Need solutions for the medication, medical appliances and/or medical travel that you can't afford? READ EMPOWER Yourself.
A Health Information Management professional, I survived a life-threatening emergency with information that only a person of my professional experience would know. And I’m sharing it!
B'SD 21 Tevet, 5777 I've been busy preparing feature stories for a mental health website (I'm certified in counseling skills and as a spiritual chaplain plus quite experienced at coaching ill people 1:1 as I intereact with mental health professionals professionally and socially). Now I have a bit of mental health information to share with YOU! An acquaintance shared the following account of a frightening story that need not have happened. Heed the life lesson no matter your medical or mental state: Now that it is all over, I have been asked to share a scary story, in the hopes that others will learn from it, and not suffer as this family suffered.
My connection to the story is that I volunteer for an organization that helps women who are suffering from post-partum depression.
This story is about a woman who suffered in her youth from anxiety and depression - fairly mild , but she continued to take antidepressants for many years. Thank Gd, she never had setbacks after giving birth.
At menopause, her ob-gyn felt that her physical symptoms were severe enough to warrant taking hormone replacement therapy.
Unfortunately, this ob-gyn did not ask her about her mental health history, and was unaware that she had suffered in the past from anxiety and depression.
Like most laypeople, she did not realize that there might be an issue.
It started very gradually. Her mood changes were blamed on her gradually emptying nest. She would feel antsy, couldn't concentrate on anything.
Then the panic attacks began. She quit her job, feeling that she was unable to do even simple tasks.
As time went on, she found it hard to be alone. She would call her husband to come home from work. But she was too depressed to enjoy his company. She would lose her temper over nothing.
And then there were rages. She would scream, and throw things. She seemed to have completely lost control.
She stayed in bed most of the day, which kept her calmer. And then, a few good days went by, as she stayed in bed, her mood improved. She talked calmly, the rages and the panic attacks were gone.
In her calmer state, she noticed that she had missed a week of her hormones. She took a pill, and by the next morning, was completely out of control again. This sequence repeated itself one more time, until her husband decided to look up the potential side effects of the hormones. Seems that mood swings and depression are both potential side effects, and much more likely when one has a history of mood issues.
Now that this very difficult time is over, the woman is back on her feet, and her family is breathing easier, they want to share the lessons - hormones affect moods. And other medications can also affect moods. Any doctor who prescribes medication must be told your complete medical history, including mood issues. Even if it was a long time ago, and even if they don't ask.
As you'll learn in the E-book or print edition of EMPOWER Yourself to Cope with a Medical Challenge, YOU are your own best medical advocate. Read every page to learn how to take proactive steps to protect your inner and outer health. Face Your Medical Problems with Dignity.
Face Your Future with Optimism.
Fill your time with proactive behavior!
Britons who feel stressed and/or can't afford the medical care they need might find the solutions to their problems in the Global Resources section of, plus the soothing text in, doctor-recommended
Read it to learn of charitable organizations willing to pay part or all of your specific healthcare needs.
Buy the E-book or print edition of EMPOWER Yourself to Cope with a Medical Challenge. Face Your Medical Problems with Dignity.
Face Your Future with Optimism.
Fill your medical files with sound solutions.
B'SD 13 Tevet, 5777 I recently read several books that impressed me with the descriptions of profound improvements in the lives of their authors. Each had described how he or she had chosen to commit to specific healing and/or inspirational lines of thought and how that has had appealing impacts on their lives. Today I want to begin sharing excerpts from Sheldon Rice's book, A Formula for Joy. Here's the first excerpt:
A Formula for Joy
How fortunate I am! What gratitude I feel or the gifts the universe has provided me – consistent joy, devoted wife, perfect home, financial security and deep spiritual knowing that all is well. My three daughters and
five grandchildren provide harmony, love and
affection to us and to each other; they are a strong anchor in our lives. We live without medicine or pain. What more can I ask in the 78th year of my life?
I am blessed.
Some people relate happiness and joy to material gains; others require spiritual connection to feel complete. For me joy is a sense of contentment that results in a deep
sense of well being. Happiness for me is freedom from fear. It is made conscious
when I
appreciate all that I have,
particularly when I can compare it to how my life used to be. This
appreciation requires focusing on the now—how I feel now,
not what I may feel in the
future or felt in the past. When I am in a state of balanced mental, emotional, or physical
health, my joy is peaked.
