the beginning and are still true today? 

The first principle of holistic health is The Yellowstone Principle: The Whole Is Greater Than the Sum of Its Parts

In the early 1990s, conservationists with Yellowstone National Park faced a titanic problem. Over the previous 70 years, an ecosystem that was once in balance was spiraling out of control, and conservationists were at a loss to reverse the trend.

One obvious symptom of the change was the ballooning population of elk. But this wasn’t the only change. Many of the trees were losing their bark, which led to a decline in the aspens and cottonwoods. Also, the songbird population had decreased.

Other changes in the Yellowstone ecosystem included a decrease in the beaver population, erosion of the streams, and a decrease in river animals such as muskrats, ducks, fish, reptiles, and amphibians — many symptoms of a diseased ecosystem.

All the symptoms of change, from beavers to rivers to elk, were connected by a single cause.

The ballooning population of elk led to an overgrazing of tree bark, which led to fewer aspens and cottonwoods, destroying the habitat of the songbirds and providing less wood for beavers to make their dams. Fewer dams resulted in erosion of the streams, and a reduced habitat for muskrats, ducks, fish, reptiles, and amphibians. Naturalists hoped they could attack the problem at its source — the growing elk population.

In the 1930s, the park services started trapping and moving the elk out of the park, and then, when that didn’t work, shooting them. This went on for decades. While one symptom improved (the population of elk did decrease) the other symptoms, the trees, birds, and beavers were largely unchanged.

What should be done next?

Plant more aspen and cottonwood trees? Introduce more beavers into the park? Dredge the streams and rivers to restore the wildlife habitats? All were logical — capable of treating one symptom or another — but none would restore balance to the ecosystem.

Why? Because, as the conservationists learned, the solution to the changes in Yellowstone would only be found by understanding the ecosystem as a whole, and not a disparate set of unconnected symptoms.

While the changes in Yellowstone’s landscape were becoming more apparent in the 1990s, the change started in the early 1900s.

When the U.S. Park Service took control of Yellowstone from the U.S. Army in 1916, they systematically killed all the wolves in the park, killing all 134 over the next 10 years. From this point until the early 1990s, there were no wolves in Yellowstone as wolves were a deemed a threat to cattle and livestock.

To make the ecosystem whole once again, naturalists could either kill more elk, plant more trees, add fish, feed songbirds, build dams, or, quite simply, they could reintroduce wolves.

Fourteen wolves were reintroduced in 1995 and 17 more the following year. Thirty-one total wolves were added to a 2.2-million-acre national park spanning parts of Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho.

This seemingly small addition produced a series of remarkable changes.

First, the wolves, a natural predator of the elk, helped thin the elk population.

Then, the potential threat of being eaten changed the behavior of the elk. The elk moved from the valleys and the gorges, where they could be easily hunted, to the areas of heavy timber. This allowed the bare areas of the valleys and gorges to regenerate.

Songbirds and migratory birds returned to the new regenerating trees. The beavers, with their food source of trees restored, began to proliferate. More beavers led to more dams. Otters, muskrats, ducks, and fish that relied on the dams for habitats returned.

Increasing vegetation stabilized the riverbanks, reversed the erosion in the riverbeds, and created a healthier ecosystem.

The changes in Yellowstone could not be understood by looking at only one species, one location, or one plant. The interventions aimed at treating a single problem produced only short-lived changes, and none restored health to the whole.

Instead, to restore balance to the ecosystem, all the pieces must be considered as parts of the whole, where every part impacts every other part.

Just as an ecosystem is made up of many individual plants and animals, of a variety of species, each independent yet interconnected, the human body is also made of many independent parts — cells, organs, tissues, and systems, that interconnect to form a whole.

This idea of holism fits within the context of nature. When we introduce wolves back into Yellowstone, we accept the cascade of changes as natural consequences. In nature, we understand that a change to one part affects the whole.

But somehow, along the way, we started to view the body as separate from nature.

Instead of seeing the body as a whole ecosystem, the way we might with a national park like Yellowstone, allopathic medicine treats the body as if it operates according to a different set of rules.

