November 1st
Our goal in life should be our wellness. Not career, relationships, a nice house, vacations, or other external or material things. If you feel good in your own skin, everything comes naturally.
Even health should not be our main goal. Because we only want health when we have lost it. Ask a healthy man what he wants from life, health will be somewhere in the last places. If you are in good health, health is implicit.
We, the people with autoimmune diseases, “fight” the disease, and this fight exhausts us, drains us of our l energy. And that doesn’t make us feel good in our own skin.
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What does wellness mean for a person with autoimmune diseases?
Understanding the actual situation. Until we change the thinking that made us sick, we will not recognize healing even if it falls on our head. We can suppress the symptoms and pain with drugs, but the disease will be cured when the root cause is removed. And this can only be done after we have changed our thinking and mentality.
Patience. Be patient with yourself. Slow down and pay attention to what you need to heal.
Acceptance. Let life flow smoothly through us. Let’s be open to the possibilities. Let’s not focus on one thing, exhausting ourselves. Let us be persistent like the Chinese drop, not like the bulldozer.
Autumn has come, have you seen how beautiful it is outside?
November 2nd
Over time I have only had to lose by comparing myself to other people, to what others have or do. I either saw myself as the last goose in the flock, disheveled and small-brained, or the coolest in the parking lot, the bright sun in the sky of my Ego. Neither option was to my advantage.
Lately I’ve learned to observe people, without comparing myself to them. I admire their work, without comparing it to mine, I notice a beautiful dress on a woman, without wanting the same one myself, I see a girl walking nonchalantly in 12 inches high heels, without getting sad that I can’t walk on heels.
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When we make comparisons, we are not free. Instead of minding our own business, we spend our time trying to convince others to do as we say and do, or wanting to do as others say. Instead of living life doing what we know is best, we are demoralized that others are doing better. And instead of walking down the street with our heads held high, smiling at people, we look down or look suspiciously at them.
This week I’ve been talking about time, and how we waste it. Here’s another reason: comparison. When, seeing a certain thing, our mind immediately jumps to compare, we waste time and invest unnecessary emotions. And we are not free. When we compare ourselves, we bind ourselves with invisible chains to what others do, have, think and say.
I’m still learning to stop comparing myself. Whenever the monkey mind jumps in to compare me to others, I stop it and bring it back. It’s not my job to compare myself.
I leave in the comments the article “Freedom is an acquired habit, not a privilege”, in which I talk about the many aspects of freedom.
November 3rd
You write me privately how much I encourage you with my writings and my positive attitude. Once again, thank you for your likes and feedback. You give me the energy to continue to “dig” within myself and bring to the surface the methods I use for healing. I didn’t take these methods from books and translate them into my life, I adapted and transformed them to suit me. Like a cake recipe, which I modified to fit my gluten free, dairy free and low sugar lifestyle😊.
The article below was also inspired by you. You told me how hard it is to make changes, how much effort you have to put into it. Here’s my take on the effort. Enjoy your reading!
November 4th
Lately I’ve been getting my head in order, more specifically in the “what helped me heal” department. As I said yesterday, I didn’t follow the advice of any spiritual or personal development guru, but once I started on the road to healing, I let things happen by themselves, almost without any effort.
One of the programs that sabotaged me was the “you don’t deserve it” program. This belief does not let you enjoy anything or do anything good for yourself. Do you always feel guilty that “your children are crying at home and you want to go out with your girlfriends?” or “death is looking for you at home and you are walking in the park?”.
These are extremes of this belief, the most common thoughts in this department would be: “I don’t have time to exercise, I’m going home quickly because I have laundry to do” or “my husband doesn’t eat beets, so I don’t buy beets, even though I really likes beets, but what’s the point of buying it if he doesn’t eat them?”.
And the fact that you “listen” to your loved ones, who tell you: “Where are you going? And what am I doing alone? I made children for to give me a glass of water in my old age. You are sitting for nothing and I have no ironed shirts. Why do you need to exercise? What are you complaining about, I’m in more pain than you are.” If you listen to them, or if you rebel and argue with them, both options are still the manifestation of “you don’t deserve it”.
