by Ingrid Ward, New Zealand.

When I stop and observe the health of people around me and humanity’s health in general, it seems to me that we have come to accept many things in the medical field as ‘normal’ when actually, they are not. We have come to accept that it’s normal to feel tired, to have indigestion, to have a consistently runny nose, just as a few examples. And for much of my life I was one who considered these conditions to be normal, simply the way my body was.  It’s taken a deep commitment to changing my lifestyle, the way I am living, eating and working, to now know that these accepted ‘normals’ are actually making us sick.

A couple of months ago I had an experience of another, but slightly unusual, accepted normal. I had a health issue that took me to my doctor’s surgery but this time to another doctor in the practice. He was in his 60’s and so had been dispensing his medical skills for several decades. In the course of the appointment he examined my abdomen, palpating gently wherever he went. Then he stopped over my midriff and the palpating became a little more focussed so I felt to ask him what he was looking for. The conversation then unfolded like this.

Doctor: ‘I’ve found your friend’.

Me, feeling a little puzzled:  ‘What friend?’

Doctor: ‘This strong pulse from your aorta. Has it always been like this?’

Me: ‘No – only since I lost all the weight from around this area.’

Then there was a pause where I could almost hear him thinking and then he spoke.

‘Well I suppose this is the way it should be, that I should be able to feel this pulse so clearly, but because most of the patients whom I examine are overweight, I don’t get to feel it’.

So, there it was, the medical normal that he and probably many other doctors had come to accept and here I was reminding him that in fact it was a very long way from being normal. And this particular normal has simply arisen as a result of people carrying more weight than their body needs, especially in this area, and in the process this most natural of pulses has been, in most cases, buried under excess layers of fat.

He did go on to say that he would still book me in for a scan, just in case. I appreciated his commitment to my health but was curious as to whether this was for his confirmation or mine.

So two months later, I attended the radiology clinic for my scan. The radiologist was a lovely young man with a very welcoming and warm demeanour. It took him all of 10-15 seconds to see that there was no issue with my aorta, but he still went diligently through all the required procedures. He then said that as he had the time, he would have a look around all the others organs in this part of my abdomen, so I lay back and watched as he did, definitely appreciating this opportunity to see what the inside of me looked like. After checking out my spleen, pancreas and liver he shared that they all looked in great shape and in fact it was clear, he said, that I had been really looking after my liver. And with more time to spare he checked out my kidneys before announcing that I had the kidneys of a 20-year-old. Of course, that had me smiling as I am 70 now.

And then I shared that I was absolutely sure that this was only the case because 20 years ago I had decided to make the choice to change my lifestyle, especially the food I had been eating, food that had been making me very unwell, but being in total denial I had kept on eating. At aged 50 I was 20 kgs overweight, I had had severe gut issues for as long as I could remember, continual sinus problems, a multitude of aches and pains and always felt tired. I am sure that if my organs had been scanned then, they would not look like they do today. I am sure my liver would have been showing the effects of the alcohol I had been drinking and the fatty foods I had been overconsuming for some time. The radiologist totally agreed and a very in-depth conversation followed about the damaging effect some lifestyle choices can have on our precious bodies.

It was at that moment I allowed myself to feel the deepest appreciation for the choices I had made and realised that my body was simply reflecting the love and the care that I had brought into my life back in 2000.

It was in that year, as a result of a book with quite an unusual name – The Beat the Candida Diet book – almost jumping into my hands in a bookshop that had been temporarily set up in the local high street, that I started to make loving changes. I have recalled the miracles and the marvels that happened next in my blog – “My Body Spoke – but I didn’t listen, for a very long time” .

It was the wisdom shared in this book, the deep knowing in me that I was being offered a lifeline to true health and five years later finding my way to the incredible life-changing presentations of Serge Benhayon of Universal Medicine, that have all accumulated in the level of well-being I live with today.

The personal story I read in the book mirrored my ill-health story and had me quickly realising that it wasn’t normal to feel the way I had been feeling for so long. I realised that I hadn’t been imagining how unwell I had been feeling and that I wasn’t a hypochondriac, my body had been simply speaking very loudly, but obviously in a language which I didn’t understand at that time, so tenuous was my connection to it. So, I began to listen intently, and responded with the choice to remove wheat, dairy and sugar out of my diet, which soon impacted on my health, in a most unexpected and very vital way. And slowly but surely life began to be so much easier and way more enjoyable to live.

Unfortunately, a few years later, after several life challenges, I let this wonderful way of living slip and with it my health, but it wasn’t long before I was once again presented with the wisdom of my original choices. In 2005 I met Serge Benhayon and it was when he began to share much of what I had previously read in the book, but on a much deeper level, I realised that I had been on the right path as far as my body was concerned; now to get back onto it! He presented how the food not only affects us on a physical level but also on an energetic level, and that sure made sense of much of my life. But, it was when he presented on the impact of gluten in the body that I had found the final piece of my food puzzle and it didn’t take long after its removal from my diet that my body felt like it could finally smile.

Even more key was the understanding of why I was eating what I was eating, of the underlying thoughts, emotions and self-beliefs that were uncomfortable, if not painful, and that I was using the food to numb… and deeper still, of the understanding of energy, that my body is run by one of two sources of energy, one that loves and cares for it and one that treats it with disregard, and I can choose to align to one, or the other.

It also took a huge commitment, one that never wavered, often in the face of those around me struggling to deal with the changes I was making and at times appearing to be trying to derail this most self-loving of decisions on my part. The fact that I had chosen to remove gluten, dairy, sugar and alcohol from my diet was something many found hard to understand even though my health and my well-being was improving every day. This I really found bewildering but can now understand. They were finding the reflection of me saying ‘yes’ to true health very challenging, as deep within them they also knew that this was the choice their body was asking for, but a choice they weren’t yet ready to make. These days there is total acceptance from them of my change in lifestyle and some have even made small changes themselves, without any expectation from me.

Yes, I often have aches and pains, yes, there are days I am more tired than others, but after 20 years of a loving commitment to this wonderful body of mine, I know that I have a strong foundation that supports me through those moments when my body is speaking loudly to me. And these days, as I wrote in my previous blog, I listen intently and then make the choice that I know is being called for, even though sometimes I do initially resist.  I also know that now that I am 70, I am breaking through many of the accepted ‘normals’ of someone my age, not fitting into the box labelled ‘This is what to expect at this time of your life’. I, and many others I know, are totally committed to re-writing this label as we know that growing older does not have to be all downhill, that we don’t have to fit into all the medical ‘normals’, that in fact the way we are living is the true normal.

And I know without a skerrick of doubt that I will continue to treat my ageing body with the deepest care and love that I can, without perfection of course, until my last breath; after all this body is my best friend. A very patient, loving and supportive friend that knows in every particle of its being, what is normal and what is not.

Read more:

1. Going gluten free does not require a gluten intolerance diagnosis 
2. Gluten, dairy, corn….. are the root of all evil.