peace, love, and macrobiotics

sometimes, the worst weeks are my best weeks.

this week, my doctors laid down the law and told me i had to

get penicillin injections for my ongoing battles with infection.  i know

 it's due to the unbalanced schedule i lead, but as long as my life is

out of balance, i guess my skin is too.

i fought them pretty hard, as i haven't taken antibiotics since 2009.

sure enough, i experienced horrible side effects.  ironically, also skin

related.  i didn't get much sleep this weekend, and i was really worried

that due to the severity of the reaction i had, that i'd have to go on meds.

i usually only talk about food (or shoes) on here, but i know a lot of you

are struggling with your health, and i always want to be real with you,

because the macrobiotic community is... a community.  we support each

other, and i think that communal support is really key in healing.

well, i decided to get back to the basics to treat my symptoms.  i took

out my cutting board, and really spent time with the food.  i carefully

washed, dried, and sliced all my veggies, and i was amazed at the calm

that came over me.  a ton of emotions and thoughts that i hadn't realized

were there floated to the surface.  i calmly balanced my meal, using root

veggies, greens, seaweeds, and grains.  i took several remedies, including

aduki bean tea tonight.

my body has begun healing on its own, and i feel like my mind and my

spirit are healing with it.  i realized through this that i can trust my body.

i also realized that i really don't need coffee as much as i think i do :)

finally, i am not only trusting in god, but overwhelmed by his universal

providence.  he loved me enough to let my illness be my teacher to guide

me to the foods i knew i should be eating.  

i feel so blessed cooking these recipes, and as i cook, i can feel the energy

and love of all the amazing friends and teachers whose recipes i prepare.

i know that their wish for me was to grow strong enough to heal myself.

the movements they taught me, techniques, recipes, guidance, and patience

are with me when i cook.  i really almost lost hope this week.  i felt so

helpless and demoralized, and then i felt the love of all of my friends and

teachers who shared macrobiotics with me and knew i would be okay.

when you cook macrobiotic food, think about all the people who passed down

those recipes.  they shared them from love, and someone passed it along to

someone else who passed it along to you because the food you're cooking

enriched their life, and because they care about you.

and that is why i love macrobiotics.

Macrobiotic Theory: Aggression

Macrobiotic diagnosis most often focuses on physical ailments, but a major symptom of general poor health is attitude.

A healthy, balanced body has a healthy and balanced mind.  Western culture focuses on illness in terms of physical pain.  Mean-spiritedness, unkindness, and aggression are symptoms.  If mind, body, and spirit are connected, a frayed or aggressive mind means an imbalanced body.

That being said, mean people still irritate me.

It's hard to look at a person who is cutting you down and say, "Wow!  They must have a pretty serious dietary imbalance.  I wonder how their colon is doing..." but as a macrobiotic person, it's important to view angry people in their proper context.

This week, jacked up on sugar that I really should never have eaten, I found myself getting really angry.  A girl I know said something mean and petty, and I got wrapped up.
Do I know this person very well?  Not really.
Is it possible for me to cease all interactions with her?  Pretty easily.
Was the comment even directed at me?  No, but I felt targeted.

If I consider this from a macrobiotic perspective, this is not only a symptom of her imbalance- it's a symptom of my imbalance.  I was so hyped up on sugar and caffeine that I allowed myself to get riled.

I know for a fact that this girl has a health-weakening diet and lifestyle.  Think about the mean girls you went to high school with.  A steady diet of alcohol, sugar, and sporadic meals will make any person aggressive and nuts.

This is how I understand the anger-yin imbalance relationship.

I crave sugar and chocolate when I'm stressed out.  I just want the quick carbs and sweetness to create calm.  Once I have them, I bounce to the middle for a couple of hours (Temporary Calm).

Unfortunately, these effects are only temporary.  Because we're pulling our body into an artificial calm, when we come back, our original symptoms (stress) return.  This time, they're accompanied by craving.  If I don't get chocolate, I start to get cranky and angry!

It's a band-aid, not a cure.

Listen, we're all human.  Like I said, I had sugar this week.  When you're upset, the last thing you want to do is steam some kale.

The reason I made this chart is so that we can have compassion for people who have taken it to the next level.  They're not only angry, they're targeting or making fun of other people.  To me, aggression is the next stage.  

Stress <  Anger  < Aggression

Michio Kushi's intention in sharing macrobiotics with America was to work to create one peaceful world.

