September 1st
The only foods I never eat are gluten, artificial sweeteners, and vegetable oils, with the exception of coconut and olive oils.
I don’t eat corn, but sometimes I eat a little polenta or a baked corn. I don’t eat cold cuts, but sometimes I eat 2-3 slices of dried salami or prosciutto. I don’t consume dairy, but sometimes I eat a little goat cheese or a few spoonful of goat yogurt for breakfast. I don’t eat sweets, but sometimes I make a cake at home, sweetened with sugar only as needed. I don’t drink “soft” drinks, but very rarely I drink half a glass of Pepsi with sugar, not with sweeteners.
A healthy diet does not mean forbidden foods (except for severe food allergies), a healthy diet means that 90% of the foods you eat are foods that are good for you structurally, and 10% are foods that tickle your emotional. This can help you not feel like a victim (look how bitter I am, I’m not allowed to eat x food), a self-aggressor (no, grandma, I don’t even taste sarmale (Romanian style cabbage rolls), I brought boiled chickpeas from home) or a false hero (look how strong I am, I refrain from eating x food). Food should be something natural, which does not involve effort, discomfort and expenses that unbalance your budget.
September 2nd
It’s hot and I sleep with the window wide open. I’m a very light sleeper, I hear the fly walking on the windowsill. People passing by on the street, I wake up. A bird singing, I wake up. The wind blowing, I wake up. I should have become a night guard 😊.
Before, when I was suddenly woken up by a noise, I would get angry. I’d mumble, swear, then spin around all night like a caged lion. Now, I turn on the other side and fall asleep again. I no longer have an emotional reaction to something I can’t avoid. I can’t change the fact that I’m a light sleeper and every noise wakes me up, but I can change my reaction to noises.
This is one of the positive consequences of my “change”. Decreased anger, rage, intolerance. Accepting the things I cannot change. Getting out of the victim-aggressor-rescuer triangle.
September 4th
“If you want to get an idea of a man’s character, do not consider his great deeds. Any fool can become a hero once in his life. But look at how people behave towards you or others in the smallest and unnoticed actions, how they perform their smallest duties, and this alone will enable you to define their character, their true face. Exceptional occurrences elevate even the lowest human being to a certain degree, but only that is truly great, whose character is noble and steadfast in every circumstance of life, however small, however insignificant it may be.” Karma Yoga
Don’t be fooled by people who are nice to you but execrable to others, animals or things. It won’t take long and they will treat you the same way.
I look at the people who take the products from the supermarket shelves and carelessly throw them in the shopping cart. Do those people know how to caress?
September 5th
A scientist puts a flea in front of him and asks it: jump! The flea jumps, and the scientist notes in his notebook: if you tell it to jump, the flea jumps. In the second phase of the experiment, the scientist breaks the flea’s legs, puts it in front of him and asks: jump! The flea does not jump, and the scientist notes: if you break its legs, the flea can no longer hear.
Moral: Science is accurate, but it depends on who interprets it.
September 6th
I think that in another life I was a polenta 😊. I need a flat surface to lie down several times a day. To lie as wide as I am wide and as long as I am long. I cannot sit like civilized people, in a chair, for more than an hour, maybe two. I feel my whole being drain into my toes and looking at me in amazement from there, wondering why I’m torturing it. Rather than sitting in a chair for 2 hours, I’d rather walk.
Man became civilized when he became bipedal. You can’t do many civilized things when you’re on all fours. But he paid for it. Have you ever seen an animal with cervical spondylosis or bilateral sacroiliitis? I have both. I am bipedal and supposedly civilized. I was not present when man was made to choose between brains and brawn, so I bear the consequences.
I wrote the article “The personal power decalogue”, so you can see how strong I am… in the brain. I’m going to lie down in bed for a bit.
September 7th
My husband and friends wouldn’t ride the train even if threatened with a machine gun. “To go by train?! Never!”.
