setting the stage

on the foundational stuff of health

This image, and all others within this essay, attributable to St. Hildegard of Bingen.

One would be hard pressed to find people in our societies not addicted, or at the very least, misusing some sort of substance(s) as a coping mechanism. There are the obvious ones, of course, drugs and alcohol which are accepted as addictions. Cigarettes, too. More and more people are sharing stories of addictions to opioids, often started with a prescription in a doctor’s office. But it’s not just opioids. Do we call a chemical dependance on things like antidepressants and sleeping pills addictions or should we stick to the “chemical dependence” moniker? Or are pharmaceutical drugs actually curing something? There are people addicted to their work at the cost of their relationships. People addicted to video games, sports and porn, gambling, and the frenetic busyness of their self imposed lives. Anywhere dopamine offers a hit lies the potential for addiction. 

But there are innumerable addictions, we can call them “misusing” if that softens the swallow, that are more accepted in our society and therefore slip quietly under the radar. The DSM whatever-number-we’re-on has hard and fast criteria for addictions and if yours doesn’t lie within its pages, it couldn’t be one regardless of the deleterious effects in your life. I think many things can become addictive. If I find myself doing something I don’t want to do, knowing it’s not bringing me closer to my objective goals of health, intimate relationships, vitality etc., I view it as an addiction that needs attention. In that way, my radar is tuned to the crutches I lean on so that I can excavate the authentic lessons in my life.

In my case, I have a sugar addiction. I’ve had one all my life, I suppose, or at least, the life I started to live when I was a young girl and we moved from our home in the country, a home that burned in a fire, to the city. My parents divorced that same year and I was frequently left alone. I would often ride my bike to the convenience store and spend every penny I had on powdered, neon coloured sugar and jelly candies. When we visited our dad on occasional weekends, our first stop was always the grocery store where my sister and I could pick out whatever sugary delights we wanted. Sugar was a comfort. Loyal and true.

My teenage years saw me eating cinnamon buns for breakfast in our school cafeteria and then trying to keep my eyes open for my morning class as the gluten and sugar flooded my bloodstream. In the afternoon I would buy a big slurpee from 7-11 and drink it while smoking cigarettes with the other headbangers behind the school. My mother usually made us some sort of nutritious food for supper, but other than that, there wasn’t much of anything real in my diet. I was depressed and I had anxiety. Only, at that time, those things didn’t exist so every time I had an episode of not being able to breathe, the ER doctor would tell me I was “hyperventilating” and get me to, quite literally, breathe into a paper bag until I was able to breathe normally enough to go home. I figured I had “bad lungs” from smoking. I was totally oblivious.

I was blessed, through my life experiences, to grow into a life where I was taught about real food and how it affects my health. I learned what brought me closer to my authentic self and what clouded my world. I learned about how my emotions and perspectives were altered by what I ate and I started making better choices. All throughout my twenties, some thirty years ago now, I ate a “healthy diet”, but it was one that always had a little drip, drip, drip source of sweet in it. I just never thought about it. No, I wasn’t eating candied popcorn and store bought cookies all the time, but I was eating my so-called “healthy treats”. In my twenties, at the height of my bodybuilding days, eating 5-6 small meals a day, those sweet treats would be protein shakes and yogurt with fruit in it. The cravings were constant and it was willpower that saw me through. I would sometimes make “healthy” cookies or other baking with properly soaked and soured grains, sweetened with honey and maple syrup or the homemade ice cream I churned with raw cream and egg yolks, fruit and a bit of honey. It all seemed quite reasonable and I didn’t give it much thought. 

Then I got sick with Lyme. Then I spent ten years trying to get well from Lyme. In that time, I read everything I could get my hands on that had a modicum of relation to chronic illness. The more I learned, the more I realized that the mitochondria in my body, the little dynamos that control our energy production along with endless other bodily processes, were suffering. My years of smoking and partying and antibiotic use (at times in my teenage years it was continuous for years), along with poor sleep habits and then pushing myself to extremes in the military, and some stressful and traumatic emotional issues I never contended with, were all responsible for the mitochondria impairment I was dealing with. 