The body, the thinking goes, is not a whole but instead a collection of parts. This is called reductionism, the idea that a complex system can be understood by understanding the pieces that make it up. It is this thinking that lets us to cut out a cancer from the body without changing the conditions that led it to grow in the first place.

Reductionistic thinking lets us take an antibiotic for a cold — often without knowing if the symptoms are even caused by bacteria — instead of asking why the immune system did not fight off the bug in the first place.

In another context, reductionistic thinking allows for the surgical replacement of a knee without evaluating the health of the whole.

Specifically, without asking how and why the knee degenerated in the first place. And no, getting older is not a sufficient reason to have a bad knee. My favorite questions for patients who use the “I’m just getting old, Doc” explanation for knee pain is to ask, politely of course, “Well, if that is the case, how old is your good knee?”

The idea of reductionism is not universal, but it is foundational to the medical idea of health. Perhaps, it came from the Industrial Revolution with its proliferation of machines to increase output and its concurrent migration into cities and out of nature.

Or, perhaps, from the revamping of medical education that occurred after the Flexner Report, in 1910, with its increased focus on scientific research in the basic sciences like physiology and biochemistry (both of which focus on the parts of the body rather than the whole) at the expense of holism. However it happened, the medical idea of health mandates that we see the human body as a collection of parts, separate from nature.

This change had a profound effect on our health.

It is the difference between shooting elk and restoring wolves.

The idea of thinking of the health of the whole is foundational to how we see nature.

We do not need to consider the health of 2,000,000+ acres of a national park to see the principle of holism. We can observe the same principle in a single leaf.

When it comes to health, plants are simple. They are not like humans. Plants don’t complain. They don’t forget to eat. They don’t sabotage their health with Oreos and reality television. Plants grow. They add carbon dioxide (CO2) to sunlight to create food. They survive.

Because of this, healing plants is easy.

A healthy plant needs optimum amounts of three things: sunlight, water, and nutrients (found in healthy soil). A sick plant, one with brown leaves, needs optimal amounts of three things: sunlight, water, and nutrients (found in healthy soil). That’s it; that’s the whole list. The presence or absence of disease does not change what the plant needs to create health. It may need more or less of each, but healthy plants are the inevitable result of optimal amounts of these three inputs.

But what if things were different? Let’s imagine we enter a world of plants, a world that, for simplicity, we’ll call Plant World.

Let’s imagine Plant World has advanced well past the antiquated ideas of ensuring plants need optimal amounts of sunlight, water, and nutrients. How old fashioned! How antiquated! Instead, in progressive and innovative Plant World, plants are treated like people, following the three-step allopathic model disease care diagnose disease, treat with drug or surgery, eliminate the symptom or disease.

Step one, diagnose disease.

In plant world, before a sick plant can be helped, it first needs — of course! — a diagnosis. How can you treat a plant if you don’t name the disease? In the allopathic plant disease care, as with humans, the disease is given a name, often with a Greek root. We’ll call it Brown Leafitis.

In this progressive system, researchers and plant doctors search for a cure for Brown Leafitis. Lots of money, public and private, is spent researching pharmaceutical treatments and surgical techniques (step two!) to treat the symptoms of Brown Leafitis.

The allopathic plant disease care system even has teams of molecular biologists searching for a miracle drug that will cause an already sick plant’s leaves to turn from brown back to green. Other promising treatments include, covering the leaves with spray paint and the surgical removal of the brown leaf (a leafectomy, if you will). How progressive! How technologically advanced!

Even better, Plant World elected a government that demands equal access for all diseased plants to essential plant medications and includes a team of lobbyists petitioning Plant Congress and the Federal Plant Drug Administration to have medications approved for the new epidemic of Brown Leafitis.

Luckily — for the plants — Plant World disease care doesn’t exist.

We don’t waste our time and money on pharmaceutical drugs or tiny plant surgeries to treat Brown Leafitis. Instead, we restore health in a plant by ensuring the plant has exactly what it needs to create health (sunlight, water, and nutrients (found in healthy soil)).

By assuring a plant has the nutrients it needs, the plant returns to health and the symptom of brown leaves go away, or, better yet, never appear in the first place. Giving the plant water, sun, and healthy soil is healthcare.

