It's that time of year.
Johnny and I caught a bug this week so I thought I'd revisit some of my cold/flu protocols. I realize I haven't been on top of my game lately, ideally I would be doing some proactive/preventative care every single day, in sickness and in health, but we all fall off the band wagon sometimes.
Here is my protocol for supporting yourself with a cold:

People commonly ask how Johnny and I take on so many things. The answer to that question is highly involved but could be boiled down into two words: Passion and Obsession.
“Great…” you may be saying, “but how do you cultivate that?”
A lot of people mention their lack of time, energy or motivation.
Some people always put it off for the future, which we’ve been guilty of ourselves, saying, “when I get “there” I will start pouring into what I love.”
Some people just have no idea what they want to pursue...there is this huge looming idea that we have to know what our life vision is right now! And then we need to pursue it with everything we have, make a difference and change the entire world!
There is a lot of unnecessary pressure.

Passion comes when we pursue our obsessions.
Passion comes when we fuel our bodies and minds with good food.
Passion comes when we create rituals and take time for self-care.
Passion comes when we stop looking at it as the end all be all.
Passion comes when we do the thing that makes time stand still for us.
Passion comes when we explore, adventure, try new things, fail over and over.

There are steps to feeling fulfilled in life. These are things that I have tried myself.

FIRST. If we aren’t eating well we won’t be fueling our bodies to wake up and live to our fullest potential. Not only that, but certain foods affect how our mind works and if we aren’t digesting well then we won’t be receiving the building blocks we need to have a clear mind. How are we to follow our passions and live life if we always feel bogged down in our body?

A few quick nutrition tips:
-Take Bitters before every meal to stimulate digestion. That way your brain and body will receive the vitamins, minerals and other materials it needs to thrive.
-Consume healthy fats. Fats make up the barrier of every single cell in our body, this affects the transport of nutrients into the cells which affects EVERYTHING. Fat also satiates us and gives us long burning energy for those days that we are kicking ass! Some ideas: coconut oil, pastured butter, raw olive oil, avocado, wild caught sardines, raw milk products, pastured animal products.
-Consume high quality protein. Proteins are broken down by optimal digestion into Amino Acids which are the building blocks of our Neurotransmitters, the things in our brain that create our feel-good emotions. Without protein we can become deficient in these and slip into depression, anger and lack of motivation. Consume PROTEIN for PASSION!
-Consume a variety of vegetables/fruit. The colors and types of vegetables/fruit have different benefits. We’ve become a society that has a lack of variety in our food. Eat seasonally, go to the farmer's market, try new things.

SECOND. If you don’t know what you want to pursue but you don’t go out and try things then how will you discover it? A common issue is that people don’t even know where to start. If that is you then answer these questions:

1. What do you love? Is it travelling, learning, teaching, exercising, volunteering, reading, fixing things, music cooking…? (this can be broad)
2. What are you actually good at? What has come natural to you?
3. What do people need and want? What are the needs around you? Where is there a gap in resources for people that you could fill?

Where do these lists all align?
Once you’ve got an idea or direction:

1. Are you willing to fail? Some careers or passions require failure to succeed. The most successful people have failed the most. You have to be okay with this aspect and use failure to work out kinks, learn things and ultimately thrive.
2. What unpleasant experiences are you willing to deal with? What are the unpleasant details of your passion? For me it is being alone for long amounts of time.
3. What did you love when you were young? For me that was writing, creating and being alone. Dig back into your past and remember where you started and what sparked joy in you as a child.

THIRD. Take the lists and writing you did above and start researching or trying things out. Most people don’t choose their passion the moment they graduate highschool and go full throttle. The reason Johnny and I look like we’re doing so many things is because we are trying stuff out. We’re seeing what works, what doesn’t, what makes us feel alive, we’re researching, experimenting and ultimately FAILING a lot. You have to take calculated risks and you have to fail. I don’t like failing...but I see the purpose of it now.

If you truly find your passion then you’ll become a force to be reckoned with!
Passion=Obsession
No one could stop you once you find it and all you want to do is learn more, try things out, fail and succeed.

My hope is that more people take the risks needed to find their passion.
And once you find yours, or if you have the resources, help others find theirs.