I like it. Despite the fact that it’s rarely the right temperature, that sometimes people talk loudly, and that there are sometimes delays.
Once or twice a year I go somewhere alone for a few days. By train. I rigorously calculate my luggage, go to the Train Station and get on a train. Usually towards the sea. No reservations, advance planning, googling, weather forecast and other normal people stuff 😊. I don’t go during the summer season, so accommodation is not a problem, I’m sure I’ll find something with a bed, a shower and a socket. Will follow.
I leave in the comments the article from a few years ago, in which I tell what the purpose and usefulness of a solitary journey is.
September 8th
I’m not much of a world traveler. I can count on the fingers of one hand the countries I have been to and the seas I have enjoyed. But I liked what I saw. Even the Turkish coast has its charm, with those people too agitated for my taste. The Black Sea in Bulgaria is charming, the North Sea wild and cold, and Greece… is Greece.
We self-praise we love our country. We have mountains, forests, lakes and valleys. And seaside. How low can you go to get money from the Romanian coast without investing a drop of soul?
I’ve worked a bit in the seaside hotel industry so I know how it’s done. Just exploitation, no soul. And what I see around here now, things are getting worse. There is no longer an unbuilt piece of land, a piece of beach without sunbeds and canopies (a few pieces of planks given a coat of cheap paint and some flapping rags). Each “owner” of a piece of beach has fenced off his plot with wire and string and put up huge “no sheets” signs. On the few places intended for sheets, narrow and sparse, boulders are placed. Yes, boulders. It is not known who put them, but we can guess. The sunbeds and canopies are placed all the way to the edge of the sea, if there are any waves you can’t go on the beach, because you have nowhere to go.
And it’s messy. Very messy. As the train approaches Constanța, you see mountains of dirt in the field. Mess in the cities, mess on the beach, mess in the soul of people who should be hospitable, welcome you with love and a smile.
And people come to the seaside. The hotels are full. So to hell with sensibilities, people love it here, don’t they? 15 lei a 2-finger cappuccino served in a mug and 14 lei a bottle of still water.
Yes, I got angry. Especially last night when I went out to see the sunset and instead saw the human mess on the beach… You know I’m not a whiner who flails at every breeze of injustice but this is not fair. The Romanian coastline does not exist, this place is a garbage dump.
September 9th
The first time I saw the sea I was 14 years old. I’d be lying if I said I was awestruck by the immensity of the water. The truth is, I don’t remember, just like I don’t remember much of my childhood and adolescence. What I remember is that I stayed in a tent, in a campsite. In the following years I went to the sea and stayed ”in the host”. You know how it was in the guest house at sea, a house with a yard, those older like me, right? One room, toilet in the yard, shared, and shower with water from the sun. A common kitchen, like a kind of shed, where the mothers made a soup and a stew one at a time, with a little understanding with the other mothers😊.
I stayed in a hotel for the first time when I was 19 years old. I took my mother to Voineasa at my own expense, on my first paid vacation.
I haven’t stayed “in the host” since I was a teenager, it reminds me of the soup my mother made there. Women did not have time off from their duties: they washed and hung clothes, cooked and washed dishes even on those days when their husbands and children enjoyed the sea, the sun and that was it. They do not…
It’s still crowded at sea these days. Hotels, guesthouses, are full. It’s hot. The wind is blowing, there are big waves, and the lifeguards are frantically scrambling to warn people venturing into the water. I barely found a room as I wanted, close to the sea. It is a small guesthouse with a kind and attentive host. He made a name for himself from the big notes on Booking, which he displayed on the window at the entrance😊.
I saw the sunrise today. So beautiful😊.
September 10th
When I check into a hotel or hostel, the first thing I do is scan the room and divide the space. Organization is my mojo 😊, even on vacation I don’t give up on it. I determine exactly what each space will serve. I don’t spread like a pie all over the place, wasting time looking for something. Everything has its well-established place, just like at home. From the sock to the spoon, I know exactly what I took out of my luggage and where I put it. I don’t take up all the drawers and shelves in the hotel room, but organize my things compactly, only in the space of the size needed. I have never forgotten anything in any hotel room.
