Get well soon! It’s what we would wish for anyone, and on the whole we expect and hope for healing. We rely on the body’s capacity to mend: bones to re-set, cuts to close, colds to subside. If sickness lingers, we get uneasy.
Yet, like happiness, being well ‘writes white’ – we generally don’t consider why we are healthy, until pain hits.
When I stopped sleeping several years ago, I became interested in health. It was nothing life-threatening, just a chronic lack that gradually wore me down in what felt like frightening ways. My first port of call offered sleeping pills and medication for depression. Having seen their effects upon people I knew, I didn’t pursue it.
So my friends got rather used to my complaining. Maybe I was just one of those people who couldn’t sleep. I felt I should be more stoic, put up with it as part of life. Yet at the same time, instinctively, I knew that it didn’t have to be this way.
I ‘tried everything’. I was blessed to receive a lot of support and a lot of advice, but it was a long road, with a lot of disappointments.
Eventually, I saw a nutritional therapist. Very gradually, I started to feel different. Then one day, I realised I had begun to sleep again. I would wake in total amazement. Did the whole night really pass? Am I truly this happy to face the morning? This experience of recovering sleep gave me a new passion for health – especially for the ordinary, simple things that anyone can try.
Further down the road, I pursued professional qualification so as to develop an evidence-based understanding of holisitic health, and to support others myself.
In this blog, I want to think through and celebrate what I find to be life-giving. I'll be balancing personal posts with more science- and research-based posts. Please do get in touch if there are any subjects you'd like me to address!
To your best of health,
Clare
Clare Backhouse, dipION, Registered Nutritionist MBANT, Registered Nutritional Therapist CNHC
Consultations in London, in West Sussex, and online
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