​

            We all know the blunt fact: sugar is bad for you, yet we don’t know how to curb our ravenous cravings for this white gold. The alluring sweets and treats enter our vision and waft into our noses on the daily, whether we have them in our household or not. We have to pass them in the grocery store when we’re stressed out and weak from a day at work or we have a child relentlessly tugging on our arm to buy them sugary snacks that we end up indulging in as well. We have to see magnificent cakes and pastries on the menu at restaurants and behind thin glass at our coffee shops. We have treats offered to us by friends and displayed freely down long tables at weddings, waiting for us.
           The problem of sugar cravings goes incredibly deep. We’ve actually changed our taste buds by overpowering them with sweeter and saltier things than you could find in nature. This is because we’ve isolated sugar from the sugar cane plant. The sugar cane plant, believe it or not, is very high in minerals, this is the same with things like berries and fruit, they have sugar in them but they also have minerals, vitamins and fiber. When sugar is isolated it’s more intense and it damages our bodies when separated from it’s co-factors. The damage I am talking about comes in a few forms, the first is the elevation of blood sugar causing blood sugar dysregulation, fatigue, insulin resistance and diabetes.  The second is something called glycation, put simply, this is when sugar and proteins react with one another to create “sticky” proteins that end up damaging body systems including the brain and our arteries. (think Alzheimers and congestive heart failure) So sugar is something we don’t want to mess around with or take lightly.
            The other day I was presented with a beautiful piece of cake. I thought to myself, I’ll try a bite! It was made with high quality ingredients and complex flavors. The first bite was good, the second bite was less appealing and by the third bite I couldn’t handle the sweetness. This is because I have trained my taste buds to appreciate the sweetness in natural things, like fruit or raw milk. The sweetest thing I eat is a Paleo Dutch baby (which is basically eggs, arrowroot flour, coconut milk, vanilla and lots of butter for cooking) with berries on top. I never add sweeteners, not even honey anymore. But guess what? I don’t miss sugar one bit, and I don’t crave it anymore. It’s possible for you to get here too!
            The problem is the food industry has made things sweeter and saltier every year so that our taste buds will change. Slowly but surely we are unable to resist unhealthy foods because of our intense cravings. But there is hope.  
 
Here are some steps:
 
 #1 Add in the Minerals/Vitamins/Amino Acids that your body really wants.
To start, we should add in healthy foods that meet our deepest body desires for minerals, vitamins and satiation. A lot of times sugar cravings are caused by deficiencies. Here are a few possible deficiencies and which foods to start incorporating:
 
Chromium:  An essential nutrient for blood sugar regulation, an essential component of Glucose Tolerance Factor, which helps insulin bind to the appropriate receptor on the cell surface Functions in fat, protein and carbohydrate metabolism
Found in: Broccoli, grapes, cheese, dried beans, calves liver, chicken
Carbon:
Fresh Fruits
Phosphorus:
Chicken, beef, liver, poultry, fish, eggs, dairy, nuts, legumes, grains
Sulfur:
Cranberries, horseradish, cruciferous vegetables, kale, cabbage
Tryptophan:
Cheese, liver, lamb, raisins, sweet potato, spinach
 
#2 Add in Bone Broth soups.
Bone broth is incredibly high in minerals. Because sugar cravings can be caused by mineral deficiencies, as I mentioned above, this is a must have in the diet.
 
#3 Add in Healthy Fats.
Fats are incredible for satiation and curbing cravings. Including these in your diet not only gives you more satiation but healthy fats actually slow the absorption of sugar into your blood stream so that you don’t have a blood sugar spike.
Add these into your diet: Grass fed animal products like Lard and Butter, Coconut Oil, Avocado, Fish Oil, Etc. Healthy fats are long lasting energy sources that will curb your cravings and leave you feeling satisfied for much longer than a carb heavy meal.
 
#4 Lower Carbohydrate intake: especially refined Carbs.
Carbs actually turn into sugar in your body so it’s best to minimize those and get them in the form of vegetables and fruits.
 
#5 Add in more of the other tastes.
Because we have been overpowered by sugar and salt we should begin to incorporate more of the other flavors into our meals and switch our sugar and salt intake to what you see listed below. Surprisingly the bitter flavor can actually be helpful when trying to curb sweet cravings so start eating more bitter greens like Arugula.
 
