Chapter 2 - SH down for the count

I'd like this blog to inspire anyone who reads it to realize the power of lifestyle changes to improve your health, your mood, your mind, and even your Spirit! It's just the stuff I've seen in action, and it started with SH. Each weekend I will try to post another "chapter" of my pamphlet and during the week, there will be a smattering of things from recipes to family moments.

Since Jan 2005, all 4 of us in our little sprouting family have suffered from different ailments. All common ailments, really, but unacceptable when you know what good health feels like. I spent my 20s never hardly even getting a cold, never having to stop plans due to being under the weather, just getting to seize each day to its fullest. This began to end around Jan 2005 when the started after StudHusband did not treat a strep throat infection.

Actually, it started before that. Years of wrong eating and other toxic practices kept building up until the final straw in Nov, 2004 began to add the final effects. There's only so much the liver can handle before it is filled and can't do it's job too well. In Nov, SH decided my $500/month expenditure on food was obviously too much and that he would masterfully show me how to spend quite a bit less. For 2 months in a row, he performed his magical shopping prowess and spent about half of what I had been spending. He stuffed our fridge and freezer full of whatever he found in Canned Food Outlet - suddenly my freezer contained corn dogs, my cabinets were stocked with Top Ramen and Mac 'n Cheese. The fruit bowl was brimming with 2 apples and a banana and the veggie draw in the fridge contained a cucumber.

Welcome to the SAD diet. The Standard American Diet. It's cheap, in the short run. The combination of chemically laden food, high sugar, low vegtables, and the Holiday Season onslaught of sugar meant that his body was finally done. It could no longer handle another thing. So the first sign of it's inability to fight back was his contraction of strep. Strep is around us all the time, and it's certainly around SH all the time - he's a TEACHER!! But this year, his body gave in. He didn't deal with the strep throat and then his body erupted in a full body rash that we thought was scarlet Fever. It actually was a full body explosion of psoriasis. I am talking every inch of his body itched and burned in an inflamed rash like explosion.

He went from StudHusband to non-functioning husband. Doctors said what they always say, "here's some drugs, but be warned, you will never get rid of this. This is the new you". They had him on a slippery drug path of needing stronger and stronger drugs to try to help him cope. Eventually, he'd be needing a weekly visit to the dermatologist for light therapy. Then he would need drugs so strong that he'd need monthly liver biopsies. So, therapy would clearly shorten his life, even though psoriasis itself wouldn't. Now we were spending hundreds and hundreds of dollars on prescription strength creams and doctor visits per month.

He did use some low level steroid creams in the beginning just to survive until his internal cleanup could take effect. This became our focus. He discovered Dr. Pagano's work. A chiropracter on the east coast who has devoted his practice to tough psoriasis/excema cases. With few exceptions, what he teaches works, but it's not easy.

His book in detail describes the importance of cleaning up the internal systems of the body, and of course, despite what the doctors said that food doesn't matter, food is the key. In Jan the rash first showed up, by June we were in Cape Cod and StudHusband was returned to his rightful throne of studness - no signs of psoriasis, the disease that dermatologists assured him was incurable and not related to what he was eating. The skin is one of the body's many mechanisms for ridding the body of toxins. Those that suffer with psoriasis or excema simply have a body that is stressed and using the skin as a way to get what it can out of the body. It's the red flag that something is wrong. Many of us don't have this little warning system. My body never seems to use my skin as a signal to me - it suffers in total silence. Really StudHusband
is blessed to have this little red flag system - any time he starts to get a little toxic, his body will develop a little spot now of psoriasis. He just gets a little stricter on what he's eating and it disappears quickly.

Tune in later this week for details of what we did. Beneficial for so many problems that we all face, not just skin issues...including reducing the number of pesky colds you might suffer from.

Since StudHusband did the internal cleansing that year, he has had maybe 1 tiny little cold. The years of bronchitis (12 years straight of bronchitis every year) are gone and his system is strong enough now to keep him going hard all year, despite going to work in a giant germ cesspool. We do spend $800 to $1200 on food but hardly ever see a doctor. The net result is more money than we have had in years as we don't have the huge medical drain on our budget any longer.