The Wellness Bitch

Well, there you have it folks. This nut has finally been called a nut. And by none other than the medical establishment, and his ever loving cronies, the mainstream media.

Eating too healthy has a new name: Orthorexia.

It’s actually not so new. I first heard about this “diagnosis” last year when Time magazine reported it. At the time, I chuckled and waited for one of my family members to hit “forward” and send it to my email with a gentle suggestion that I seek help.

But somehow Orthorexia has made it back into the spotlight again; perhaps, someone on the Today Show staff needed a good comeback for that annoying co-worker. You know the one. She constantly brings in her own homemade lunch every day — a healthy salad filled with organic veggies from her co-op, with sliced grass-fed beef, seasoned with fresh herbs and spices and no salt. She dropped 20 pounds when she stopped eating gluten. She’s fit. Her skin glows. She no longer needs to smoke or wear black.

I can’t imagine why else a health reporter could take seriously and reprint an indication from the Mayo Clinic that states, “To feel clean and pure, orthorexics may avoid food with artificial coloring or flavoring or added salt and sugar. They may require food to be washed several times and cooked to kill bacteria, the clinic says, and some won’t go to restaurants to avoid meals they haven’t prepared themselves.”

I’m reprinting those words exactly from the Today.com article, which were excerpted from an article written by a physician and registered dietician on the Mayo Clinic web site,  and then shared with millions of unsuspecting Americans on the Today Show by the show’s “nutrition expert” Madelyn Fernstrom.

To that, I can only parrot another reader’s comment on the Today.com article: “If only more Americans had this condition.”

Fernstrom, who seems legitimately concerned that too many Americans are focusing a disproportionate amount of time on healthy eating, also says that one of the indications of someone being orthorexic is spending three to four hours a day reading labels on food packaging

Stop.

Hold on just a minute.

I have spent two hours reading labels on food packaging.

Shit. Someone grab a prescription pad. Quick! Write me a script for Lexapro — Pronto!

Or…wait a second. Instead of writing that prescription, why don’t you write a letter to Fernstrom explaining to her that shopping in a mainstream American grocery store these days is like shopping in France when you can’t speak a word of French.

The labels are filled with the names of chemical concoctions that can only be interpreted and understood by a scientist or someone at the FDA who has been paid off by Kraft.

Want to know why I “can’t live life normally” or why I am in “social isolation” because of my food choices? It’s because I’m spending so much time at the grocery store trying to translate food labels!!!

Whatever you do, don’t tell her you heard about this from me.

Fernstrom also warns that those who “lecture” others on the safety of food are also prime candidates for Orthorexia.

Uh-oh.

I’m going to spend the next three hours working on a magical potion with herbs from my organic garden that I grew myself so I can comfortably eat Kraft Macaroni and Cheese for dinner like sane Americans.

The last thing I need is one more diagnosis.

It’s funny (and not) how often I have forsaken the Earth in the name of health.

What I mean by that is I never directly intended to heal the planet by changing my lifestyle. My lifestyle changes were always very selfish: I cleaned “green” because it reduced my asthma symptoms. I started drinking filtered water and stopped polluting water sources because I learned that water filled with the antibiotics I had previously flushed down to toilet was making me sick. I started eating organic meat and produce because I understood the long-lasting health consequences of ingesting toxins. I realized that my and my children’s symptoms of chronic illness were partially due to toxins in our environment.

I never really made these decisions with an eye on the planet, though I did understand that my efforts towards healing myself were also contributing to a healthier Earth. In fact, there were even times when I told people outright, “I’m not an environmentalist. I’m just a concerned mom who wants my children to grow up healthy. I’m just a woman who is sick and tired of being sick and tired.”

I wish I could say that my marketing campaign was strategic: I purposefully did not align myself with the green movement because I wanted to reach a population that was not going to be responsive to “healing the world.” I didn’t do it purposefully and yet somewhere down deep I think I understood that there was a group on the verge. People like me who didn’t necessarily possess an impulse to the “change the world,” but who were sensitive and rational and could understand the connection between healing ourselves, healing our planet, and healing humanity.

