What I wish I knew before, during or immediately after my health crises

Here's what I wish I knew before, during, or after my health crisis. Healthcare workers who took care of me hardly had the time to go deep into discussion with me. So I learned this over years of research afterward.

1. Health crises have at least 2 causes.

Some crises have immediate causes, e.g., a road accident or an infection we pick up at school.

Other crises have long-term causes: A stroke that comes after high blood pressure for years.

2. Medicines usually target symptoms.

For example, if we take insulin for diabetes, that's because our bodies are not producing enough.

We may have had headaches or felt tired ever so often and discovered our blood sugar was very high.

The insulin does not tackle the root cause: our insulin-producing cells are being killed slowly.

Medicines for root causes are still in the research phase.

3. Genes and gene expression also play a role in illness.

Two sets of Japanese people who smoke heavily were studied. One set lived in the US. The others lived in Japan.

Despite similar genetic profiles and similar lifestyle habits including smoking, those living in Japan had a much lower rate of heart disease.

So, having the genes does not automatically mean having the disease. Other conditions matter too.

4. Disease, our immune system, and stress are linked.

Research shows links between stress, the malfunctioning of the immune system, and several diseases.

5. There are two kinds of stress:

- Openly recognizable stress (like losing a job or a loved one)

- Hidden stress from when you buried your pain to get on with life.

6. The mind has two important parts:

The conscious mind and the subconscious mind.

Both use the same tool: our brain.

7. Trauma & healing are not explicitly taught.

Many parents and teachers do not practice recovering from hidden emotional and psychological injuries.

Sadly, children learn by watching.

Most of us wing it.

8. Burying distressing things is a way to cope.

To keep going in life, we push distressing things out of our conscious mind. They do not get pushed outside us but into a different part of us: the subconscious.

It's like clearing out broken glass or burning coals from our living room. Quick fixes mean sweeping these into a room and locking the door.

The wood continues to smolder and burn. The broken glass remains sharp enough to cause injury.

9. Some people drown or escape from pain.

At the root of almost all addictions is an attempt to escape buried pain.

10. Emotional injury is widespread but unacknowledged.

Many of us may have unresolved injuries and pain from the past stored in the subconscious.

It is all stored in one tool: the brain.

11. We have an internal communications network called the Psychoneuroimmunoendocrine supersystem.

Dr. Gabor Mate, Canada's most famous physician, uses and explains this term in his books and videos.

Psycho stands for the mind.

Neuro stands for the nervous system including the brain, the spinal cord, and the nerves running all over the body.

Immuno stands for the immune system.

Endocrine stands for the system that produces hormones in our body including the stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol.

Once there is distress in the conscious or subconscious mind, messages go out from the brain to the rest of the body.

12. Stress changes the functioning of our body systems.

When the body is activated by stress, a lot of systems get shut down or suppressed until the stress is over.

This includes things like the immune system, our reproductive system, our growth system, and many more.

Other systems get hyper-activated like energy production.

13. The immune system is like the body's police.

There are more bacteria in our bodies than human cells. Also at any time, there will be cancerous cells in our body.

The immune system is like a police force running all around the body locking up the bad guys.

When the body suppresses the immune system long-term, bad guys like cancer could break out of jail.

14. Biologically, we can de-stress in 3 minutes.

We can flush out all the hormones released during a stressful event within 3 minutes.

But...we tend to be people who worry, ruminate, resent, get ashamed and brood.

So our brains keep sending distressed signals which keep up the production of stress hormones.

15. Our health deteriorates with long-term stress.

Long-term circulation of stress hormones in our bodies and suppression of the immune system can bring about deep and lasting changes.

Things affected include the brain, nerves, organs, blood vessels, skin, bones, joints, and more.

It's like washing our car several times a day with vinegar. At some point, the appearance, and functioning of the car will change significantly.

16. Healing is about tackling stress.

There's stress in our conscious minds that we may be aware of.

There's also stress trapped in our subconscious which we don't see directly.

17. De-stressing is about re-wiring our brains.

It's like tackling an addiction.

We have spent our whole lives feeling, thinking, responding, and reacting in specific ways. Some of this is stress-inducing.

To let go of our stress, this has to change.

Through new habits, we re-learn to respond to things, people, and events in new ways.

With this, we learn not to pick up and hold onto new stress. We learn not to sweep things into dark rooms. Instead, we tackle and resolve them.

We also bring to the conscious all the old stress trapped in the subconscious and let go.

Rinse and repeat.

18. Good health starts in the mind.

The Western medical tradition is only now opening itself up to the fact that the mind and body are deeply interlinked.

Most non-Western medical traditions (the American Indian and Eastern traditions) around the world accept that stress in the mind is a major origin of disease.

With centuries of experience, they have developed treatments too.

19. We can de-stress and heal fully.

There are good programs out there with trained professionals that can help.

We only have to search.

Thank you for reading this.

Please share with your family, friends and connections. This may help them too.

This newsletter is very much in experimental mode. At a future date, I may need your support with a subscription to continue offering you tips on how to "live with enthusiasm".

Have a wonderful weekend.

Auf Wiedersehen Freunde (German).