Sweet
Fruit, grains, natural sugars, milk

Sour
Sour fruits, yogurt, fermented foods

Salty
Natural salts, sea vegetables

Bitter
Dark leafy greens, herbs and spices

Pungent
Chili peppers, garlic, herbs and spices

Astringent
Legumes, raw fruits and vegetables, herbs

#6 Start tapering your sugar intake.
It’s better to add in healthy, satisfying foods to begin supporting your body and changing your taste buds before removing processed, sugar-laden foods cold turkey. You will be much more successful if you do it this way. It can take 6 months for your taste buds to change so you’ll need to be patient. Week by week start removing your typical treats while incorporating all the foods I mentioned above.
 
#7 Clean out your pantry and Have healthy snacks available.
You can’t control the temptations once you leave the house, but you can control your pantry. Do a pantry clean out of all the unhealthy snacks and replace them with other options. If you don’t have options ready you are more likely to cave and go buy something. Some of my favorites to have on hand:
 
-Hard Boiled Eggs
-Apple and Nut Butter
-Berries
-Homemade Nut Granola with Grass Fed unsweetened yogurt
​-Bacon wrapped Dates
 
#8 Accomplish other things when having sugar cravings.
When you notice a sugar craving coming on, and you’re not hungry, go do something else epic. Write a poem, take a walk, go to the library and check out a book on a subject you really want to learn about. Use your sugar cravings to accomplish great things instead of giving into them. It will give your brain the much needed distraction AND you’ll be doing something beneficial for yourself.
 
            There is a lot more I can say about sugar and cravings but this is a good place to start. If you want to be like me, where you have your cake and you don’t want to eat it, then start implementing these steps. Sugar intake is made all cute in the form of pretty deserts, which are okay to indulge in once in a while, but when sugar rules our lives and we can’t control our craving we need to seriously consider a drastic change.
 
For more help or support in this area contact me for a one on one consultation: [email protected]

Tags: Sugar Cravings, Nutrition, Nutritional Therapy Practitioner, Desserts, Holistic Health, Portland Nutrition

Instructions:
Use a Julienne Peeler (I use this ONE) to peel your zucchini into noodles. You can also peel one of your carrots this way if you'd like.
​Chop broccoli and other carrot and start cooking medium heat in coconut oil. Add 1/4 cup water to steam and cover.
After 5 mins uncover and add in chopped pepper and onion.
Cook for another 5 minutes uncovered.
Add chopped mushrooms and cabbage.
Continue cooking till mushrooms begin releasing their fluid.
Put the Zucchini/Carrot Noodles in another pan on medium heat and cook covered for 5 mins and then uncovered for 5 mins.
Add garlic and ginger to vegetables and cook for a few more mins then take of heat.
Start making Peanut Sauce.
Bring 1 cup of water to a boil in a sauce pan.
Add 3/4 cup peanut butter, 1/4 coconut aminos and 1 TBS fish sauce.
Stir sauce till it's well combined.

Layer the vegetables on the noodles, pour peanut sauce over the top and add toppings.
You can add your own flair to this with different vegetables and meat/seafood.

These days we talk about issues like a popcorn machine. Today there is this this and this. Tomorrow it's something else. Social media has connected us to EVERYTHING, and we cannot support that weight. I've faced the issues head on, it started when I was 17. I remember a turning point, where I was exposed to something I could not ignore. All of a sudden I was handed this thing and I had to decide what to do with it. I brought it to the forefront of my life and I tried to spur others to see it the same, and not just see it, but do something about it. No one came along side me and it was the beginning of my discontentedness as well as my fervor to push forward. These two feelings have always co-existed for me, I try hard for a season, burn out and then feel lost again till inspiration finds me. 

As many of you know, we have been in the process of trying to buy land for a year now. The vision started 6 years ago because of "the weight of it all" this was my answer to the question, "what can be done?" and we've been working hard toward it ever since. For the first 3 years we worked hard in tangible ways, ways that didn't make us any money but gave us the experiences we needed to make this decision. We remodeled a house, hosted hundreds of guests, cleaned up after people, gave people money, shared space, started a community garden, traveled to South Africa to work on farms, and much more. For the last 3 years we have hunkered down with jobs and worked hard to make the money we need for our land. Our work has never been conventional, and I've always given too much of my self and money away. because of these two things, we really don't make that much money, although we work hard. Our work isn't appreciated by the modern culture. (besides Johnny's barista job and my floral design) Day to day we are working hard studying and learning everything we can be successful in the future. This doesn't make us any money, but it's what matters the most to us. 