Perhaps I wasn’t operating on my plan, but a divine plan: To reach people through messaging they can access. Messaging that fits with their understanding of the world, which for many people is “Me.” Or “survive.” Or “feel better.”

I became a vegetarian in 1998  not because I thought eating animals was inhumane, but because I had a health scare and giving up meat seemed easier than giving up drinking and smoking.

I stopped eating sugar the following year because I was tired of getting yeast infections and I read a book that told me sugar addiction was connected not only to yeast overgrowth, but also to anxiety, IBS, and other chronic illnesses. That diet lasted about a month that first time.

I started doing yoga in 2000 because my therapist told me it was a way to deal with my anxiety. At that time, I practiced yoga, not instead of medication as I might now, but alongside. It took me a few more years to give up the crutch of medication.

In 2001, I got married and in 2002 pregnant: And from then on, my mission has been to know what I need to know to keep my family healthy.

In 2007, however, I realized (with the help of many friends and colleagues) that I had it in me to share my message of well-being and empowerment with others. As I said before, I never saw beyond health and wellness. I understood my mission of “healing my community” to be one that focused simply on personal health and wellness. My eyes were never set towards the horizon.

For many years, I ignored the fact that the Earth’s resources were being so exploited that one day it wouldn’t matter how healthy I was. Because the Earth would one day soon no longer be able to sustain even healthy beings.

Over the last year or so, however, my focus has shifted. My awareness has heightened. My awakening, which started in 1998, has reached a tipping point.

I understand that there is no divide between healing my planet and healing myself.

I understand that healing myself is healing my planet. And healing my planet is healing my family.

I understand now that I could work 24-7 on cleansing my body through detox or boosting it through vitamins and supplements, but that a dying world is not a world a healthy body can live on.

And I am worried that our world is dying.

I don’t mean to be an alarmist or a doomsday prophet. But as a researcher, as a thinker, as someone who has woken up already to wellness, I cannot ignore the signs that our Earth is sharing with us.

She’s unwell. And if we don’t actively and intentionally incorporate into our wellness initiatives the healing of the planet, our wellness initiatives will be for naught. This message is directed to others like me who blog in an effort to educate or spark dialogue; it’s a message for health and wellness practitioners who preach holistic and preventative care and yet still use toxic cleaning products to wipe down their examination tables; it’s a message for the health conscious, and for the unconscious.

It’s clear to me that the only way we will heal ourselves is to adopt a two-pronged approach.

Heal the planet, so that you may heal. Heal yourself, so that the planet may heal. One depends on the other.

But to do this, we need to change our messaging.

My recommendation to the spiritual and wellness gurus out there who have the ears of many more than I:

Stop speaking esoterically. Stop using words like “Oneness” and “Mother Earth” and “Gaia.” These are words only the awakened can understand. We need to be reaching a much, much larger audience. And we need to be reaching them NOW.

Speak in a language that the average mother or grandfather or high school student or gym teacher or scientist or medical doctor or college professor or postman or construction worker can access. Speak to our awareness and our fear.  Speak to our logical minds. Speak to our preconditioned understanding of how to world is. Speak to our every day needs.

To speak this way is not to perpetrate negativity; it’s simply acknowledging that in order to speed up our global enlightenment, we need to turn the lecture into the Cliff Notes. It’s time to stop sounding elitist and academic and…well…weird. We can shift humanity. But to do this, we might need to stop using words like “shift humanity.”

There are many out there like me: People who will easily shift from thinking only selfish to thinking selfless. But without an easy onramp to the road of enlightenment, they will simply just keep driving down the road that’s familiar.

I remember distinctly when I first heard and fell in love with the word “fester.”

I was on a high school summer political communications program in Washington, D.C. That night, Jill, a fellow Jersey girl, was offering up the punch line of yet another tale of her boyfriend back home, Terry, whom none of us had ever met, but was quite the character.

Terry was not just a Jersey guy, but a permanent resident of the Jersey Shore (if I may use euphemisms) and presumably possessed a signature style of speaking and behavior that lent itself to fodder for good storytelling.  