What is the source of my incredible joy, and how did it come about? Luck alone cannot
explain it. After extensively pondering the issue, I concluded that there exist universal
truths that are
easy to understand although they can be difficult to apply. Successfully
realizing them has brought life changing rewards for me.
The purpose of this book is to inspire through the examples of these
simple concepts. Personal experience is the only real tool there is. Anyone
can do what I did by applying
effort, strong desire and deep self reflection.
There is no need to accept everything I write immediately. It is meant as food for thought that sometimes makes sense long after
the first time you read about the concepts I present here. On the other hand, something you read might answer an immediate personal issue.
Balance According to Yin and Yang
Applying universal truths helped me turn my life around. The first of these is the principle of yin yang
balance. Intuitively the idea makes sense to me, but its application to
my lifestyle, particularly in my case my eating practices, proved to be quite challenging.
Achieving balance requires significant habit changes, an elusive and often difficult initiative for many people. Why do some people make changes in their lives so easily once they are consciously stimulated to do so, while others
find it so difficult?
The ease of making changes is one of many personality traits illuminated through the esoteric science of numerology. We are all born with a personality planned for us by our
soul, yet anything can be changed through our free will. At least half of the
world
population—the percentage varies
from country to country—has difficulty making changes. Given sufficient incentive, anyone can make changes if they want to badly enough. For
me, making changes
is relatively easy. In fact, I changed to a macrobiotic diet literally
overnight. I decided and did it.
“Balance” always had been merely a buzz word for me, only translated into my day to day
reality when I first undertook macrobiotic cooking 30 years ago. It was then that the terms
yin and yang entered my vocabulary. Before that, I had had no way to measure or understand balance.
Everything existent may be classified as either yin (expansive) or yang (contractive). Balance is possible when these two universal forces are synchronized. For example, when Page 1 of 29 A Formula for Joywe dress warmly in winter we are comfortable because we are balancing expansive
warmth (yin) with its natural complement, contractive cold (yang). On the other hand, when we eat ice cream in winter, the effect on the
body is discomfort, as the cold food (yin) and
cold weather (yin) together create an imbalance of excessive yin. As a result we feel tired,
lethargic,
unfocused. These simple examples are easy to understand.
Stress, on the other extreme, is a contracted (yang) state. A person who by nature is
already relatively contractive–
drugs. In my case, stress
relief was mainly through sugar. The problem with all these solutions is that they don’t
address the
underlying cause of the imbalance. Addressing and relieving the stress itself neutralizes the need for destructive habits
and restores personal control. Each person needs to balance his food intake with these natural considerations in mind.
There is no single, universal formula for achieving balance. I know when I am relatively
balanced in my daily life by
the way I feel. It can be a long time in coming and yet happen
in a moment. Even then it fades in and out.
When I feel content, I am balanced.
My mind is
clear to pursue my chosen activities.
Imbalance for me means remaining hungry after I eat. I feel agitated and dissatisfied, and
find it hard to relax. If I lose control, I find myself endlessly and restlessly
snacking. With
attention, I can examine the quality and quantities of what I ate to find balance. I don’t
believe that everyone
has to follow a macrobiotic lifestyle to feel balanced. There are many
healthy diets that leave people feeling good. The important thing is that balance requires good eating habits that leave us in a happy, good feeling place.
My eating imbalance originated with early childhood training. My parents came from a Belarus village in the Pale of
Settlement, perhaps similar to the one in Fiddler on the Roof without the sentiment. For them, low body weight meant that
when the next famine comes there won’t be enough physical reserves to fall back on. My mother’s neurotic food
obsession led her to insist that from an early age I eat more, regardless of my appetite.
In order to be sure that I ate enough, my mother spoon fed me until I was six years old.
Not sure how to stop this insidious force feeding, she revealed the details to my school
teacher in my presence. I have never forgotten that shame. Even in my adult years she
loved telling everyone how she had allowed me to break dishes while she fed me, just so
I
would keep eating.
These early obsessions around food inevitably led to patterns of overeating that continued
for a good part of my life.
I binged consistently with sweets and anything else in the house
that was eatable. Though I was never obese, certainly had periods of being full-figured. The imbalance of alternately binging and dieting became a way of life for me for decades.