I didn't go to college. I didn't see the point of being in school for 4 years plus and being in debt to do something I ultimately didn't want to do. I was told, "you have to do it this way, this is the way it's done". Instead I started my own business and went to trade school for 3 years to study plant medicine and Nutritional Therapy. If you've read any of my other posts you know how important these things are to me. And I know how much they can help people, but still, it's not a job that is going to make me a millionaire. These were my choices, yes, but I've never understood why I needed to waste time doing something I didn't want to do in order to accomplish my dreams. Unfortunately, I'm at this crossroad, where I realize my dreams will never come to fruition without the help of others. In this culture it seems everyone wants me to work "hard" according to the typical system (9-5 job) and earn what I have. It's a depressing system. 
My dream is to start a retreat center on a piece of property where I can do week long Nutritional Therapy workshops that truly give people the time to relax and change their habits. I imagine cabins people can stay in, saunas, salt water soaking tubs, space to do cooking classes, and of course space to grow true nutrient dense food. The world operates on such a high frequency, I want to create a space people can come and have no obligations. We've lost this ability as a culture, and we feel that weight in many ways. 
I want a different life than the stays quo, and I want to share that with people.

Honestly, I am at a really weird place right now. I'm suppose to be feeling this excitement of completing school and being a Nutritional Therapy Practitioner but the day after I graduated was the day I was told we weren't approved for enough money to buy anything. (well only one property, which was sold later that week) And since then it's been a cluster of mixed emotions, stresses and let downs. I don't know how to start my business while I'm in limbo and we have to move out of Portland within the next 5 months. (because of our living situation). I stay positive most days, but I miss having a community of support. It's been mainly Johnny and I on our own through all these processes and I honestly don't know what I am doing half the time. I've been really happy and content for the last year and sometimes there is a time and place for feeling sadness when faced with the unknowns. I haven't lost hope, I just can't see the light yet.

Trying to balance doing things that matter with doing things that make money is a hard thing to do. And trying to respond to the weight of issues being put on us daily is hard. And continuing with a positive attitude is hard. Overall, I know things will work out. Just let me wallow for a moment.

As Wendell Berry says,

"To make public protest against an evil and yet live dependent on and in support of a way of life that is the source of the evil, is an obvious contradiction and a dangerous one. If one disagrees with nomadism and the violence of our society, then one is under an obligation to take up some permanent dwelling place and cultivate the possibility of peace in it. If one feels endangered by meaninglessness, then one is under an obligation to refuse meaningless pleasures and to resist meaningless work, and to give up the moral comfort and the excuses of the mentality of specialization."

That's what I'm trying to do…it's not simple.