“And then Terry says,” my friend set it up, “That guy is like a sore festering on the back side of my ass!”

Wow. What a visual, I thought at the time. Fester: It’s a verb, I thought, with the power of an adjective.

And now something is festering inside me. It’s not just annoying or irritating me, mind you; it’s causing me lingering worry and emotional pain.  And like a festering sore on the back side of my ass, I can’t ignore this worry because it doesn’t look like it’s going away.

My worry has to do with anti-Semitism.

What does anti-Semitism have to do with wellness, you ask?

I’d have likely asked the same question a few months ago. But recently I’ve discovered there seems to be a connection between the two. And I fear I risk something by sharing my concern with you; by bringing politics into a non-political blog. I fear I risk alientating readers or worse, attracting unwanted ugly attention to this blog. But, I realize I risk a lot more by keeping quiet.

While the connection between the “wellness community” and anti-Semitism is under the radar, the overlap between social progressivism and left-wing politics is not. For instance, it’s understood that an environmental activist is often a liberal voter, right? If I were a betting girl (and I am), I would place a wad of cash on the chance that the majority of card-paying members of GreenPeace don’t vote Republican.

In many ways, I’ve ideologically aligned myself with those liberal voters because they often subscribe to expectations for society I also support, such as a woman’s right to choose, egalitarianism in the workplace, and, most important, the freedom to question and protest government intention and policy.

However, I learned somewhere along the way (read “college”) that left-wingers are often also anti-Israel: Something I am not. I am pro-Israel. So much so that I now live here.

Particularly in recent years, as Israel has become a main target for left-wing activists, I’ve become more and more conflicted about my alignment. And, while I will agree that Israel is certainly a piece of the human rights puzzle, I find it frustrating that activists often have a singular focus on Israel. This singular focus is peculiar and suspect to me and has always smelled a little bit like anti-Semitism, and/or Jewish self-hatred. When I read their posts on my left-wing friends’ Facebook wall I want to respond (but don’t): “But what about Syria?!? Or Libya, or Cuba, or Iran or other non-democratic governments in the U.S. State Department’s top ten most violators of human rights? Can we also talk about them? Are you also boycotting them? Are you crying for their abused women, brutally treated gays, and starving children?”

As a Jew with an interest in history, I’ve learned that left-wing thinking and anti-Semitism are no strangers to each other. (Look up Marxist theory. Or spend some time on the campus of a Liberal Arts college.) And I’ve learned to…ignore it. It’s just not my thang.

As an American Jewish Wellness Bitch who recently became an Israeli Jewish Wellness Bitch, however, I’m increasingly disturbed by the amount of anti-Israel, and even anti-Semitic messaging I find running through many wellness-related blogs and forums I visit; ones that focus on the types of ”alternative lifestyle” topics I’m interested in. 

What do I mean by alternative lifestyle topics?

Well, according to Wikipedia, something may be labeled alternative if it’s considered “outside the cultural norm,” but examples listed include lifestyle choices that I think many of us might consider normal, such as vegetarianism, meditation, herbal medicine, homebirth and hypnosis, to name a few.

It turns out, there are bloggers out there writing about topics I’m interested in (such as climate change and human consciousness) who are also entertaining submissions and comments from people who blame the world’s troubles on a “Zionist plot” or the Jewish-influenced media and banking elite.

Through following eco-friendly bloggers on Facebook and Twitter, I have discovered well-known and well-followed bloggers who position themselves as health-conscious and as concerned for the welfare of humanity; who speak and write like intellectuals, not like members of the lunatic fringe; and who, in one figurative breath preach meditation and in the other, rant about the “Rothschilds” (a reference to a Jewish banking conspiracy) and accuse Jews and Zionists of being part of a “New World Order” involved in secret governmental affairs. 

And just like other grassroots activists taking advantage of social networking, these individuals are also creating You Tube videos; they’re publishing e-books; they have radio shows and RSS feeds; all while selling nutritional supplements and invoking mantras.