I make my bed in the morning, just like at home, with the blankets tucked in and the sheets spread out nicely. The order in the space where I live gives me a feeling of well-being. My husband was also convinced of this, who is messy by nature, but on vacation he makes an effort to make the space tidy. Because otherwise I’m crancky and I’m grumbling him 😊.
I leave in the comments the article “Make space in your home and in your life for what matters”, in which I tell the philosophy of order and why it is good to be organized.
September 11th
The only autoimmune disease in which the exact trigger is known: gluten, and the solution: eliminating gluten from the diet, is celiac disease. For the other 99 autoimmune diseases everything is foggy. There is medication that relieves symptoms and reduces inflammation, but it is not known what triggered the disease, and therefore where we can intervene to eliminate the cause.
Few doctors recommend anything other than medication and physical therapy, so many of us seek solutions on our own.
After this introduction I will tell you the purpose of this post, born from a comment on yesterday’s post. Celiacs know exactly that they have to eliminate gluten completely, and that’s what they do: look for products with the logo of the cut wheat ear. It is quite complicated and expensive to be in the shoes of a celiac. So if you tell them that they should also look for healthy products, whose ingredients are as natural as possible, anti-inflammatory, without chemicals and preservatives, it’s already too much for them, it completely turns their life upside down.
In any autoimmune disease, including celiac disease, the gut is affected and there is inflammation in the body. Eliminating gluten is essential. For most of us with autoimmune diseases other than celiac disease, this is a pro-inflammatory factor. But it is not enough. There are other pro-inflammatory foods. Additives in ultra-processed foods. Inactivity is pro-inflammatory. Lack of sleep. Depression. Anxiety. The habit of finding fault and hyper analyzing everything.
There is a pro-inflammatory lifestyle, of which gluten is only a small part.
When I started the Oana gluten-free project 9 years ago, I was excited about the effects of eliminating gluten from my diet. I didn’t really know what it was the cut wheat ear logo, and in the first year of the diet any trace of gluten caused me great joint pain. After a year I started to tolerate the marks and no longer have such strong reactions. I didn’t get tested for celiac disease, because I found out about the tests after I had been off gluten for some time, the test requires gluten loading, and my mind no longer considers gluten a food. I can’t eat it anymore. So I don’t know if I have celiac disease or not. All I know is that the decades-long flare of spondylitis ended a few days after I stopped eating gluten. Now I rarely have flares, they are short, and the inflammatory markers are usually within normal limits. Not all the time, but there are long periods where I’m on limits, which hadn’t happened before.
I slowly implemented an anti-inflammatory lifestyle. There is a lot to say here, I don’t want to go into detail, but all my posts and articles talk about my anti-inflammatory life in all its components.
Regarding my diet, there are foods that I never eat, foods that I eat often, and foods that I consider “guilty pleasures”. I had a craving for potato chips yesterday, so I grabbed a small bag of potato chips with salt. That doesn’t mean I eat potato chips, it means I’m human. It’s the first bag of potato chips this year. As I said in another post, a healthy diet is 90% structurally necessary foods and 10% emotionally necessary foods. That’s it, I’ve written too much today. Congratulations if you managed to read this loooong post.
September 12th
There are a few seconds, maybe 1 minute, just before sunrise, when nature’s breath quickens. The wind blows stronger, the animals stir, the birds of the air fly more fiercely, the poultry makes a noise… nature is impatiently waiting for the Sun that will appear soon. How do seagulls know the time of sunrise?
We humans have completely cut ourselves off from nature. Especially the townspeople. We can’t even find our way to the supermarket without Google Maps. We no longer know when and why the sun rises. But we talk a lot about nature… which we don’t know.