​I’ve spoken of health for a long time now, well a long time for one who is 26 years young. Now six years into my journey to discover what true, radical health looks like for me, I am utterly floored by what I’ve found. This weekend I accomplished the impossible, I graduated as a certified Nutritional Therapy Practitioner. And I say impossible, because as my story goes, I was a child put on the back burner in school. While others boiled with high heat, I slowly simmered, unsure of why my brain just didn’t work the same, why no matter how hard I tried I could never pass with what they call “flying colors” which is interesting, because I am chocked full of color. Instead of honing in on what they said made a balance human adult who could “make it” in this world, I stuck to the quite life of my own heart where I wrote endlessly, sang and played music, thought deeply and somehow laid out the framework for where I would be now.
Money has never fueled my decisions, and thankfully I am good with the little money that I do have, but I never wanted to decide my future based on what would make me the most money, I also never wanted to go into school debt. Once I left high school behind I knew my next few years would look different than attending college; it wasn’t made for me. I began with attending The Floral Design Institute, for creativity has always been where I feel I thrive. It was the “safe” option for now and over the last 5 years I have built up quite a nice business, but alas, I needed more, I needed something that rocked me hard. Something that could double as a passion and a “job”.
I’ve shared this journey before, and I don’t know for sure when it happened, but at some point I remember watching people fall around me, with cancer, heart disease, autoimmunity, allergies, depression; the list could continue forever. I was also struck with my own ailment, 2 years of intense allergies which I have now almost entirely healed with natural methods. I felt like people couldn’t fully be themselves, they were all bogged down by their bodies and even their minds were locked up. I watched some of them die, and some of them barely able to live. I knew this wasn’t how it was suppose to be, and I knew, from my own experience, that the medical industry wasn’t truly helping people HEAL, they were helping people just stay alive, adding a plethora of side effects to their already hurting bodies.
I thought to myself, how can I, this uneducated woman who never got exceptional grades, dive into the “medical” scene. I had a deeper driving force than just helping people heal, I wanted to see people’s souls align with their bodies. I don’t know if people realize just how controlled they are by the health or lack of health in their bodies. I don’t know if people know that their bad moods, rollercoaster emotions, depression, anger and so on are sometimes more than just emotional wounds, they are biochemical.
My journey began with plant medicine. I wanted to take health into my own hands and feel empowered, plants grow everywhere for anyone to use, I wanted that knowledge. I never expected to make money with herbalism training, I just wanted to be able to use plant medicine in my life and with friends and family. After 2 years of herbal training I felt I had found my place within holistic healing and knew I needed to continue. This is where nutritional therapy came into play. I realized if I didn’t know how or what to eat then my journey would stop there. Plant medicine is amazing, but I felt it needed to go hand in hand with nutrition. It was then and there that I decided to forgo my 3rd year of herbal training in order to jump into nutritional therapy. This also came into play because of the intense allergies I was dealing with. The doctors gave me no hope of ever going back to normal and I was given pharmaceuticals to deal with my symptoms. I did not accept their diagnosis, though, and I went on an intense journey to heal myself. A year later I was enrolled in the Nutritional Therapy Practitioner certification program through The Nutritional Therapy Association. 
This was a huge step for me. Studying Nutritional Therapy was way out of my comfort zone. I had deep passion about healing with foods but to actually dive into the science behind it was daunting. I didn't know if my brain could work this way. I signed up for the course in the winter last year and slowly felt the anticipation creep into my bones. I knew I was making the right decision, I just had no idea what to expect. February soon came into view and I was on the phone for my first conference call with my class. It's weird to meet all your classmates and teachers over the phone and complete most of your homework online and by yourself. A month few months into the program I headed out to Bend, Oregon for my first in person class. All the voices and online profiles soon became real people and a tribe of healers was formed. I don't know if you've experienced being in a room full of people who all care so deeply about the same thing, but it truly is a magical experience. Tears were flowing from the moment we sat down because we all had stories that brought us to this place, something that doesn't happen often in the college scene, I did my entire 9 months with these same people and we journeyed together. To create a web of support is something I seldom see in other ways of learning. In college you take many classes with many different people, there is something really special about the trade schools I've been a part of and I know that this is the way I was meant to learn. It goes beyond "you need to pass your tests to be a Nutritional Therapy Practitioner" it becomes a support group where we all want to succeed because we know we are meant for greatness and we know we are meant to be healers and that's why we pass our tests. I'll say right now, I was a "C" and even a "D" student growing up, my Nutritional Therapy Final grades: Written Test: 101% Functional Evaluation Test: 100% Client Folder: 100%. Why is it that I can't pass a test in traditional school? Well, traditional school doesn't feel like a community, it doesn't feel like a support system, and I feel lost in it; alone. 
Over the last 9 months I worked my butt off. I mean really, I completed hours and hours of homework, listened to lectures, read over 15 different books, completed a community project, learned the functional evaluation, went to Bend on three separate occasions for weekend classes, practiced on 15 people, and passed both my midterm and final. I didn't have time to think about anything else in the last 9 months, I was thrown into a tornado and whirled around. And this weekend, I was thrown out of it, at least that's how it felt. Once I completed the course, it took me a moment to gather my bearings. I was in shock. Something I never thought I could do, I did. And I didn't just scrape by like I always had in school; I thrived. I don't know what the next steps looks like, but for now I can say:

I am a healer.
I am a Nutritional Therapy Practitioner.

Why do I want to be a Nutritional Therapist and Farmer?

Because the fullness of being human cannot be expressed with out the fullness of nutrients, and the fullness of nutrients cannot be brought forth with out care for the soil. We’ve lost our ability to see creation as something sacred. We say we love the mountains, the rivers and trees, but these are words we only speak. We take photos to capture the beauty but never arrive at truly understanding our deep connectedness with what is not just one thing, soil simplified and defined as “dirt”, when in reality soil is life, and soil is death, the perfect way to reconcile those two things, which feel so distant from one another. When we began hiding from death, putting up walls between us and the slaughter of animals, forgetting that it was necessary for our living, we disconnected completely so that we didn’t have to deal with it’s weight. We simplified everything and left it in the hands of a few men, people who don’t know how to look past their greed and feed the world in a way that brings vitality to every person’s body. Our food system is made of money, it seems it really does grow on trees.

