Unraveling the Gut-Heart-Brain Connection
How nutrition has healed my family and I.
27 years ago, my newly married dad was given that news — you know, the Big C, which had decided to enter his ‘life’ and turn it inside out, upside down, along with his beautiful new wife, new sons’ and his 3 daughters…
At 15, an avid ice-skater, in a whole new big city and world, I had no idea how to handle that kind of news, especially when in another country my Mum was ALSO facing deaths’ door with sclerosis of the liver and was informed she didn’t have much time to live.
Double whammy…!
I immersed myself in my friends when I wasn’t sitting and crying, chilling with Dad at home, or helping where I could, but the second I could run away to school or mates’ houses, ice-skate, and ‘forget’, is what I really looked forward to.
Many in the family couldn’t understand where I was half the time, but my parents defended me by saying — how do you want a teenager to handle this? Stick like glue to her dad's side all day and night worrying?
I was grateful they got it.
Fast forward a few months of chemo, and the cancer had spread — after they’d removed his bladder.
My new mum wasn’t having it and turned to all kinds of nutrition books! She finally came across a nutritionist who wrote about cancer and how to heal it with nutrition — I’m sure many of you reading this know who I’m talking about, but I can’t for the life of me remember her name! We’re back in the early 90s here folks.
We changed everything about how we ate. Removed all dairies and sugars, meats — except chicken, red meats specifically, and stuck to veg and fruits. It was really tough for us kids because we loved those foods, but we all made the effort for dad.
It was worth it. He healed.
In around 6 months, dad’s cancer had gone into remission, his hair started growing back, his weight started to come back, he was a new man.. it was just incredible!!! The Doctors were beyond impressed… My mum had saved his life through food.
Bio- mum, on the other hand, took a little longer. Not only was she based in another country, but she didn’t have the kind of access to the information and foods we did being in South Africa, where everything we found was actually imported — specific rice grains etc.
Having a different diagnosis; cause — alcohol, she refocused all her efforts on getting help with this. Going to AA meetings helped her a great deal! Specifically, in finding friends and people who would listen to her, but also the fact that I had at the time a young 6-year-old brother who had no one else but his narcissistic father — also based in another country, is what I believe drove her to mentally fight the disease and turn a new page.
She had her relapses, but it wasn’t until she and my brother left Africa and moved back to England that her life really changed. She didn’t have the finances, nor the ‘usual crowd’ to lean on to support her habits, and one day she just woke up and stopped cold turkey.
22 years on (yeah she beat the prognosis of Doctors’ ‘estimated 5 years max to live’…), she hasn’t touched a drop of alcohol, can look at it and not feel a thing.
The Gut, plays a crucial role here in both cases:
- Dad healed from changing his eating and what he was putting into his body.
- Mum healed from the mentality around her habits, but also through stopping the toxic liquids entering hers.
What will it take to really understand that one message?
Our GUT heals all!
There are no excuses anymore for us out there.
If you’re suffering from a health issue, have a look at what you’re eating, many may disagree on this, but years ago I got my hands on a famous book:
“Eat Right for your Type”, by Dr. Peter J. D’Adamo (Author), and Catherine Whitney (Author); who write about the genetic connections in our blood-type and what we should be eating. I’ve actually found that majority of the time it has worked with others as well as myself. On top of this, how often we’re eating — we’ve all heard about intermittent fasting in recent years, well we do not need to eat 3 meals a day!
Stone-age times show us that there were days/weeks man went without food — or very little of it, which produced a lean, healthy homo-sapien. The fats in our body eat themselves when we’re not constantly feeding it, which in turn shrink/annihilate diseases..
In my case, I need meat — tried the veg-route years ago, couldn’t adapt to it, and established that I function better on a majority carnivore diet. I managed to cut out sugars too — with great difficulty, but find that I’m healthier in body, heart and mind thanks to what I’m feeding my body.
The source of where our food comes from is vital to our gut, and the more information we’re getting out there today, the more we’re awakening to the atrocities of what we’ve done to our earth. In turn — we’re just affecting/infecting ourselves with pollutants.
If you haven’t heard of them already — Dr. Zach Bush and Dr. Eric Berg are my favorite gut health experts out there who helped me change my health and life around.
I really wish for all of us to just sit down and listen to the experts — and the experts in our bodies — our guts.