Just after sunrise, everything quiets down. Nature welcomes the appearing Sun with joy. It has been doing this every day for as long as the Earth has existed.
September 13th
I remember that when I came across the idea of ”healthy eating” I devoured everything that was written on the subject and tried just about anything I could find. I once read about spirulina. How miraculous and beneficial it is, and I thought that if I consume it, nothing will hurt me anymore.
I finally went and bought some. It’s not cheap, it kind of stung my wallet. But I resigned and told myself that everything good is expensive. Isn’t that what they say? I got home, carefully opened the bag. I was struck unpleasantly by a smell of rotten algae. You know, like the one at the seaside, when no one picks up the seaweed from the beach for days. I resigned again. The pills are also bitter and smelly, right? And it is ok, you don’t have a headache anymore. I take out the smoothie maker, put in a banana, some parsley, water and a spoonful of the miraculous spirulina powder. I swirl the contents, remove the glass, take a deep breath, hold my nose (the smell of rotting algae had intensified) and drink the miracle liquid. I was instantly nauseous. Look how sensitive I am! Well, it’s miracle powder, sir. With many vitamins and minerals, it must cure me! Nope, no chance. That if you evacuate it immediately after consuming it, those vitamins and minerals go down the drain, along with the money spent and vain hopes.
That’s how I was when I wanted to follow all the miraculous advice I found on the net. In the meantime, I went to a nutrition school and educated myself to know where to look, to stop reading and to stop following all the nonsense.
It’s not hard to eat healthy. And it’s not expensive either. If you find all kinds of stuff online, like miracle powders, expensive ingredients, and threats of lectins and nitrates, remember that all you need is a little nutritional education. Instead of wasting your time and health reading gibberish and getting scared by everything, better look for a reliable source of information.
I leave in the comments the article “It’s expensive to eat healthy. Is it?”, in which I briefly describe the few rules that should be followed in this area. Otherwise… sky is the limit. And enjoy good and tasty food, leave the miraculous powders.
September 14th
I don’t know if suffering is characteristic to Romanians, probably other peoples also have suffering in their blood. We don’t suffer because we have a reason, but because we were programmed to do so. Imagine man as a computer that has been loaded with programs in early childhood, or even before. We come with programs inherited from parents, grandparents… One of these programs is that of suffering. Suffering is so deeply embedded in our synapses that we believe it is normal to suffer. It’s not normal. Pain is normal, suffering is not.
“Pain is inevitable, but suffering is a choice,” says Dr. Menis Yousry. Suffering comes from resistance to pain.
Pain is all the things you can’t control in life. Suffering is the tension you create around pain.
Joy is the opposite of suffering. It seems counterintuitive to be happy when you are in pain. It doesn’t seem “normal” to be happy, because we have suffering deeply engraved in us, not joy.
We are not happy that we had someone in our life, but we suffer that we lost him.
We don’t laugh when our neighbor wakes us up with a drill on a Sunday morning, maybe we should go and serve him a coffee, but we grind our nerves in suffering, spoiling ourselves all day.
We do not rejoice that the years of wisdom are coming, but we suffer that we grow old.
We do not enjoy the joy of another, but we suffer that others are happy, we gossip or put rust on the blade for others.
It was a revelation to me to realize that I was suffering, even though I had a thousand reasons to be happy. I had let the pain envelop me from all sides, leaving no door to joy.
I didn’t even know what joy was. No one had taught me. So I taught myself. At first it seemed strange to me to rejoice, I even felt guilty, it seemed to me that I was betraying entire generations of predecessors, who had a hard life and suffered. I want to enjoy life!? What reasons do I have to be happy, look, I’m sick, I have a lot of physical pain, sometimes I can barely get out of bed! Take and suffer!
I learned joy slowly, I let it overwhelm me, drive away the suffering. Menis Yousry is right, suffering is a choice. When you choose joy over suffering it’s like being reborn.
