15 Comments

I'm very happy to read from you again, and the article gives good news and excellent information and advice. Good to hear from you again!

I'm being reminded constantly by my own medical professionals about iron levels, to the point that I don't think about THAT anymore, assuming (wrongly), that everybody else is getting nagged and bullied into remembering it too.

I also take extra Thiamine (B1), and niacin on regular basis to improve healing from years of nerve and brain injuries, but such is the expected outcome of a life of physical activity and contact sports.

Still, what you said here is a good reminder to draw the line at cartesian philosophic snake-oil, and remember that we are integrated body and soul. What effects one part, affects the whole. Thanks! (Ps: And I'm glad you are okay. I think your friends would worry less about you if you didn't insist on figuring out EVERYTHING by yourself first. Sometimes it's okay to share things, tough guy. Just sayin'.)

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But Joe, I LIKE thinking. Thinking about things all the time is my number 1 top-favourite thing to do.

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Hi Hilary, glad you are back from the shadows. I read your Twitter feed yesterday and decided it was about time to get bloodwork and maybe an EKG done and went up to the local clinic which has always been excellent- not a chance, phone consults only. Tried to book a phone consultation and that was out as well. It was suggested that I go to ER!? This is what shutting everything down for the good of our health is doing. So I followed your example and bought iron and B12 for good measure. I also had a good rant and a few tears. I guess this was my Covid breaking point. And I think the neuralgia is a little better today! The school of osteopathy where I studied has a strong emphasis on the integration of body/ mind/spirit that sometimes I found hard to stomach- a little speculative and in a sense controlling to ask that someone’s unique anatomy and physiology fit a nice narrative, and yet I do hold it to be true just deeper and more nuanced than can be taught. When I am doing a treatment the essential piece is to dialogue with the tissue but also to dialogue with the spirit. I hold that last piece lightly but there may come a day when it is somewhat I’m more comfortable with or that I disavow altogether. In any case I try to respect the whole of the person and it’s good work.

Anyhow I like your thinking but like Joe I say you don’t have to do it alone -even if that’s how it’s always been.

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Marnie, I'm glad you were able to get things sorted. I must say the incredible show in England of people being turned away for cancer and heart disease treatments to "save the NHS" is the most incredible and horrific thing to watch, even from a distance. They've absolutely turned it into a golden calf over there and are literally sacrificing people to it. I'm sorry about Canada's weird obsession with public service. In Italy you have a bit of market competition, and it made things a lot smoother for me back when. If they couldn't book you a public system MRI, for example, you just called a private clinic. Yes, you had to pay, but you got the damn thing done, and they took credit cards. At the moment I don't have a public system doctor, only my private one in Rome, but he's the best doctor I've ever had, and is as you say very BIG into looking holistically at the complete picture. He advised me on vitamins, exercise and gave me acupuncture for anxiety and depression through cancer treatments. I am always happy to hand over cash (and private insurance covers his office if you have it - it's not expensive) because he's just so damn good.

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Really, most doctors are simply not sufficiently trained. They have no more idea about how nutrition affects health than the school nurse did. I had one actually start reciting the Canada Food Guide pyramid that recommends you mostly eat grains, and keep fat low. good grief!

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Glad you are feeling better, Ms. White. If you asked me, I might explore the nutritional deficiencies area, referring to your last paragraph.

I liked your comments on acedia! It’s good to understand what one is dealing with and why. Then one can fight it. I really need to remember daily what you said, that we are our bodies just as much as our souls. I should put it on a big note somewhere where I’ll see it daily.

I’m always trying to feel better from my thyroid condition. Last couple of months ,what’s helped me feel so much better, especially with my brain health, is I now eat red meat regularly. Root veggies for my veg mostly and not lots. ANd bi-weekly, I eat calf or beef liver with some bone marrow. The offal, especially the liver, which I hadn’t eaten since I was a child, has been a game changer. What’s so great, is one doesn’t have to eat a lot of this food as it’s so super nutrient dense. Coffee, I’m sorry to say, significantly depletes iron levels. I’m drinking less than I did but still drink it as I do like it!

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You guys... Thanks for all this. It really does help.

