Your Healing Roadmap
You may now find yourself in a state of shock; bewilderment at the very least. I don’t think there are many of us who’ve planned what to do if we found out we had Cancer. I know I never did. It’s the kind of thing that pulls the rug out from under your whole existence, and leaves you falling endlessly into a bottomless pit. My purpose for creating this tool is to meet you where you are; where you find yourself now, and to gift to you a means to create a small piece of ground, big enough to stand on, while you’re reaching out for something to grab onto and steady yourself. You will undoubtedly have a flood of emotion moving through you, You will likely have questions to which there are no good answers. You will be trying to take control of forces that refuse to be controlled, You may feel like you are now fighting a battle you’ve seen many others lose. My hope is that this tool will help you find out what you CAN control, and get control of it. There is much uncertainty ahead; many challenges for which noone can be truly prepared. By taking stock of the conditions, and organizing our approach to what must be done, there is a way to be the best prepared we can be, for what comes next.
Most chronic, degenerative disorders have a long history of averting the best efforts of western medicine to address them. Assuming that you’re here because you’re looking for adjunct treatment protocols, or alternatives to conventional treatments, let’s begin by taking some time to assess your position, determine what you know, and consider everything as one large, detailed picture. This outline has been designed as a guide to the thought experiment of mapping out your position, the territory, and each of the possible routes leading through the dark regions, and back to the safety of home.
This outline is a list of considerations, following a logical sequence, for the purpose of guiding the survey and delineation of that map of thought. By writing out your answers, your thoughts, and your feelings about each of these particular issues, you will be assembling the map that could eventually lead you back to health and safety.
Start to get a feel for the process by reading over each of the headings, and then each of the issues, in order to focus your thinking. Then take whatever time you need to fully understand your emotional and your rational responses to each of the issues raised. When you feel resolute about any particular one, write out as much as you can in response to it, and add that page, in sequence, to your roadmap. Feel free of course, to drop any headings that seem irrelevant to your case, and to add new ones of your own as you see fit.
If you can, set aside a specific time each day to review your expanding roadmap. Then write down your newly found realizations, and re-read the entire collection. In the light of your new learning, you will continually refine your grasp of your situation, and gain a clearer perception and deeper insight into your condition, and your path out of the darkness. We will begin with your
Current Position:
I was originally Diagnosed on this date:
The specific Diagnosis I was given is:
This is what my Diagnosis Means:
If I have Comorbid Conditions, they are:
I am currently taking these Medications:
These are the Side Effects I Experience:
This is how I feel about being on the Medications I’m currently taking:
This is what it Costs:
New Medications being Proposed are:
These are the possible Side Effects Described:
This is how I feel about taking the New Medications being proposed:
This is what it would Cost:
Established Prognosis:
Statistical likelihood of 5 year survival With Treatment:
Statistical likelihood of 5 year survival Without Treatment:
Potential Gain of Function With Treatment:
Potential Loss of Function With Treatment:
Potential Loss of Function Without Treatment:
Potential Outcome from Malfunction of Treatment:
Potential Outcome from Malfunction of Medication:
Anecdotal example of Best Case Scenario:
Anecdotal example of Worst Case Scenario:
When I consider all that is represented in the Prognosis for my condition, This is how I feel about taking my chances, and undergoing the Standard Treatment offered by the Conventional Western Medical Establishment:
The Unconventional Options I Have Discovered:
These are the Books I’ve read from, describing Unconventional Options:
These are the People I’ve encountered, Who Work with Unconventional Treatments:
These are the Options I’m Not Interested in Pursuing:
This is Why I Can’t See them working for Me:
These are the Options I Can See Myself Pursuing:
This is Why I Like These Options:
This is What I would Expect to Accomplish by Pursuing the Options I Like:
A Cost/Benefit Analysis:
For Each of the Options I Can See Myself Pursuing;
These are the Advantages it has for My Case:
These are the Potential Pitfalls associated with This Option:
For a more revealing Cost/Benefit analysis, Go down through your 2 lists, and for each individual item, and assign it a number from 1 to 5; or from 1 to 10, describing how Strong an Advantage, of how Damaging a Pitfall that item is, relative to all the others you have listed out.