September 15th
The pleasure of sweet taste is in human nature. Let’s not feel guilty if we have a sweet tooth and enjoy a cake with all our senses.
Let’s just do it in moderation. The pleasure of sweet taste is well known and wildly exploited by food industry makers. Sugar is added to any processed commercial product, and thus we can become addicted to mustard, for instance, in which, in addition to mustard seeds, sugar is also added. And we find that we can no longer eat mustard unless it has a hint of sweetness. We can no longer eat normal pickles, but only the sweet and sour ones, otherwise we will have cottonmouths and we refuse what was normal before: the pickles were sour and the biscuits were hard and not too sweet. Now we are used to everything being sweet and soft. Our jaw muscles have atrophied from refusing to bite and chew hard foods, and our teeth and gums are warped and decayed from so much sweetness.
And yet today I want to present you a sweet dessert 😊. The sweet portion should be well defined, in terms of quantity and periodicity, and have a well-established place in the day: dessert after the main meal, small portion and not too much sugar in it.
This peach and buckwheat semolina pudding wonder should be enjoyed leisurely, spoonful by spoonful, with eyes closed, accompanied by guttural noises of pleasure. It’s a treat! 😊.
September 16th
“It is important to take responsibility for our life and live it fully. When we say that we are responsible for creating our reality, what we mean is that we create the internal state that witnesses and experiences the world. Our internal state is the what we are responsible for, not what happens outside. We are responsible for gaining a greater ability to experience how our body feels in response to external circumstances, as well as the thoughts, ideas, or feelings that float through our minds. We are responsible for the state of pain, tension or ease we feel within ourselves.
As we wake up and pay attention to what is happening within and around us, our inner state will shift to greater ease. Life will begin to flow more easily, and other people will begin to respond to us differently. As we develop our awareness, we will begin to be “lucky” in life.
However, waking up, paying attention, and fully experiencing our experience doesn’t have to be just for the purpose of changing our circumstances and fulfilling our desires. But to choose and allow the powers of attraction and creation to manifest whatever is consistent with who we are now and who we can be in the future. Then the impact of various events, whether pleasant or unpleasant, can be seen from a new perspective. A new and different story that we create ourselves.”
Excerpt from the book Healing Myths, Healing Magic, by Donald M. Epstein
September 18th
Isn’t it amazing how we, women, can juggle multiple activities at the same time? We can walk down the street without stepping on potholes, think about what to buy for dinner, and that involves deciding on the dinner menu, paying a bill online, replying to a text message and exclaiming: look what a colorful cloud! At the same time, the man walking beside us stumbles upon hearing our exclamation. We devolved him from the only activity he could do at the same time: walking 😊.
September 19th
To enjoy, truly enjoy, you don’t need a reason. Joy is a state, not a feeling. You don’t enjoy “something”, you simply enjoy. Joy is a state, just like continuous unhappiness. Do you need a reason to be unhappy? You think so, but unhappiness is also a state, like a muscle you’ve exercised all your life. It’s the “I don’t have” muscle. There will always be something you won’t have. You will always miss something. You will always have “reason” to be unhappy. To suffer. To complain To be a victim. When you look for reasons, you will find them.
Joy is also like a muscle that needs to be exercised. It’s not easy, it takes persistence and awareness. It will hurt at first, like an atrophied muscle you start to work. You make muscle fever in the muscle of joy😊. But as it begins to develop, you also begin to have small “flares” of joy, just like that, for no reason.
September 20th
I love the articles in the “Life in Search of Equilibrium” series, articles in which people with autoimmune diseases share their struggles with disease and pain, and how they achieved balance. Through this column I met wonderful people, beautiful people, who did not let themselves be defeated by pain. People who seek remedies for the body and the soul, and who understand that healing means much more than the relief of physical pain.
