inspirediscovery

[inspirediscovery]

health. congestion, deficiency, excess.

Over the last decade I’ve read, observed, and experienced much with respect to diet and health, and it seems to me that the vast majority of human illness is the result of deficiency, excess, and/or congestion/stagnation (often coupled with some form of childhood or generational trauma, which slots in under congestion/stagnation).

So why the image of the garbage truck? Well, with respect to excess and congestion/stagnation, let’s consider the body’s systems of elimination and use a city’s sanitation department as a metaphor. In some cities, each residence receives three bins with which to dispose of waste: refuse, recycling, and compost. When everything is sorted and disposed of properly and the bins are put out on time, everything functions as designed.

What happens if this or that bin is overflowing? Either the operator refuses collection, as is the policy in some cities, or perhaps the excess gets dumped in the alleyway or on the roadside during collection.

What happens if items are placed in the wrong bin? Or if items like batteries or paint, that can be particularly harmful, end up in the system that shouldn’t?

Now consider your body. It shouldn’t be that hard to see how your body could become overwhelmed by an excess of metabolic waste, undigestible material, or material that the regular pathways aren’t designed to handle... so what then? Materials accumulate here and there to be dealt with when the system isn’t being overwhelmed... and what if that time isn’t forthcoming and materials build up beyond what this or that organ can handle? Congestion. Stagnation. Stones. Tumours. Ulcers. Etcetera. These deposits don’t form by accident. There is a lot of stuff that modern humans put into their bodies that the human body has never encountered (or only encountered in much, much smaller amounts) over the tens (hundreds?) of thousands of years we’ve been around, until just recently... over the last few centuries at most? Certainly not a lot of time for adaptation or evolution to kick in. Natural selection however...

R.

#health #illness #lung conditions #skin conditions #gut health #accumulation #stagnation #congestion #tumours #deposits #stones #blockages #elimination

[inspirediscovery]

The Hidden Life of Trees

Peter Wohlleben, a German forester and author, has a rare understanding of the inner life of trees, and is able to describe it in accessible, evocative language. His book, The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate, has sold more than two million copies worldwide. Wohlleben draws on groundbreaking scientific discoveries to describe how trees are like human families: tree parents live together with their children, communicate with them, support them as they grow, share nutrients with those who are sick or struggling, and even warn each other of impending dangers. Wohlleben also shares his deep love of woods and forests, explaining the amazing processes of life, death, and regeneration he has observed in his woodland.

A revolution has been taking place in the scientific understanding of trees, and Wohlleben is the first writer to convey its amazements to a general audience. The latest scientific studies, conducted at well-respected universities in Germany and around the world, confirm what he has long suspected from close observation in this forest: Trees are far more alert, social, sophisticated – and even intelligent – than we thought.

There is now a substantial body of scientific evidence that shows that trees of the same species are communal, and will often form alliances with trees of other species. Forest trees have evolved to live in cooperative, interdependent relationships, maintained by communication and a collective intelligence similar to an insect colony. These soaring columns of living wood draw the eye upward to their outspreading crowns, but the real action is taking place underground, just a few inches below our feet.

All the trees in a forest are connected to each other through underground fungal networks. Trees share water and nutrients through the networks, and also use them to communicate. They send distress signals about drought and disease, for example, or insect attacks, and other trees alter their behavior when they receive these messages. Scientists call these mycorrhizal networks. The fine, hairlike root tips of trees join together with microscopic fungal filaments to form the basic links of the network, which appears to operate as a symbiotic relationship between trees and fungi, or perhaps an economic exchange. As a kind of fee for services, the fungi consume about 30 percent of the sugar that trees photosynthesize from sunlight. The sugar is what fuels the fungi, as they scavenge the soil for nitrogen, phosphorus and other mineral nutrients, which are then absorbed and consumed by the trees.

To communicate through the network, trees send chemical, hormonal and slow-pulsing electrical signals, which scientists are just beginning to decipher. Edward Farmer at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland has been studying the electrical pulses, and he has identified a voltage-based signaling system that appears strikingly similar to animal nervous systems (although he does not suggest that plants have neurons or brains).

Five-thousand miles away, at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Suzanne Simard and her grad students are making astonishing new discoveries about the sensitivity and interconnectedness of trees in the Pacific temperate rainforests of western North America. Dr. Simard is a professor with the UBC Faculty of Forestry, where she lectures on and researches the role of mycorrhizae and mycorrhizal networks in tree species migrations with climate change disturbance. Networks of mycorrhizal fungal mycelium have recently been discovered by Professor Simard and her graduate students to connect the roots of trees and facilitate the sharing of resources in Douglas-fir forests of interior British Columbia, thereby bolstering their resilience against disturbance or stress and facilitating the establishment of new regeneration.