It frightens me that an individual who may be searching for news and information  about “natural medicine,” or “Monsanto,” or “global warming” will stumble upon the unfiltered alternative news site, Before It’s News, or the alternative news magazine “Signs of the Times,” which admittedly offers relevant wellness-related news you likely won’t get on CNN.com, but also dedicates a significant part of their content to blatant anti-Israel op-eds and conspiracy theories that position Jews as “puppet masters.”

It’s mind boggling to me. How can you possibly promote “well-being” and ”awakening” when you are still so stuck in a cycle of fear?

Is it not hypocritical and counterproductive to foster paranoia and anger against other human beings when you preach well-being? I just don’t get it.

My message today?

1. I am a Jew and an ideological Zionist and I am not part of a global elite. If I controlled the world, there would be a lot more love and compassion and a lot less fear. My children would be growing up in a world that was safe for them. My blog would already be a best-selling book. I’d have much cooler clothes. And there would be more love.

2. There are Jews and Israelis both, hundreds of thousands of us, who are enlightened individuals – vegans, environmentalists, green builders, holistic health coaches, energy workers, midwives, yoga masters, spiritual gurus, organic farmers, writers, thinkers, and teachers. All of us passionate healers and educators, and many of us whom are working both behind the scenes and publicly to foster peace in both this region and the world. Our only plot is love. Our only intention is healing.

3. There is certainly evil in this world, but it’s evenly distributed among all nations and our energy is better spent on healing ourselves than it is on imagining and assigning blame.

If you found this blog because you were searching Zionist Plot or New World Order or Anti-Israel, I invite you to consider the idea that there is a Zionist Jew out there whose only purpose is to be one of many guides on your road to wellness.

I’m sick with yet another cold in a series of countless colds since I moved to a kibbutz in Israel. I am not exaggerating when I say that I’ve been ill more times these last eight months than I have in total in the past five years.

Countless people have told me that this is not unusual for new immigrants to Israel; that many get hit with stomach viruses or other infections thanks to new microbes and less sterile conditions. It could also be that I’m working in an office environment, in contact with more people on a day-to-day basis. It may have something to do with a change in diet or the stress that accompanies a big transition like a move across the world.

It could be any one of those things.

But as I sit here, with my bedroom door open, enjoying the breeze from the West, as well as the bugs that may fly in through the screenless opening, I acknowledge the great changes in me since I moved to a small kibbutz in Israel. In particular, the mass giving up of control that I held on to so dearly for most of my life; the letting go of fears that caused me to be angry and bitter; the welcoming in of blows to my ego; and the letting down of the strong guard I placed around me to deal with the pain I associated with being wrong and being hurt.

This all happened here in Israel? In eight months?

No. Not really. But the quiet that I have embraced here allows me to hear and see it.

Do I feel this sense of peace and calm all the time?

No way. But I am very clear that it exists for me now more than ever before.

Have I turned into a weird, hemp-wearing, sprout-eating, New Agey hippie? Some would argue I have been that hippie for years, and now I only blend in better with my environment.

A great transformation has and continues to take place for me here. It certainly didn’t start with my Aliyah in December, but has become more and more noticeable. I do not equate it with religion, per say, but it deeply moves my spirit. It’s overwhelming and confusing, at times, and, since I’m certainly not full evolved, curious and anxiety-producing.

But just when that anxiety seems to be overtaking the curiosity and ease, I happen upon something or someone that is able to bring me back down to ground level. Sometimes it’s a wise friend or a colleague. Sometimes it’s a timely post on Facebook. Sometimes it’s a dream or a memory. Sometimes it’s an innocent suggestion out of the mouth of one of my children, or an angry accusation or a loving reminder from my husband.

Today, it was the butterfly.

I’ll tell you a little secret about me: Once upon a time, during a turbulent, yet exciting chapter of my life, I did something very bold and out of character for me.

I got a tattoo.

Okay, big deal, you think. Half the population between the ages of 18 and 40 have a tattoo, and of that 50%, a sure 10% have a tattoo with symbolism similar to mine.

It’s a butterfly.

But it was a big deal for me. My butterfly was a statement. It was a symbol that appeared time and time again before I was awake enough to recognize it. My butterfly, once a part of me, gave me strength to make extremely difficult choices. And she continues to remind me of who I am, but more important, who I strive to be.