When we are balanced, the anger of others doesn't stick to us.  It breaks like water on rocks.  There's no anger in us to respond.  We have peace.  As each person who comes to macrobiotics finds peace, we begin to reduce the anger in others, because they have no target.  Person by person, we start to build a peaceful world.

Rich People, Poor Food

This is Beacon Hill.

Two homes in the Beacon Hill area are currently on the market, priced at $14.5 million and $18 million.  Not for the likes of plebs like you or I is this Hill.

I used to work on Beacon Hill, and I love to go back and walk up and down the streets, sipping fashionable tea as I watch professional dog walkers wrestle with massive Saint Bernards up and down the street.

It's a beautiful area, and believe it or not, the people who live there are really nice folks.  I wrote a piece for a local organization, and they were friendly and warm to the feckless intern in their midst.

What I just can't understand is this...

Why do people who can afford to eat better... eat cheap junk food?

I saw a woman on Beacon Hill this week carrying the $1200 Louis Vuitton bag I'd been coveting.  This is not remarkable.  The combined retail value of the handbags walking down that street could fund a nuclear research facility.

The strange thing is that all of her children were eating those 99-cent firecracker popsicles.  You know... the red, white and blue ones you used to get at summer camp that are equal parts corn syrup, water, and experimental food dyes.  The artificial cherry flavoring was invented by some scientist who never tasted a real cherry.

I stopped in at the local grocery store looking for a snack.  In the interest of full disclosure, I've seen worse.  There are those city convenience stores where the only vegetable is a Ho-Ho.

But the prognosis wasn't good.  Here's a look at the cereal aisle.

You can see we've got our root vegetables, our grains, and our deep leafy greens.

Oh, my bad.  That's Cap'n Crunch and Weetabix.









T'wasn't all dire.  They made an effort with some dried fruits and nuts.  At about $5-$9 a pop, they were a little pricey for the likes of me and mine, but if you're cruising $14 million houses, a $5 box of wasabi peas won't hit you where it hurts.

Still...  A lot of this "health food" was misleading.  Yogurt-dipped pretzels were nestled right alongside roasted almonds.  Everything was given a really peaceful "organic" looking label.  It made me feel like a kindly Vermont grandmother tucked my Assorted Dried Fruits in their plastic box and sealed it with a loving kiss before heading out back to sing the cows to sleep.

Holy unseasonal, totally non-regional produce, Batman.  The last time an avocado grew in Massachusetts, I'm pretty sure dinosaurs roamed the earth.


The point of this journey through the grocery store isn't to nitpick and highlight the fact that almost every one of those vegetables is a nightshade from a different climate.

I just want to know why nobody has a problem with constantly ingesting food that atrophies our health.

Especially people who have the financial and educational resources to care.

The brunch, breakfast, and lunch restaurants on Beacon Hill are filled with eggs, ham, bacon, and sugar.  Donuts, pastries, cakes, croissants...  Why is nobody insisting on better food?

Why do the financially impoverished neighborhoods of Boston have higher quality produce and restaurants than the most expensive square mile in New England?

What are they eating?  At first I thought they were leaving Beacon Hill to get organic produce and food.  Then I saw the family of popsicle-wielders and thought again.

I'm not passing down judgement.  There is no finger-shaking here.  When it's on TV, in our magazines, advertised on the subway, listed in the Michelin Guide, subsidized by the US Government, and carried in every store on the planet, it's not a matter of being aware or unaware.  We're being fed.

And I believe that as a nation, for richer or for poorer, we deserve better than what's being put on our plates.

Committing to Change

I've got a post coming up about tofu scrambles and delicious things of that ilk, but I wanted to do a reflective post today about my decision to come to macrobiotics.

To say the decision was a last-ditch effort would be putting it mildly. For someone as young as 23, there were a lot of things that I "knew."

I knew that vegetables weren't stronger medicines than prescriptions given by the doctors.
I knew that there was nothing a macrobiotic healer or acupuncturist could tell me that a doctor and tests couldn't.
I knew that no natural healing, whether food, shiatsu, acupuncture, or supplements, would give relief as fast or as strongly as medication.
I knew that when I got better, I would get my life back.

I can't stress this last one strongly enough, because it's the one thing I've heard myself and every single other person I know who has suffered through a long illness say all the time.

Here's the single hardest pill that I had to swallow in my life, and I can't say I wish I had known, because I think if somebody had told me (and they did, numerous people, numerous times), I wouldn't have believed them.

