Weirdness and grief
Last week, my wife and I were on the beach, it was a beautiful sunny day, we were with our children and I tell her I just feel….”weird”, I couldn’t explain it any better than that, just a bit weird.
And she says something profound, ”the discomfort you are feeling is grief”…….and I say ”ohhhh”.
Suddenly it all clicked into place.
Now I remember this.
It is a deep and unsettling feeling, it is black in colour and it swirls into upper abdomen, it tries to bubble up into throat and into my head so I can’t stop thinking.
I am grieving for my day to day life, my future, my children’s future, my friends and families future.
Personally, it is not the virus per se, but the economic consequences of the lockdown that is making me afraid.
Later on I found an article that explains the sense of grief better than I could ever have verbalised it.
https://hbr.org/2020/03/that-
Read it.
My caveman brain knows something is wrong but it can’t see it (unless I watch the mainstream media coverage and that I try to avoid at all costs).
It also doesn’t know when this is going to end, so I am bargaining in my head “lockdown for 3 weeks I can handle, 3 months no, that is not OK, I cannot and will not accept it”
For now I have routine to focus me.
Writing and recording in the morning more material for the ACN Core Concepts in Chiropractic Nutrition course (planned launch will in the summer), & consulting with clients as usual for function medicine/nutrition in the afternoons via telehealth.
This morning’s list: recovery from anti-depressant side effects (mirazapine finished her off after years of sertraline and citalopram suppressing symptoms), nasty, but she is now off all anti-depressants for the first time in her adult life. Recovery from a bug/parasite caught in India 2 years ago inducing gut inflammation and subclinical thyroid issues (TSH was 7.46). Remission from chronic fatigue syndrome and late diagnosis of vitamin B12 deficiency causing massive anxiety leading to alcoholism, with inadequate NHS support & treatment.
There is a certain stability that routine gives me and I need that right now.
My son is five, and he has the right idea.
He loves dinosaurs and most of the time he is dressed up as Andy from Andy’s dinosaur adventures, running around the garden trying to track down dinosaurs on another daring adventure.
Here he is on the beach about to find a “brachiodontasuralophus” (it doesn’t exist I checked, I had to, he tells me these things with 100% certainty)
He is 100%, in the moment, loving life, no future worries, just pure pleasure right here, right now.
I also read a great article by Toby Young that is a nuanced piece about the cost of life when you shut down an economy.
Read it.
In the meantime, if any patients ask you via email about taking paracetamol, it is worth pointing out that it has to be detoxified by glutathione.
Glutathione is your master anti-oxidant and key detoxifier.
If you take more paracetamol that you can detoxify with glutathione, you get liver failure.
It is also really important for your immune system so depleting it right now by chugging paracetamol isn’t a great idea.
Check this out
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/
Also given asthmatics seem to be vulnerable to SARS-CoV-2 it is also worth noting that glutathione when it combines with nitric oxide it makes s-nitrosoglutathione (GSNO) a potent bronchodilator.
If you want to up your glutathione take extra glycine (it is my favourite amino acid, like of all time) and cysteine (glycine + cysteine + glutamate = glutathione) or you can take some liposomal glutathione.
ACTIONS TO TAKE:
– If you are feeling “weird” my wife and other peeps say it is grief, and I think they are right.
– If you are feeling weird, aka grief, trying pretending to track down dinosaurs, it totally helps.
– Buy some glycine & cysteine or glutathione and bump up the immunity and open the airways.