They found that the mycorrhizal network serves as a below ground pathway for transfer of carbon from the nutrient-rich deciduous trees to nearby regenerating Douglas-fir seedlings. Moreover, they found that carbon transfer was enhanced when Douglas-fir seedlings were shaded in mid-summer, providing a subsidy that may be important in Douglas-fir survival and growth, thus helping maintain a mixed forest community during early succession.

Simard’s research indicates that all trees in a forest ecosystem are interconnected, with the largest, oldest trees serving as hubs. The underground exchange of nutrients increases the survival of younger trees linked into the network of old trees. She has found vast underground tree root systems that are kind of like giant brains. Like the neurons in our own brains, trees send messages via their roots. In fact, she says that trees aren’t only communicating, but are also sending resources back and forth to help out other trees – even if they are a different kind of tree.

Simard calls the older trees (up to 500 years old) “mother trees.” Mother trees are the biggest, oldest trees in the forest with the most fungal connections. They’re not necessarily female, but Simard sees them in a nurturing, supportive, maternal role. With their deep roots, they draw up water and make it available to shallow-rooted seedlings. They help neighboring trees by sending them nutrients, and when the neighbors are struggling, mother trees detect their distress signals and increase the flow of nutrients accordingly.

When mother trees begin to die, they start passing their resources off to the younger trees around them. Simard says it’s like the passing of a wand from one generation to the next. Besides being a beautiful way to understand forests, this information also gives us one more reason to stop clear cutting, which is when timber companies clear tracts of land of all trees. It’s easier for the loggers, but it takes away the mother trees so they can’t pass along those resources to the next generation. With the logging of mother trees, they wipe out whole forest communities, and that’s nothing less than attempted ecocide. After learning about the complex life of trees, a walk in the woods will never be the same again.

#trees #forests #mycorrhizal fungi #mycorrhizal networks #old growth trees #mother trees #peter wohlleben #ecosystem #interconnectedness #nature

[inspirediscovery]

health. nature’s cycles: sun, moon, seasons.

There are three major cycles that we can observe in nature, and which all of nature participates in, except modern man and perhaps our domesticated pets. Among these are that of the earth’s rotation on its axis, the moon’s rotations around the earth, and the earth’s rotation around the sun. We experience these as the cycles of day and night, moon phases, and the seasons.

Day and night. I think it’s probably safe to say that this cycle is the most well known of the three, and the consequences for life out of sync with it are also at least known, if not well known. In college I did a presentation on circadian rhythms for my public speaking class. I pulled most of the information for the presentation from a Scientific American magazine and a book on the subject.

I’ve since become familiar with this cycle from an Eastern perspective which asserts that our internal organs alternate between periods of more and less activity over the course of the day and night, which offers insight into the best times for sleep, awakening, work, study, meals, and exercise, all of which aligns with what I’d learned about circadian rhythms from the western scientific perspective.

At any rate, there is plenty of information available on circadian rhythm and the adverse effects of misalignment. And if you really want to know, just talk to anyone you know who works night shifts or shift rotations. Know that the shift premium some receive for working these off shifts doesn’t come at all close to covering the cost to their health and longevity.

Moon phases. Nature’s calendar has thirteen months marked by the phases of the moon, not twelve like we observe in the western world. While I’m unsure what sort of impact this misalignment has for men, for women it’s significant. It’s no coincidence that indigenous women call their menses their moon time.

I recently (yesterday) sat in on a teaching about Indigenous Full Moon Ceremonies, not realizing it was for women and related to their reproductive and birth cycles. That said, I learned much. I learned that indigenous women refer to Luna as Grandmother Moon. I learned that the full moon is a time for women to align their moon time with nature, and that artificial light confounds this alignment (not to mention the havoc modern birth control methods wreak on women’s bodies and cycles).

Seasons. All of nature participates in the cycle of the seasons, except modern man. We certainly notice seasonal changes, and while we may dress warmer for winter and take time to clean our spaces or plant gardens in the spring, we don’t participate in seasonal cycles quite like the rest of nature. Thanks to modern life, we humans are mostly free of the impacts of this particular cycle. Or are we?

Perhaps we just don’t notice the impacts on our lives being out of alignment with the seasons. As a child I would often fall ill in spring and autumn. It was suggested that airborne pollens triggered my allergies in the spring, and in autumn? Perhaps moulds. Or perhaps there is a cost associated with ignoring our place in nature and thinking we can operate independently of its cycles.

I will continue to explore seasonal cycles and the potential impacts on human health in future posts. In the meantime, consider that despite whatever we might think about it, our bodies will at least attempt to continue to do like they’ve done for the tens of thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of years that humans have lived on this planet.