Tatiana sought me out to ask if the AIP would help her get rid of the pain caused by the spondylitis flare that had started right before she went on vacation. We kept in touch during the vacation, and I was happy every day that she told me that she was feeling better, that she had started swimming and that she was enjoying the sunny days along with her husband.
Tatiana is like a summer storm. Expansive, daring. As a true Libra, she longs for balance and human connection. She wants harmony, beauty, adventure. And to be healthy. She is beautiful. She is tall, slender, always elegant and with a smile on her face. No one would suspect that she is 45 years old and has a cohort of diseases, some of which have not even been given a name, after decades of excruciating pain, tests and medical investigations.
Enjoy your reading!
September 21st
When you get sick, this is actually your body’s way of telling you that you are neglecting and abusing it. When you get an autoimmune disease, you’ve already passed any acceptable limit, your body is overwhelmed by the burden you’ve put on it for too long.
When the spondylitis symptoms started, I was just out of my teens. I didn’t love myself at all, I didn’t even like myself. If I hadn’t lived in my body, I would have been the person I didn’t want to be friends with. I was too shy, fat and short. I was slipping past the walls to avoid being noticed. I had only one friend, just as shy and awkward as me. I didn’t do sports, I just stayed at home, dreamed and read. My parents had divorced and my father had died. I was eating crap. I was like a time bomb waiting to detonate. And I detonated in a lot of sickness and pain.
If you analyze your life before the onset of the diseases, you will notice that the pattern is the same: a long period of physical dysfunctions (stress, extreme fatigue, the tendency to “forget about yourself”, binge eating, sedentarism) and mental (anxiety, loss of loved ones through death, divorce, departures, breakups; emotional eating, self-sabotage, anger).
What to do? First of all, turn your attention to yourself. Notice the suffering you are causing yourself. Don’t scatter outwards, looking for culprits. It doesn’t even matter who or why. When your perception of the world and events changes, the healing has begun. When you stop trying to control the situation, others and emotions, the healing has begun. When you accept yourself completely, when you let life lead you without resisting, the healing has begun. When you don’t set in your mind how healing looks like, the healing has begun. When you stop letting your mind take over, disconnecting from your body and soul, the healing has begun.
How do you know the healing has begun? It doesn’t matter, you focus on yourself and what you have to do today.
September 22nd
Life is simple, we complicate it. In the case of nutrition, this saying is very true. The fewer ingredients we have in a dish and the fewer dishes at a meal, the better it is for our body.
This is an extremely simple recipe. I thought of it that way, meaning very simple, and refrained from using too many ingredients. It can also be used for the Autoimmune Protocol (AIP) after egg re-introduction, with the modifications in brackets.
This cauliflower and chicken pudding can be eaten warm, fresh out of the oven, or cold, the next day, as an office lunch, accompanied by a few salad leaves or arugula. A wonder!
September 23rd
When I go to the supermarket, I don’t take a shopping cart. I put my shopping directly in my bag so that I am not mistaken about the amount I can carry. So, I put it in the bag, and when I consider that this is all the donkey can carry today, I stop. I usually keep the last product in my hand, and approach the cash register. Many times it happened to me that the person in line in front of me, seeing me with only a product in my hand, asked me to go ahead of them. I thank them for the intention and show the bag from my back with a smile. There are many kind people in the world, and I’m glad they exist.
Just like yesterday, a lady about my age, visibly in a hurry, told me to go ahead. As usual, I showed the bag and chatted until it was our turn to check out. She told me she had back surgery and had just finished washing some carpets. That life is hard, that she took care of her parents until they died of old age. I said, “I’m sorry! But life should get easier now, right? You can take better care of yourself.” She looked at me in disbelief, something between “how do you mean life is easy? I never learned that” and “I’m not giving up the pleasure of whining, so I keep making my life hard.”
We feel guilty if we want to enjoy life and give ourselves pleasure. We feel that we have no right to relax, to enjoy ourselves, outside the “established framework”. We can’t say to the family: “family, I don’t want to wash carpets anymore! Either you wash them, or find money to take them to the laundromat, or we give up the carpets! In the time I was washing and sweeping the carpets, I want to do my manicure.”
