Listening to your body
Over the past couple years, I’ve gotten very good at listening to my body. I just want to preface this and say I’m not a doctor, but I am very intuitive with my body and I believe all humans are. If you start teaching yourself how to listen to it, it will tell you a lot. Some stuff shared in this might be gross or personal so sorry in advance, but I’m hoping it might give you insight on how to read the clues your own body is telling you.
When I was in elementary school, I started getting stomach aches after I would drink cows milk. I also got super bad stomach aches after I would eat bananas. I took an allergy test back then and turned out that I was allergic to whey. But bananas didn’t show up. So I stopped eating diary, but I would cheat a little bit and eat pizza at a friends house if they had it. It would also make me fart, and they smelt pretty bad. I also stopped eating anything involving bananas, I hated the taste and texture of them so that was easy. What I’m trying to say is that, even though bananas didn’t show up on my allergy test, my body was still telling me that they were not right for my body.
Fast forward to now. I have been living with my mom for the past couple years and the environment is very clean here. There’s little to none endocrine disruptors here (fragrances, toxic chemicals, etc) and we eat very clean (whole foods, lots of protein, and vegetables and fruit.) I heard a quote the other day from a health and wellness influencer and he said “A healthy body is a sensitive body.” And I have never heard anything more true in my life. The healthier I am, the more my body tells me “Nope, don’t eat that” or “Something in this house isn’t good for me.”
One thing I’ve learned from my body, is that anytime I eat refined sugar whether it’s in a dessert someone made me or in the kombucha I made, I get constipated a couple days later and start farting like 30 min after I eat it, and it sucks. I hate it so much because I want to have a healthy gut, but I know every time I eat sugar I have to start all over. So now whenever I bake, I use unrefined sugar like coconut sugar. I still need to lower my sugar intake, but humans aren’t supposed to eat sugar and everyone eating it is probably affected by it some way. I use to not get constipated by it when my body wasn’t as healthy and I would poop fine, but then again “a healthy body, is a sensitive body.” If you’re curious to see if you are affected by sugar or anything, don’t eat it for like a week, and then reintroduce it back into your diet, and see if anything happens to your body like 30 minutes after you eat it and check your poop the following days.
I clean houses for a living, and it’s so interesting because when I spend four hours at someones house cleaning, I can tell if there’s something in the house that my body doesn’t like. One house I go to, after like an hour of being there, my eyes start feeling puffy and I blink them more. I still don’t know what it’s from, but my body doesn’t like it. Another house I go to, my nose will start running, and my eyes feel weird, and if they have lots of air freshener plugged in, I’ll get a headache. I know all those are caused by the candles and air fresheners. And then there’s some houses where by body doesn’t react at all.
A friend of mine gave me some raw milk to try the other week, and I tried probably 1/8 tsp of it. I knew my body would tell me if it wasn’t good for me with the smallest amount and I didn’t want to risk damaging my immune system by taking a big gulp. Sure enough, the 1/8 tsp of raw milk was enough for my body to tell me “Dude you’re allergic to whey, this isn’t good for us” but I thought that maybe with all the bacteria in it, it was what my body needed to digest the whey. But my throat got more mucissy than normal, so I got the message.
Anytime I burp, sneeze, fart, have back pain, or tummy pain, I take a mental note and think back to what the last thing I ate was. Your body is always talking to you. I believe humans were made perfect, just like all the animals on the planet, but why are we (and dogs and cats) the only ones who suffer illnesses, and so much more? Does your body get jittering after coffee? Probably shouldn’t be drinking it. I feel like humans just keep repeating patterns that they know aren’t good for us but we do them anyway (I’m guilty of this.) Another way to know if your body is telling you something, look at your skin. I am reading a book called “Younger Skin Starts In Your Gut” by Dr. Nigma Talib, and she talks about how the food we eat affects the skin. And there’s four main food categories that she see’s all the time from clients that affect the face: gluten, diary, sugar, and alcohol.
How gluten affects the face based on the book:
Blemishes on forehead
Puffy cheek and jowls - your face looks like you’ve gained weight
Redness and/or red spots on cheeks
Blemishes or darkened patches on chin
How dairy affects the face based on the book:
Swollen eyelids
Under eye bags
Darkness under the eyes
Widespread acne and blemishes
Pale cheeks
Blemishes around the chin area
How alcohol affects the face based on the book:
Pronounced lines or blemishes between brows
Droopy eyelids
Pronounced fine line and wrinkles under the eyes
Dehydrated skin with feathery lines across cheeks
Visibly enlarged pores
A reddish skin tone
Deep nasolabial folds
How sugar affects the face based on the book:
Lines and wrinkles on the upper forehead
Sagging under the eyes
Blemishes all over the face, particularly pustular/cystic acne
Gaunt look to the face
Thinning of the skin
Dark grayish or pasty white hue to the skin