Caroline, I've started cutting coffee in half. In fact, I only ever had one a day, but it was a doozy, a three-cup mokka pot (it's an Italian thing, and "3-cup" doesn't mean here what it means over there. Italians think two teaspoons of espresso is a "cup of coffee") with a tablespoon of honey and a bunch of heavy cream. I never drank coffee at all, ever, before I came to Italy. In North America coffee is the most repulsive stuff, a fantastic fragrance but it tastes like something you scrape out of an ashtray. I never understood why anyone could stand it. Coffee is an entirely different matter in this country and I've learned to like the Italian version. But being English of the old school, when I was growing up and until I came here tea was on at least three times a day and any other time you felt like it. A friend sent me a huge box of green jasmine tea for Christmas and another sent a huge bag of Darjeeling, so I'm going back to old habits. I've got quite a lot of tea-compatible herbs in the terrace pots, so I'm inventing iced tea blends.

People don't talk about their ailments, especially online. We tend to focus more on issues, I guess. I think it's an Anglo-sassone thing that we think it's more important to be stoic than to actually feel better. Italians are up front and blunt about their medical stuff to a degree I still find discombobulating. If you've had cancer they won't hesitate an instant to ask you "where?" something an Englishman would rather face waterboarding than do himself. I have learned to answer, "in Rome", which usually gets a laugh, and then I change the subject. But though Italy is a nation of hypochondriacs, this is definitely the best place in the world to be seriously ill - the instant they find out you've really got something serious going on they fall all over themselves to help and be nice to you. I'm not at all confident I would still be here if I'd had the treatment in Canada or Britain. Not only do they have vastly inferior services - I looked it up on the WHO website - they treat patients like crap. The medical culture in AngloLand is Mordorian.

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That’s very nice to hear about Italy if one is seriously ill! Good to know!

I used to be, feels like ages ago now, a geriatric nurse in an East End London hospital. I know what you are taking about and I don’t miss the ward I worked on. (I’m from England but live back in US now).

Sounds lovely, the tea drinking, especially with herbs from your garden. Enjoy! Medicinal I’m sure too.

(P.s. sorry for calling you ‘Ms.’ in my post. - saw a Twitter post just now with a helpful reminder by you of it’s origin).

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Well I'm glad you are back and on the mend. All through Reading I was thinking she is severely anaemic, and thankfully your friend pointed it out. Please continue with your iron supplements and maybe, as you have become so low, another multivitamin supplement too. Coffee will impair iron metabolism aswell, and it wouldn't hurt to get your Hb levels checked, they might take some time to recover. You are right, this bag of bones wasn't just created to carry around our psyche and nous. We are created whole persons, so if one part of us is becoming sick, then our whole person is involved, hence the depression and anxiety associated with unwellness, which is also evidence of spiritual sickness when our prayer life is affected. God made us complex, and whole, complete, so I guess we have to take care of our wholeness, but I know its easy when we are in a downward spiral to forget who the Great Physician is. So take care of your whole self, I'm glad you have a wise friend, glory to God for all things.

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I would absolutely be completely lost many times over without my excellent friends. Online and IRL.

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When North Americans talk about how they "drink coffee" they mean something quite different I think. Y'all drink that watery stuff multiple times a day, all day and think nothing of it. In Italy you have a kind of coffee that is like a super-concentrate, and in comparatively tiny amounts. I seriously spent 2 euros once in a Rome coffee bar on what had to be no more than a tablespoon of it. Most Italians will have one in the morning - with a sweet bun, which I find incredible (if I ate one of those things every day I'd be 500 pounds in half a year) - and one in the afternoon. I only take one first thing in the morning, and that's it. But even that is really too much, and the lift I get from it for the first half of the day is just not worth the price of the late afternoon crash. So, I've cut it in half, and have added a general multi every morning. Also taking Jordan Peterson's advice to control glucose-crash related depression/anxiety and eating a large proteine-only breakfast.

I do actually know what to do to solve this. I just have to remember to do it, and keep doing it. I did a ton of research into nutrition, metabolism and all that during and after chemo, and the docs said my recovery rate was amazing. But in the last few years, like everything else, I've let things slide and stopped caring, and this situation is the result. So, I've got this.

