"Flipping the switch" and "resetting" the body from sickness to health
...exploring a new approach to health and healing
Neither allopathic nor natural medicine work - for me
I have used various alternative health modalities all my life, and have trained in a few of them. However, after a lifetime of dedication to this, I have to concede that I have been able to manage but not cure my background ailment, fibromyalgia. Medicine failed me in my younger years when all my various symptoms were attributed to “hysteria”. Then natural medicine failed me over the subsequent 50 or so years after I gave up on allopathic medicine. I explored every modality I could find, and followed some protocols slavishly to give them my best shot, and all any of them did was make me worse. Eventually I evolved my own protocol - involving “taking stuff” and managed my symptoms well enough to live fairly normally for around 30 years, until “covid” in 2022. Since then, I have lost control of my symptoms and have been unable to function “normally”.
Shifting realisation - the importance of “the switch”
This might be a good thing because it has forced me to look beyond “taking stuff” or “thinking right” to restore health. In 2022, my entire digestive system and lungs failed simultaneously, and my heart was beating wildly although soundly. After 11 days in hospital during which I did not improve, suddenly, all those systems switched back on, and perfectly, better than they had ever been. How could this be? There was an off switch that had turned my organs off simultaneously, and now an on switch that turned them all back on - simultaneously. I asked a retired nurse how this could be, and her answer was a short phrase, “the vagus nerve of course”. I started looking at the vagus nerve.
My research has been slow because it has taken me a while to slough off mind control. When I first came out of hospital I relied on the healing protocols of the medical doctors like the FLCCC in the absence of any other form of help. After those healing protocols apparently failed to do anything against the developing long covid, I devised my own healing protocols using more natural food and neutraceutical products. These helped me manage a few smptoms somewhat better, but still no “cure”. Now, a year later, I have finally reached the point of working on the idea that we can “switch” good health on and off.
Health is about “settings” and “messaging”, and the vagus nerve
The further I get into my own health issues since leaving hospital, the more I realise that everything that is wrong with me, both the original fibromyalgia and now long covid, is related to "settings". My body is tough and has spent a lifetime valiantly obeying commands, doing it very well. But those commands are faulty. And it is our vagus nerve and the associated components of the autonomic nervous system that interpret what the body needs and send the commands around the body to tell it exactly what to do.
I left hospital with every indicator of metabolic syndrome, I have high blood sugar, high blood lipids, high blood pressure, fatty liver and am overweight. I did not know whether to blame covid or the drugs I was given in hospital for this, but I was not happy with it. However, it turns out that there has been a good side to this. Being able to test blood sugar whenever I like means I can watch how my body is reacting in real time to various stimuli. When I went on a low carb diet, my blood sugar dropped, my weight dropped dramatically, and my blood lipids improved. Then they all crawled back up to where they were before I started - on the same low carb eating regime. I introduced various spices that improve insulin resistance. Again, an immediate drop in blood sugar with each new spice, which then crawled back up again. I have watched that pattern now with berberine, cinnamon, fenugreek and turmeric. All dropped my blood sugar when I started taking them, then the blood sugar crept back up again. I have paid special attention to my stress hormones which are clearly related to insulin resistance. Again I have tried various herbs to see if I can calm my production of stress hormones. Same thing. Herbs work initially then stop working. Now with high doses of all these powerful herbs and spices, I am having various histamine style reactions - of course - because I am taking them in unnatural doses, so my body is correctly trying to shunt any excess out through my skin and any other way it can, whence the itching.
In other words, my body is running perfectly, exactly the way it thinks it should be running. It is managing it’s task brilliantly, particularly given my age. It does not know that its settings are wrong. I have lived my entire life under extreme stress, so much so that I barely notice how many times a day I get that ping throughout my whole body when something nasty hits my mind and my body does a mini panic. My body is doing what it thinks it should be doing, shutting down metabolism and preserving fat and sugar to fuel my next fight/flight interaction.
Flipping the switch on the command centre
The trick is to “reset” the system somehow. For me, that means, I must get my “setting” to stop demanding perpetual preparation for fight/flight mode. Easier said than done. Other people will have different command centre glitches, set up for different life circumstances, trying to achieve different things. The one thing we can be sure of though is that every symptom we have is our body valiantly trying to do what our body's “command centre” is telling it to do.
Now of course we have the whole mind body connection which tends to be interpreted as our own thoughts determining these things, but it is just not that simple. Our body's command centre has an operating system that has developed over an entire lifetime, not in response to thoughts per se, but in response to how we have lived our lives. Life circumstances built our code over time, and the one thing we can be sure of is that the entire code IS in balance to achieve what our body believes we need to achieve. If we try to shift one part of it, for example the part where we determine how much sugar should be in the blood, we throw the entire apparatus out of whack. And if our system still has enough strength, it will fight to get back into the balance it has determined is correct. Unfortunately, if that balance is not correct it might well kill us in the long run.