After the endless treatments and experiments to annihilate the terrible pathogen that is “Lyme” (or whatever it was that I was dealing with - that’s a rambling for another day), I started focusing on repairing the core functions of my body so that it could do what it was designed to do. I needed to return the controls to the master of healing. In order to do that, I had to remove the cause of the inflammation that was creating the downstream effects that I was continuously chasing after. And in order to do that, I needed to have well functioning mitochondria. That’s when I really started looking at the sugar in my diet. And when I say sugar, I mean so-called “natural sugars”. I didn’t eat table sugar at all. I hadn’t for over thirty years. I was a purist, comforted by the fact that I only ate the holier than though sugars - the honey and maple syrup, the coconut sugar or date sugar. Doesn’t matter. It’s sugar.

I want it to be clear that when I decided to do a “trial” to remove sugars from my diet, this was in the context of having eaten an ancestral, traditional type diet full of nutrient rich nose to tail animal foods for decades prior. I was eating whole foods and raw milk and butter. I had long stopped eating any grains before I decided to get rid of sweets in my diet. I had a clear picture of what I was working with. So when I stopped eating anything sweet, what came was a clear message and that message was strong, “Yo, Tara, where’s my treat?!”

Just a little. Just a bit. Just a sweet little sweet, innocent and fun.

It’s amazing how the mind works. For a long time, I’d find myself with a little bowl of homemade ice-cream in my hand because “I wanted it”. Now I know that the “want” was a little more complicated than that. But at the time, I thought it was a choice so I’d have a little, just a bite. I’d control the sweet cravings, build rules around them so I wouldn’t go off the rails and eat too much of it. I would go through days of deciding I didn’t like how I felt when I ate it so I would stop eating it. For a few days. Then I’d be back to just a little, just a bite.

 I never did binge on sugar, I just wanted it to be there. But the more I took breaks away from it, the more I came to understand myself in deeper ways. I liked myself better when my mind was clear. I liked myself better when my emotions were balanced. In her excellent books, Julia Ross dubs these feelings “false emotions”. That’s exactly what it is.

I wonder how many of us, ruled by not only sugar, but processed foods, alcohol, or drugs are ruled by these false emotions. I know we all experience them on some level. One day we think our spouse is the bees knees and the next they are maddening. We lose our patience with our kids or we find ourselves in a bleak, dark hole with foggy brains and lethargic bodies. All of that, I can control with what goes into my mouth and the environment around me. It is my medicine. I can be genuine me or I can allow for the gauzy fog to weave itself into me so subtly, so perfectly, that I can barely tease out my authentic self from the side effects of chemical processes in my body.

In his book, ‘Brain energy”, Dr. Chris Palmer makes the link between the mitochondria and mental health. The manifestations of how we experience mental health issues, ranging from ADHD to depression to schizophrenia, may all look different, but he has put forth a unifying theory of mitochondria dysfunction. He may be a pioneer in putting forward this theory in his field, but there are many physicians and researchers who have been looking at mitochondrial dysfunction in relation to cancers, Alzheimers, autoimmune diseases, infertility, etc.. One has to wonder, are we finally getting it? Is it all coming together now? Is the fact that mental health issues are often interconnected with addictions also related to the functioning of our mitochondria and, if so, is it the dysfunctional mitochondria setting the stage or the players struggling in the fray?

Dr. Palmer explains the link between our mitochondrial health and our mental health as a physiological one. He has come up with a brilliant, unifying theory on mental illness that everyone should read (links to his book and a myriad of other sources to be found at the end of this essay). 

Our bodies are quite literally rewired by the foods that we eat, increasing the need for yet another hit. For some people, that may look like a two litre of coke and a sleeve of Oreos. For me that looked like a teaspoon of honey in my herbal tea that had me craving something more two hours later. And soon enough, ‘sweet’ is part of my life again, I am full of inflammation that affects my brain/emotions, and my body and everything around feels a little more dull. The idea of having “a little something” starts taking up space in my life instead of the freedom of thinking and focusing on anything but.

Diet is the obvious, major player in our mitochondria being damaged, but we are also now learning more and more about how integral nurturing our natural circadian rhythms are. Sun gazing in the morning and night, making sure there’s no LED or CFL lights in your house. Not looking at screens past sunset. Getting rid of wifi and really addressing non-native EMFs in your home. Using non-toxic products in your house and on your body. Getting outside. Living and eating according to the seasons. The air quality in our homes and the water we drink. All of these things affect our mitochondria. All of these things must be addressed.

Far and away, the biggest eye roll I get is around the conversation of wifi, non-native EMFs and cell phones. Nobody I know has listened to me on this one. Maybe it seems too ‘out there’. Maybe it’s a hassle to figure it out. Maybe, because we can’t see it or taste it, we just think, “meh, no biggie”. And yet, we’re all tired and our hair is falling out and we’re having sleep problems and mood problems and so many people are unwell. All of these things profoundly affect our mitochondria which are the very determinants of our quality of life here on planet earth.

