I am having the healthiest winter I think I have ever had. Where everyone around me keeps picking up germs,flu bugs and colds and flu, I am not even having so much as a sniffle. (Hoping I make it through the whole winter!) I am famous for the, “long UTI, four cold, two flu bug, three cold sores, maybe a stomach bug or two, at least a few fevers,” Winters. Seemed as though I would just finish fighting off one thing and something else would pop up. And of course, throw in there that my Hashimoto’s would rear its ugly head with some reaction I never had before. Last year, it seemed to just go on and on and on with no relief until May.
Early on when I started working with Dr. Jack, in our first weeks together, I got the dreaded yearly UTI. Uggggggggggggggggggg…… I thought, “Oh, here we go!!!” Now normally for me, a UTI is a four week adventure. Get it, get on meds, it goes, then it returns, then it goes, only it comes back again. Round and round the little track for about four weeks.
This year, I was working my second job and all of a sudden I start getting, “the feeling.” Oh, no…. not that. I quickly fired off a message to Dr. Jack, asking, “What do you know about UTI’s??? HELP!!!” In a few minutes, I got a note back, with an explanation of natural things I could do and extra supplementation that would make it go away. Dr. Jack explained that since I had been working so hard to get healthy, this would not be like before. I admit, that I was hesitant to believe that after Winter 2015, but I tried. I had what I needed at home, and what I didn’t, I grabbed from the store, and so I started following his plan and drinking up a storm of water, doing exactly as he had recommended. I went home, took the necessary supplements, and crawled into bed, hoping it wan’t going to be one of those sleepless UTI nights. Guess what? Slept the whole night, waking up only once because I drank so much I needed to make a quick bathrooms trip and then guzzled down some more water and a few more of the supplements.
Next morning, I woke up, not a tingle in site,!!! YES next morning??? UTI??? GONE!!!! I didn’t have a single symptom and it was over. I kept thinking that couldn’t be right, because any moment now the symptoms would come back. But it didn’t.
I waited for the next week, thinking for sure it will be back, he will see, but it didn’t come back at all! Totally gone, less than twenty four hours. That is when I started to realize how awesome it is when you are working hard to make sure you are SUPER healthy!! It is a whole lot easier to fight off infections. I couldn’t believe the how quickly the symptoms came and went! How did I go from symptoms all the time for weeks and weeks to nothing in one day?
Then about a month ago, one of my other winter plagues hit. The yearly cold sore. Double yuck… It was an extremely stressful time and I figured between that and the cold bity winds, I could feel the itch and I knew. Some lucky people get this little tiny, teeny cold sore that you need a microscope to see. Not me! I get those massive half your face ones that look like it could be documented it is so large. the entire half of your face swells up. People look at you wondering what is wrong with your face. The massive cold sore usually brings one or two friends, who then pop up after or during the first breakout, so it seems like you have the cold sore mark on three quarters of your lip, or your nose, for a few weeks. Again, I sent Dr. Jack a note, “HELP…. cold sore.” Normally I would go through two tubes of Abreva and still the scar would linger for months. Followed his advice. Three days, completely gone. No scar, no trace of it, gone. It was unbelievable to me that I could have that much healing that quickly. That’s when I started realizing that I was having the most awesome healthy year EVER!!!!!
It’s the end of February and I am feeling great. I have not had a Hashimoto symptom in months, and no new ones. I don’t even want to discuss Winter 2014 where I got the hair plague that required prescription strength shampoo. It was an ugly period where I stopped wearing dark anything. Awful….. I never have those icky feelings anymore, like I am coming down with something all the time. That was a weekly occurrence. I would come home, drag myself to bed, wake up feeling worse and then it would start. This winter, I go to bed, sleep and wake up feeling great. Dr. Jack explained to me the “whys.”
In the beginning of our journey, he explained to me that his primary focus was not weight loss but instead, to get my body extremely healthy, and then the weight loss would almost be an added bonus. I, of course, was only interested in this added bonus and nothing else, but now I realize he was so right! When you are not constantly fighting disease, your body stays in an awesome fat burning mode! Illness only adds stress and stress and weight loss fight each other. Now, I don’t have to worry about that as much and that is super! This has been the best winter EVER!!!!