And, of the great unknown that accompanies great change.

I read today something I never knew about the transformation a caterpillar makes into a butterfly.  A Greek poet and naturalist named Theodore Stephanides wrote,

“How great a mystery of Nature is the transformation of a caterpillar into a butterfly! This is not, as one might imagine at first, a gradual process of transition and modification. The body of the caterpillar is not just reduced or enlarged, it is not pushed in here or pulled out there there, it is not moulded as it were into the body of a butterfly. Nor is this the case with any of the caterpillar’s organs.

No, a far more astounding sequence of events takes place. Inside the horny envelope of the pupa, the whole caterpillar melts and deliquesces into an amorphous semi-liquid pulp until nothing of its original form remains. Viewed as a sentient entity, that caterpillar has “died”. It has no organs with which to contact the outside world, no nervous system to afford it awareness, however dim, of its own existence.

But after death comes resurrection. Somewhere in that pultaceous mass a mysterious controlling force is concealed. Science is baffled and even the imagination is confounded. It cannot be and yet it is! Some wholly inexplicable directing influence now exerts its power and slowly cell by cell, organ by organ, a new being takes shape. A new organism is gradually built up that bears no resemblance to the lowly caterpillar either in function or in shape, and a glorious butterfly spreads its wings to the welcoming sun.”

I am not so grim as to suggest that my multiple illnesses over these past few months foretell my death or my “deliquesce into a semi-amorphous pulp.” But I can wrap my mind around the idea that my body is adjusting to the change my soul is making, and is naturally going to fight it. And perhaps all the illness is simply a sign of growth and of the beautiful shape my being is yet to take.

(This was previously posted here.)

I am forever indebted to my friend Lisa Duggan who in 2007 asked me if I wanted to write a story for her magazine about local massage therapists. The magazine was a start up and while Lisa’s budget to pay freelancers was low at the time, she told me that the massage sessions would be covered.

It took me about five seconds to commit.

Back then, I was a “massage on my birthday” kinda girl. I got my first massage when I was in college; a gift from my parents. It was an uninspiring and painful hour spent in a room off the dark upstairs hallway of the local beauty salon. Fortunately, that experience didn’t turn me off of bodywork forever. I tried a different therapist the following year on my birthday and decided massages were definitely for me.

However, I viewed massage as a luxury item; the second to lowest rung on a ladder that started with pedicures and ended with a Mercedes Benz and a house in the Hamptons. Sure, I giggled with pleasure when my mom would surprise me with a mother/daughter massage appointment or a gift card for my birthday, but I never paid for them on my own and I never considered massage therapeutic or preventative care.

Until Lisa. The story she wanted me to write would feature three of the more “famous” massage therapists in our neck of the woods, and was intended to be a gentle comparison between the three, but mostly a feature on how massage (and bodywork in general) could be integrated into a mother’s wellness regimen. (The core readership of the magazine was local parents.) What were the benefits? How could massage be seen as more than just a well-deserved pampering?

I enjoyed three massages in three weeks. It was pure bliss.

But more than bliss…it was a wake up call.

I realized the true meaning of therapeutic massage. I understood both experientally and intellectually, after interviewing all three, just how much regular bodywork can contribute to our state of well-being.

To be more to the point: Getting a massage, or Reiki, or QiGong Meridian Therapy, or reflexology, or craniosacral therapy can keep you out of the doctor’s office. Or in my case, it could reduce the incidence of migraines; it could alleviate sciatica during pregnancy; it could balance my endocrine system and boost my immune system. It could keep my head and neck moving left to right and lead me to a good night sleep.

It was no accident that the writing assignment was offered to me at a major junction in my life. The moment at which I would choose wellness over illness. It was also around the same time in 2007 that the seeds of Mindful Living NJ were planted; and my journey to educate myself and empower others began.

Today, I’m working towards getting rid of a sinus infection on my own, without the help of antibiotics. I’ve found that antibiotics do me more harm than good (particularly creating major imbalances with yeast in my system), so I try to avoid them whenever possible.

