Getting back to health
Last weekend was one of our busiest weekends, almost on par with the weekend after just having given birth to my boys 😍. We had our first market stall on Saturday and an open house on Sunday for Sustainable House Day with around 150 visitors.
We (the whole family) spent the following week being sick, quite sick. Throughout the week, we had lots of detox bath, high dose vitamin C, we brewed and sipped away our immune boosting herbal tea, chewed raw garlic and simply rested. A week on, we are now in a much better place and are recovering well.
I remember just under two years ago, the whole family went through a very rough patch. We battled 6 severe flu in 6 months and I don’t remember a day of not having at least one of us being sick.
At our worst, our elder son had consistent temperature soaring over 40 degrees for 6 days and the rest of the family followed suite. At that time, we didn’t know what to do apart from administering panadol when temperature soared over 40 degrees.
We didn’t have the wealth of knowledge we have today on how to support our body and our immune system fighting off diseases. Even though we had started our journey to an organic lifestyle, with organic diet and organic everything, we didn’t really understand how our body works and how our immune system works. We were left at the mercy of our already immune compromised body to fight off each sickness, unsupported. It was a very long and tough journey and I never want to go through that again.
I remember the time when for several days I had coughing fits and so many times, coughed until I almost passed out as I couldn’t catch my breath. Also at that time, my milk supply completely dried up as I was too sick to make any milk. My 4-month-old at the time, who would not take the bottle almost ended up being in the hospital, very dehydrated. Ambulance was called at one point. I ended up sending my husband who at the time had over 40 degrees fever, for a long drive to the city during peak hour traffic to pick up a Supplementary Nursing System (SNS) just so I could feed our child.
And our child spent the following 9 months feeding from the SNS, and some of you would have seen how we had to resolve to attaching the SNS tube to his dummy so we could drip milk in drop by drop while he slept. A 100ml feed took 1 hour. 😱
At that time, I reached my breaking point and knew something drastic had to change, and change for good. We couldn’t continue living like this. Everything means nothing when our health is compromised. And I couldn’t bear seeing both our babies suffer anymore.
I knew GAPS diet would be a big game changer I had seen great improvement to my health when I was on that diet previously. Thanks to my amazing naturopath at the time who started me on the GAPS journey. ❤ However, I could only maintain the diet for 3 months as the rest of my family were not on the same journey. It was too hard to do it on my own.
In June 2018, we found Christina Matthewson, a naturopath, GAPS practitioner, iridiologist, herbalist, personal coach, business coach etc. We started the GAPS diet as a family and were carefully coached on each stage of the diet.
Through our relationship with Christina, we have since learnt so so so much more about natural medicine, how to support our body heal and fight diseases. How to rebuild our health from scratch.
The journey of getting back to health is a very tough one, because there is simply no shortcut. We have to undo so many years of neglect and damage we did to our health. The processed and inflammatory food we ate, the polluted water (flouride and heavy metals) we drank from unfiltered tap, the toxic skincare and personal care products we slap on all over our body, the sedentary lifestyle we lived, the many rounds of antibiotics we took, the toxins leached out from the plastic bottles we drank out of, the stress we live in, the EMF exposure, the disconnect from earth, the exposure to toxic off-gas from seemingly harmless furnishing, carpet, mattresses, pillows, the list goes on.
I have to say, 15 months on since we started our health journey, we are in a much better place. We are stronger, healthier and happier. The journey does not end here however, to live healthy and sustainably, it needs a lifetime of commitment. And as importantly, it needs knowledge and understanding of how body works. What is good for our body and what is not. It took us a lot of trials and errors and endless hours of research as well as coaching by our naturopath to get to where we are today.
We want to share our experience and our learnings throughout the years with you. Our goal is to inspire others to live healthily, simply and sustainably, as nature intended.
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Have a great day! 🤗