In my early 50s I adopted a macrobiotic lifestyle, seeking discipline in that structured framework. At first I continued
to overeat without control, until after a year and a half I was
diagnosed with a tumor somewhere between my
bladder and spine. Only when I realized that healing was contingent upon taking control of my eating habits did I learn to
release
my binging. The secret for me was in learning to chew, taking an hour to eat each meal.Chewing for such a long time left me balanced, satisfied with a relatively small quantity of
food.
This rigorous chewing regimen lasted over two years. For the first time I began to experience balance on a daily basis.
It was an incredible relief as I could now focus my
mind on activities other than food once I left the table.
After my tumor finally healed, my overeating habits resurfaced. I lost control once again,
this time with nourishing food. Overeating was so deeply ingrained that I couldn’t sustain
healthy eating patterns despite feeling so much better with them. Once again, the patterns
of binging and dieting returned.
About 18 years ago I had the good fortune of meeting with a superb hypnotherapist. My
desire for change was so strong that one session was enough for me to kick the habit of
overeating and this
time stick with it. What incredible good fortune! It has made such a big difference in my life, as my balance and good feeling have been restored. After a lifetime, binging is a problem I have put behind me.
Watch for a few more excerpts from A Formula for Joy when you visit this blog.
Buy the E-book or print edition of EMPOWER Yourself to Cope with a Medical Challenge. Face Your Medical Problems with Dignity.
Face Your Future with Optimism.
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B'SD 12 Tevet, 5777 Last year I was among the featured speakers at The Whole Health Forum. A fact-filled, international get-together of people experienced in Alternative, Western, plus Complementary healing strategies and successes, it was a fun experience for everyone who participated in the event. Board-certified doctors, alternative healers and people who'd healed or improved their health somehow were part of the crowd. We educated our audiences who dined on delicous whole foods between sessions. I'd like to you to help me to "spread the word about the Whole Health Forum" coming up this spring! Who knows? Maybe we can meet each other there.
UPDATE: The Whole Health Forum is a five day educational gathering for health-minded English speakers in Israel. This is a place to regain and maintain optimal health. Join us in a relaxing, informative gathering in the beautiful Judean hills just outside Jerusalem in Even Sapir from Sunday, May 21st to Friday May 26. Choose from cutting edge holistic workshops with doctors, rabbis, healers, and therapists during each of seven daily time periods. Enjoy perfectly healthy vegan kosher food and create lifetime friendships.
Enjoy early bird discounts until February 1st. Stay on site, in a nearby BnB, or commute. Volunteers and teachers come for half price.
Contact us by mail or call Sheldon at 052-706-5002. Visitwww.TheRiceHouse.comfor full details.
Buy the E-book or print edition of EMPOWER Yourself to Cope with a Medical Challenge. Face Your Medical Problems with Dignity.
Face Your Future with Optimism.
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Words to the Ever-Wiser: The other day my general practice doctor questioned why I'd requested a blood test for my hemoglobin and a few other blood chemistry levels following the unanticipated loss of blood during my hand surgery this month. I responded: "I used to be a medical coder. Anyone in that profession would know of the necessity to check blood levels following significant blood loss. Since follow-up surgery is scheduled in a few weeks from now, we need to know FAST that my body can safely endure it!" He wrote the hall pass for the blood test after saying "Ah, you know what you're talking about." I took it this morning as nurses carefully checked to fill each necessary vial with my red stuff. Hat tip to my dear friend and fantastic nurse, Terri , who reminded me to have the blood check done. Life Lesson: Find out relevant facts about your medical situations and be proactive regarding your medical care. Doctors lack time to do much more than check boxes, patients and time slips. YOU are your own best advocate. Read all about that in
Buy yourself a copy of the E-book or print edition of EMPOWER Yourself to Cope with a Medical Challenge. Face Your Medical Problems with Dignity.
Face Your Future with Optimism.
Fill your time with focused efforts.
B'SD 5 Tevet, 5777 My formerly broken arm healed two weeks early, but last week's surgery to repair my Trigger Thumb (aka Hammer Thumb) went awry. Surgical Repair Part 2 is scheduled to clean up the problem later this month. Meanwhile, I'm home sneezing due to a very dusty day and happened upon this blogpost. Love your child?
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