We recognize, intuitively, that a brown leaf is not a disease of the leaf, but rather a sign of a problem within the whole plant. We intuitively provide healthcare to plants, but we disastrously provide disease care to humans.

What the medical idea of health seems to forget is that we humans are not reductionistic machines but instead operate under the principle of holism — like plants!

In the case of my headaches, taking pain relieving medications sometimes helped with the symptom of head pain, but didn’t make me healthier. How could I be healthier taking a chemical that (supposedly) helped pain yet at the same time damaged my liver and kidneys?

Doctors who understood the principles of health would take a different approach.

They would see pain in the head not as an isolated symptom but instead as a sign of dysfunction of the whole, much like we view a brown leaf on a plant. Instead of prescribing a drug to treat the symptom, the treatment might include the human equivalent of water, sunlight, and healthy soil needed to restore health.

So how do we find those basic first principles, the human equivalents of water, sunlight, and healthy soil that create health?

We must begin by seeing a disease of a part as instead a dysfunction of the whole.

Timeless You-th tells the story of my struggle to find a cure for my crippling headaches while navigating the established medical system. My headaches persisted and worsened despite seeking the best medical treatment available, including top doctors and pharmaceutical drugs. The overall goal of my book is to teach you five foundational principles of health so that you, too, can create a lifetime of timeless youth.

Timeless You-th is your go to resource to maximize your health without drugs and surgery. Grab a copy on Amazon and share!

The post Why Holistic Health is Life Changing: New Book by Dr. Crippen appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

I’m excited to bring you a guest post today about a new book that I’m currently reading. What drew me to this book, by Samantha Deere, is that it contains an exhaustive lists of plants that grow in North America and how to use them for the health of your family.

For example, did you know that in 1536, Jaques Cartier boiled pine needles to cure his ship crew from scurvy? I learned that in this book.

I asked Samantha Deere and her team if they could share something from the book with us.

They provided us with a recipe for sage potato soup, along with uses for sage. Let us know in the comments if you try it out!

***This post contains Amazon affiliate ads. When you purchase through these links, I do collect advertising fees from Amazon.***

Guest post by Samantha Deere:

My book , ‘Herbalist Guide to Native American Remedies’, is about the ancient herbal knowledge of Native Americans used in modern days. It is mainly about finding, processing and using medicinal plants and herbs growing in North America.

The remedies contained in my book have been passed down for generations. They help with a myriad of issues like energy and sleep regulation, anxiety, immunity, beauty, sexual and reproductive health, and much more. As a mother myself, I know about the needs of everyday life. Therefore, I also included first aid remedies and remedies for kids.

One of the most useful ways to use the power of these plants is to include them into our diet.

The recipe below is an example of this. Having 2 children myself I confirm that they loved it.

Interested in more cooking recipes?

Check out www.soveressence.com.

Or into herbal remedies to take care of your family?

Find the book on Amazon. A few things covered in our books include:

• Many uses of Elderberry (including recipes for food and as a healing herb (an easy one: make a syrup)
• Uses of pine needles
• Yarrow with its many benefits for kids and elderly
• basic herbal teas to 1) lower fever, stop bleeding, cold , cough, flu, 2) against toothache, good tooth whitening, 3) painkillers

Click below to download the printable recipe for Sage Potato Soup:

This book is an excellent resource to have on hand.

The post The Ultimate Guide to Native American Remedies appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

****This post does contain affiliate links.******

I received a Fitbit for Christmas. I have been wearing my Fitbit Charge II a month now, and I’m obsessed. I love this thing. I sleep with it, I check it 50 times a day, and by the way, I now always know what time it is. Plus, I see my text messages faster.

I wrote a full review on all the neat-o things this technology can do, over at Monterey Premier.

Here’s a snippet:

12. It provides COMPETITION.

You can “friend” people, and it tells you how many steps they walked. Just don’t friend my pal Erika because she logs in like 14,000 steps/day, and it just feels so impossible to beat her!! And she’s a dentist. I gotta figure out how she’s racking up so many steps.

13. It will give you a nudge to go walk…..

Click here to check out the rest! I’m disabling comments here in order to allow you to give Monterey Premier’s page some comment love.

