Wellness

Three summers ago ( I think?) during peak period in the bistro and accommodation, I broke my toe. It was the middle toe. At the time, I consulted doctor google, pretty sure it was broken, massively bruised and even bleeding and split open. But there’s not much you can do for a broken toe, we were flat out and I couldn’t take the time off work so I soldiered on and eventually my ‘Shrek toe’, as my husband called it, got better.

Two winters ago, the pain was unbearable. Cramping, hurt to stand, hurt to walk, to the doctor for scans and advice. The toe was osteoarthritic.

The choices at the time were pain relief, with some stronger options than just Panadol and Nurofen. I’m not a fan of too much normal over-the-counter pain relief, leads to bad digestion, constipation, and then onto a general feeling of just feeling shit that could go on further mentally. We know how these things work.

Or second choice, look at cortisone injections. Frequent, repeated injections can weaken local tissues or lead to further cartilage breakdown, leading to surgery and can leave you with insomnia (good sleep is crucial for good health), so who knows where that option could lead.

Anyway, I looked into my options, and then I left it at over-the-counter pain relief when I was desperate and managed to have a few weeks in the heat in Queensland, and that relieved the pain that year.

So it’s safe to say I don’t look forward to winter.

At the start of this year, I decided to do a parasite cleanse, not that I was too worried about what was in my body, but thought it wouldn’t hurt. It was all natural ingredients, so no harm could be done.

So for a few weeks I added oregano oil, black walnut hull, wormwood, salt bush and lavender tea, pumpkin seeds and generally just ate pretty well with lots of fresh fruit and veg. I guess my normal diet tidied up a bit and a few herbs were added in.

And my foot healed. I have had no pain all winter. None. The blossoms are on the trees I feel like I have made it through winter painlessly. And another little nodule thing on my finger has also disappeared.

Call it hippy bullshit if you want, or is that a massive coincidence? Is arthritis little parasites in the broken bit of my toe? Or was it just all the anti-inflammatory ingredients that I consumed that took away the inflammation and the pain? Whatever, it worked, and I’ll never know why. In the early 1900s they were still practising natural healing at the “doctor schools” – was it called medicine back then?- until the money and corporations took it all over and replaced it with money-making medicines. And they do make money, trillions and trillions and nothing is ever really healed this is fact. In fact, we are seeing more and more side effects of medication that are worse than the illness that it was originally prescribed to help with. In our courts right here in sleepy little Hobart, misdiagnosis and prescriptions for ADHD causing OCD so the judge concluded the drug was at fault.

It brings me back to that core message I have shared for years. We need to bring natural/alternative health back (I don’t like the word alternative as some of the practices have been around for 50,000 years not just a few hundred like modern medicine). The knowledge from our first people looking after the land and themselves. I am not suggesting we work against medicine. If I am in a car accident, I’ll prefer a surgeon, not an aromatherapist. But alongside it, to alleviate the pressure on the health system. Cooking your food and eating a real food diet is a good start. Doing that, you are already eating a variety of prebiotics, probiotics, bone broth and herbs and spices that your gut needs for your physical and mental health (these don’t need to be expensive labelled jars and capsules).

We read this week that the emergency department is overwhelmed again. We will never afford our current health system as it is, when the treatments create more problems (and expenses) and nothing is ever healed.

15 or 20 years ago, if I suggested that I thought antidepressants were dished out too easily, I would have been shot down. But the narrative has gently moved over the years, and now it’s accepted that ‘they don’t work for everyone’ – because science? Sorry, doesn’t sound very scientific to me. And acknowledged that antidepressants have been wrongly prescribed after a misdiagnosis in some cases, for example menopause and ADHD, and that the diagnosis and medications have sent people to psych wards. Every time I read of a suicide or murder where mental illness is blamed, I will now wonder whether it is the illness or the treatment (prescriptions) that has contributed, don’t you?

We are fucked, though, when the premier of the state we live in believes that wine (a toxic, addictive drug) should be part of a wellness hub. It’s just so disappointing: we read “wellness hub” and get all excited, but it’s not. It’s just bullshit. How did we get here? (see my previous post) Even though he was in charge when a 20-year preventive health strategy called alcohol out as a major contributor to poor health. And after a man got let off child sex offence charges due to a misdiagnosis and the wrong meds prescribed, our government chooses to retrain 50 doctors(12 hours of training is what I found- even though the trained psychiatrists misdiagnosed) to diagnose and prescribe the meds quicker. Why don’t we learn. I would hate to think. It just gets worse and worse every year.

Two recently released books I read by New York Times bestselling authors have mentioned prescribed drug harm. So I think we are about to see a lot more of it. Yes, the books are fiction, but there are always important messages in fiction books (why we write them- speaking of which, I have finished my first fiction novel 🎉, currently in the agents’ and publishers’ slush pile).

Health is not access to more medication, and wellness isn’t sitting around drinking wine.