Choose Detox Success

Detox of ‘dis-ease’ is a necessary yet irksome process where healing makes us feel much worse before we feel better. This unfair turn-around taxes the body and emotions so deeply that waves of doubt and fear can easily overcome us. Choppy waters take our eyes off the prize; calling it quits look attractive, and our longed-for rescue boat sorrowfully drifts away in search of another sailor who might stay the stormy course.

We have navigated this crazy trail for two years with wild success and I want to help you overcome fear and doubt to achieve the same results. Yes, we had scary days, weeks, and months where the notorious towel nearly got tossed. We had tears, anxiety, and flares with over the top mental and physical distress.

But like a lighthouse in a dark and stormy sea, I chose to let every gain be a beacon to signal the way towards a dry land called Healing. Each tiny, one-at-a-time improvement in sleep or poop or pain reduction, tolerating previous food allergens, cognitive growth, a trigger that no longer caused flare, or a word from a non-verbal child was like a beacon of hope. I chose to hang onto each little light sliver for dear life, and vowed to press on for the next one.

My suggestions below may come across as ‘in your face’ and be a turn off, but they were necessary for us to recover. We had lost our ability to function as a family spiraling from home bound to bed bound. We were broke from multiple specialists and protocols, sleep deprived, exhausted with no support or respite system, and we were so battle weary and afraid as one of ours seemed to not have much time left. So, my face-the-music ideas are based on our very dramatic turn around. While sounding too transformational to some, they may be key to others who wanting to heal, no matter the cost.

Focus

Face book detox. It sounds paradoxical, but leaving my face book medical ‘support’ groups boosted our healing. I know, I know, it’s so supportive, right? Well, maybe not as supportive as you might think. I listed some behaviors that may sound familiar:

Cross checking doctor on FB after every appointment.
Changing doctor’s protocol based on the advice of strangers.
Always searching for the latest, greatest, magic supplement.
Buying supplements not knowing correct dosage or if genuine need exists.
Dealing with FB Admins who argue your success despite improvement.

Here are some other critical thoughts:

If any of the above behaviors proved successful, we’d be healed by now.
The behaviors I listed above feed fear and doubt, not healing.
The groups do not communicate the lowermost level of illness that asd, pans, pandas really is, but I’m here to tell you, it’s the bottom of the health barrel. This is not DIY. We need help.
Face book is addictive, invasive, and all that internet usage creates chaos internally, making infections worse.
Face book feeds the nature of now, but ASD, PANS, PANDAS, Lyme, and auto-immune problems do not heal that way. These require patience, dedication, persistence, life-style change, sacrifice, determination, and education.
We did not need IVIG, stem cell, fecal implant, any invasive procedure, testing, or conventional medicine despite having severe cases. FB feeds into the frenzy of parents demanding these types of expensive procedures.
The groups are information overload, not specific to anyone.
Biofeedback streamlined everything we needed and we tossed what we didn’t. We needed a whole lot less, not more.
After success under us, and getting our lives back, my message of healing is often argued (oddly in my (ex) favorite groups) so healing really isn’t the true goal of some some of these groups.

Take your Life Back

Grab a bestie in the trenches to call and text instead of using face book. Communicate in the real world by phone calls or meeting up. Ditching the keyboard has been a true support. Don’t have anyone like that? Sure you do! Pick a bestie from face book and change how you communicate.
Use your practitioner as your source of information, not face book. His/her fee includes communication with you. Your treatment is individualized to you. No group holds a candle to that!
Focus on the gains. Embrace each one and don’t let go until you see the next. Let the small gains be huge. They’ll get bigger but we have to crawl before we can walk. You’ll be running before you know it.
Focus on family. With your time freed from face book, interaction and engagement with family fosters healing on the emotional, developmental, and behavioral planes which feed into healing physiological health too.
Spend some time researching resources related to the issues you are facing. Books that really went the distance for us were from Dr. Andreas Moritz, Stephen Buhner, Dr. Joe Rozencwaig, and so many others. And of course, just going back to school put so many books and doctors before me to study.
Surround yourself with others who are kind, winning, and supportive. Ditch those who want to fight or argue with you, especially if it’s on face book.

