Health is a spectrum that everyone travels along. At any point in time, your well-being is either improving or declining. I learned the hard way what it’s like to lose your health so completely there was very little standing between me and death. Fortunately, I managed to survive and have since regained my health. Now I can pass on my story and the lessons I learned in the hopes I can help others recover and keep their health.
I spent five years of my life chronically ill. Symptoms included digestive issues, abdominal pain, and severe lethargy. I couldn’t think straight and my memory was shot. During my worst days (and weeks) I was bedridden, so exhausted that simple tasks like taking a shower sounded insurmountable. Medication and supplements slowed the destruction, but I wasn’t recovering. I knew I was dying but didn’t know exactly why. Then, in the course of one year I made a dramatic recovery. My symptoms disappeared and I got a second chance at life.
So, what happened? Well, instead of just masking the symptoms, the underlying problems were resolved. All my ailments improved and I got better. Better than better, I had energy again like I hadn’t had since high-school! So what is this miracle cure you ask? Or maybe you’re wondering what snake oil I’m trying to sell. This all sounds too good to be true. Well, there isn’t a miracle cure in the classical sense, no simple pill to swallow. In fact, the “cure” involved making some pretty dramatic lifestyle changes.
It turned out one of the biggest problems for me was my environment. The very air I was breathing every second of every day was killing me. I lived in a big city with lots of pollution from cars. My cute indoor dog and cat were releasing allergens. The modern world is filled with chemical fumes and off-gassing synthetics. And my body was reacting to all of it.
I know it sounds crazy, I’m not sure I would believe it if I hadn’t lived through it. The story of my descent into critical illness and subsequent recovery is a long one, which you can read here. The short version is that my symptoms took time to develop. I never had an immediate reaction to anything, which would have helped clue me in to the underlying causes of my failing health. Until I removed myself from my problematic environment, I got sicker and sicker. After re-homing my pets and moving to the country where the air was clean, health returned.
When I finally began to recover, I discovered I reacted quite strongly to certain factors in my environment when re-exposed to them. This allowed me to pick apart what my body was reacting to, and in doing so, allowed me to limit my exposure. All I had to do was eliminate these triggers from my life.
A simple solution, except not. The modern world is filled with troublesome substances. Some of the worst reactions were caused by things very near and dear to me like my pets and the city I lived in. Many modern conveniences release chemical fumes such as car exhaust, new plastic, and fresh paint. Mold spores from the wet climate I lived in, smoke from grilling outside, and too much dust indoors all affected me. The best thing I did was move out to the country, away from major roads, to a house with no carpets and no pets.
Recovering health is often a hard path, especially when healing requires changing the way we live our lives. Due to my critically diminished health, I had to change dramatically change my living conditions in order to recover as fully as I have. For those who are not so critically ill, you can likely improve your health with less drastic changes.
My goal is to help others on the path to their own recovery. I don’t have all the answers and am in no way an expert. I’m not a doctor or a scientist, just a computer programmer. The advice I have largely comes out of my own experience and what I learned while researching how to recover. There are many other factors besides air quality that negatively impact health too. The environmental triggers ultimately just happened to be the biggest factor for me. If you, dear readers, have any insights or your own stories, please contact me, I would love to hear them! I think collectively we can find the answers to some of the more nebulous ailments that lurk in the shadows, outside the realm of mainstream medical knowledge.
If you’d like to learn more, please check out my other articles!