Our challenge, how to flip the “switch”
My challenge now, which I am working on intuiting, is how to "reset" my entire metabolism to a calmer setting. I need to turn the thermostat down, and thinking a few nice thoughts won't do it. Although one's model of life is clearly behind all of this, that model has been created over an entire lifetime. It has total integrity and mind boggling complexity. No human mind can decode everything that is going on in the body. It is doing what it believes is right, and brilliantly. We, at a minimum, have to graduate from thinking a few nice thoughts, to evolving a new way of approaching life, if we are to flip that switch.
For my case, my system will not - cannot - reset until I feel safe, at which time, my body will - hopefully - stop keeping me ready for the next disaster. Every pharmaceutical, neutraceutical or food intervention is just a stop gap that might keep me alive for long enough to achieve the "reset". In all healing systems that I know of, the "reset", if it happens at all, happens by lucky accident rather than by deliberate design.
(And it is important to note here that our body electrical systems cannot be restored to healthy functioning while they are exposed to unhealthy levels of electromagnetic frequencies.)
An example of “flipping the switch”
Many years ago, I came across the story of an older lady who was diagnosed with terminal cancer and given a few weeks to a few months to live. She decided to live out a wish with the time she had left. She bought a motor bike, got her licence, and took off, to ride till she dropped. Twelve months later, she was still alive and feeling well, so she finally visited a doctor again, to the news that she was cancer free. That story stuck in my mind. Initially I interpreted it differently but now I think that her change in lifestyle caused her to “flip her switch” and her body did the rest of the necessary healing, with or without healing protocols.
Does exhilaration help us “flip the switch”?
In another post I talked about the idea of “exhilaration”. One thing that happens as we age is that less is able to give us that feeling. I realise that my entire body is bored with my life, and I no longer experience “exhilaration”. In fact, after covid, even my sense of smell and taste largely deserted me, so I was no longer even getting that “yum” sensation when I thought of food I like. For some people, the sensation of food or sex or even some music, or dancing is exhilarating. For me, speed, and the wind in my face is exhilarating - or was - as the opportunties for this can decline with age. Is that what flipped the switch in the lady on the motor bike? Can exhilaration “flip the switch”?
Healing once the switch is flipped
I think the "reset" happens via the vagus nerve, but beyond that, I have no real idea what is physically involved with flipping the switch. I am guessing, or to use a more flattering word, intuiting.
Once that switch is flipped, the body has to have what it needs to heal the damage done, which is where good food and neutraceuticals come back into the picture. But it is not good food and neutraceuticals that trigger the return to health. We have to “flip the switch” first!
So now I am onto my third phase of healing post covid. First I chased the spike protein via the FLCCC protcols. Second I chased the metabolic syndrome using herbs and spices. Now I am chasing the switch, a technique for which, as it happens, I might have known all along. I cannot immediately get out there and chase exhilaration so I will do the next best thing. I will trick my brain into thinking (or feeling) that I am exhilarated.
Here’s how. I can’t say that this will flip the switch, but I will now do it morning and night for a few months to see what happens. At the very least it will help me manage pain and stress, and at best, it might kick start a new era of health for me.
Please feel free to add information on healing modalities are ARE doing something like this, or techniques for ramping up the sense of exhilaration.
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Reaching out and connecting with new people. Trying totally new and brave things.
A close friend of mine and I have been discussing many of the same health issues and challenges over the past few months because she had a similar kind of shut down occur and had been doing everything in her power to reset and heal her body from being in chronic fight or flight mode. She had mentioned to me how important the vagus nerve is in regulating our whole body and that humming can stimulate it too.
I have really struggled with my health weight for years, went low carb, then keto, which helped tremendously. Also got no help from allopathic medicine when dealing with an autoimmune disorder (celiac) so I try to inform myself as much as possible.
In the past month I have been doing intermittent fasting and I love it. I am seeing the excess weight fall off and I just feel better all the way around. Jason Fung’s books are great, I have “The Complete Guide to Fasting”. There are many benefits to limiting our eating windows or doing a total water fast and one of those is autophagy, where our old beat up cells get recycled by our bodies and regulating insulin, lowering blood sugar. Growth hormone also increases during a fast. Anyway, I just wanted to share what has been working for me.
To deal with anxiety I have been leaning on Buddhist philosophy, especially the concept of accepting impermanence. I love Thich Naht Hahn’s books.
Thank you for writing this. I will share with my friend. I wish you well on your healing journey.🪷