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I know EXACTLY what you describe in that post, btw. And I think the brutal heat of Italian summers is particularly conducive to spiralling down this way.

My first summer in Italy, with a good deal less excuse than you, I got into that cycle of not eating. Too hot at first, and then feeling too tired to get anything to eat, and then not feeling hungry.... I was living on a cup of coffee in the morning, a plate of pasta with a little red sause and a sprinkle of cheese on it sometime in the midafternoon (only because I was babysitting for a few weeks, and that's what the family was having), and then in the evening a yogurt cup, or a gelato.

I always felt tired and weak, unable to concentrate, utterly languid. I only came alive a little bit if at the beach, feeling the breeze and cooled a little by the water. But walking down (5 min) to the beach was too daunting, as it sapped all my strength--and then there would be the trouble of getting back! This got creepingly worse for weeks, and reached the point where walking DOWNstairs--and finally, even getting up in the morning--exhausted me.

Starting having heart palpitations that frightened the living daylights out of me. One day I thought I was on the verge of a having a stroke--ridiculous at my age, never having done drugs or birth control or anything like that. But I still had no idea what was wrong.

I sheepishly thought about walking over (about a mile) to the hospital to ask them if maybe they could take a look at me in the Emergency Room

But my pride got the better of me, and I ate icecream instead (thinking just in case I had low blood sugar, like my hypoglycemic cousin has, that would help).

It made me briefly feel better, and gave me the idea it was all related to food. With trial and error, over some days, I realized my body wanted food in general but especially protein. Boy, did I feel foolish. And also wonderful, as I started to eat again and regained my strength, and was able to walk UPstairs again, with a light and springy step.

Occasionally, when I remember that summer, I could almost burst out laughing, thinking how unbelievably embarrassing it would have been, if I HAD gone to an Italian emergency room--to be diagnosed as an idiot who simply hadn't eaten well in months! I am sure it would have been a dramatic scene. I can just see how the Italians would have reacted. For darn sure I would have been shouted at, wept over, and fed, in short order!!!

Anyway. The Italians are not wrong to be so attentive about food.

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Thank you for your article. I had had some concern that writing about acedia had caused some more. I am glad to read that you are returning to a little more health.

Others have helpfully commented about diet as well as health. Judging by them, my coffee intake is forecast to head straight to zero by tomorrow!

The particular thing I drew from your article is the importance of physical labour. I have spent many years in Anglican parishes engaging in lay and clerical ministry. Higher level support was poor, stress was high and it became clear in a variety of ways that this was becoming a dead end. I joke sometimes that the Army added years to my life and ministry took them away.

I knew of St Benedict's writing on physical work in theory, but now I know about it by personal experience. Having left the parishes I now spend my much of my time felling trees, cutting firewood, planting dozens of trees (fruiting and ornamental) as replacements, building fences and a myriad of other physical outdoor tasks. It is very hard to stop once I get started and I find it very enjoyable - especially considering the alternative. I pray (poorly) and I work. My perception is that physical labour is the key to men's health. Other things may be helpful but some form of work is needed. The 'Do you lift, bro?' question is funny but there's a truth behind it.

One other thing I also considered was that the human body is a key part to salvation. For example, the water of baptism isn't a metaphorical idea, it's a reality, directly experienced. Or another example is the Resurrection. Christ's return is physically experienced and so on...

Anyway, thank you once again for your writing - I found it very helpful in self-reflection.

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I was always very struck by the Risen Christ asking for something to eat. He did it to prove that He was not a ghost, of course, and probably didn't need food to sustain his body. But it was also such a natural and human thing to do. Christ remains fully human as well as fully divine in his Resurrected body, and it's something to remember. We tend to be, mostly half-consciously, assuming that after the Resurrection He was some new sort of being and not really just plain human anymore at all. But that's not at all true. He walked, with His feet on the ground, He talked with his mouth, using His lungs and tongue, He sat at table and ate. Resurrecting is heavy work, I expect - and He'd had a busy day on Saturday - and it seems very natural for Him to want a little something to eat after all that.

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Good reminder not to take the current mindset/"Covid Coma" as an excuse. Happy to hear of your improvement. Write, on! dear Hilary.

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