Why do I want to be a Nutritional Therapist and Farmer?

Because I’ve lost family members to Cancer and Heart Disease, which could have been prevented, had we known how to eat with intention. People tell me they don’t have the time for this way of life. But I don’t have time for disease, which steals life away. I’ve watched disease steal life away from everyone around me, including myself. I’m not scared of death, for we all must pass over that threshold, but we’ve been given this space in time to live out on earth and we are doing it in the worst way possible. We are degrading everything. Making it un-inhabitable. You cannot say you want to feed the poor and also buy food from monoculture, pesticide laced farming, which perpetuates poverty. We’ve lost the ability to do radical accounting, we only see things in dollar signs, who will account for the acidifying of our oceans or the dead soil they continue to rape with corn and soy? I know that this food and this pollution killed my family members before their time. And I know it is sucking the life out of everything.

Why do I want to be a Nutritional Therapist and Farmer?

Cause this is ridiculous. We no longer know what it feels like to be human. We are a sick and dying generation. I say, “who wants help” and everyone comes running. We work long de-humanizing jobs under florescent lights, eat packaged food that’s more traveled than we are and fill our bodies with toxins. At this moment in time, we are overpopulated: 99.3% of Americans eat food, and only .7% are farming, and most of that is ruled by Monsanto. There’s no need to worry about overpopulation, though, it’s projected that if we keep eating this way and destroying our soils we’ll all be infertile by 2050 anyway. That’s the direction we are going.

This is why I want to be a Nutritional Therapist and a Farmer.

Someone has to do it. We need to turn that .7% into something larger with small, locally minded farms. We need to bring the vitality back into our bodies. 

Why do we lead such stressful lives? We seem to gather our meaning from being busy. Honestly, I've never been this person, I've organized my life in such a way that I don't have to be busy. I also never wanted to be in debt. It seems we are a busy, in debt, unhappy culture and we live our true lives on the weekends. I've also  been content not attending "college" but every time someone asks me if I have a degree or what college I am learning Nutrition through I have to tell them that I didn't go to college and that my Nutrition course is a certification; this usually leaves an awkward pause in the conversation where I know they are internally questioning of the validity of my life. I wish we didn't define people by how much they work, how much money they make and where they got a degree. I've successfully run my own floral design business for 5 years, learned plant medicine at The School of Traditional Western Herbalism and in October I will be a certified Nutritional Therapist. And guess what; I am in zero debt. 

Let me segway into something else. Lately, I have felt overwhelmed, it happens every summer in high wedding season. Have you ever thought about what wedding vendors go through? For me, I am in a triple threat kind of situation, I've got my creativity on display to be scrutinized, I have to be organized and successfully run a business/keep track of documents and money, while having meetings, taking deposits, planning out details, ordering flowers at the right time, picking them up and then delivering all by myself. Lastly, I am dealing with the high emotions that run around weddings. TRIPLE THREAT. I am a creative, emotional person, not a businesswoman. I am dirty, hairy and covered in goat hair, I am not a fancy wedding florist. I get so stressed out by events sometimes that I wonder why I even do this job! I've had this feeling for over a year now…but I had to push forward. Don't get me wrong, I love floral design, I just don't like the stress of everything else that comes along with it. So, I think it's time. Johnny and I are buying land this year and moving out of Portland. We plan on starting a farm/retreat center and I will focus more on my Nutritional Therapy. 

So there you have it, I am phasing out of Forest & Field Floral Design. It feels good to say. I may start it back up when I can grow some of my own stuff on our property but for now, I am done. I'll be finishing out the rest of this wedding season and begin focusing on getting clients for Nutrition as well as doing some retreats and workshops. (this doesn't mean I won't consider doing some weddings, cause I definitely will.)

Let's lead lives that invigorate us. Let's lead lives that don't oppress others. Let's lead lives that aren't filled with stress and obligations. Let's be simple, let's be wild and free. 

People keep asking me how I overcame (am still overcoming) my allergies. I've shared half of my journey in a post HERE, but the journey continues. I feel like we live in a culture that expects immediate results, we don't want to work toward healing, we just want to be better now! I get it, I really do, I suffered immensely with my allergies but never took pharmaceuticals, I felt them fully. I'm sort of thankful for them actually. They were what finally pushed me towards Nutritional Therapy; as I shared in my first post the doctors gave me no hope and only prescribed cover ups like antihistamines and steroid nasal sprays. I wanted to truly heal, not cover it up. 

