My health a couple years ago was not good. Smoking a pack of
cigarettes daily, drinking 3-6 beers a night and throwing down a pot of coffee
with very little water and mostly processed food (except for the dinners
Kathleen would make which were healthy) brought me to a very unhealthy
state. I am proud that I have almost 2 ½
years of not smoking under my belt (thanks to Chantex, a form of Welbutrin,
that made it easier to quit) but the rest of my body has not been getting
better. One of my biggest challenges was
battling with Psoriasis in my scalp and across my body since 2000. It had started to creep into my joints a
couple years ago which made walking and grasping items difficult due to
psoriatic arthritis. At age 40 I felt
like my body was falling apart. I had
tried acupuncture and other techniques with no luck and was being told by
doctors and the Internet that what I had was incurable. At the end of 2011 I had a huge breakthrough
with an injectable medicine that is
called Humira and is an immune suppressor.
It fixed the psoriasis but at what cost?
An immune suppressor is not a good medicine to be on and when I was
getting ready for Africa I had to take a live oral typhoid vaccine that
required me to get off Humira or risk actually getting typhoid. So at the end of November I stopped taking
Humira and expected the psoriasis to return..
That is when a friend from Central City, Reba Bechtel, recommended a
life changing book called “Healing Psoriasis, the Natural Alternative” by John
Pagano, D.C.
This book made several recommendations but at the core were
dietary, stress and health changes that all had to be done in order to reverse
and actually cure the psoriasis that had been plaguing me incessantly for over
12 years. One big item was that the
digestive system and liver are not working correctly if you have psoriasis and
you have to focus on healing the digestive system. I was at the point that I would try anything
so I jumped in with both feet. Here is a
rough list of things that I did, most of which were recommended by the book:-+
- Drinking more water daily
- Exercising more frequently
- Doing a couple intestinal cleanses (Bobbi at 5th Avenue Wellness Spa helped with this quite embarrassing procedure)
- Avoiding meat and processed foods (once every couple days I cheat with a little meat but observing the 90% rule of eating well most of the time)
- Giving up coffee and switching to tea
- Avoiding night shade vegetables (eggplant, tomatoes, green pepper and potatoes)
- Going to Dr Diane Spindler who recommended several vitamins and herbs that would help address intestinal damage
- Lower stress – this is easy when you are taking a sabbatical!
So it is now mid April and my psoriasis is limited to a few
scalp flakes but no lesions on the body have returned. Thank you Reba, Bobbi and Diane!
Love,
Ben
Interesting. always assumed you were kind of healthy and laid back. Interesting alternative.
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