Monday, April 4, 2016

Healing...Loving Scleroderma with Real Food

Healing...Loving Scleroderma with Real Food, is the Facebook page I started with the help of my dear friend, Nicola Whitehill, in June of 2015 when I started my juicing journey!  I wanted to share what I've learned on my journey of living with Scleroderma and Severe Raynaud's Phenomenon, since I was diagnosed in 2012.  After seeing countless doctors I was referred to Mayo Clinic in 2014, where they did more testing and I was diagnosed with Limited (CREST) Scleroderma and Peripheral Arterial Occlusive Disease.   I felt like a guinea pig, as there was no cause or cure for the autoimmune diseases I had and the only way to manage it was by taking medications that would mask the symptom.  I asked the doctors several times if my eating habits could be a contributor to this disease and they always said, "No". 

In 2014, I saw a Nutritionist and a Holistic Medicine Doctor, my journey began to evolve as I began to trust my instinct, that what I was putting in and on my body could be causing the symptoms and that eating certain foods could relieve my symptoms!  I began researching everything I could about the disease and I came across an article, Nicola Whitehill had wrote. Our friendship began a world apart and I found someone with the same thinking as myself and that there was something more to the puzzle.
 
I learned that eating Real Food, food that comes from the ground or has a mother is the food that was intended for us to eat all the way back to creation. It should be our goal to use food as medicine to treat the symptoms of our diseases, because our bodies are meant to heal themselves when the right food is given to it!  Choosing the right foods for your individual body may take some time to figure out and I agree it isn't easy, but it is worth it! YOU are worth it!

My family has watched me suffer with pain and frustration and they've also seen me enjoy life as I found a way to begin the healing process over the last 5 years!  Changing my lifestyle and learning to love these diseases, that changed my life, hasn't been easy.  I'm not at all perfect and I have had many trial and errors along the way.  I've fallen into my unhealthy habits many times, only to find myself coming back to using real food to heal my body!  It is so important to remember the past is gone and tomorrow is a new day!  All we have to do is pick ourselves back up and keep moving forward in the right direction one step at a time!