You're not getting your life back. At least, not the life you used to have. For me, "getting my life back" meant that I could walk down the street and if I was craving KFC, buy a giant tray of puffy biscuits, thick gravy, and crispy fried chicken, eat it, and feel fine afterward. "Getting my life back" meant going clubbing with my friends and having drinks if I felt like it, then doing it again the next day.

And for a time, getting my life back meant being strong enough to spend the night outside of my house. It meant being strong enough to get on a plane and fly without throwing up from the exertion. It meant not being afraid to eat a meal that I didn't prepare myself. It meant not getting up from my work to run to the bathroom and throw up.

The important thing to know if you're seriously ill and are considering natural medicine is that no matter what happens, whether you choose natural medicine, or whether you choose medication and surgery, your life will never be the same. It will change in different ways depending on what you choose, but even if you go mainstream with Western medicine, you still won't get the same life back that you had six months or a year or two years ago. In some cases, the medications you take or surgery you choose will alter your body's functions for the rest of your life. In other cases, you'll find that you'll be on a cycle of medication, on and off for years.

Rather than focus on the end goal, which is to return to where you started before you were sick, remember that the life you lived before you got sick was setting you up for illness. Something that was going on in that life wasn't sustaining you. It was a train on a course for illness. Logically, to go back to that life is to go back to a life that is preparing to collapse. To go back to that life is to get back on a train that you already know will crash. You should know! You were on that train the first time!

The real difference between natural and Western medicine is that natural medicine forces you to reflect on your old life and see what was setting you up for this illness. Western medicine in most cases ignores this, stating "These things just happen sometimes." or "We don't really know all the causes of ____." Rather than take medicine that masks symptoms so that you can carry on "business as usual," in macrobiotics your body lets you know when the old ways aren't working.

Example: Friday night, for the first time in two years, I went to the club and drank (about half of what I used to drink pre-macro). My tolerance for alcohol had all but vanished, I was absolutely blind drunk by the end of the night, and for the next two days, my body and mind were an absolute wreck. The next day I felt puffy, my gut and intestines hurt like crazy, my skin broke out, and I cried two times from such weighty matters as my nails getting chipped from work, and getting a friend's voice-mail instead of her phone. Crises, I know.

Perhaps more importantly, I couldn't imagine doing that more than maybe MAYBE once a year. When I was in college I used to go out and party three or four nights a week. Now I can't even imagine how I used to do that.

I used to pray and pray that God would give me my old life back. I would get mad and cry and tell myself that God abandoned me when I would land in the hospital. Obviously He wasn't hearing my prayers when I told him how I deserved the life of a "normal" 20-year-old, and that if I had my life back, I would be normal again. And don't we all deserve to be normal? Normal people don't get randomly hospitalized with recurrent skin infections that require surgery, kidney stones, rupturing internal cysts. Most importantly, most people don't throw up every meal for months on end, to go from a size 12 to a size 4, to cry every night to just be knocked unconscious because the nausea and vomiting are so bad.

God knew that I deserved better than just getting my old life back. If you are reading this tonight and you are sick and want to know why God doesn't just give you your life back, it's because He has the foresight to know that you deserve better.

As far as the things I "knew" went, each one of them was wrong. The first night I was at Ginny's, she saw me take the antiemetics (anti-vomiting medication) prescribed by the hospital. (Note: You know that nobody has any idea what the hell is wrong with you when they write you a prescription for 100 pills and they tell you to call when you run out).

The next day, she stopped my hand and gave me a tea to drink instead. I knew it wouldn't work, but what the heck, right? The pills the doctor prescribed me sure weren't working.

30 minutes later, my nausea level had been halved. I couldn't believe it. Ginny explained to me how and why it was working, and unlike the doctors who cleared the room seconds after giving the medication to see the next patient, she sat with me for several hours, checking on me and making sure I was doing okay.

I can't really describe the difference that macrobiotics has made in my life. I went from taking 3 pharmaceutical drugs a day to treat everything from chronic yeast infections to chronic sinusitis, more antibiotics when I'm sick and a bunch of pain killers for cramps... I don't have sinusitis anymore. I treat yeast with diet and it goes away in a day or so, I don't need antibiotics because I only get about 1 cold a year, and I don't get cramps. And this is just my first year of macrobiotics. I thought as soon as my nausea got better, I'd get off the diet.

Instead, I can't wait to see what next year brings.