Understand

Dealing with infections like parasites, pathogens, retro-virus, metals, biotoxins, or having a leaky gut, food allergens, inflammation, and reactions to everything means we are literally swirling the toilet drain of health.
Drs Judy Mikovitz and Klinghardt call this AIDS minor. Grasp the level of illness with which we are dealing.
Know that you will not be healed in a few days, a couple of weeks, or maybe several months. It may even take a couple of years. Re-read the first two bullet points.
Healing naturally does not imply healing alone, cheaply, or quickly.
There is Good News! you will see gains all along which keep you motivated to fight and they will get bigger and better with invested time.
Focus on the gains you see each day. I said this above, but I’m saying it differently here. You are going to continue to have flares. Repeat, you are going to continue to have flares, but ( a really big but), they are going to gradually reduce in strength and frequency, and the triggers will begin to become easier to identify, manage, and then gradually disappear.
Focus on the time you spend not in flares. Maybe you experienced a flare today, but it lasted 10 minutes instead of 4 hours. Woah! That’s awesome! Maybe you experienced a flare today, but because you have peeled back so many layers, you know the exact cause and can squash it in minutes. Wow! That’s amazing! Focus on the positive.
Peeling back those ‘layers’ reveals underlying causes of issues so that they, too, can be solved, permanently.
The annoying cliche ‘it’s a marathon, not a sprint’ is an irritating truth you’ll have to decide to consciously live each day, maybe on a minute by minute basis for awhile.
Know that each layer may reveal new problems sending us backwards for a short time. It’s a healing pattern you’ll identify better down the road. But each uncovering, at the root, brings new solutions and new level of gains!

Changes in Diet

Buy Organic. It’s not a personal attack on your cooking, shopping, or on how much you love your family; It’s just a fact Jack: Detox is expensive, hard work. You are removing toxins and infections underlying dis-ease. You are wasting every cent and second if you are eating toxins at the same time you’re trying to eliminate them.
Eat Raw and Organic. This doesn’t mean you can’t ever cook or bake, but 80% of your diet should be raw, organic vegetables and fruits. Processed food contains almost zero of the nutrition our cells need to heal. You like the right tools? Give your cells the right tools, they’ll get the job done!
Remove gluten, dairy, soy, sugar, GMO corn, plus any allergens or foods that may cause reaction such as high oxalates, thiols, phenols or salicylates. These foods are inflaming to the body, soy is estrogenic, all corn is GMO unless specified organic, gluten molecules are so similar to thyroid hormone that some doctors believe it may be tricking the thyroid straight into hypothyroidism, and sugar, plainly put, is the devil.
Gluten free means buy raw veggies, fruits, and meats. It does not mean buy packages of processed foodstuffs labeled ‘gluten free.’ Those are commonly devoid of nutrition and full of sugar. Avoid the aisles at the g store and stay on the perimeter instead.
Drink filtered water. I use two different filters. One is a Zero Water filter which gets out all Total Dissolved Solids and glyphosate. This is a great filter if you have kidney issues. I also have an alkaline filter from EHM. This filter takes out the bad stuff and puts back in the good minerals to keep water alkaline. If you have kidney problems, this is not a filter you should use. If you can afford a whole house system, this is the way to go. The heat from showers and baths open the pores and a fairly large percentage of toxins in water can get into our bodies while bathing.
Stop using your microwave and especially don’t microwave using plastic! Don’t eat with plastic utensils. I asked Dr. Moore for a detox tip he would give the general public, and this was it.
Research the organs and foods that support them. For example, through detox, we had liver, kidney, bladder, gut, gall bladder issues and so as we seemed to systematically move through each organ, it occurred to me to add foods good for each particular organ and conversely, keep away from foods that would irritate. It’s very easy to research this topic.
Research eating for your blood type. You might be shocked to learn that blood type can be an indicator of foods your body can and can’t handle.
Research proper food combining. I have a link to a free book by Dr. Shelton in the post directly below this one.

Miscellaneous Paradigm Changing Ideas

Don’t worry about all the things you may be missing. They’ll be there when you’re healthy. I know how much it hurts and how few understand. It’s a hardness born out of love and survival in PANS/PANDAS/ASD/Lyme parents. Try to let go, focus on healing, and life will be easier when there is health.
Consider homeschooling until kids are well. Most of us have PTSD from what we are going through, but we are passing that to teachers and other students when we send our flaring kids to school. I guess you can demand IEPs or special school plans, but bottom line, these kids are sick. I can’t imagine recovering my kids if they were gone all day. Their diets and toxin exposure must be kept in order and there is NO way I’d put that responsibility on anyone other than myself.
Learn about herbs.
Learn about homeopathy.
Get rid of internet. I use the hot spot on my cell when internet is needed, otherwise, it’s off. It’s definitely contributed to healing.

Stay the course, get in the know, ditch the bad, keep the good, find a good friend and stay in contact, focus on the gains, read our Bibles, depend on the Lord. Healing is just over the next wave. If we can do it at our house, anyone can do it. If you ever need support, I’ll throw you a life preserver.

If this sounds like an overwhelming list, contact me at New Leaf Holistic. I’ll help you keep it all together.