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It took me a long time to understand that I had this program firmly embedded in my brain, soul and muscles. Yes, muscles are also affected by this program. “I can’t afford to relax.” Be careful how many times you say “I can’t afford it”, “I can’t”, “I’m not allowed”, “I don’t have time”. All these are manifestations of “I don’t deserve”.
Where does this program come from? From childhood or even earlier. I leave in the comments some articles I wrote on this topic. Now I’m going to clean the kitchen, I don’t have time to sit around enjoying my coffee 😊.
November 6th
Being healthy does not mean “thinking positively” and ignoring the disease, but neither does it mean living your life only in the disease, thinking about the disease and hiding behind the disease. It doesn’t mean flogging yourself with prolonged draconian diets, but it also doesn’t mean continuing to eat what made you sick. It does not mean fighting the disease, but not surrendering to it either.
But it means quieting your mind and soul so that you can grasp the complexity of life. It means awareness and acceptance. To accept that intense fear behind the mask of “I’m fine, leave me alone”, but also the fear of “oh my God, it hurts, I can’t do it anymore”. To accept yourself as you are, weak, sick, helpless, coward…
Since my spondylitis started, I have had 2 periods where I ignored that I had something: the period immediately after the onset and the period of the first remission, after 25 years. I eliminated from my mind and vocabulary the idea of illness, the word “illness”, I didn’t want to think about illness, go to the doctor, listen to anyone talking about illness. I didn’t activate the disease groups anymore, I wasn’t interested in illness. You get the idea.
But… guess what? The illness did not go away. Not even my terrible fear of illness, locked tightly in the conscience, covered with whole layers of cheap bravado. “I am strong!” Really!?
In the first case, the period immediately after the onset, I had to declare myself defeated by the “non-existent” disease when I could no longer get out of bed. In the second case, coming out of remission, I fell into the worst pit with physical and especially mental pain. After 7 years in which nothing hurt and I thought I was cured, I had to go back to the doctor and the illness groups in search of cures.
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The illness is there, and I am in remission for the second time, pain free and inflammatory markers within limits. The illness exists, and now it is my silent long-distance companion. I am on the path to healing, and my healing includes much more than just removing the symptoms of the illness. I am healthy, and the spondylitis is now with me, not in me.
Sometimes you will say: but I’m fine now, I’ve accepted myself, I’ve healed! When you feel the need to give your opinion on what someone else should do in order to be well, you are not healed. When you are angered by someone who follows a different path than you, you are not healed. If you make fun of those who look different than you, you are not healed. When you compare yourself, even just in your mind, to someone else, regardless of whether you come out on top or off, you are not healed. Basically, when you care about what other people are doing instead of minding your own business, you are not healed.
Turn your gaze away from the mirrors that are others and look at yourself. It’s not easy. It’s easier to point the finger at others. But ignoring your own pain and helplessness only perpetuates it and delays healing. Healing is not the absence of physical pain, but the absence of mental pain. Healing comes from within, with help from without. When your soul stops hurting, you will find remedies for your body too. And you will mind your own business.
November 7th
Facebook tells me I got 6000 reactions in the last month.
I always had a talent for writing, but I didn’t cultivate it. I started writing “for real” when I launched the Oana gluten-free project. My original goal was not to become some great writer, but to share with you the joy of putting spondylitis into remission with the help of a gluten-free diet.
At first, hardly anyone noticed me here, I had 2-3 likes. But I persevered: my recipes started to become more and more “edible” and diversified, and the articles more “readable” and more documented. I also started using the video tools, in reels.
It took a while: 9 years. Until about 3 months ago I had 2000 reactions, a month ago 5000, and now 6000. No promotion, paid ads or other audience growth tools. If I compared myself to the big influencers, I’d be a grain of sand, I’d get demoralized and stop writing anything. I was doing this in the beginning😊.
