Are You Playing Whack-a-Mole with Your Symptoms?
Ever feel like you’re playing a game of whack-a-mole with your symptoms?! The game where you’re trying to hit the toy mole on the head before it hides back under the game board. It then pops out again in a different spot? Read on to see what this looks like in real life.
The real world game of whack-a-mole
You’re gaining weight so you go on a “diet.” While you’re “dieting” you get a weird skin flare up so you start doing things to help heal that instead. You then start experiencing brain fog and fatigue so that becomes a concern and you shift your focus again. At the same time, you’ve gone off your “diet,” start gaining weight. You now also have some weird gut issues and are constipated. You also start noticing your hair is thinning out and overall, you start feeling depressed…
Does this “game” sound familiar? Do you have your own version? If so, your number one priority right now should be to step back and STOP PLAYING!
Why you should stop playing
You should stop playing because symptoms are usually part of the same root problem or problems. Until you identify what’s going on in your body, you’ll just continue to play the game. Note: the game actually speeds up as time passes!
The main problem with focusing on just one or two symptoms at a time and attempting to “fix” those, rather than identifying root dysfunction is this: symptoms are just the tip of the iceberg. What’s going on underneath the symptoms is what needs to be addressed for ultimate relief.
Co-activation and the cycle
In addition, many times our symptoms can actually co-activate dysfunction in other systems of our body. If you’re symptoms are considered auto-immune in nature, even if you don’t meet the diagnosable criteria, (think gluten sensitivity, hair loss, eczema etc.,) your symptoms can co-activate an inflammatory response in your body! This inflammatory response can then trigger cortisol. If this goes on long enough we can end up losing our body’s natural pain killer (just one of many consequences). This in turn makes us feel worse. Inflammation can ALSO co-activate dysbiosis in the gut which can cause all sorts of gut AND non-gut related symptoms….
In turn, dysbiosis can also co-activate auto-immune symptoms and/or inflammation. To top it all off…any type of stress that releases cortisol can co-active all of the above as well!
See how the game of whack-a-mole can become never ending?! Not fun! Unless you’re one my kids kids playing it at Chuck E Cheese….
What to do instead
So once you decide to stop playing the game, what’s next? Identify what in the world is going on in your foundational systems that are triggering these responses and co-activating each other. Checking into possible hormone imbalances, gut infections/bacterial overgrowth’s/parasites and/or yeast infections is a must. Mold and/or other sources of internal and external toxicity, inflammatory foods, and blood sugar balance are also examples of what needs to be identified and addressed as needed, for true symptoms relief.
Sound depressing and overwhelming? Keep in mind that the chronic long term co-activation series described above (aka whack-a-mole game) will also eventually lead to brain inflammation and/or depressive symptoms. Many, many times, depression is initially a symptom of overall inflammation and/or de-regulatory processes and NOT a root cause…. So if you’re feeling overwhelmed with this post and/or feeling depressed as you’re reading it, it may not be your depressed thought processes talking but rather inflammation affecting your thought processes….
Stay tuned for ways on how to initiate the changes needed to stop the game described above. In the meantime, if you’re interested in finally taking control of your health and finding out the true meaning of your symptoms contact me here to find out how to start.
Inspiration: The Autoimmune Fix; How to Stop the Hidden Autoimmune Damage that Keeps You Sick, Fat and Tired Before it Turns Into Disease: Tom O’Bryan.