As an advocate of the health merits of a highly-nutritious, whole food diet, “you’ll feel better” and all that, I can’t help feeling a little Holly Golightly Phoney when the lurgy (you Brits know what I’m talking about) hits and I’m lying in bed, feeling a tad sorry for myself. This is pretty much how I felt all weekend. I put it down to my lovely but somewhat pesky children, constantly bringing home the contents of an overflowing petri dish and rationalize it thinking how much worse I would be if it weren’t for all those greens and beans.
I was fast asleep by 8:30pm on Saturday night (yes, life’s pretty wild these days). I woke up 11 hours later, finally feeling clearer headed and stronger, and I reflected, again, on just how powerful the brain is. The brain gives us hints to take it easy, telling us that we are tired and need rest. But, we often do not listen. And when the brain realizes that we are ignoring it, the primal part of the brain takes over. It shuts us down. It has us asleep by 8:30pm so that the immune system can work to fight, repair, and restore us back to health. It’s as if we have a parent brain and a child brain in our head. The parent brain allows the child brain to have day-to-day control, but, when there is serious need, usurps that control.
This parent brain, so powerful, so important, can so easily become damaged. Addiction is a powerful reality. Introducing substances into our body that alter the expected chemical processes in the brain affect this very complex ecosystem. Those substances can be in the form of sugar, nicotine, or opiods. Looking at addiction crises and the opiod / heroine epidemic as a case in point, help us understand how quickly that parent brain, whose role is to protect us and keep us alive, can become corrupted and cause harm. That parent brain, the voice of reason and care, can quickly turn into the voice of destruction. Literally. The voice now tells you to self-destruct. The voice tells you that you need another hit.
So how do Plantable, addiction and the flu come together? Plantable ensures that we provide the parent brain the nutrition it needs (and craves). By setting the infrastructure for the correct nutrition and reducing substances like sugar and highly-refined grains that alter natural metabolic processes, we keep the parent brain in good health. A healthy parent brain allows for the rest of the body to function properly. And if that parent brain has been taken astray by a little too many hits of sugar or nicotine or whatever to cloud its judgment, a period of elimination of those substances is key to return to health. Arming ourselves with proper nutrition is the best defense. Plantable principles guide us to make the most health supportive choices so that the brain can work for us, not against us.