We find it hard to put ourselves first in our lives, we think we are selfish if we do. True selfishness is when we refuse to spend time in solitude, and instead devote ourselves to others, filling all our time with service to others and with the company of others. When you sit with yourself, when you are alone, when you walk alone in the park, when you just sit, with nothing to do or plan, you start to know yourself. When you know and accept yourself, you start taking care of yourself. Pamper yourself, take care of yourself.
The lady at the supermarket had bought a box of chocolates for her sister because she was retiring. I said: “oh, there’s a party coming up!”. Again, she looked at me somewhat guiltily, as if she had been caught with something forbidden. Dear lady, you are allowed to party and enjoy life! I wonder who gives her candy?
September 24th
In childhood we learn that there is good and bad. Later in adult life, we learn that good and bad are the extremes on the axis of life. That life happens between these extremes, and that nothing is completely bad or completely good. Life is like a black and white television, on whose screen the action unfolds in an infinite number of shades of gray.
It’s the same with food: there are no good foods or bad foods. You don’t suddenly get sick if you eat a portion of fries once every 3 months. It is possible to get sick if you eat them daily, accompanied by ketchup and 2 beers, in the evening, after a sleepless night and a day in which you did not move from the chair, did not drink water, argued with the boss who threatened to fire you and cursed all the bisons in the traffic. On the “fries axis”, the above situation would be “bad”, and zero fries would be “good”. “Normal” falls between these limits. So, a portion of fries once every 3 months is acceptable.
What I’m trying to say here, rambling gracefully, is not to demonize certain foods. They also have their purpose, maybe we don’t know what it is, but it exists. Let’s not pay too much attention to nutrition and neglect other equally important aspects of life: movement, sleep, water, healthy relationships with others and with ourselves. Let’s slide naturally on the axis of life, without falling into extremes and without neglecting important aspects.
September 25th
What are the biggest lies we tell ourselves? Psychoanalyst Matei Georgescu makes a list of them.
- It will be fine
- Everything is bad
- I know what I want to do in life
- I know who I am
- I want to build my life according to a plan
Sometimes what we think is a truth is actually a lie. We lie to ourselves. Why do we do this? Out of fear. We are afraid of losing what we have and who we are. The more afraid we are of losing something, the bigger that something is a lie.
The truth cannot be lost. But what is the truth? Truth is found only in stillness, and truth only comes from within, not from without. We cannot learn the truth from someone else.
Sit quietly for 5 minutes, alone, no phone, no TV, no music, breathe slowly, collect your thoughts from your daily chores, collect your emotions caused (apparently) by others and you will begin to glimpse the truth.
September 26th
Because lately you have started to follow me in increasing numbers, I will say a few words about me, about what I do online. On Facebook things are divided between: “look at how much I know and I want to teach you”, “I have something to sell, come and buy from me” and “let’s have a little laugh”. I don’t know anything, I don’t sell anything, and I’m not very funny either. So, what do I do online? I’m normal and genuine, or at least that’s what I like to think. I have an autoimmune disease that has turned my life upside down for decades. Pain and insecurity were my companions. Now I’m fine. This is what I am talking about, how I got from pain and insecurity to a normal life.
The motto of the Oana gluten-free project is “Purpose. Food. Lifestyle.” This encompasses all dimensions of life: spirit, material, soul. Everything I have learned and continue to learn: about nutrition, movement, relaxation, love, tolerance, understanding. A healthy lifestyle at all levels. This is what I write about on this page, and on the blog, www.oanaglutenfree.com.
I write on Facebook daily. It’s a self-imposed exercise, sometimes it’s hard for me to do that. Like today, when I wanted to mark a special moment: I surpassed 5000 followers! I want to thank you for following me, for being with me on my journey to normalcy and joy, and I hope to inspire you too to enjoy life! Enjoy every day and marvel at the beauty and harmony around you!