But all of these things matter. They are foundational. Basic. Necessary. If you are well, are you well? Like thriving sort of well or is there just an absence of disease? If we look around at our toxic world where people buy food from climates and locales far away, where central heating keeps us forever at room temperature, where food and the outdoors are paid lip service, but remain on the periphery, we can see that the oddity isn’t in the person going to farms to buy raw milk or structuring their water or using incandescent bulbs and blue blocking glasses. These are just people trying to find their way back to the original design. And the original design is the blueprint our bodies, our mitochondria, are still following. No mitochondria 2.0. Yet. Our minds may live in the modern world, but our bodies struggle here.

In my body, foods that cause glucose surges are motivation killers. Maybe that’s not a diagnosable disease but it is, most definitely, a dis-eased state for me. Everything in my body is sore and who wants to work out with a sore body. My mitochondria, damaged by the high levels of circulating sugar, suffer to effectively do their jobs so my energy is low. My life feels like I’m in a semi-depression if not just a general state of apathy and pessimism. It’s a negative feedback loop brought back into balance, if for only a short while, by another hit of sweet goodness. And isn’t that the definition of addiction? Being tied into something you know you would be better without? I think there’s a lot more people in this situation than we realize. Most people just don’t like using that word in relation to their problem. But take away the substance…

If only I had a penny for everyone that’s ever said to me, “I’d rather die than give up my cakes and cookies!” They say it with a laugh.  I understand why they slip the laugh in there, but it doesn’t fool me.

For some people in this world, the “moderators”, a bite of a cookie and forgetting it on the countertop is a regular occurrence. I am not a moderator. I would never forget that cookie I just bit into. I would need to eat that cookie and ask for another. And that is why I’m an ‘abstainer”. This is the first place to start with any negative habit or addiction you want to rid yourself of. Know thyself.

I can go years without anything sweet, and indeed I have, but just like the alcoholic, the moment I have that first slice or spoonful or bite, those tenacious little synapses start firing like maniacs shouting “more, more”! Abstinence is the way for me. Abstinence is absolute freedom. 

There are always people around to tell you what will be best for you. Most everyone I know that knows they have addictive patterns in their lives, prefer to moderate even when they aren’t really moderators. That’s a slow form of torture. You convince yourself that moderation is more normal, it allows for easy social situations and looks less weird to the other addicts around, but if you’re not a moderator, it’s a vicious, cruel cycle of berating yourself, using willpower to restrain yourself until you’re exhausted and you lose control. Again. Then it starts all over again. Nobody tells the alcoholic that “just drinking a beer” at the family gathering is okay. The need for abstinence is well understood by people working in the field of sugar/flour/carb addiction, all addictions really, but in social situations, it’s still not widely accepted. For someone that’s trying to break any sort of negative cycle, telling them to just dabble in the thing they are trying to break free from is not a kindness. No matter what it is we’re talking about. The truth is, there’s no bypassing the work you have to do to get well. That’s only the beginning. If you can’t get past that, all that is waiting just waits.

Some people will move through their lives, consuming foods and taking part in things that damage their bodies and minds, but they just won’t make the connection. I see it all around me. I used to work with clients that were baffled by the mere suggestion that low fat margarine on melba toast or syrupy fruit-bottom yogurt was not serving their health. But there are also people who are infinitely more sensitive, the canaries in the coal mine if you will, who can sniff out the misalignments before they become the full blown health emergencies. That’s not to say that really paying attention to one’s diet and lifestyle is a guarantee of a swan-song in this life, but it sure beats bumbling along, patching up symptoms as they appear with nary a thought to what might be going wrong at the core.

I used to feel sorry for myself for being someone that was sensitive to my environment and the food I ate. I’d look around at “normal” people and wonder why that wasn’t my lot. Well, I know why that wasn’t my lot. As an infant, fed soy formula, and then throughout my childhood and teenage years - a reoccurring trip to the doctor for more antibiotics for my constant strep throat and, later, bad skin. Of course there would be some damage there. Can that ever be totally healed? It’s irrelevant. If eating the way I do puts illness into remission, I am healed. That’s it. That’s how I know it to be. I’m grateful that my body sends me clear signals and I listen to them. I’d like to think my body is grateful for that, too. I do believe that the illness I have moved through has brought gifts of awareness that bode me well. Why bemoan not being able to put poisons into my body and home? Better the messages I serve than the diabetes or senility or other major illnesses because I was too busy or distracted to listen to the warnings from within.