Psst!! I am still sending out newsletters every 2 weeks. These are just short stories that don’t appear on the blog. One went out yesterday, and the one from 2 weeks ago had a spiritual gifts survey on it. Wish you hadn’t missed it? No problem. If you’d like to receive the link to the spiritual gifts survey, just join my bi-monthly newsletter below, and I’ll zip it right to ya.

The post What can a Fitbit Charge II do for you? appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

3D Hand, by Caleb

Have you ever had a problem that no matter what you tried, it would not go away?

Ten years ago, I thought it was a fluke. I thought it just needed to be quickly fixed, and then we would move on with our lives.

It took longer than I figured, but it did mostly eventually go away.

Until it didn’t, because eventually it showed back up, bringing a friend with it. So now there were 2 problems. The medical people seemed unable to help me, so I tried the chiropractic people. That helped for a while. Problem solved.

Years went by.

And then the cat came back, and now there were 3 of them. And then 4, and then 5.

Okay, there was no cat. I’m talking about my hip here. And then it was my hip and my shoulder, forever appearing together ever since. Then it was my hip, my shoulder, and my finger tips. My heart did weird things.

I remind myself of Paul. Even he had problems that God did not take from him:   “Therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. 8 Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me.”  –2 Corinthians 12:7-8

Paul pleaded, but God did not take it away:

9 But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.  –2 Corinthians 12:9   We do cry out for God’s power more when we are weak, don’t we? When we’ve “got this”, we start to think we have no need for God.

Being gluten-free helped for a while, until it didn’t. 

Today I went to the dermatologist. Give me something to make the pain and ugliness of my nails go away. Heal the ache. But they said it isn’t supposed to hurt. It’s only supposed to be ugly, but my fingers hurt.

She wants me to see another rheumatologist and get all this mess figured out. She’s calling my doctor to discuss it. I don’t want them to discuss it. It’ll only bring light to the fact that I never showed up for the x-rays she ordered. (I don’t need more x-rays. They never help. Enough already.)

I don’t want to go. Yes, I know something is wrong, but I don’t even care what it is anymore. I don’t even care that they can’t fix it. Prescription strength Naproxyn takes the edge off. When it’s not enough I have Lidocaine patches. I go to physical therapy and do the exercises they tell me to do.

I’m tired, and I’m done worrying about this medical mess.

I have accepted all of the cats. They can just stay.

Today I don’t feel like fighting it, whatever it may be. I just want to lay down and cry. All right, truth be told I broke down crying in the dermatologist office. I didn’t want to, and it was embarrassing. She kept asking me questions, and talking about it makes me sad and confused. These are issues that I’m ignoring and hiding in the subconscious area of my brain. Didn’t you see Inside Out???

Today I don’t care about all that. I only want to be held in the arms of Jesus. I long only for the comforting of the Holy Spirit. My physical problems are a small thing. The pain comes and goes. These aches are temporary. Everyone dies. We don’t last forever.

There is so much more to life than the physical.

My children, my happy thoughts

I’d much rather focus on helping my boys with their problems, and we’re beginning to realize that one of my sweet boys has quite a battle ahead of him to fight. I hurt for him, and I want to fix it for him. Only I don’t know how.

It isn’t our job to fix all the problems.

Our job is to be supportive and loving. Look for hope where you can find hope. Hold on to the promises of God that you are never forsaken. Rest in the arms of Jesus, and allow yourself to be comforted.

“The Spirit also hears our infirmities, for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself makes intercession for us with groaning which cannot be uttered. And he that searches the hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because he makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God.”    Romans 8:26-27

“When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow you: when you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon you.  For I am the Lord thy God, the Holy One of Israel, thy Savior.”  Isaiah 43:2-3

No, some of our thorns will never leave our earthly body, but there’s a soul inside of us.

That soul is forever, and it is ever so much more important than any flesh and bones made from dust. That soul gets its nourishment from love and communion with God. We gotta keep on praying, singing, loving our children, helping our fellow-man, and loving even the least of these. And when life hurts, cry to Jesus. Don’t be too proud to get help.

28Come to Me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.…”  Matthew 11:28-29

Let’s keep encouraging one another, especially when life is hard. Thank you all for encouraging me through 2016. I thank God for all of you!