September 27th
I often read on the disease groups texts like: I have a lot of pain, please recommend me medicine to stop hurting me. If someone suggests diet, exercise, rest, hot baths, the answer is: I don’t have time for that.
It hurts my soul and I revolt when I see that people with autoimmune diseases do not have time for them. That they pull on them until I drop. And most of all, it hurts me to see that after they fall, they still try to get up and continue what they were doing… which made them sick. And they call that “power”…
You are not powerful if you persist in physical and mental pain, if you do not make the effort to know yourself, and if you do not give yourself the time and care to heal. And to be happy.
I realized that my main goal in life is my well-being. If I feel good, if I am happy, I can also bring happiness into the lives of others. I can’t make others happy if I’m unhappy. And if those around me are also happy, they will never ask me to “sacrifice myself” for them. They will be happy that I am happy and they will be happy with me. I do not accept or ask anyone to “sacrifice” themselves for me.
Read the whole article in this link. Do you want to be happy?
September 28th
When approaching change in your life be like a child. The child falls hundreds of times when learning to walk. Have you ever seen a child give up learning to walk because he fell on his bottom? To think: it’s too hard, isn’t it better for me to walk on all fours for the rest of my life? Or: what good does it do me to learn to walk? I’m doing very well, I am crawling around the house, my mother takes me in her arms and does everything for me. It will be like this all my life. How good it is!
Change is inevitable throughout life, but when we refuse to change, life changes us by force, and that hurts more than the conscious effort to make a useful change that brings us something more. It hurts more to resist change than to initiate and implement change.
The example with the child is not correct, because a child does not think, and this is his asset. He lets himself be carried away by life, by his parents and by the energy of the environment. He is not afraid of the future and does not plan for it. For him, change is life itself. It’s natural. He has no problem fighting change, accepting change, being afraid of stepping out of his comfort zone. He is guided by the adults around him, who are not afraid that the child is changing. Change is normal then and we call it growth.
Why do these same adults not accept change and fear it when it comes to themselves? Why do they remain locked in the same habits for years, even though they no longer serve them and even harm them? Why don’t they consider it growth, something positive, but a kind of boogie man, which they fear? Why are they afraid to experiment like in childhood, to enjoy the novelty, to laugh happily that they discovered something never seen, never heard of, even if they got a bump in the process of discovery?
How about we be like little kids?
September 30th
White cabbage, red cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, arugula, turnips, radishes, bok choi, horseradish, kale, Brussels sprouts, mustard greens, Swiss chard. All of the vegetables on this list are cruciferous. How many of them do you know and eat?
Dr. Terry Walls recommends 3 servings (about 3 handfuls) of cruciferous vegetables daily. Dr. Terry Wahls cured herself of multiple sclerosis using the protocol that bears her name after allopathic medicine had declared itself defeated. She ended up in a wheelchair. I wrote about the Wahls Protocol in the article “Healing diets, brief description”.
Crucifers contain glucoraphanin, which under the right conditions is metabolized to sulforaphane, which is associated with many health benefits. What are the right conditions? These vegetables must be well chewed, because sulforaphane only occurs in the combination of glucoraphanin plus the enzyme myrosinase, which is found in the mouth.
The benefits of sulforaphane are multiple. Anti-inflammatory: helps prevent and treat many types of cancer, autoimmune diseases, as well as neurological and psychiatric disorders. Antioxidant: heals and aids the liver and kidneys in detoxification. It helps eliminate toxins from pollution. Prevents cognitive decline and helps memory, improves resistance to stress.
Are there only benefits from cruciferous vegetables? If we have stomach problems, we should eat them mostly cooked, at least a little, steamed or boiled. And gases… are part of the charm of cruciferous vegetables.
I try to eat cruciferous vegetables daily and succeed most days.