Now I know there is room for everyone to express themselves, if they have something to say. And that by doing this consistently, you become better and better. Better at what you do, better as a human being, better at who you are. You become a joy to yourself and others. Thank you!
I leave in the comments the first article written on the blog, 9 years ago. I had the intention of deleting the older articles, they are… clumsy, to express myself elegantly 😊. But I leave them there, to calm my Ego when it gets too proud. To remember where I started from.
November 8th
The post I made yesterday reminded me why I started the Oana Gluten Free Project: to share with you that giving up gluten helps us people with autoimmune diseases other than celiac disease get rid of pain, to better manage the inflammation within the disease, and generally have a better life.
At first, giving up gluten seems like an overwhelming mission, and the fact that few doctors recommend it outside of celiac disease, can make us give up at the first contamination or the first donut we come across: “I kept the gluten-free diet and it still hurts. The doctor didn’t recommend it anyway, so what’s the point bothering about it?” In our mind it seems that we impose an unnecessary torment on ourselves, which is added to the already existing torment, that of the disease. When you’re in pain, you want to get rid of the pain quickly, not add more frustration. Sometimes you start, you don’t get quick results, you don’t notice them or they aren’t spectacular, and you give up.
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Our “traditional” way of eating doesn’t help either. We cannot imagine eating without bread, potatoes, rice, macaroni or noodles in soup. If we started by eating only grilled steak with salt and pepper and a big salad for 3 days, that would be the easiest. But…no bread!?
Over the 9 years of Oana gluten-free, I have designed several gluten-free bread recipes. Some simpler, others more elaborate. As I say in the recipe below, gluten-free bread will never taste like wheat bread. I mean the “real” bread, made of flour, yeast, water and salt, not the one from the shops, which has improvers (of taste and texture) and preservatives. In this recipe I mixed more natural flours to give the bread a more neutral taste.
And as a conclusion, a Romanian saying: absence makes the bread better 😊
November 9th
Someone commented on a post that she took the word “disease” out of her vocabulary, and thus began to feel better and healed. I countered that healing comes from awareness, not ignorance. The word “disease” exists, we meet it everywhere, even on the discharge note with our name on it. And when it hurts, we really can’t ignore it. That pain must have a name, so that we know how to approach it. But disease is not a sentence to pain, but an impetus to start healing. This is my opinion, don’t throw eggs on me 😊.
However, there is a truth here: we should be aware of the words we speak and think. Let’s be careful when we say: I can’t, I can’t afford, I’m not allowed, I don’t have time, I’m stuck, it annoys me, I’m stupid, I’m lazy… Let’s be careful when we say: I’m sick, I have a disease, my disease. It is not the word “disease” itself, but its association with us that makes us ill. Through words we impose restrictions on ourselves, we strengthen the wall that we ourselves build around us, a wall that separates us from healing.
So, let’s replace “I can’t” with “it’s hard”, let us eliminate from our heads and speech “I can’t afford” and “I’m not allowed”, let us leave the “disease” where it is, that is, outside of us, and in generally, let’s use nice words when it comes to us😊. When we think well of ourselves, when we are forgiving ourselves, we will begin to think well and be forgiving of others.
I leave here the article that inspired me to make this post.
November 10th
It’s autumn. It’s the time when the housewives fill the pantries with all kinds of pickles and the whole neighborhood smells of vinegar😊. Pickles in vinegar are tasty, but their benefits are limited to taste. Vinegar and sterilization kill the beneficial bacteria that can develop through fermentation. And the usual vinegar that is used for pickles is not exactly the best quality. I gave up putting pickles like this a long time ago. A lot of work, and the result is not exactly what I want for my gut.
I like cabbage😊. As I said before, I eat at least one portion of cruciferous vegetables every day, and cabbage (along with cauliflower) is the queen of cruciferous vegetables. I make fermented cabbage, a little different than we Romanians are used to. I leave in the comments some of the recipes with which I prepare the cabbage wonder. Simple recipes, for busy people or for lazy people 😊. But the results are amazing: the cabbage fermented this way is tasty and full of probiotics.
