Dancing with life & death

Do you know someone, maybe you yourself, who has a difficult chronic illness? Like cancer. Something that’s labeled “incurable”? Something that forces you to consider your mortality. Something that jumps in your face as “death is on its way.”

I’ve gotten to dance with death a few times in this lifetime. Nothing like a diagnosis of type 1 diabetes at age 16, followed by three different breast cancer diagnoses starting at age 39. Plus two suicide attempts, both of which I was surprised I survived. 

These events collectively cause me to deeply examine how I show up in my life. Nearly daily, I ask myself if I’m spending my time doing things I consider worth doing. If my answer to this question is, “No,” I then immediately change what I am doing and shift to doing something I value and consider worth doing.

In addition to being of service at my job, helping people with their LinkedIn profiles, writing, running, swimming, riding my bike, volunteering, and hanging out with good friends, another activity worth spending time on in my world is HEALING. 

I imagine that cancer and diabetes and all the trauma I have survived in this lifetime happened to me because there is something my soul wants to learn in this particular life. I am open to learning.

A few weeks ago, in my good news blog, I told you about a book I’ve been reading and integrating into my daily life as I work to heal my mind, body and soul as much as I can. 

Here’s what I wrote about this book.

I’ve been fine-tuning the Four Pillars of Health as described in detail by author Jeffrey Rediger, M.D. in his book Cured: Strengthen Your Immune System and Heal Your Life. 

Dr. Rediger studied spontaneous remission from all kinds of off the charts incurable diseases, like cancer, for 17 years. He then figured out the four things all of them had in common. One of the most powerful healing books I’ve ever read. I even gave a copy of this book to my oncologist on my last visit with her.  

The Four Pillars of Health, as described by Dr. Rediger, are the four things all the people who cured their incurable diseases did. The people found their own ways to do these four things, but they all did these four things. 

Here are The Four Pillars of Health and how I’m working my way through them.

I share with you to inspire and motivate you too to give these four pillars of health a chance. Perhaps you and I can cure our incurable diseases. If nothing else, I believe I am learning how to value every day I have to be alive in this body this lifetime around. 

The Four Pillars of Health

Pillar One: Healing your immune system

Immediately I wondered what it means to “heal your immune system?” Reading this section of the book, I learned a lot about the immune system. I’m not a scientist and I was never that skilled at remembering information about biology, so what I can tell you about this part of the book is please, read it.

Dr. Rediger tells great stories about the history of medicine and the dangers of antibiotics. Nothing is 100% good or 100% bad. He also describes how important our microbiome is to our immune system. He also describes how fevers can help the immune system. I’m telling you, this part of the book is GOOD.   

Our immune system is nothing short of amazing. Along with the nervous system, it’s the most complex system of the human body, and that’s saying a lot.

One thing that especially stands out after reading this part of the book is that our minds can and do talk to our immune system. Let that sink in for a moment. 

I’ve known this for a while. In my 20’s, I figured out if I stopped talking or thinking about getting the flu or a cold, I actually got sick quite a bit less than everyone around me. I learned during this time to focus on how healthy I felt, how rejuvenated I felt after a solid night of sleep and after eating healthy food. To this day, I get the flu or a cold almost never. Turns out focusing on my health and not on getting sick does pay off. 

Along those lines, I have been going to acupuncture nearly weekly since I was 26, that’s more than 34 years of consistent acupuncture. I know all that acupuncture has helped my immune system. 

Additionally, as I was launched again into the cancer world in October 2023 with this last round of cancer, I started taking a few key supplements, all designed to support/help the immune system and reduce inflammation. I did my own research to make sure these particular supplements are from reputable companies and the supplements have a good track record. 

For the record, I get zero kickback for telling you about these products. These are the things I am taking because I think they are helping me and my immune system. Maybe it’s the placebo effect in high gear.

In particular, I take beta-glucan 500 once a day from Better Way Heath. There are other companies that make beta-glucan, and maybe they’re okay. My research led me to Better Way Health. They can be trusted. I take astaxanthin twice a day from a company called AX3. Again, they are a company I investigated. I trust them. I take two capsules of moringa leaf from a company called Organic India. Plus I take a mix of Chinese herbs daily that my acupuncturist makes specifically for me.  

Pillar Two: Healing your nutrition

Having type 1 diabetes and a mother who was a nutritionist in the 1970’s and who taught me and my siblings how to grow fresh food in the garden and cook it into healthy meals has served me well. I love finding new-to-me healthy recipes every month and cooking them. I almost never eat out and I eat almost zero processed food. Turns out that is VERY good for health. 

For those who have read my book Extreme Healing: Reclaim Your Life + Learn to Love Your Body, you know that I’ve been obsessed about healthy eating since my second cancer diagnosis in 2010. I gave up gluten (turns out I have celiac disease), meat, most dairy, and nearly all sugar. I’ve stuck to this diet for more than 15 years. I love eating this way and intend to stick with it. I feel good when I eat this way. 

I also have made a point of having close friends who care deeply about eating healthy. I’m part of a daily texting chain of a group of five of us, and several times a week we text about the food we are eating. It’s affirming and reminds me, and all of us, to keep making healthy choices about what we are eating. 