The post When Your Problems Won’t Go Away appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

I was all excited to buy “Georgia peaches” now that I live down here, but look. These aren’t actually from Georgia. 🙁 Apparently, peach season is over already. I missed it!

This week I have two cardiology appointments. The one yesterday was fairly easy, and all went smoothly. John David, my faithful sidekick, tagged along for that one. I think he fully entertained the cardiac floor of the hospital. My favorite part was the bit he did with the crayons. See, I brought a brand new box of 24 crayons along. New crayons interest people more than old ones.

My sidekick…..He’s not distracting at all…But he can entertain a cardiology office like no other.

JD enjoyed the crayons very much, but I’m not sure that he actually did any coloring. The door to my appointment room had a large gap between it and the floor. John David found it delightfully fun to roll each of his crayons, one-by-one, under the door and out into the hallway. I stopped him at first, but then I was trying to give the doctor my full attention, so when he eventually resumed his game, I didn’t even notice really.

When I finally opened the door and fetched all the crayons, there were nurses giggling in the hallway. When I got onto the elevator, the elderly gentleman behind us said, “Well, we all know you had a good time at the doctor’s office,” to little John David. John David was wearing his Lightning McQueen back-pack, and he looked ridiculously adorable. He just looked up at all the people who kept talking to him with his little straight, serious face. This is definitely not the toddler you have to worry about running off with strangers.

I asked the man, “Oh, did you see the crayons rolling out into the hallway?”
“Oh, yeah,” the gentleman replied with a smile. “Is this your first?”
“Oh, no, my fourth.”
“What! Gracious! You don’t look old enough to have four! But then you don’t act like he’s your first. First time parents are, you know, different, more anxious and restrictive.”
Haaaa!!! Yep, true, and we’ve all been there.

So the heart problem lives on. I see my electrophysiologist today. It’s all sort of embarrassing when all of my health problems start coming out. Maybe I’ll just keep my mouth shut today about all the other non-heart symptoms that I have. I’m glad I didn’t yesterday though because that doc actually understood my hip problem and referred me to a local orthopedic surgeon, but don’t worry, I’m not hoping to have surgery.

What I actually want to tell you all is what a difference eating better has made for me. You know that whole, “You are what you eat?” slogan?? Well, it’s true. I hate it, but it’s true. The last few days, I’ve just re-embraced the fact that I need LOTS of sleep, and I can’t handle wheat, and I feel like a living human again, instead of a dying one, like I felt the last week.

Out for a walk with my work-out partner, JD

See, moving to the South from California was exciting and also bad, or really just I was the one that was bad. I wanted to eat buttermilk biscuits, fried chicken, and pie, pie pie!!!! I decided to pretend like I don’t have a problem with gluten for a while.

Until it caught up with me, and I was back in the hurt locker. So now I’m back to behaving, and I feel better. Eat better. Feel better.

I’ve been getting in more exercise too. I felt too poorly to do much of it last week. Who knew? Food, sleep, and exercise: three things I never realized would be so important for the rest of my life.

That’s why I’m such a fan of Justin Cox’s Kettle Bell Burn program. (You can check it out here.) He teaches the importance of a balanced diet, 8 hours of sleep per night, staying hydrated, 20 mins. of exercise per day, and taking vitamins.

I recently noticed that his current promotion is a free 5-day course on nutrition, so I just wanted to call your attention to that and urge you to sign up.

His regular exercise program is only $30/month, and it’s awesome, but if you’re still on the fence, the free 5-day course is a good starting place.

What, your gym doesn’t have a china cabinet?

When it comes to exercise, arm day is my favorite. I always actually do the whole work-out on arm day. You have to understand. I was never an athlete. I don’t even feel ashamed when I quit. I’m like, “Eh, this is heavy, or I’m out of breath. Time for a nice little rest.” No shame.

Case in point: Yesterday Caleb came into the kitchen asking Joshua to play ball with him. Joshua refused. Joshua was in the kitchen snacking. (Peas. Joshua eats whole cans of peas for a snack. We are baffled and pleased).

So I volunteered. Caleb kind of looked unsure, “Sigh. Okay, but I mean Mom can’t really catch or throw, but….Just so you know, Mom, there ARE bugs out here, and it is hot. I’ll get you a glove.”

