How can you fight disease if you don’t know you are in danger of disease? It’s like that saying ‘You don’t know what you don’t know until you do.’ It is equally true that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
Spoiler Alert: Health Knowledge-related Prevention saved my life.
I was in the latter boat — I didn’t know what I didn’t know…and I own my ignorance. I take personal responsibility for being ignorant, because the life-saving health information was always out there (for free and I had acquired most of it), but I had a blind spot.
My downfalls were:
- I didn’t know the hidden dangers and prevalence of food borne-parasites.
- I trusted that restaurant workers served me uncontaminated food.
- I was naive — it never occurred to me that the ‘experts’ and ‘professionals’ would deceive me or harm me.
- I possessed an arrogant sense of invincibility like ‘Oh disease happens to other people — it won’t happen to me because I’m health-conscious’, but one day the person harboring disease was me.
Guess what else? The red flags pointing toward chronic disease were there — I just made excuses for them, because when I did visit the medical doctors to ask about the red flags, the doctors would shrug or turn a blind eye and ignore my request for information…and doctors know best, right?? (insert dripping sarcasm here). For example, in 2018, when I attempted to discuss nutrition as treatment, one young, Asian, female medical doctor said to me, and I quote, “You know I can’t talk about that, right?” She was the only honest medical doctor I ever met in my adult life.
As for me, armed with the medical doctors’ apathy, I learned to make my own excuses, ‘Oh, this is just what happens as the human body ages’ and then I’d ignore the problem while the problem just got bigger and bigger and bigger, year after year after year until that cataclysmic event occurred that wouldn’t allow me to ignore my deteriorating health anymore.
It wasn’t just me contributing to my illness — there were many humans who contributed to my illness and who willfully harmed me such as medical doctors, an acupuncturist, surly restaurant workers — there was the hostile, Caucasian-American, female, waitress in Alexandria, VA, who insisted I try the “special” appetizer which I soon discovered was rotten, mashed sushi on stale toast. In Manassas, VA, there was the Middle Eastern, male, diner-restaurant owner who yelled at me to “Just eat it!” when I reported and showed him a large blow-fly the size of a kidney bean baked into my breakfast biscuit. There were numerous Chinese restaurants that served me food poisoning complete with vomiting and diarrhea (and one of them even attempted to bribe me with $40 so I wouldn’t report them to the health inspector). I’ve contracted food poisoning from Panera, Chick-Fil-A, a ‘fancy’ French restaurant, and an organic restaurant in Northern, VA called “Naked Lunch” (twice). In Jacksonville, NC, there was the Mexican restaurant worker who put sand in my refried beans and rice and the salad that dangled a green inch-worm from my dinner fork. I could go on and on about the atrocities I have experienced eating at restaurants.
If you are shaking your head and saying, “That’s normal! That’s the chance you take at a restaurant!”, then your thinking is abnormal. When you pay triple the money to eat at a restaurant, then you should be served quality food; however, this is not reality. The majority of food at restaurants is subpar, laden with chemicals, nutrient-deficient, and further poisoned by the handling of negligent and apathetic humans who don’t care about the quality of your life.
Leading to the Cataclysmic Event was I a Total Train Wreck or What?
Answer: No, I was not.
Since age 14 (when I became aware of ‘health’), I strived to eat healthy and exercise. During my adolescent years, I ran miles around my neighborhood or I exercised to aerobics tapes in my bedroom. During my required physical, when our team doctor told me that I needed to stop drinking beverages with color dye, because it was causing my kidneys to bleed, then I abruptly stopped drinking soda and sports drinks while my teammates mocked the doctor’s suggestion. From that moment on, I only allowed myself to drink filtered water, skim milk, and clear-colored Gatorade (of course now, I only drink distilled water and organic green/herbal tea). I was (and still am) an extremely self-disciplined person, so I was not a train wreck, even though my life became one.
Throughout the years, many jealous men and women have accused me of being “naturally thin”, but they never saw the countless hours I spent at the gym pushing my physical and mental limits or limiting my menu to whole food, low-calorie choices.
— Heather Blackwell
My entire family is obese. At age 16, I decided I never wanted to be obese, which is why I joined the track team and started weightlifting.