Turns out the food industry keeps trying to make our food, which much of it is processed galore, taste better. They keep adding things that are darn right dangerous and VERY unhealthy. 

There’s an amazing free app where you can scan any food label and learn how healthy that food is or is not. It’s called Yuka. I’ve been using it for a few weeks and I’ve made some different choices about items I’ve purchased at Trader Joe’s based on what I’ve learned about various additives. Turns out even organic processed items are NOT GOOD. 

Have you taken a close look at your daily nutrition? If not, consider one thing you could change/adjust/improve TODAY. And DO IT. 

Please, your health is worth it. YOU are worth it. And, chances are good you will immediately feel better. Healthy food is the best medicine.  

Pillar Three: Healing your stress response

This pillar I thought I was pretty good with, mostly because I’ve had a daily meditation practice for more than 25 years. Turns out, upon closer examination, maybe not. 

When one has had as much early childhood trauma as I have had, my body is often in a state of fight, flight or freeze. In other words, my sympathetic nervous system is overly active. This happens without me realizing it. It’s a near automatic response to any stress, even small stress, in my life. This sort of automatic response is not healthy for the body. 

Turns out multiple times a day I hold my breath, clench my hands into fists, slightly hunch my shoulders. All of which keeps my body pumping too much cortisol into my system, which causes chronic inflammation which creates an unhealthy breeding ground for many not good things, like cancer. 

In working with my wonderful therapist, we’ve been helping me learn how to catch myself holding my breath, catch myself clenching my body, catch myself tensing in fight, flight or freeze. To help, I’ve been working on my exhalations. 

I use the free app called Insight Timer and I’ve started doing a few different vagus nerve meditations. Here’s one I really like. 

Here’s an excellent article about the power of deeper, slower exhalations and how that’s a vagus nerve hack. My writing colleague and psychologist Abby Medcalf, PhD shared this article with me, as I’m now sharing it with you. Turns out I need such a daily hack. When you “hack your vagus nerve” you activate your parasympathetic nervous system which is responsible for the “rest and digest” response which promotes relaxation and conserving energy. The parasympathetic nervous system helps counteract and balance out the sympathetic nervous system. 

Inch by inch, day by day, I’m making progress on healing my response to stress. I’m practicing slowing everything down. By slowing down, I give my body and my nervous system a chance to assess and notice if I’m safe or if I need to fight, flee or freeze. Very rarely am I in danger now. That’s helping me heal and reclaim my nervous system. 

What about you? How’s your response to stress? Could you do some healing work on this? Please let me know. Let’s support each other. 

Pillar Four: Healing your identity

When I started reading this part of the book, I was very curious. I wrote about identity in Extreme Healing: Reclaim Your Life + Learn to Love Your Body. I spent many years claiming the identity of “athlete” instead of the identity of “victim of diabetes and cancer.” Thus, I thought maybe I didn’t have any more to heal in this realm.

Once again, I’m grateful I’m committed to continuous learning. Even on topics I think I’ve mastered. I kept reading. On page 255, Dr. Rediger writes, “I was reminded of the teaching that the body is thought to be a metaphor for something that the deeper mind is trying to learn.” 

This resonated. This was why I sought out a new therapist who was skilled in chronic illness, hospice and preparing for death. To be clear, preparing for death for me means being very clear about what is valuable about living and being alive. 

I realized that cancer needed and wanted me to pay attention. My body couldn’t get my attention any other way. I realized I WANT to pay attention.  Since this third cancer diagnosis, I’m paying very close attention.

In this section of the book, Dr. Rediger described something we all have, the default mode network (DMN) on page 268. He goes on to say, “This is a scientific term for a collection of loosely connected regions of the brain, both older structures deep in the brain and newer ones in the cerebral cortex, which are activated, or light up, when you engage in certain categories of thinking.” He tells us that he uses the term “light up” because that’s what it looks like on an fMRI – areas of the brain glow bright out of the silvery gray like when you blow on embers in a fire.

There are things we do over and over again that deepen the grooves of the DMN. And if you are someone who has had a lot of trauma and stress in your life, you might be reinforcing pathways in your DMN of negative beliefs and limitations. It could be that these beliefs and pathways could be preventing you or me from healing, or it could be making me sick from cancer over and over and again.

This section of the book REALLY caught my attention. I have read and reread this section many times. I’ve underlined many sentences and added stars and exclamation points. I am willing to disrupt my DMN.

To do that, I had to first explore, what IS my default mode network? I’m not entirely sure yet. I have taken to talking to my parts using the IFS method, using meditations on Insight Timer. I am making a concerted effort to listen and witness myself during my daily meditations. Slowly I am peeling back the layers of who I see myself as and the deep often sub or unconscious stories I have been telling myself about myself. The discovery process is amazing. 

Thanks for reading to the end of this very long post. I appreciate it. 

Please tell me about yourself. 

Telling each other a bit of our stories is part of how we heal. How is it for you to learn about these Four Pillars of Health? How are you doing with them? Do you have insights on your default mode network? Do you have ideas about how you can heal your identity? Please let me know!

With love always and may we all live well for all the days we have to live,

Mari

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