A Ranked Order Analysis:
Upon Considering Anticipated Advantages, and Potential Pitfalls, Cost, and Availability of each of these Unconventional Options, list those with the highest values first, and work your way down through to the lowest values; just to see how they fall into an order relative to each other; Advantages in one column, Pitfalls in another.
The Universal Foundation Underlying All Treatment Programs:
Virtually all of the Practicioners, Clinicians, and Researchers we have encountered who have been successful in arresting and reversing the progress of chronic, degenerative diseases articulate the same two initial steps in the approaches that have provided their success. This intervention applies whether you use conventional western treatments, alternative treatments, or a combination of both.
First: Stop ingesting the toxins that are doing the damage.
Second: Start providing the nutrients required to repair the damage, and operate the immune system.
This is where we revisit that ironic principle that beginning the healing process is very simple, but not very easy. For many people, this first step towards healing your life-threatening illness may very well require you to give up forever eating “foods” that you have enjoyed all your life. The diet most Americans are eating is so replete with commercially produced, edible products that are more toxic than they are nutritious, that for many of us, these products constitute the bulk of what we have become accustomed to subsisting on.
Packaged products from the grocery stores, and ready meals from fast-food chains are not only fabricated from ingredients devoid of nutrient value, but most of them are also deliberately formulated to be addictive. This is not hyperbole. It is scientifically verified fact; shocking as it may be, it is true. This fact, meeting head on, the lifelong eating habits of most Americans will put many of us in very difficult positions at the outset of this journey. We must undergo a process of withdrawal from a group of unnatural toxic substances that have been introduced only recently to the foodstream that bipedal apes have been nourishing themselves on over the past 3 million years.
Over the course of only the last few centuries, extraction and concentration processes have created agriculturally sourced food ingredients that our cells and our bodies can not process without sustaining damage. Sugar, Oil, and Salt are three of the most prominent offenders. Grains ground into Flour, and bound with Fat into baked goods are another. Animal Proteins, in the forms of Meat, Eggs and Dairy have held a place in the human diet, in limited quantities for several thousand years, but only in the past 2 or 3 centuries have they become the predominant source of caloric volume in the modern diet. And in that time, they have become dangerously polluted by high-production feeding methods, environmental degradation, and heavily infected processing facilities.
For these and other reasons, The first step to healing the body from the digestive lining, to the arterial lining, to the interior of the individual cell, is to eliminate these sources of concentrated environmental toxins from our personal food streams, in order to stop the damage to our bodies, so that our efforts to heal ourselves are not counteracted at every turn.
Providing the appropriate nutrients to supply the body with the incredibly broad array of biochemically active inputs for the thousands of exchanges it needs to perform continuously is probably an easier undertaking, once we learn a few simple mnemonics. Shifting our tastes to appreciate and enjoy the new food sources will take longer, but thousands of patients, facing abbreviated lifespans have accomplished this; it just takes time.
A Few Simple Actions to Get the Process Started:
First, Stop doing the Damage. Here are the most Toxic “Foods” that should be Eliminated as soon as possible.
Sugar, and anything containing sugar. Soda, and all sugar-loaded soft drinks, Cookies and Snack Cakes, Candy
Oils, Fried Foods, most Salad Dressings, Chips, Fast Food, and Restaurant Meals; they’re loaded with Fat & Oil
Salt, and All Packaged, Processed “Foods”; They’re loaded with Sugar ,Oil and Salt
Animal Proteins: Meat, Fish, Poultry, Eggs, and Dairy, They’re loaded with Growth Hormones and Toxins
Baked goods; where the grain has been ground into Flour
Alcohol, Caffeine, OTC and Recreational Drugs
Second, Begin to Provide the Body with a Comprehensive Mix of Nutrients, in their Natural Forms
Dr. Joel Fuhrman uses an acronym to remember the Most Important Plant Foods to eat in their Whole Form.