(I complain about sweat, gnats, and bugs on the regular.)

9. Wow. It took my children only 9 years to surpass me in athletic skills. Nice. 

Now don’t be mad at Caleb. He was very sweet to me out there. He has played with me before, so he knows that half of my pitches will go over his head or five feet away from him, and I can’t throw very far. And I don’t really care. Sports are not my thing.

My sons say that P.E. is their favorite class. Can you imagine??? Well, I certainly can’t. I even found a way in high school to not have to take any P.E. at all. 🙂

Nutrition and exercise suddenly became so important to me after it actually turned my illness around. I was the queen of having two granola bars and a Coke for lunch, so this epiphany that if you want to feel good, you have to eat good was a truly rude awakening. (Yes, I know that’s bad grammar, but it’s catchy, you see. Eat good, feel good……Eat well, feel well doesn’t have the same ring to me, but we could also use that.)

I want you all to feel better too.

info graph/ affiliate link property of kbburn.com.

Let me know if you decide to give kbburn.com a try, so we can cheer each other on.

Eat better. Feel better.

The post Eat Better, Feel Better appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

I reached a low point the other day. I was standing in the Wednesday night supper line at church with my two smallest boys, and I had what could only be described as some sort of hypoglycemic brain shut down. As in, my brain stopped functioning for a solid 2 minutes.

It was embarrassing. I know those women in the supper line will probably always think I’m bonkers now.

John David and Daniel were standing beside me, clinking their trays together and saying things that they wanted in their high-pitched little boy voices. Meanwhile, the two ladies working the cafeteria line were asking me questions. Only I didn’t understand the questions. I could hear them just fine, but my brain quit on me. I tried to answer them. It went something like this:

JD and Dan: Eeebedebedoobed Mmbedeebebebededeeeeee…

Ladies serving: Which one? How many? Do you? This? That? Do you want rice? Do you want vegetables?

But mostly they just looked at me as if they were waiting on me to say something.

And I couldn’t. I wanted to, but I didn’t understand what the question was. I tried to talk, but I had trouble.

Me: Um….uh…yes.  No? Three? I’m sorry. I’m having trouble. I’m having trouble.  I have these two little boys here, and I…I….I

“I don’t understand what I’m supposed to be telling you!” I thought, but I couldn’t figure out how to say it…

Me: “Um..  Standard? Two? I’m sorry. I’m just having trouble. Okay (Things started to get better inside my head). Just put rice and a roll on that one. Um…..K..

I know this went on for only a minute or two, but it felt like 10. I was actually worried if I was going to be able to pull it together enough to make it to my table. I was so embarrassed.

I stared at my tray. Somehow, I’d ended up with one pork chop with gravy, a ton of rice, a helping of squash, and a bowl with four grapes in it.

I was extremely nauseous. Before all of this, between the time I picked the boys up from school at 3pm and the time I took them to dinner at 5, I’d eaten one bowl of ice cream with chocolate syrup and a couple of handfuls of an unusually sugary trail mix.

I strongly felt like the sugar was to blame. I decided to only eat my pork chop and nothing else for dinner. With each bite of that southern chop, smothered in gravy, my nausea improved. By the time I finished it, the nausea was gone, I wasn’t dizzy any more, and I could speak perfectly clearly.

Add that to the return of my ventricular tachycardia symptoms, and it was a major wake-up call for me. I’ve got to get back to taking better care of myself. Do any of you struggle with this stuff? Surely I can’t be the only one.

So here’s my plan:

#1. Cut out the sugar.

It makes me feel sick. Why am I eating the nasty mess? I know. I’ve said this before, but this time I have a healthier living support group:

My daily workout regimen and yes, there’s even a Facebook group.

#2. Continue my return to exercise.  kbburn.com baby!

#3. Drink more water. 

Remember how well I did on the water challenge last year?

Baby steps. Start where you are. I do girl push-ups. One day I’ll graduate to the harder version.

Let me tell you about my exciting return to exercise. I have done 5 or 6 of these work-outs now, and I am all about it. The program is kbburn.com. What I love about it is that it’s only 20 minutes a day.