#health #lifestyle #nature #natural cycles #cycles #seasons #moon phases #moon time #circadian rhythm #day #night #alignment #being human

[inspirediscovery]

Health; adoption trauma.

“I must acknowledge that though his adoption embodies graciousness, it is also a reminder this world is not as it should be. Brokenness permeates our world. Sure, beauty is born from ashes, but the ashes don't just magically disappear. Suffering and all that is wrong in this world still exists. This side of heaven, tragedy remains and the moments of her son becoming ours is a representation of joy and suffering deeply intertwined. Our son, the living proof and blessing that love is what makes a family, reminds us that adoption is born out of undeniable loss. Irrevocable loss of wholeness, of what was meant to be.

“To only acknowledge the beauty without giving voice to the tragedy, is to detract from adoption. In diminishing the tragedy of adoption, I decrease my son's story, along with others a part of the adoption circle. I would be choosing to ignore a massive portion of who he is.” - Natalie Brenner, This Undeserved Life: Uncovering The Gifts of Grief and The Fullness of Life

- - - - -

Before I get into this I want to acknowledge that I have never harboured any ill will toward my mother who birthed me or father who sired me. I have known from a young age that I was adopted, as well as the circumstances of my adoption, or at least as much as was known to my adoptive parents. I knew my birth parents were too young to raise a child (15 when I was born). I also knew that my adoptive parents were unable to conceive and wanted a family so very much. I perhaps didn’t appreciate any of this as much as I do now, to be honest I never really paid it much mind at all until I became a parent myself.

All in all, I had a good childhood. My father worked hard so my mother could stay home with us (I had two older sisters, also adopted) until we were all into grade school. My parents both had daytime schedules, we had regular mealtimes, I did well in school, and can’t say I ever really wanted for much. There was never any, “you’re not my real parents/child,” and I never suffered any further childhood trauma beyond the accepted forms of discipline at the time, and that one time when I was still fairly young and briefly got lost in a Safeway supermarket.

All that said, it’s the first three weeks of my life that are most important here, with some consideration for the first year or two following and nine months preceding.

I was born in Calgary at the Foothills Hospital at 8am on June 24th, 1979. It was a Sunday. I didn’t go home with my adoptive parents until July 14th. I was in the hospital for almost three weeks. I acknowledge that the details of those days are lost to time, though I think I can safely assume that I spent most of that time alone in a hospital crib. Sure there were nurses to care for me, though not like a mother would. I discovered recently that while my mother was in the hospital for the first five days, she was not permitted to hold me except for one time that she was nearby and the nurses could not get me to stop crying (and once in her arms I stopped crying immediately).

So, for nine months I grew within my mother. I became familiar with her heartbeat and the sound of her voice. I may have also become familiar with the voices of other members of my family. And once I was born they were just, gone. Anyone who has lost someone important to them knows grief, though what the experience of that might be like for a newborn, I have no conscious recollection. I can imagine that it would be absolutely devastating, terrifying even.

Humans experience emotions in the body, and strong emotions can have an impact on the organs associated with those emotions. Extremely strong emotions can be held in the body to be processed at a later time to save the individual from being overwhelmed. Grief and anxiety are associated with the heart and lungs, fear with the heart and kidneys. The lungs and kidneys are important in eliminating metabolic waste and excess, and when our normal organs of elimination are impaired, the skin can help (I will expand on everything here in future posts).

It was between the time when my birth mother held me and when I left the hospital with my adoptive parents that I developed skin issues. And by the time I was one year old I was diagnosed with asthma; my adoptive parents were told it may have been due to the eruption of Mt. St. Helens in March of 1980.

So what proof is there that adoption is a traumatic experience? In 1998 the CDC and Kaiser Permanente published the Adverse Childhood Experience study (ACEs) which shows that early trauma has lasting impacts and far more negative health impacts than most people realize. The seven core issues of adoption are: loss, rejection, guilt/shame, grief, identity, intimacy, and control/mastery. More on ACEs can be found in books published on the subject and elsewhere on the internet.

Let it be known that I’m not sharing this to assign any blame or make anyone feel guilty or anything like that. And if any blame were to be assigned, it is the system that’s at fault, not my birth mother, adoptive parents, or any other family members.

So why am I sharing this now? Having only met my birth mother a couple years ago there’s parts of this story that I’ve only come to know recently, and further, it’s only recently that I’ve been doing the work to resolve this trauma and process the associated emotions (composing this post has taken some time and brought me to tears throughout).

I also share for the perspective it can offer to others, whether they’ve experienced similar or know someone who has. And because it’s part of the work for me to release the trauma and process the associated emotions. If anyone would like to discuss anything I’ve shared here further, by all means comment, dm, text, or reach out to me in person.

