A few days ago I was doing one of my creative recovery exercises in which I had to write down a few culprits which have prevented me from writing and picking one of them seven times at random. The usual suspects: alcohol, cigarettes, food, friends, sex, drugs etc. I picked up Food the first time. I found it difficult to blame Food for preventing me from writing. I tend to eat well generally so this was the very last area I would blame for my lack of writing time. But I had to find something.
The next time I picked Food again. I was getting annoyed with the exercise. In the end I picked Food four times. This was ridiculous! I would have guessed alcohol was my biggest enemy, but I didn’t pick it even once. This exercise was all about Food. I figured that it must be some kind of sign.
A day or two later, it’s been brought to my attention that I have a bit of a bad breath situation. I was utterly and totally mortified! I thought that I have a perfectly rigorous oral hygiene: I floss, I brush with an electric toothbrush and I use Sensodyne, the most expensive toothpaste there is! So when I heard that I decided to investigate.
My investigations revealed that it is most probably the result of an imbalance in my body, which makes it easy for candida and other bacteria to go wild and spread. I’ve also recently had a very strong antibiotics treatment and that just about killed all the good bacteria in my body, as little as it was. And what did I do? Nothing! I carried on eating the same as before and didn’t even bother to add some probiotics in, because all this time I was convinced that everything was just dandy.
So I started reading and listening to podcasts, ordered Kris Carr’s ’Crazy Sexy Diet’ and Donna Gates’ ’Body Ecology’, bought spirulina tablets, probiotics, rhodiola, a juice maker and stevia sweetener. Also I replaced the morning coffee with warm water with lemon and I stopped eating sweets. Sugar is what feeds bacteria, especially in the mouth, so I started to chew sugarfree gum everytime I eat something to clean in between brushes. I’m reading about alkaline diet and so far I’ve only been eating vegetables and a bit of fish. Not sure I’ll give up meat completely forever but I’m considering becoming a vegetarian. My alcohol intake has visibly reduced and I smoked 3 cigarettes in a week last week. This week I aim not to smoke any.
I admit, I may be becoming a bit food obsessed nowadays. But I’m feeling great and I’d like to monitor my body for a while longer and see what improvements I will start noticing. At the moment, I can say I am feeling lighter, happier and haven’t had any cravings at all since I started.
But what I find most interesting is that it would have not occurred to me that I may have a food/digestive system situation if I wouldn’t have received the warning signs. The ’Food’ note picked up four times. The news that I had bad breath…
There’s something very important about signs: you have to know how to read them. Sometimes the Universe gives you a riddle and you must have fun trying to solve it. I am certainly feeling good and empowered and because I reached the conclusion all by myself, it’s probably more of a reason that I will stuck with it.
So how about you? Are you looking after yourself enough? Have you given your body some good bacteria lately?