There are two levels of membership:

Premium: full personal trainer services, weight loss program tailored to your needs, and membership to the Facebook community complete with educational videos. I tried this out last summer, and it was fantastic. However, I didn’t have the health scare going on yet to make me stick with it. Now I do. This is an awesome way to go if you are ready to get serious about being healthy.

Basic: $30/month You get daily work-out videos in your email and you belong to the Facebook group. This is the service I’m trying out now.

With both options, there are educational videos galore on how to implement living healthier with nutrition, exercise, sleep, water, and taking care of yourself.

He also has lots of recipes you can download.

Here’s a link to one of his lessons.

I would love it if some of you joined the group with me. We can hold each other accountable. I love the idea of losing weight, but really my goal is simply to not have any more hypoglycemic episodes like the one I described above! We can encourage each other.

P.S. It’s been two weeks, and I’m already out of my “fat pants”! Yes way!

Click here to learn more about it or sign up for the free trial. *And yes, this is an affiliate link, which means I do get paid for signing people up. That’s an extra blogger perk. Blogger friends, be sure to sign up for that too!*

If I can do it, with all my geriatric problems, you can do it too. Wishing you all a fun and ACTIVE weekend! If you do sign up, let me know so we can cheer each other on!

Click on the bird above to learn more or sign up!

The post A Scary Wake-Up Call and My 3 Part Plan to Return to Health appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

Alan and Mom. Mom was such a huge help the week of my procedure. Thanks, Mom!!

The Move

Yesterday I started cleaning out the kitchen cabinets and drawers. No, I’m not packing myself. Alan’s job hires people to do that, so why would I?

What I’m doing is trying to eliminate all things that I do not want or use so that I don’t have to unpack them in a few weeks. We have way too much junk.

Junk. Just junk.

How do we all accumulate so much of it?

Is it the result of retail therapy gone overboard?

The inability to let go? I don’t know. But somehow every two years, we haul off truck loads and truckloads of our old stuff to Goodwill and the dump.

Occasionally, we sell a thing or two. I got $25 for an Ergo baby carrier…

Bye-bye, Ergo, we had a love/hate relationship anyway.

I sold a Mickey Mouse Cake Pan for $5. Because let’s face it. I bought it 2 years ago and never used it. I’m obviously too intimidated by the directions and the hand cramping to actually decorate a Mickey Mouse cake.

My hand hurts now, just thinking about squeezing out all those icing stars.

So yeah, we’re moving. We still don’t actually have a house to move INTO yet, but we hand over the keys to this one on June 25th.

Do you know what the funny part is? The funny part is that my California Health Crisis earned me a plane ticket with JD, so I don’t even have to participate in pack and load week or the cross-country road trip. I leave on the 20th.

……Oh. my. goodness. Daniel is watching Teletubbies. I thought we killed those obnoxious things off years ago. How? How are they suddenly back here, back into our lives????

“Daniel, please, please, don’t watch this show. I can’t take it. It’s too dumb.”

“Yeah,” Daniel agreed. Now we’re watching an alphabet video. It’s not too bad.

What was I saying? OH YEAH! Our moving plan. I ended up getting the super-sweet side of the stick, thanks to my psoriatic arthritis issues.

Mom and Me at Point Lobos. We’ve established that Pt. Lobos is what I will miss most about California, right?

The Psoriatic Arthritis

Psoriatic arthritis is basically pronounced sorry-attic arthritis. In my head, I also call it sorry ass arthritis because that’s what it makes me feel like.

It’s back, and it’s ugly, and I’ve just stopped playing around about it. My big toe swelled, but I’ve figured out a way to walk without using it, and then I bumped it just a tiny bit on JD’s potty stool, and now it’s swollen, bruised, and bloody.

The ligament that connects my knees to my hips is inflamed all the way up, on both sides, and my left thumb is permanently bending slower than all of my other fingers. The shoulder tendonitis is back too. But at least the plantar fasciitis finally went away. So, there’s that.

The Heart

I asked my cardiologist about what anti-inflammatory meds I could take. I need them right now, for this flare-up and the up-coming travel.

He was obviously not too concerned. He said, “As long as you don’t take cocaine or meth, I’m good.”

As you can see, my cardiologists are super worried. Not.