It doesn’t matter if the things that hold you captive are different than the things that I contend with. Maybe you are the lucky soul who hasn’t any vices at all. But for the rest of us, a reminder that our physical experience of life is a finite gift. It’s worth getting granular with the review of yourself. It doesn’t matter who tells you that this thing is the answer, or that thing is the answer. All of that stuff keeps you immobilized. Paralysis by analysis. Meanwhile, your body, your ally in this joint venture, is here, whispering truths. Pay attention. Excise whatever isn’t working for you. 

Many people around me would say, have said, “But Tara, you eat better than anyone I know, surely a little this and that can’t hurt.” Quite frankly, I have never found comfort in comparing myself to someone else. It does me no favours to find the lowest common denominator in an effort to feel better about myself. That’s a fool’s game. I compare myself to myself, the highest version thereof to whom I still aspire. 

In order to be here for that work, I have to have my foundation in order. That foundation is run by those miraculous, marvellous mitochondria of mine that work tirelessly to ensure I can be here for the bigger work of my life. My job is to be their partner in our mission. I give them the light and the movement, the resonance with mother earth, the nutrition and the love they deserve and, in return, they allow me to expand into the reason of my being. They allow me to serve with a clear mind and functional body. They allow me to love and see and learn with clarity and peace. They bring me to the higher version of who I want to be.

That “higher version” of myself, the one God put me here to be isn’t an impatient, snappy thing. Come on, she’s the highest version! She’s patient and kind, but she loves knowing what I am capable of and she holds me to that work. That work is immense, well beyond what I eat, but without the foundation of a clear and strong body, I cannot have a clear and strong mind and spirit. It’s impossible because I’m not fully realized to begin the work that I am here to do. It’s not that what I eat is the totality of me. It’s that what I eat and how I care for the environment in which I live is what nourishes the body I have been given to hold me while I get on with the meaning of my life. It’s the very foundation to the blooming of Tara.

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Year of the House 2023

In the theme of my dedication to my houses, both the one I live in and the one that houses my soul, I include this week’s progress report. I finally finished the patching and shoring up of this ancient 100 year old door that goes into our bathroom. I’m hanging a textile on the back for privacy. The textile is one I bought years ago from an Australian artist that took moody, luscious photographs of peonies and then printed them on rough linen. I wish I could remember her name. Anyway, the door is done! I painted it with my favourite lime paint, Pure and Original. Should I be putting pictures of these projects in here or in the chat?

And on the flesh and bones house of mine, I dedicated extra time to long walks this week with grounding on each one. Grounding in summer is easy. Shoes off! In our cold winters it takes a little more effort. I hugged and was hugged by many a tree this week. I also came upon a lovely pine with boughs hanging in a big arc, weighed down by the snow. I climbed underneath and sat in the snow, leaning up against the trunk of the tree. It was just me, tucked away, in my secret hiding spot. Until my dogs found me. Then it was two dogs hyperactive with joy at finding me at their level, vying for my attention and kicking up snow in my face. Ah well, who can complain about being so loved?

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Learning

I was so taken with the information in this conversation on CHD.TV that I wanted to run through the streets telling everyone about “One Health”, the WHO’s latest diabolical plan. Everyone needs to understand this. The WHO and member countries have been meeting to sign a legally binding contract on how they (that being globalists) will control and direct the next cinematic release pandemic. People and livestock and wildlife and their version of what constitutes health. What, your version is different? Too bad, these unelected maniacs will tell you what to do with your bodies. All in the name of safety. See? That’s what we get when we become so scared of death that we will trade life for someone else holding our reigns. Seriously, this podcast should be listened to and passed along. The whole covid thing was just a wee setting of the stage.

I’m presently reading three books, depending on my mood. The first is “The Transformational Power of Fasting” by Stephen Harrod Buhner. I’m ready to get back into fasting, taking my learned lessons with me. This time, I would like to incorporate more of the spiritual elements into my fasts. My other ventures into fasting were all about “authophagy-or-bust”. That worked well, but I’m in a different part of my life now.

The other book I’m reading is “Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence”. A good one that speaks to much of what I tried to encapsulate in this essay.

