A few years ago, I gave up on finding a cure for Crohn’s.
I distinctly remember the conversation I had with a friend. We ate at Little Big Burger, where she had a cheeseburger and crispy fries drizzled with truffle oil…and I had a plain burger on a lettuce wrap.
I was jealous of her fries.
It was in the middle days of my SIBO adventures, so I was learning that it really was necessary to take small steps every day toward my goal. I had to re-train myself into new daily habits centered around purging bacteria from my insides and my outsides.
Because of my increased focus on the daily grind, I had finally reached the (painful) conclusion that what I wanted–one simple trick!–simply didn’t exist.
Admitting it out loud, that hurt.
And I truly believed it. I still do. When it comes to dealing with long-term disorders that involve multiple bodily systems and a whole cornucopia of external factors, you have to chip away piece by piece so that each layer has a chance to recover and rebuild. Sometimes there’s so much “static interference” from inflammation across multiple systems that it is impossible to even know how bad the problem is.
Taming a chronic disease takes work. There is no silver bullet. That’s a fact.
However.
It’s still surprising to me how quickly my body can start to heal when I finally stumble on the “missing piece.” I do all this work to support various health systems, but it looks like there’s one cornerstone that is the light by which you see everything else.
In my case, I’m back fighting SIBO regrowth and ran out of a supplement that combines three different herbal antibiotics. Instead of buying the same blend again, I decided to see what would happen if I tried each component separately.
And guess what? One worked much, much better than the others.
The turnaround has been spectacular. Saturday I had to make an emergency pit stop for Immodium. Today I went 10 whole hours without needing to run to the bathroom.
Truly, it’s not a silver bullet–there’s still a lot of work I have to do, and I’m not magically cured all of a sudden–but it is like a switch has been flipped. I’m pointed toward health again.
There are no easy cures, but there are smart ones.