At age 18, when my step-mother gave my spandex-clad, muscular body a jealous once-over, squinted her eyes, and sneered at me to say, “You won’t always look like that. One day you’ll look like me”, I thought to myself, “Like hell, I won’t!” and I’ve kept that promise to myself. Throughout the years, many jealous men and women have accused me of being “naturally thin”, but they never saw the countless hours I spent at the gym pushing my physical and mental limits or limiting my menu to whole food, low-calorie choices. If anything, I’ve been naturally health-conscious. Most of my life I strived to eat healthy, exercise, and supplement with nutraceuticals to complement my life-stage. I ate mostly lean meats — chicken and salmon. I strived to eat more lentils, vegetables, and fruits than starches and carbs. I stayed away from pasta and breads almost always. I never drank soda pop. I mostly drank water. I monitored my hormones to maintain homeostasis.
If I was so healthy, what was my Achilles heel? What was the root cause of my disease? Because I wasn’t born diseased.
Around 2008, I began eating sushi — it was the cool thing to do. Many popular movies boasted actors and actresses eating raw fish and my social group was proclaiming how wonderful it was, so I figured what could be the harm? And when I asked the restaurant owners about how healthy it was to eat raw meat, they would just tell me that the raw fish was steamed at a high temperature to kill parasite eggs…they lied. Also, fruits and vegetables need to be thoroughly cleaned with a disinfectant like vinegar, hydrogen peroxide, or ozone, and I wasn’t doing that either (restaurants don’t do that either) and most restaurants buy GMO/non-organic/pesticide-laced produce, FYA.
What Were the Red Flags Leading to My Cataclysmic Event?
My health-related red flags started as far back as 2008, so my red flags were over a decade in the making before my cataclysmic event.
To keep the list short for this article, I won’t list the events in chronological order; instead, I’ll just list the disease-related ailments I suffered through the years.
1.) facial/neck acne
2.) tonsil stones/bad breath
3.) repeated tonsil infections
4.) gallbladder stones/pain
5.) pale-colored stools
6.) vaginal yeasts infections
7.) cervical, thoracic, lumbar joint pain
8.) other joint pain
9.) intermittent heart palpitations
10.) indigestion
11.) constipation
12.) weight gain/excess adiposity
13.) cold hands/feet
14.) fatigue/lethargy
15.) brain fog/difficulty concentrating
16.) sleepiness after eating
17.) afternoon lethargy
18.) vision blurriness/eye floaters
19.) craving sugar/junk food
20.) pancreatitis
21.) difficulty fighting off cold viruses
22.) breathlessness/reduced ability to jog
23.) dairy allergy/increased lactose intolerance
24.) intermittent “razor blade-like” pain when stools traveled through the colon
25.) breast pain
26.) colorectal tumors
27.) decreased core temperature
What was the Cataclysmic Event?
Long story short? From 2008, my symptoms steadily increased until December 2022, when I experienced digestive failure of the pancreas, liver, gall bladder, and colon. If I ate sugar or fat, my pancreas was immediately, excruciatingly inflamed. My colon function ceased — everything I ate became impacted at my cecum because a massive parasite-induced tumor was blocking passage from my small intestine to my colon and a second tumor was blocking passage at my rectum. My body was the human equivalent of a three-car pile-up stuck in a major traffic jam.
The good news? I fought back panic and since the medical doctors had already disregarded me on several routine, annual visits, I knew they would not help me, which means that I was prepared to fight disease on my own (as I had many times before). I had no idea what was happening to me, if I would live or die, but I was determined to figure it out until the moment I ceased to exist.
The better news? Since age 18, I had been self-educating on any nutrition and exercise science-related allopathic/naturopathic book (and academic peer-reviewed articles) I could find, so I had a lifetime store of health knowledge (and this knowledge is also how I spot-treated my ailments since 2008) from which to pull strength, which is much better than starting from zero knowledge. I have thousands of hours of human anatomy & physiology and nutrition-related knowledge under my ‘health knowledge’ belt.
The best news? This is a two-part answer. First, I now understand systemic illness and systemic treatment of illness using holistic nutrition; therefore, I no longer spot-treat illness, instead I eradicate the root cause and work from there to restore wellness. Now, I holistically view the entire human body, with all the human organ systems, and I understand how the entire body is healed with nutrition. Second, I no longer have any of the aforementioned illnesses/symptoms, such as, but not inclusive to:
- No more tonsil stones.
- No more tonsil infections.
- No more acne.
