By: Tasha Spradlin
Health and Wellness. Why write about it? Isn’t it obvious when we aren’t well? If we aren’t well we should go to a doctor, right? Well, it depends on what your philosophy of health and well being is. How you approach your health is your choice, of course, but I would like to tell you about mine and how I went from
“I can eat or do whatever I want, and if I don’t feel sick – then I must be ok”
to
“I want to be happy and have a positive mindset in life, and to do that I now know what I need to do to get and stay healthy.”
This post will explain how I went from my initial perspective to my current one and what I’ve learned about life that others may benefit from.
It has been a long and frustrating journey back to health (sort of). I have been seeing doctors for five years now, from the time I lived in Texas to where I am living currently. From near and far, there hasn’t been a lot of answers, just guessing, medication taken based on guesses, and money largely wasted.
I grew up eating a lot of junk food and processed food such as toaster strudels, cereal with cow’s milk, pizza bagels, and let’s not forget about fast food and drinking in my teen years. You name it, I probably consumed it. Of course we don’t think of damaging our bodies while we are young and resilient, but unfortunately it does catch up with you when you are older. When I was sixteen years old, I noticed my lifestyle was harming me when I first started getting sharp stomach pains and feeling seriously depressed. I knew something was not right with me.
Luckily, I went through personal growth and practiced self love after my crazy teens and found that I didn’t need any of those things in my life. I attended some personal growth seminars and learned to introspect and examine my reasons for living an unhealthy lifestyle. What I discovered during this period was I had total freedom. My parents were pretty much doing their own thing at the time. I wanted to be the life of the party and get attention from everyone, so I drank a lot! A huge part of health and wellness is mental health. My mindset wasn’t in the right spot and I needed support. I thought I needed to drink to get attention and love, when really what I needed was to love myself.
A wake-up call for me was when my mom found out she had breast cancer. since then, I did a 180 in how I was living life. I started eating only organic food, grass fed beef, wild caught fish, less sugar, and no artificial anything.
I make it a point to always do my research and check the labels on everything I buy. This is huge! Even when we “think” the label is healthy, they can trick you by saying things like natural. If you see a label that says natural, this does not necessarily mean it resembles anything natural. It indicates that at one point the manufacturer worked with a natural source like apples or rice. Pay close attention to your labels on everything you use, not just what you put in your body, but also what you put on it.
Although by my early twenties I had changed my eating and health habits and felt much better, a life change came my way that disrupted my eating and health routines: I met my future husband who is from Texas and had an entirely different set of eating habits.
Slowly, but surely I was going back to my old ways of eating. I wasn’t feeling my best and started on a downward spiral. Here I was in a new relationship with my now husband from Texas who only ate meat and potatoes. It was hard to stick to my healthy way of eating, especially when there was conflict in the way we both ate and were used to eating. I also notice when I am stressed out, I crave really bad food and start binge eating. Depression hit hard, I didn’t want to shower, get out of bed, isolation kicked in, and I felt fatigued. I was on the lookout for yet another doctor, one who would hopefully be into natural healing. I had told my friend and co-founder Mike Gemmell how I was feeling and he referred me to a local doctor just down the road. I was skeptical after my experiences with other doctors, but decided to see if he was different from the rest. I did a little research online and sure enough, his beliefs and values matched mine. I particularly liked his perspective on wellness:
“Wellness is more than the absence of disease.”
Quickly, I filled out new patient paperwork, and was given a complimentary visit with Dr. Katie, an assistant of Dr. Scott Rollins (every patient receives this). I told her my symptoms and then had a visit with Dr. Rollins.
The experience with Dr. Rollins and his staff was a breath of fresh air compared with my previous experiences with doctors. I was finally getting a lot of answers! Prior to Rollins, I was getting pills prescribed from doctors to treat my symptoms, but no one was able to address the underlying problem. The doctors did not know what it was and did not focus their attention on that.
With the COVID -19 outbreak the issue of treating symptoms without addressing causes became much worse in the conventional medical community. I couldn’t go in to see a doctor so I had to make an online appointment with a doctor I didn’t even know. He thought I might have Covid with the symptoms I was having at the time, so he prescribed me with antibiotics. I was astounded. This doctor had no idea what I was going through, but he managed to give me a pill and send me on my way.
This “pill dispensing” approach that too many doctors use goes to the heart of what is wrong with medicine and public health these days. Each disease has a cause, conventional doctors are taught to focus on how to treat an illness to eliminate or mitigate it. What they rarely do is investigate what caused the person’s biological system to become weakened so that it became sick or diseased in the first place.
This approach works well for some things, but for most, they put on “bandages” to slow the disease process or simply treat the symptoms. We have pills for everything, but those pills rarely stop or reverse the course of disease. Many natural remedies were used long before drug companies came along with the latest FDA approved drug. By focusing on the whole patient and not just a symptom or disease, integrative medicine provides a more holistic approach to healthcare. Practicing functional medicine is more difficult than prescribing a pill, both for the doctor and the patient. And at least initially, it often involves advanced laboratory testing, which can be expensive, but in my opinion, worth it.
Rollins and his staff took the time to perform laboratory testing that would identify my underlying issues causing my symptoms. I had my blood drawn and results came back as candida overgrowth, gluten sensitivity, multiple food sensitivities, hormonal imbalances, and I was low on iron. To correct these, I needed to stick with a paleo diet because it eliminates gluten and candida altogether. I was given iron supplements, now on hormone therapy, to manage my stress, and take the only prescription to kill off candida in my intestines and stomach.
The results were remarkable! My mood has changed drastically. I feel much happier and energized which has positively affected how I am as a person and how I treat others in my life.
Everybody is different and what they need to live a healthy life will vary from one person to another. A diet or approach that is right for me, may not be the right path for you. We are all on this journey to health and wellness in some part of our life whether it’s right now or later down the road. My advice to anyone reading this is: listen to your body. If something feels off and you’re really in tune with how you are supposed to feel or not feel, it is imperative to go see someone you trust because the only one who can tell if something isn’t right, is YOU. It is much better to catch problems early, so you can live a healthy and fulfilling life. I hope this story of my journey to health and wellness has been helpful, and I encourage you to correct your health and wellness issues in a natural way that works for your body.
We help Integrative Medicine and Functional Medicine professionals communicate their message. We believe:
“Wellness is more than the absence of disease, and methods of diagnosis and treatment of illness that address the root cause(s) are preferable to approaches that simply treat symptoms of a disease or condition.”
— Mike Gemmell and Tasha Spradlin, co-founders, Health Marketing Innovations