R.

#adoption #adoptee #adoption trauma #childhood trauma #trauma #grief #fear #anxiety #lung conditions #skin conditions #asthma #eczema #emotions #health #disease #illness #childhood illness #wounded masculine #wounded healer #healing #origin story

[inspirediscovery]

Health; childhood illness.

“Illness is the doctor to whom we pay most heed; to kindness, to knowledge, we make promise only; pain we obey.” - Marcel Proust

Allergies: animal dander, dust, grass, mould, pollen, fresh strawberries, codeine, penicillin. Asthma, with all the common triggers. Eczema, pretty much everywhere at some point. These are the conditions that have plagued me for the majority of my life, beginning in my childhood, as far back as I can remember.

The hospital bracelets pictured represent a fraction of my childhood hospital stays, most asthma/breathing/coughing-related, and three or four surgeries to clear a blocked tear duct, and then two to bypass it; the first tube came out my eye one time I was rubbing it. I was told I’d have to get a permanent tube put in after the second was taken out, however when the time came and it was removed, the duct remained unblocked and further intervention wasn’t required.

Not represented are the monthly visits to the clinic for immunotherapy; injected with allergen extracts in hope that I would... get used to them? The only thing I ever noticed over the years was that I had a sore shoulder for a couple days to a week of each month.

So, as I was finishing high school, you might see why I had some interest in pursuing a career in medicine. My first semester of university I took the appropriate courses toward that end, however the more I thought about it, the less interested I became. Up to this point in my life, modern medicine never held any answers, only assertions. Like how immunotherapy should help, so why didn’t it? Would I have been better or worse without it?

All I know for sure is that I heard “let’s try”, “maybe”, “this should”, and other not-so-scientific assertions often enough that my confidence in allopathic medicine successfully alleviating any of my conditions waned as I grew older. Heck, it was all speculation as to why I was even afflicted by the conditions I was. Perhaps it was the eruption of Mt St Helen’s that caused my asthma... but what about all the asthma-free children my age and in my geographic area? Surely I wasn’t the only one?

Ultimately, I had the most success when I came to address my diet and lifestyle in my early thirties after reading extensively about a number of approaches. I experienced relief to the point where I could actually run without restricted breathing. I could play with pets and not worry about allergy meds or if I had my inhaler. I received compliments on the softness and clarity of my skin and was asked what skin products I was using (none). I also stopped experiencing what I have come to know as “abnormal discharges” like ear wax, eye boogers, etc. I’d never felt so clear, physically and mentally...

Sooo, how’d I get to that point? Where am I at since? Will what I did work for anyone? What other conditions may be alleviated through diet and lifestyle? 🤔 I’ll explore these questions and more in posts to come.

R.

#health #illness #chronic illness #childhood illness #asthma #allergies #eczema #lung conditions #skin conditions #relief #diet #lifestyle

[inspirediscovery]

begin.

“If we wait for the moment when everything, absolutely everything, is ready, we shall never begin.” – Ivan Turgenev

“Discover, and inspire discovery,” is my personal mission statement. I utilized the formula laid out in the book, “The Path: Creating Your Mission Statement for Work and for Life,” by Laurie Beth Jones. While I have no intention of reviewing this book here, if you are interested in creating a mission statement for work or your life, well, this book could help.

So after ten years with this mission, have I been fulfilling it? It occurs to me, maybe not… while I’ve certainly made many discoveries over the years, I don’t know that I’ve inspired many.

Oxford Languages Dictionary defines inspire as follows: “fill (someone) with the urge or ability to do or feel something, especially to do something creative.” While I’ve shared some of what I’ve learned and experienced with others, I don’t know how much discovery I’ve actually inspired.

Back to the quote I began this post with and this idea of being ready and what has being “not ready” looked like for me?

In my professional life, I’ve given up on a business and business ideas. I’ve made lacklustre efforts. I’ve delayed projects. I’ve been inconsistent. Because I need to do this, first. Or I need to know more about that. And I need more practice.

And my most likely future? More of the same, until I actually begin fulfilling my mission and doing that which aligns with my purpose. This blog is a significant part of that. It will give me a platform to express myself, to practice writing, to share knowledge, experience, and my self.

I’m not just doing this for myself though, I do hope that you get something out of it too. And if you do, I hope you’ll share, or if you have a question, consideration, or anything that might deepen or expand upon the post’s content then please comment to add to the discussion, or message me directly.

Thank you for joining me on this journey of discovery.

R.

#inspire #self discovery #i am ready #so it begins #introduction #journey #spirituality #humanity #mission #mission statement #purpose #discover #discovery