Multiple Diagnoses: Do You Remember What Health Feels Like?

For a long time, I didn’t remember what health felt like. With three diagnosed autoimmune diseases – during which many of the symptoms just gradually came on – I lost the concept of what true health feels like.

My "normal"

I was living in a world of constant fatigue, brain fog, digestive distress, as well as aches and pains. The accumulation of these symptoms became my new norm.

It wasn’t until my doctor rattled off the symptoms of multiple sclerosis and I said “yes” to the majority of them, that he confirmed they were all MS-related. I felt a bit foolish. For years, I dismissed them as a nuisance. But once I had context around them, put a plan in place, I discovered there was a higher level of health that I was able to maintain.

It’s similar to when I was diagnosed with endometriosis. The pain came up in conversation with my primary care physician and I actually began downplaying it. I wasn’t trying to be a hero, I just truly thought that’s what everyone experienced during their period. Once I experience my period post-laparoscopy surgery, it felt like a new world opened up to me.

We all deserve to feel as healthy as we can

So how and why do we get to this place? Or perhaps more importantly, how to we avoid reaching this point?

We deserve to experience the highest level of health available to us. That may look and feel slightly different for each person, but we are not meant to live with constant low-grade health.

It breaks my heart to see people accept a lesser quality of health for themselves – especially when it’s because they don’t feel it’s worth taking the time to explore or worse, their concerns are dismissed by a physician.

Reaching optimal health

I believe the absolute most value step you can take in managing your optimal health is becoming in tune with your body. This means truly knowing what it feels like to be in your body.

We have become so disconnected from our body that we can easily forget what true health feels like. This is so common if/when a symptom or health condition gradually creeps up for us to not even take notice to it.

It can happen so gradually you lose perspective on what “normal” should feel like. However, our body will signal to us when something is out of balance.

Connecting to my body

Personally, I found yoga and mindful breathing to be two powerful tools to achieving this connection with the body. The more I was able to experience my body in a state of conscious relaxation, I was reminded of what my “baseline” should be. It also became very apparent when I quieted the noise around me, if there was a something out of balance. That’s when I was most likely to feel the tension in my stomach. It was eye opening. It gave me the awareness to then begin caring for my body in a way that supported my true healing.

Have you experienced a similar situation? Do you ever find that the more you turned down the volume of the noise and distraction around you, the more you’re able to listen to your body’s queues and respond with healing efforts?

The body wants to be in a state of health. It’s our job to listen in and support that journey back to our optimal health.