G-BOMBS refers to Greens, Beans, Onions, Mushrooms, Berries, and Seeds.
To this, Add Tomatoes, Peppers, Herbs and Spices, and Fruits and Whole Grains.
Most Americans are Dehydrated, and have been for a Long Time. As a chronic condition, this can give rise to a variety of unfavorable conditions, like thickening of the blood. Drink 3 to 4 Quarts of Water Every Day.
This is the part that’s simple, but not easy; for perspective, compare the difficulty of shifting away from the ”foods” you’ve always loved to these foods to the difficulty you imagine might be associated with recovering from heart surgery, or dying of multiple organ failure. In thousands of cases every day, this is what it comes down to.
There will be a period of transition, where a variety of difficulties will be encountered. The “foods” you’ve become accustomed to enjoying have been deliberately designed to be addictive, and so you have become addicted.
There will be a period of “toxic download” wherein the cells, upon receiving supplies of nutrients that have been lacking, will die off in waves, and be carried off, to be replaced by healthier cells. Certain metabolic functions that have been compromised will begin operating properly for the first time in years, and this will result in clearing out the accumulation of toxins that reside in various organs and tissues of the body. This process can manifest in symptoms that suggest malfunction, but which will subside as the body and it’s tissues regain their health. These symptoms may include headaches, “brain fog”, dizziness, absent mindedness, confusion, digestive irregularity, gas and bloating, generalized fatigue, etc.. etc…. Do Not be Alarmed. If you have spent years in the degradation of a diet rife with slow-acting toxins, and deficient in essential nutrients, this is both the price of getting back into healthy eating practice, and it is the indicator that the toxic load is being evicted.
The life cycle of a red blood cell is about 120 days; thus in about 6 months time, you will have a completely replaced blood supply. Likewise, the lifespan of a taste bud on the tongue. If you miss the flavors of all those “foods” that were conspiring to shorten your life, and to make you miserably unhealthy, rest assured that within a year’s time, you will have retrained your sense of taste to appreciate the flavors of the nutrient-dense foods that you are now only beginning to use to make your life longer and more joyful. Right now, you may need to go through a tunnel of darkness; but upon emerging from the far end, the brightness of the light of the new day is astonishing.
Where Do We Go From Here?
For centuries now, many cultures around the world have recognized the subtle connection between the mind and the body, and understood that the health of one will bear on the health of the other. Once you have taken control of your food stream, and made radical improvements to the functional ability of all your body’s natural, physical methods for fighting disease, and functioning at optimal levels in every way, You may find it helpful to move up to the level of optimizing the connection between your biochemical functioning, and your cognitive and spiritual functioning as well.
There have been many modalities developed over time by ancient cultures, and by modern researchers, that you may find very useful, and reassuring in reinforcing the efforts you are making to create total health for the totality of your life and your being.
At Your Healing Home, we will be exploring these schools of thought and practice, by visiting and conferring with their adherents. We invite you to explore them with us, and maybe find one or more of them to complete your healing journey. We also invite you, if you have found a mind/body practice that you’ve found to be effective and helpful, if you don’t find any reference to it on our site, to share it with us, through an email or a forum post, so that the entire community we’re building may share in the benefit you have found.
In the research that’s been done to create Your Healing Home, we have encountered many cases of individuals who were given ominous diagnoses of disease, and very short life expectancies. Not all, but many of those have made radical changes to their eating habits, altered their values, their schedules, and their recreational practices, and then gone on to live another 20 or 30 years beyond what they were told to expect. There are no guarantees in life. None of us really know how much time we have here. But we do know that by educating ourselves, and making responsible choices, we can significantly improve the likelihood that we’ll get to enjoy a long life, and more importantly, good functional health for decades, right up to the end. It’s been done. I’ve seen it. I created this site so that you would get to see it too; and more importantly, so that you’ll get to do it too.
Thank you for taking responsibility and joining in; Long life - Namaste