November 11th
Dr. Alessio Fasano, a gastroenterologist specializing in celiac disease and other conditions caused by gluten, says that the human body perceives gluten as a bacterium.
Gluten cannot be fully digested like other proteins are. Undigested fragments remain, and the immune system sends “soldiers” to attack them, as it does with bacteria. And, just as the bacteria are neutralized, the immune system also neutralizes the undigested fragments of gluten.
Until it can’t do it anymore. Just as the immune system shuts down in the face of bacterial attacks and we get infections, it sometimes shuts down in the face of gluten. Genetic susceptibility, weakening of immunity with age, stress, environmental pollutants, all these weaken the body, and the immune system can no longer cope with the continuous attack. Because we consume gluten daily, we don’t give our immunity a break.
If most people can tolerate gluten, for a longer or shorter period of their lives, this does not mean that it is food. You feed on food, you don’t tolerate it, waiting for it to harm you when your body weakens.
November 13th
Epictetus said, almost 2000 years ago: it is not what happens to you, but how you react to what happens to you. The story in the article in the link covers some of what “happens” to us in life: the fear of illness, the exacerbation in our heads of small inconveniences, the fixation on things we cannot change. But also the joy you can have in your soul when you understand the essence: life is beautiful if we do it this way!
When we look for a pleasant or positive meaning to something perceived as unpleasant or negative, new neural synapses are formed and our universe of knowledge and understanding expands. We leave the familiar boulevard of the victim-aggressor-savior triad and gain another perspective, another point of view. First, we will understand it with the mind, and later the soul will take it over as well. We will “feel” knowledge, it will no longer be simple information. And then we will react with our soul, not with our deeply embedded programs in our minds.
November 14th
When you are in the Victim position, you give others the reins of your life. It’s the easiest way. You are not responsible for what happens to you, others are: your parents, your partner, the government, fate, illness, God… What can you do if others won’t let you? You cannot change anything in your life, because it does not depend on you, but on others. And those “others” want you to suffer. Is it really so?
I was never a sports person. Short and stocky, the only sport I did as a child was carrying my schoolbag to and from school. And that schoolbag was very heavy! I was the “nerd” type, I liked books more than the hopscotch. I didn’t have an ergonomic desk to sit at, I sat as I could to read and write. And I hunched over. What to do, others were to blame: parents, poverty, the times…
Every time I wanted to start doing a sport, some disease struck me: hepatitis, kidney stone or who knows what strange virus. That’s it, what to do, fate…
At 19, my spondylitis started. Of course, I was hunchbacked, the disease was to blame. I entered adult life: responsibilities, work, spondylitis flares. Who cares about posture anymore?
I had a hunchback all my life. It wasn’t my fault, of course. Really!? My spine and its muscles are attached to me. Why should I place the responsibility of my position outside myself?
2 years ago, looking at this photo, I realized that spondylitis was not to blame for my poor posture. I was 14 years old in this photo, the disease had not yet started. Neither my parents, nor the disease, nor the times, nor fate were to blame that at 50 I had the posture of a sleeping turtle. The responsibility was all mine. I am responsible for my posture, just as I am responsible for everything that happens in my life. I needed cervical spondylosis in addition to spondylitis to understand 😊.
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So I finally took action. Someone explained to me what the correct posture is, because it was a total unknown to me. I kept trying to straighten my shoulders, but it didn’t work, it hurt a lot. It took persistence and practice, working the muscles and continuous attention. Now, after 2 years, I still hunch over when I’m very tired or when I’m carrying a weight, but the correct posture doesn’t hurt anymore. The spine is still crooked, but the shoulders and neck are in the right place. I still have work to do with sitting on my desk, because that also depends on the glasses. You see, I still tend to blame something else 😊.