I had my last appointment the other day. Dr. G is my super-soft-spoken but very personable electrophysiologist, a.k.a. a highly educated heart doc that specializes in electrical problems of the heart, arrhythmias such as ventricular tachycardia.

He was actually kind and sympathetic about my Linq monitor. Wait. A kind and sympathetic doctor? What is this new thing?? I’ve just had bad doctor luck these past two years, so this was a nice change.

He’s funny too. I asked if anything had shown up on my Linq monitor. He explained that he has the parameters on the thing set so that the v-tach won’t register unless it’s over 195 bpm or at least 16 beats in a row.

“Ha! I don’t think it’s ever that bad,” I said.

“Well, I set it that way because that’s the point at which we would need to do something about it.” he explained.

Sure.

“Can I put off going to a cardiologist for a while because I’ve got so much to do with this move… I feel like I’ve been to the cardiologist enough for one year anyway…”

“Yes, of course, you have a lot going on. Take care of that, and then you can get a new cardiologist. UNLESS you have symptoms.”

“I have a lot of symptoms lately, but none long enough to set off the monitor (16 beats), so what do I know?”

“Well, that’s because you got a plate full of s***.”

Haaa!!!  Ain’t that the truth.

I’m always surrounded by children or other stay-at-home moms or home school moms, so I don’t hear a lot of conversational swear words. So now when I do hear them, it’s really hard not to giggle. Yeah, I probably did snicker.

Oh, well. Dr. G says he’s not worried about my v-tach. My heart is structurally fine.  His actual words were, “You’re not going to die suddenly in your sleep or anything.”

Ha! So there’s my good news of the day, folks. I’m not going to die suddenly in my sleep, at least not this year. It sounds like a joke, but that DOES happen to v-tach sufferers when there is heart disease present or with an inherited condition, like Brugada. However, when those things aren’t present, and the v-tach is short, like mine, it is considered benign.

JD was seriously THIS small when we moved in!! 2 years ago!!

I have a good sense of closure from this California Health Crisis chapter: the pain, the fevers, and the heart thing…Most of it was all from psoriatic arthritis, which mostly goes away if I don’t eat wheat or get too stressed. So there you go. I’m learning how to better take care of myself.

And the funny part…

So did you catch the part about Alan? Did you read that right? They wrote me out of the cross-country move and the pack week. SOOOO..  Alan will be overseeing the pack out and the cross-country move by himself, along with our three oldest children. That’s right. Alan is  doing a week-long road trip with Joshua, Caleb, and Daniel.

I know. Poor Alan. What kind of a wife am I? Well, I’ve done all the other pack and moves, thank you, most of them by myself. But yes, I usually shipped off the kids.

I’ve asked him repeatedly to send another kid on the plane with me, to lighten his load. But Alan says it will be fun.

I’ll give you a minute to laugh…

It won’t be dull, anyway. You gotta give him that. A friend of ours suggested that we should strap a Go-pro on Alan for this trip. It would surely make for a funny video.

Nah, what am I saying? Our kids are perfect angels, and so are we.

In fact, today I gave Cherielle a ride home from church, and Alan had all four boys with him because we’re trying to keep the van CLEAN, in order to sell it.

Alan decided to take all the boys with him to the grocery store.

While he was there, there was quite a spectacle. A certain five-year-old boy took a gold “good behavior” reward coin from his big, eight-year-old brother.

“Hey, give that back!” the eight-year-old demanded.

But the little guy only clutched the good-behavior coin even tighter. Oh, the irony..

So the two ended up WRESTLING IN THE FLOOR of the check-out line over this coin. The oldest boy, a ten-year-old, was dismayed and embarrassed at his younger brothers’ behavior, so he started punching the middle one in the back saying, “Cut it out! Get up! Cut it out!”

my little wrestlers with Aunt Janet and Nonna

Don’t worry. They were quickly apprehended, and upon their return home, appropriate consequences were measured out. I’m sure those weren’t our little angels, scrapping it out over a Sunday School coin in the floor of the grocery store….Nah….

I’m just thankful I was not at the grocery store. I was at home putting the frozen pizzas in the stove.

Just another day in paradise, y’all. Have a great week!

The post The Move, My California Health Crisis, and The Grocery Store Scuffle appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.