Lastly, I’m reading “The Scientification of Love” by Michel Odent at the behest of this fine young woman I quite love. Interesting book thus far. Michel was a French surgeon and obstetrician who spent the latter part of his career advocating for home birth. “Where childbirth is concerned, it is urgent for us to realize that, in the age of cheap synthetic oxytocin and safe cesareans, the number of women who give birth to the baby and the placenta thanks to what might be called a “cocktail of love hormones” is becoming insignificant. Hormones of love are made redundant at a critical phase of human life! What a turning point in the history of mankind! Furthermore, the onset of programming of the human immune system is no longer related to the colonization of the baby’s body by a great diversity of familiar and friendly microorganisms, since, from a bacteriologic perspective, it is impossible to replace home birth… We must also prepare for the time when it is understood that one cannot direct an involuntary process; one can only protect it against inhibitory factors. This will lead to the desocialization of birth.”

My favourite piece of writing from this week was this piece by Charles Eisenstein. I read it as soon as I saw the title. Blood root and ravens, huh? Ravens have a very special place in my heart. They have followed me around my farm since the death of our daughter. Often, in the quiet of the forest, they come, flying right above my head, dropping their invisible magic on my face, tuned to their underbellies. And blood root… In the documentary that I’m in, there’s a scene where I’m in our forest with my little farmhand gal from down the road. I am pulling a piece of bloodroot from the earth and dabbing its gorgeous juice on her hand. Bloodroot plays a big part in my wild home. Anyway, the piece is brilliant. It asks the question we should all be asking ourselves. Do you choose to live in a world of mystery and mysticism or a world where only what is measured is valid? I know my answer. Highly recommend.

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Resources

Books:

• “Brain Energy: a revolutionary breakthrough in understanding mental health” by Dr. Christopher Palmer

• “Power, Sex, and Suicide: mitochondria and the meaning of life” by Nick Lane

• “Cancer as a Metabolic Disease” by Dr. Thomas Seyfried

• “The Mood Cure”, “The Diet Cure”, “The Craving Cure” all by Julia Ross. She’s a wonderful, knowledgable mind with very helpful advice around sugar/carb/mood/addiction issues.

• “Tripping Over the Truth: how the metabolic theory of cancer is overturning one of medicine’s most entrenched paradigms” by Travis Christofferson

• “The Fourth Phase of Water” by Gerald H. Pollack

• “The Body Electric: electromagnetism and the foundation of life” by Robert Becker

• “Healing is Voltage” by Jerry Tennant

• “The Transformational Power of Fasting: the way to spiritual, physical, and emotional rejuvenation” by Stephen Harrod Buhner

• “The Invisible Rainbow: a history of electricity and life” by Arthur Firstenberg An absolute must-read. How are we all living in shells of electricity and remain clueless as to what that means?

• “Dopamine Nation: finding balance in the age of indulgence” by Anna Lembke

• “In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts” by Gabor Maté

• “When the Body Says No: the cost of hidden stress” by Gabor Maté

• “The Yoga of Eating: transcending diets and dogma to nourish the natural self”

Podcasts/Videos:

• Metabolic Mind A group of well respected physicians and clinicians sharing knowledge on mental health and diet.

• Huberman Lab Podcast “Diet and Mental Health” with Dr. Chris Palmer

• This is your brain on sugar

• “Dopamine Detox: take back control of your life and stop laziness”

• “Mental disorders are metabolic disorders of the brain”. Great podcast with Dr. Chris Palmer and Dhru Purohit

• “Nutritional and Metabolic Strategies for Optimizing Mental Health” with the brilliant Georgia Ede

• Confessions of a sugar addict in a sugar-laden world

• The wise Bitten Jonsson providing a series of information clips on the harmful use of sugar

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“Dare to declare who you are. It is not far from the shores of silence to the boundaries of speech. The path is not long, but the way is deep. You must not only walk there, you must be prepared to leap.”― St. Hildegard of Bingen

p.s. A huge, monumental, gargantuan, never ceasing avalanche of love to my dear husband, Troy, who went through every single post I have written here, categorized them and added links so that my content can be easier to find. I love Substack and what they’re doing here, but the archives are challenging to navigate and there are no tags to use as linking devices. With Troy’s new handy, dandy roadmap, you can find all of my essays that he painstakingly read through and plopped into tidy categories. He also went on an internet hunt and found every podcast, video conversation, and documentary I’ve been involved with and included those links as well. You can find the roadmap on the navigation bar on my homepage or by clicking here. Thank you, sweet-cheeks. I owe you.