The point of this post is that nothing that happens to us is ever someone else’s fault. It is up to us to take the reins of our lives into our own hands and break out of victimhood. Coming out of victimization means that we come out of the victim-savior-aggressor triad, and thus we will have much healthier and authentic relationships. We will no longer ask others to save us, nor will we rush to save others, nor accuse them. We will be more understanding with other people if we understand what is happening to us.
November 15th
In the reels of the last few days where I brag about what I eat 😊, you noticed this pudding goodness. It’s a pumpkin pudding with nuts, without a bit of flour and without baking powder. It is relatively quick to make and can be kept in the fridge, covered, for several days. This way we can enjoy a piece for dessert, every day. It is good both hot and cold. For all fancy tastes.
November 16th
Lately, I’ve been uploading, almost daily, videos of what I eat for lunch. I called it “lunch”, although it would have been more correct to call it “the second meal of the day”. I have 2 substantial meals a day, breakfast at 7 a.m. and the “second meal of the day” at 2 p.m. And I have 2 more snacks, optional, that is, I don’t have to eat then, only if I feel the need.
I received a lot of comments like: “but the soup?”, or “it’s too little”. I have to admit, no one asked me: “cake every day?” 😊.
Each age has its own way of eating. Each condition has its own way of eating. Again, each gender (female or male) has its own way of eating. Each lifestyle, height, season, period of physical or intellectual demand… has its own way of eating. The intersection of all these variables results in personalized nutrition. I mean, we each have our own, personal way of eating. We should establish all these parameters and adjust our diet according to them.
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I am a 52-year-old woman, I am 1.50 m, an autoimmune disease, with a partially sedentary lifestyle, with an average intellectual activity, with a tendency to lose muscle mass. I’ve noticed that I feel best at 44kg (which means a BMI of 19.5) so I set my nutrients and kcal based on all of these factors. And to pleasantly tickle my taste buds 😊. I don’t sit with the scale and the calculator in my hand every day, I did that in the beginning, now I have learned to calculate eye-metric.
Many women complain that, after a certain age, the pounds begin to gather on their body, especially in the middle area, on the belly. They say: “but I haven’t changed anything in the way I eat, why am I gaining weight?”. Well, you’re gaining weight precisely because you haven’t changed anything in the way you eat. As we age, we should decrease the number of calories and redistribute nutrients. Any candy eaten is deposited now, the “factory” called metabolism gets lazy and makes faces, it no longer accepts anything.
Everyone needs to find a suitable diet, with which they feel good, especially in the case of a chronic disease, to have an optimal weight to maintain, not to be hungry, and which is tasty. They don’t have to do this militarily, deviations are allowed, but rarely. The “I don’t have time” thing can seriously sabotage you on the road to nutritional wellness.
In the picture I show you what a 52-year-old woman looks like, taking into account everything I listed in the text above. I’m just bragging 😊.
November 17th
I was sitting there thinking: what is the most important factor when it comes to losing weight and keeping it off? I think it’s the relationship with food.
So… what is your relationship with food?
Are you equal in this relationship, or do you let it take over you, command you what to do? Or maybe you’re like a dictator, you do everything perfectly, the nutrients perfectly balanced, the number of calories perfect. The food doesn’t move in front of you 😊.
Are you a loving partner who behaves well, respects and loves food, or do you neglect it: do you eat what you can, eat too much or too little?
Can you get away from your partner, the food, for a few hours or days without missing it? Or are you addicted to it?
Do you have an open relationship 😊, do you see others (alcohol, cigarettes, drugs)?
Do you know your partner well enough to have a harmonious relationship? How can you have a nice relationship with it if you don’t know what it contains (nutrients), what it can do (kcalories), if it can harm you (trans fats), if it snores (fries), if it swears (shaworma), and other attributes that can help or hurt the relationship?
In the relationship with food, as in all other relationships, love, respect, compassion and understanding are important. If you love, know and respect your partner, you can create a beautiful and lasting relationship.