- No more organ dysfunction.
- No more digestive issues.
- No more lethargy.
- No more yeast infections.
- No more unwanted adipose tissue.
- No more blocked colon.
Now that I understand the mechanics of the human body, I have control over my body and my mind — I gain weight when I want; I lose weight when I want. Now, my body is well, because I treat myself to what my body needs to thrive.
Human bodies were not meant to consume and digest artificial, inorganic, and contaminated food, and all the processed, chemical-loaded “food” we buy prepared at restaurants and at the grocery store is just that…fake and toxic. Human bodies are organic, from the earth, and fake food is largely inorganic and man-made, so it makes sense that our human bodies eventually get sick when we eat it for a prolonged period of time. The human body can fight away contamination only for so long before it breaks.
Bottom line? My mounting and accumulating illness was the result of trusting others to make decisions for me and believing lies told to me instead of conducting a meta-analysis of academic peer-reviewed literature combined with experiments using the scientific method (which is how I work now). Of course, I can’t be too angry at the doctors and medical community’s negligence. Because the medical community didn’t care to heal me, I learned to heal myself, and now I bring that healing to you.
When I made the decision to take personal responsibility for my choices and my wellness, when I decided to put my knowledge to good use, then I discovered the multi-pronged solution to my sustained wellness. My only regret is that I didn’t push myself to take personal responsibility sooner. If I can make this decision of empowerment, then you can, too.
Your disease and your wellness are in your hands.
Woven into the fabric of these ten wellness-weapons is the choice to live healthy, which means to live differently than the status quo. The most difficult hurdle to your health success is overcoming the compulsion to follow the crowd, resisting temptation to do what is ‘easy’, and to be unique in critical-thinking.
— Heather Blackwell
The key to a human’s sustained wellness is:
1.) Whole Food, Plant-Based Nutrition
2.) Vegetable juicing
3.) Coffee Enemas
4.) Water-fasting
5.) Hormonal balance
6.) Tailored Nutraceutical Supplementation
7.) Self-exploration/introspection
8.) Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy
9.) Dialectical Behavioral Therapy
10.) Gentle exercise
These were the ten therapies I used to heal my whole body. That is it; that is all — the solution to sustaining long-term health. However, woven into the fabric of these ten wellness-weapons is the choice to live healthy, which means to live differently than the status quo. The most difficult hurdle to your health success is overcoming the compulsion to follow the crowd, resisting temptation to do what is ‘easy’, and to be unique in critical-thinking.
Do you want to be holistically healthy?
If you want sustained health, then embark on the wellness journey, which is:
1.) Stop ignoring health-related red flags.
2.) Decide what you want to change.
3.) Take personal responsibility to initiate your change.
4.) Identify the root cause of your health-related challenge/s.
5.) Eradicate the root cause of your unwellness.
6.) Implement changes to restore wellness.
7.) Turn health-related changes into life-long habits that are your new lifestyle.
What will be the result of your wellness journey?
The result of your wellness journey will be:
1.) Sustained wellness.
2.) Control over your body.
3.) Control over your mind.
4.) Control over your life.
5.) More time/money to enjoy life.
6.) More energy to do what you enjoy.
7.) Peace and happiness.
Does Wellness Success Happen Overnight?
Wellness success does not happen overnight — it took me 18 months of targeted therapies to get my wellness back on track. Of course, I had multiple issues to tackle, which were 1.) parasite evacuation 2.) colorectal tumor eradication 3.) hormone balance 4.) nutrition balance.
You may have less issues then I did, which means it won’t be as difficult to heal your body and achieve homeostasis. Also, if I can turn my health around in 18 months, then you can, too.
Holistic Wellness is a science — it took me thousands of hours (and years) of health-related research to obtain the knowledge to know how to get my body’s health back on track when disaster struck me.
The good news is that you don’t have to study for thousands of hours (and years) because I’ve already done the laborious work. I can fast-track your wellness success, because I educated myself and tested protocols on myself to know what does and doesn’t work. I can share my holistic health knowledge with you. I can guide your healing process, collaborate on your individualized solution, and I can teach you how to care for and properly maintain your body, so then all you need is the willpower to sustain your wellness with continued healthy lifestyle choices throughout your lifespan.
If you are ready to start living your best life, contact newzenvigor.com to schedule your wellness consultation.
New Zen Vigor 
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