Or what I learned in Japan.
“Your brain is your entire body and your environment, it’s not separate. We like to compartmentalize functions but if we understand that everything around us reflects who we are inside, how you keep your room starts to matter.” –
Scott Adams May 31, 2024 Broadcast of, Coffee with Scott Adams
The serving dishes on the airplane flight from EVA Singapore were the same sized I had played tea as a little kid, it was my first glimpse that maybe serving size was about to drop.
In Okinawa and I lost ten pounds, albeit some of that was motion sickness and heat initially.
I was 30 hours into travel with no sleep and I inserted a couple of hundred yen into a vending machine and bought a Georgia Gold coffee. It was incredible. No homeless stragglers high on meth wandered around the Naha airport, it was clean and welcoming, but hot! Orchids bloomed, palm trees swayed outside in a gentle ocean breeze, it was landing in a different world one with vending machines with coffee.
I had McDonald’s every day. I didn’t really embrace the food culture since Soy gives me migraines and I hate seafood (I just pissed off half the globe – I’m sorry, I’m really sorry). The serving sizes were modest, but I was never hungry. No matter what I ate I was full. I honestly started dreading food. Wow, I wasn’t hungry 24/7.
The Books In Japan
Every time I go to the doctor in the United States it’s like I am the first woman with this exotic and pretty much unknowable disease. I have a plethora of stuff going on, fibromyalgia, POTS, chronic fatigue syndrome, idiopathic arthritis – for which I have been offered an entire catalog of pills and once even magic mushrooms. I was always told I was fine. This is normal aging stuff. You’re 49, time to hang up the hat.
Meanwhile, my blood sugar control became worse, my joints started to accumulate damage, my blood pressure would go high without warning putting me into emergency situations. My heart could pound so hard that the artery in my neck would visibly throb.
I COULDN’T BE THE ONLY PERSON.
I would meet women around my age, and we all have the same symptoms. The wealthier ones were getting on planes to Cleveland Clinic and had specialized physicians. Others collected books, attempted diets and spent thousands on supplements. But each doctor I tried looked perplexed and lost like they had never seen this constellation of suck-symptoms in their entire careers. I was a Unicorn – but I was pretty sure I was one of millions of cogs with the same issues in the machine.
They were paid as long as I stayed sick.
I started feeling human again in Naha Okinawa. It was overwhelming and foreign, but I started waking up with a spring in my step and looking forward to moving. At first, I had to take every other day off to rest and recover from walking around, but by the end I could walk every day.
A couple of days after arriving I looked in the mirror and my one droopy eye was gone. I was symmetrical again.
We were booked into the Strata hotel in Naha Okinawa which is centrally located next to the monorail which makes everything convenient (I highly recommend the hotel and room 210 which a large balcony overlooking a spectacular patch of nature) – including being located next to a bookstore with loads of books in nutrition. They were all in Japanese, but I picked up a half dozen while there and took them back to the room to translate by app and read. What I found shocked me. My symptoms. In detail. Not a mystery!
To summarize what I learned – eat small nutritionally packed, easy to digest meals. They suggested foods like cabbage, Miso paste soup, mushrooms, sea vegetables / kelp, cumin, ginger, tomato and fish. They boiled and pulverized them for easier digesting and took a break from sweets, flour and processed food. Additionally, they advised baths but not too hot and relaxation and getting more sleep. Give the body what it needs and time to get rid of toxins and waste.
“We’re on a feed lot in America and getting sick is our job.”
author
In Japan the majority of all my allergies ceased to exist. I’m very allergic to cigarette smoke but probably could have kicked up a two-pack-a-day habit because it no longer caused instant mucus waterfall. My enlarged polyps actually came out when I blew my nose and my sinuses were totally clear for the first time in years. My lungs cleared up, no more wheezing in the evening. I could even have lemon in my water without sores cropping up on the inside of my mouth and stomach.
Japan in a way was a kick in the gut, I realized how poisoned we all were in the United States and constantly gas lit to think it was all our faults while at the same time making the medical industrial complex insanely rich. We’re basically on a feedlot and getting sick is our job.
Anytime a country starts fortification the amount of obesity goes way up.
(See Costa Rica and the US)
So in addition to eating nutritionally dense foods and including vegetables and fruit at every meal – I absolutely stopped taking any vitamins and eating enriched / fortified food products (except for the occasional croissant, I’m only human) and I’m continuing to lose weight and I don’t have my previous health issues. Only time will tell if this is a viable solution that can work long term. Now that I’m back in Oregon I’m wheezing again, my nose is constantly stuffed up, and my eye went back to wonkers. But I’ve continued to lose weight and continued daily exercise and feel a lot more positive about life.
(Two weeks later my weight began to go back up, the abdominal pain returned, the digestive issues returned, the wheezing and breathing issues returned and the fatigue set back in.)
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