And, just like in any relationship, it is necessary to have clearly stated and accepted boundaries. You don’t accept that food takes up all your space and time, and food doesn’t accept being neglected😊.
Do you have a healthy relationship with food?
November 18th
What is your opinion of yourself? Not what you say in your head, but your true opinion of yourself.
Look at your body, it knows better. Can’t you look at your body? Can’t you look in the mirror? You can’t look at a photo or video of yourself? That is because you are not ready to find out your true opinion of yourself. You don’t know who you are and you don’t want to find out yet.
If you still want to know, take a look. It’s not vanity, it’s self-knowledge.
Do you always keep your hands in front of you, as close to your body as possible, crossed, shoulders brought forward, legs together? It’s like you want to take up as little space as possible and defend yourself from an unseen enemy. “I don’t deserve to occupy a place. Others will find out and expel me. I defend myself, they want to attack me. Or find out who I am: a nobody.”
Or on the contrary, you always have your arms away from your body, your elbows pointing outward, your legs apart. You take up a lot of space. “Look how big I am! Let no one dare dispute that!”
Do you have a stiff body, immobilized joints, tense muscles? “Life is hard, the world is bad, no one can change my opinion. My way or the highway!”
Do you have a wobbly walk, trip often, don’t step on the whole sole, but more on the outside? “I don’t trust anyone. Not even myself.”
Be gentle with your body, it tells you who you think you are. I leave here an article in which I tell how I started to love my body.
November 20th
Yesterday was International Men’s Day. Even though many of us women didn’t know it, men have their day too.
I am sure that it was not for nothing that Men’s Day was established during the period of Scorpio. For men, things are either white or black, there are no shades of gray, salmon, turquoise, navy blue, or other strange colors that they can’t tell apart. If you ask them to buy the fabric softener in the pink bottle from the supermarket, they will surely bring you detergent in the orange bottle. And if they cook dinner, they will end up in the situation I described in the article below.
We love them for who they are, just as they love us and our immeasurable collection of scarves, shoes and purses. Happy Anniversary!
November 21st
There are still greens in the market, the cold allows them a little longer. What you see in the photo are the greens my family of 2 is eating this week.
I went to the market on Sunday, I chose very fresh greens, and when I got home, I packed them nicely, as you can see in the picture, in sealed bags. Stored in the refrigerator, in the vegetable compartment, some of them last for more than a week.
I paid 30 lei for these goodies. From them I will make salads, green sauces, I will have a leaf or two for breakfast or stews. They sit nicely in the fridge and wait for their turn. They are tasty, colorful, varied and full of vitamins and minerals.
What do you say, did I convince you to eat greens?
I leave here the article “20 herbs from which we can make salads”, maybe it will inspire you.
November 22nd
A quote attributed to the Dalai Lama says: “Be kind whenever possible. It’s always possible.”
Why are we not kind?
Because we don’t accept others, we don’t accept their “defects”. Why don’t we accept others? Because we don’t accept ourselves. Why don’t we accept ourselves? Because we don’t know ourselves, we don’t know what we are capable of. Why don’t we know ourselves? Because we are afraid of what we will find out. We are afraid to go down into our depths, into our darkness. We are afraid to reveal what we find there. So, we prefer to look outside ourselves and throw hate at others. We throw our trash on others. We can’t do it alone, and instead of asking for help, we point the finger: he’s bad, I’m good!
It’s not hard to be kind, you just have to understand the mechanism 😊. What it means to be really kind, I detailed in the article in the link.
November 24th
In recent years I have learned not to use “I can’t”. I replaced it with “it’s hard for me”. “I can’t” implies a finality, “it’s hard for me” implies a possibility. There is always a possibility, there is always a solution. Maybe it’s something we haven’t thought of yet, or maybe it’s something beyond our understanding right now.
We are what we think about ourselves. If we think we can’t, we’re right. If we think we can, we are right again.
