I Wrestled With My Gut For So Long. Literally And Metaphorically. This Is What I Learned

I wrestled with my gut for so long. Literally and metaphorically.

I’d always sensed that there was more to health than what I was taught in med school. But it took me a long struggle with my own health to actually believe it.

I had a sensitive stomach. It started in my teens when I’d begun gorging on junk food. It acted up in busy, stressful times. And lay dormant when things were smooth. It was not just my gut either. In stressful times, I caught colds more often, my back ached and I had acne flares. My energy dipped and my brain was foggy and moody.

I realised that my health was ‘smarter’ at times. Taking care of itself without any intervention from me. But at other times, it huffed and puffed and gave up pretty quickly. This was unlikely to be a coincidence.

This thought had been marinating for so long. But I did nothing about it till I was forced to.

Last year I had my first baby! Motherhood was all that I’d hoped for and more. But it wrecked my health pretty badly. I had to be in bed for most of my pregnancy. I hoped to get active as soon as my baby was born. It was a bad surprise when I continued feeling horrible even after his birth. I could move around and was no longer throwing up all day long. But I felt like I’d aged three decades. My body didn’t work the way it used to. Neither did my mind. I was stiff. And was out of breath on climbing a single flight of stairs. And I had a constant burning in my tummy despite all the drugs I took. And now there was the famous sleep deprivation. My son didn’t buy the idea of wasting time sleeping. All this left me feeling helpless and irritable.

Every day was an uphill trek. I tried different drugs. All worked sparingly. And for a quite a while, I had no idea what more to do.

Then I Trusted My Intuition

I decided that if these symptoms are going nowhere, I should at least move on with my life. So I did the small things. Gentle exercises, self hypnosis, spending time in nature, journaling and self reflection. I found creative outlets (aka writing) and played with my dog all day long. They gave me small results. And some hope. I continued working on me, rather than on my problems. I did continue my medicines. But no longer obsessed over ‘curing’ myself.

Weeks passed and I became way happier and calmer. And with more energy, I started aerobic exercises. Reading up on lifestyle medicine, I came across Dr. Jason Fung. Intermittent fasting made sense to me. But I couldn’t do it yet as I was breastfeeding. So I quit all sugar and most refined carbs. Ate fresh greens. And stopped snacking. I went on short 14-16 hour fasts. I felt less hungry and slept better. And the small incremental shifts made me way healthier over a few months.

But the surprising part was that my gut mellowed down. I no longer felt it burning. Even after I tapered and stopped my drugs. My back hurt a lot less. Every health concern improved. And most disappeared. Even without addressing them directly.

Take care of the whole…

And the parts fall into place

This is not to say that the parts don’t matter. Only that all parts need to be considered.

A Little Story: The Missing Pieces

Remember playing jigsaw puzzles? It was my favourite game as a kid. I used to take it everywhere and lose many pieces. Then the picture becomes incomplete and the puzzle tells a different story.

This story is from the World War II.

The US military was reinforcing its bomber planes. Analysing the bullet holes in planes that returned, they decided to strengthen the areas with most holes.

Till a mathematician stopped them. Abraham Wald reasoned that the holes in returning planes were in the strongest parts of the airplane. The plane had survived the flight home even after being shot there multiple times. The parts that were unharmed were the ones needing most reinforcement. Because the planes shot there, never even made it home.

We habitually make such mistakes. We look a little too hard at incomplete pictures and make intelligent assumptions. This leads to survivorship bias.

Unless we sense the invisible parts, we never see the whole picture. And until we look at our health through a holistic lens, we keep working on the parts that are always acting up.

But to get out of the rut, we need to honour every facet of our well-being. The different streams of physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual health. Some of them might be more vital to us than our loud and fussy bits.

Once we start working on things that we habitually ignore, we grow. And we grow healthier.

Take care of the parts…(all parts)

And the whole falls into place

Health Is A Multivariate Equation

It’s difficult to change one variable in isolation. Working on multiple aspects at the same time, will be slow. But it preserves the integrity of the system. And since the whole equation changes, results are easier to attain and maintain.

Small, steady changes

Each small step improves things. And nudges us closer to well-being. Over time, many tiny steps can take us far. And there is none of the dizziness that comes with going too fast. Rather than trying to resolve things instantly, let us shift gears and go slower. Giving our system time to adjust and recalibrate throughout the journey.

Chronic solutions for chronic problems

Many of our overwhelming health concerns are chronic problems. They need chronic solutions. This is not to say that drugs or medical procedures are useless. I have seen them work. Time and again. But they are only part of the solution.
In the long term, there is no substitute for lifestyle changes.

The things we do every day make us. And they make us healthy, or not.