If you are an allergy sufferer have you ever wondered to yourself why your body is overreacting to harmless substances like pollen? I sure did, the list of things I was allergic to was extensive:

All Trees
All Weeds
Dust Mites
Some Molds

Basically a perfect cocktail that hit me every single season indoors or out. I couldn't escape them. As a florist, herbalist and lover of nature I was devastated, and angry. There was no way I was going to allow myself to live like this, so I pursued healing hard-core. Pursuing healing, by the way, can only be done hard-core, there is no half-assing. For real. People want that magic pill, and I'm here to say that it does not exist. What I am here to say is, YOU CAN DO IT! If you are suffering and unable to do the things you love you should be willing to give up some of your comforts. 

So, that said, I'll give you a quick run down of what can cause allergies.
Whether it's indoor, outdoor or food allergies they all have a similar foundation. If the terrain of your body is compromised, overly toxic and sick then you will react to anything and everything because your body is overwhelmed. This means that food allergies can actually directly cause your environmental allergies. This was really confusing for me cause I never had much digestive upset from anything I was eating but I was sneezing, my nose would run and my whole body was fatigued. You have to start at the base, with what you are putting into your body and how well you assimilate it. Here are a few things that could be going wrong:

Leaky Gut caused by food allergies: When we eat food we are allergic to it creates an immune response and cause inflammation. If we continue eating this food it will begin to damage our gut soon making what was suppose to be impermeable, permeable. This means food particles like proteins start leaking into the blood stream and our body attacks them as if they were invaders. When the body is constantly overwhelmed by this it can begin reacting to things in our environment as well. Hence the relationship to environmental allergies.
Leaky Gut caused by not chewing well enough: Leaky gut can also be caused by not eating in a relaxed state where we are chewing every bite 20-30 times. We can really mess up our digestion if we swallow big, un-chewed food, over time this damages our gut as well. We need to really be present when we are eating, especially in a culture that is known for eating on the go.
Leaky Gut caused by bacterial overgrowth in the gut: This one is what I believe caused my allergies. Your gut is a little city of bacteria and it has to be in a certain balance to be healthy. Sometimes bacteria that is always in your gut will start proliferating and get out of balance, in my case I believe it is a bacteria strain called H. Pylori. The blanket term for this condition is SIBO: small intestine bacterial overgrowth. Sometimes bacteria that is out of balance can also cause Leaky Gut, my little H. Pylori friends are corkscrew bacteria, that means they are drilling into my gut lining can causing it to be leaky. So, they've got to go! I am currently on a protocol with some intense herbs to rid myself of my little friends. A small amount of these bacteria in your gut is normal, you just don't want it to get out of balance.
Adrenal Fatigue: These days we have so much stress in our lives that our adrenals are tired out which is also a contribution to allergies. 

Healing these issues is not easy, and it takes a long time. If you've been bad to your body for 10 years you can't expect to get better in one year, but you can make some big changes in that time and start feeling better. I want everyone to feel the vitality I feel, I think this world would be a better place if we were all nutritional supported. Don't you? I wish I could give everyone an answer right here right now, but the truth is everyone is so different and I have to take bio individuality into account. 

I know not everyone reading this lives in the Pacific Northwest, so if you are far aways and want to know more about healing your whole body and in turn healing your allergies, I will be offering phone/skype consultations with a whole nutritional intake for $50. ($20 for intake, $30 for consult) I am not a certified Nutritional Therapist yet, not until October, but I have some things I can offer in the mean time. And if you'd like to wait till October that's fine too!

Email me: [email protected]

Another genius way to eat well on a budget is using the tops of farmers market produce such as beet greens or carrot tops; which is what I've done here. I call this a Pesto but in reality it has little in common ingredient-wise. Regular Pesto has Basil, Pine Nuts and Cheese. This has Beet Greens, Carrot Tops, Hazelnuts, Sunflower Seeds and Nutritional Yeast (as a cheese flavor replacement). What it does have in common is Garlic, Lemon Juice and Olive Oil.

Soak your hazelnuts for at least 5 hours and then roast them till crunchy in the oven. Chop up greens, onion and garlic. Combine everything in a food processor and process till desired consistency. 

Then enjoy!
I put mine on slices of cucumber with a little bit of fermented beets that I made.
Johnny ate it with some plantain chips!