If we believe there is a solution, it will appear, maybe not right now, the second we want it, but at the right time. The important thing is not to close our way to that solution with “I can’t”. That “I can’t” is actually an unconscious “I don’t want to”. I don’t want to find a solution because I’m too stubborn, too comfortable, too proud, or I feel good when I cry for pity. Or “I’m afraid”.
Do you think everything is possible?
November 27th
There are people who can give up sweets and sweet taste. For me, giving up sweets means giving up childhood, playing, the joy of being in front of a plate full of cookies or other goodies. It means self-imposed restrictions.
In my opinion, it does not help to give up sweets and sugar. On the contrary, it makes us more depressed and… sour😊.
But that doesn’t mean gorging ourselves on cakes, candies and cookies all the time.
Here’s my method for enjoying sweets without gaining weight or increasing inflammation in the body:
- Never eat store-bought sweets. Just made by my hand.
- I rigorously calculate the amount of sugar needed. Did you know that salt enhances sweet taste? I always put salt in sweets, and that way I can reduce the amount of sugar in them.
- I eat sweets as dessert after the main meal. Never any other part of the day.
- I put on my plate exactly the portion that I will eat at that meal. You’ve probably noticed this in my reels with my lunch. I don’t put the whole plateau of cookies in front of me, I put 2 cookies on a plate. That way I won’t be tempted to have another cookie.
- Sweets are the main source of carbohydrates in those meals. That is, if I have cookies, I don’t eat bread, pizza, rice, chickpeas, lentils, potatoes, or any other “heavy” source of carbohydrates at that meal.
This is how I enjoy sweet treats without gaining weight. That’s what I did with these rice paper rolls filled with plums and nuts. You have the recipe here.
November 28th
The causes that can trigger an autoimmune flare-up are multiple and difficult to control. From the obvious, such as stress, a tiring period, a virus, a change (of job, home, status, even a vacation, the change of season), to the chemical and hormonal changes in our body that we have no idea about, all of these can trigger longer or shorter, stronger or more bearable flare-ups.
Even now, after 34 years of ankylosing spondylitis, I don’t know exactly what triggers my flare-ups. During the first years of my illness, I was in a constant flare-up. Now, after I’ve been able to get rid of the pain and inflammation with the help of the gluten-free diet, I rarely have flare-ups. Sometimes I recognize the trigger. Like for example the dramatic hormonal change at the beginning of menopause, entering the cold season, a virus or an accidental contamination with gluten. Other times I have no idea what triggers my flares. But I’ve learned to recognize the early signs of a flare, and so take action before it gets too painful.
I read somewhere, a while ago, the expression “the mind lies to us”. I didn’t understand back then what it meant. Lately, though, I’ve been reading more about the connection between autoimmune diseases and psychological disorders. Thus, I began to perceive the first warning sign of a flare: a slightly depressed state. A slightly anxious perception of reality. The joy of the first moments of the day disappears, I need some effort not to look at the negative side of reality. All kinds of pessimistic reflections appear in my mind, everything seems useless and too tiring. I have learned to recognize this state of mind, which appears for no apparent reason, and to associate it with the first signs of inflammation. With the beginning of a flare-up.
November 29th
I wrote in yesterday’s post how to recognize the onset of a flare of spondylitis. That slight mix of depression, anxiety, “I’m not in the mood today”, “I’m too tired to deal with this”. Most of the time this state takes me by surprise. I don’t want to take it into account, I, like everyone, have things to do, places to go and tasks to complete. But the disease does not ask you: “do you have time to lie down today? Or next week?” There is no room for negotiation. If you insist on ignoring her, she also insists, she immediately calms you from the rush of industriousness. So… I need rest, hot baths, teas, Netflix, anti-inflammatories and what else can help me.
Many of you have told me that I am strong. Real power lies in knowing the difference between times to fight and times to let it go. I wrote an article in which I talk about this “power” of mine, the “The personal power decalogue“.
These are the 10 reasons why I am strong. I can’t lift a 10kg backpack and sometimes I can’t open a jar lid, but I’m strong in other ways. You will see, self-irony is one of my superpowers.