I have been using a nasal wash with saline and grapefruit seed extract. I’ve been drinking Apple Cider Vinegar tea. And I scheduled an appointment with Tamar, who does a combination of bodywork (usually in the water) with the hopes that she could help open up my sinus passages and relieve the tension in my face and head.  My experience with Tamar (which was above and beyond expectations) also made me realize how much my body has suffered without body work since I moved to Israel in December.

When I consider the few contributing factors to why I’ve had more colds and infections since moving here than I’ve had in the last four years in total, I think about the fact that I was getting bodywork on a fairly regular basis — and here I have not been, at all.

Coincidence?

I don’t think so.

I invite you to change your way of thinking about bodywork. Instead of grouping it with the luxury items; the “what I want for my birthday list” or putting it away in the “I will never be able to afford it” file; think of bodywork in the same mindset you consider drinking eight glasses of water a day, or taking your calcium, or exercising, or annual exams. I daresay that regular bodywork, along with a mindful diet and good sleep, kept me out of the physician’s office for four years.

I invite you to make an appointment with a local therapeutic bodyworker.  Not to knock joints like Massage Envy, but I would recommend seeing someone with many years of experience, preferably recommended to you by a friend. I also recommend seeking practitioners through WellnessPossibilities.com, a wellness directory started by my friends Kathy and Dawn.

And last but not least, let me publicly acknowledge the professionals whose hands knew how to heal and who’ve helped my body remember what wellness is: Sue, Diane, Debra, Amy, Maia, Nate, Linda, Andrew, Suhail, Vera,  and any others I may have missed.

Your work is appreciated and valued. Thank you.

Remember the dad from My Big Fat Greek Wedding? He went around spraying everything from tabletops to zits with Windex and “poof” problems disappeared?

Yeah, that signature blue spray bottle’s not getting anywhere near my house, nor my face, but there’s another powerful liquid that I will gladly tote around in a spray bottle…vinegar.

Yes, vinegar. That which is truly stinky, but truly amazing.

Vinegar is nature’s best kept secret. Or my best kept secret. One or the other.

I keep waiting for people to realize how incredible and useful vinegar is. Every time I go to the grocery store, I expect that the prices will have skyrocketed higher than gas. But no, people still have not yet discovered the wonders of vinegar. They insist on using their Tide and their Lysol and their Windex. Their penicillin and amoxicillin and diflucan.

Whie distilled vinegar: I use it as a cleaning solution and as a bug repellant; to remove mineral residue from pots and soap residue from laundry; to clean the trash can and the toilet bowl. It’s cheap, environmentally friendly and non-toxic.

Yes, it’s a little stinky. Something close to a metallic vomit like aroma. But the smell disappears quickly, and I will often include a nice smelling essential oil in the mix to dilute to stench of the vinegar.

Sister to white disillted vinegar is Apple Cider Vinegar…also a miracle of miracles. I had no idea how powerful this stuff was until about a year ago when my husband and I both got a terrible case of food poisoning. When I posted this on the WB’s Facebook fan page, a few people suggested downing a few tablespoons of ACV.

And you know what? While it’s quite a challenge to down ACV while you are trying to keep vomit at bay, it completely got rid of the food poisoning within only a few hours. Since then, I’ve learned the other wonders of ACV from curing bad breath and B.O., to wiping out candida, to helping ease sinus infections naturally. Apparently it’s also used for weight loss, acne, arthritis and gout too!

It really makes me sad that people continue to bombard their immune systems with toxic coverup medications, lotions, and creams…not to mention the assault on their gut flora from repeated use of antibiotics…when they could be turning to the wonders of vinegar.

I’m tempted to start my own traveling medicine show, bottling my cure-all elixir and hawking it at street fairs and crafts expos. Sure, the old ladies might recognize the scent, but they won’t care once their gout is cured and their skin is cleared up.

I did notice that Target has started to package white vinegar as a “multi-surface cleaner” in their cleaning aisle. At least someone is giving Americans what they want, the cheap, easy solution in pretty packaging with lofty promises.