I was lucky to grow up in a very large and very poor family in rural Idaho. Of course, I didn’t realize it at the time, but because of this, we ate what we could raise and/or grow on the 2 acre lot my parents rented. Since all of our food was raised naturally, I have been really blessed with strong bones, teeth, and resistance to disease.
My mother had a strong sense of wanting to be healthy, but of course since it was mostly out of necessity that she baked bread, toiled in a garden, canned fruit and froze vegetables, raised beef, chicken and rabbits, and milked a cow, once her finances improved we moved away from our small family homestead and bought a home. At the same time, our diet changed too. Nothing extremely unhealthy according to popular health, but our attempts to be healthy were not backed by sound principles.
For example, the home baked white bread was replaced by cheap store bought brown bread that was not actually whole wheat, home made butter was replaced with margarine which could be cheaply bought at .30 per pound, fresh milk replaced with pasteurized homogenized milk, and home grown vegetables were replaced with the bagged frozen kind. We still kept a garden, but it was smaller and not as heavily relied upon. My mother had started working, so time as well as cost was now factored in, resulting in a lot of pasta dinners.
I remember being very health conscious as a teenager, but as I moved out of the house and went to college, (I didn’t know it at the time) I was really very uneducated when it came to my own health. I believe that it was because of my early nutritional history that I never had to worry about my weight, and I was active in sports, so I was very fit in college I lived on what could be easily stored in a small shared refrigerator and practically no freezer. This meant mostly canned food and things that could last on a shelf. I tried to be healthy, but I was on a tight budget and all I had to go on was the food pyramid and popular medical beliefs. This got me by for a few years before I really noticed anything.
By then I was married and pregnant with MonkeyGirl my first child (she is now 13). My health took a dive. I gained nearly 50 pounds in a very short time, so I decided that the first time in my life I should diet. So I cut out fat, ate lots of crackers and salad. I gained even more weight. I had my second child (BrainBoy 10), and then even with regular exercise I was soon over 200 pounds. I threw myself into finishing school and then my work as a high school teacher, but I was tired all the time and I wasn’t getting any better. I now weighed too much to run and had to give it up. I finally went and had the doctor test me for a thyroid disorder.
My periods became erratic and I had started having hot flashes and I suffered from Insomnia and fatigue. The Doctor condescendingly told me I was fine and I should just lose weight. Easy for him to say. He obviously never had a weight problem in his whole life. I gave up on any hope of improved health. After teaching another two years, I resigned my post because I couldn’t handle the stress of teaching and trying to be a mom at the same time, along with the added pressure of my poor health. I woke up every morning wishing I could just die because the thought of living for the rest of my life feeling the way I did was too overwhelming.
Things changed when I was at the library looking at a discarded book sale. I ran across a book called Calories Don’t Count by a nutritional doctor who worked with weight loss patients and research (I no longer remember his name, and searches for this book online were fruitless). The title was somewhat misleading as it was mostly about fats and how they impact weight loss (I imagine that was the creative work of his publicist) but the idea that fats were essential in health and weight loss was a new idea for me. I was desperate, so I began choking down tablespoonfuls of cold pressed safflower oil (as per the books suggestion for its high content of fatty acids) and the first night I was overcome with a great surge of energy and was up half the night cleaning. (LOL)
My husband and family thought I had gone cuckoo (drinking vegetable oil) but I lost weight for the first time in several years, my nails and hair regained their shine and a severe skin irritation on my scalp that I had been dealing with for several years which made my head itch constantly and caused me to shed and caused scabs to form on my head went away completely within a month. This experiment is what first woke me up to the possibility that popular nutrition as we had been taught was based on untrue principles.
I went on from that point to read more in other sources about the health benefits of flax seed oil and added this to my daily regime along with organic whole wheat berries soaked on low heat in the oven each night. At this time I had stopped having periods completely and was having regular hot flashes and night sweats. BrainBoy was nearly five by this time, and I had given up on having any more children. after about two months on 2 Tbsp of flax seed oil a day I started having periods again and ended up quite suddenly pregnant! (I read more later and discovered that flax seed oil is a tonic for the female reproductive system!)
As I read more about healthy fats and nutrition, and combined that with knowledge I was gaining about herbs through my sister, HerbalMom who had begun studying herbs when she decided that she wanted more control of her own health and birth experiences, I began to realize that all of my life I had allowed myself to become dependent on ideas about health that were false even though I belong to a faith that encourages personal study and independence. I had made the mistake of assuming that the medical world had my best interests at heart. I knew better, but I hadn’t taken the initiative to study things out for myself and to educate myself in a very crucial area — my own health!
I didn’t get skinny, but for the first time in years I was feeling better — more energetic and less depressed. My strength was returning to my muscles and I could do more without getting tired. Soon we added JackJack to our family, and with this child, I really needed that added energy! With every small improvement have come added benefits, and my husband began to take notice. Now he doesn’t laugh at me quite so much and even asks me to find herbal remedies for this or the other when he isn’t feeling well. I really wanted a home birth with JackJack, but my husband (IronMan) wasn’t quite ready to take this step. It wasn’t until two years later when LittleBee, our fourth child, came along during a time when we had no health insurance. I was able to convince my husband that it would save us a considerable amount of money and that I would get a midwife. I also paid airfare for my sister to come out and help with the event.
It was an awesome experience, and all of my children were there for the birth which I think was an eye opening and beautiful experience for all of them. (They treat her with a special reverence that I have not seen among my children before) Even my four year old remembers it with a sense of awe. His only questions were about how she got in there to begin with! LOL If I had known birth experiences could be that wonderful, I would have never stepped inside of a hospital for the birth of any of my children! Even with an epidural, I was much more uncomfortable at the hospital than I was even during the hardest part of labor in the birthing tub!
Even our mother who was skeptical at first about fats, herbal remedies, and home childbirth is now educating herself about her own health, and friends and neighbors come to us for help with their illnesses. Because I enjoy seeing others benefit from being knowledgeable about these issues, along with my love for writing, has inspired me to start this website. I wanted to share the knowledge I have gained over the years, and hopefully save my readers some time on their own journey to knowledge and independence. Just because a doctor says you have to suffer because they can’t help you doesn’t mean it’s true . . . so read, study, and learn to take personal responsibility for your own health without simply taking someone else’s word for it!