Why Don’t I Feel Better Yet?

So you have done all the right things—rested, drank ridiculous amounts of healthy fluids, taken your gemmos, even made yourself miso soup—and yet you STILL feel terrible. What’s the deal? Or maybe your problem is slightly different. It’s like this… you seriously just got over the last virus and now three weeks later here you are waking up with a sore throat AGAIN! Why is this happening?

The answers to both of these questions are timely and important. This year’s flu season has been a particularly rough one, so I have been asked these quite often. Here’s my response.

The answer to the first situation lies in your body’s ability to eliminate. Yes, I know, there is that word again, but compromised elimination is never more obvious than when acute inflammation symptoms are present and the body can’t seem to clear them out. Don’t get me wrong, even healthy people get sick with flus and colds now and then. It’s when illnesses linger more than a few days or a week, THAT’S when you should start to ask yourself, “What else is going on here?”

In a healthy body the lymphatic system (which is the most valuable player on your immune team) moves that inflammation downwards to deliver it to the bowels and kidneys to eliminate. If the bowels and kidneys are already stressed and strained—compromised in any way from your daily life—they aren’t going to be able to manage this extra flu duty so well. How will you know they aren’t happy and up for the job? For one, your lower back will ache and possibly the rest of your body as well. Your bowels will show their displeasure with any combination of bloating, constipation or urgent loose stools (in order to empty acids quickly). When illness strikes it only intensifies what is already an inflamed and overtaxed system. That’s why it takes so long to get well.

What to do? This is when a new gemmotherapy protocol or second homeopathic remedy can be called on to give more support while you are still in this acute state. What’s critical here is to notice that your elimination organs are struggling so you can get extra support early before a secondary infection takes hold in your lungs. Why the lungs? When the kidneys and bowels are compromised, the lungs are the body’s next line of defense to help clean up the inflammation. When the coughing starts, you can be sure your lungs are being pulled into the game and you could be on your way to even more unhappiness.

If you know you are prone to this pattern of lengthy colds and viruses, you will want to take the steps—when you are not in an acute state—to do some clean up work on your terrain, which I discuss below.

Now what about those of you who seem to go from one virus to another during the season? Like I hinted at in the last post, this is an issue of terrain. Dr. Claude Bernard, a 19th century French physiologist and contemporary of Louis Pasteur, introduced the theory of “terrain” debating Pasteur’s germ theory. Bernard believed that the body becomes susceptible to infectious agents only if the internal balance is disturbed. You can read more about their debate here. Along with my homeopath colleagues internationally, I support Bernard’s theory. The truth of the matter is we are exposed to countless germs day in and day out. It’s not the germ that makes us ill it is our susceptibility to illness (our terrain).

So what can be done? We simply need to clean that terrain. Today we call that detoxing. But I am not talking about a 3 day juice cleanse here. (If only it was so easy!) You need a systematic plan to clean your organs, beginning with those most directly involved with elimination. The most gentle yet effective approach is to adopt a diet filled with alkaline foods and a daily gemmotherapy protocol. These two simple steps promote and support lymphatic drainage which in turn helps your body properly and effectively eliminate toxins and wastes.

I hope this helps shed some light on what’s going on with your body’s processes and why you may not be getting the response you expect. If this sparks other questions for you and you’d like to know more, please be sure to ask!