Remember that post I wrote about how all of your symptoms matter? The key message was that the flare of one condition can trigger another, creating a vicious cycle. It's crucial to pay attention to your body and manage your triggers.
This year, I fully embraced holistic care. I visited a physical therapist, an acupuncturist, and a functional health specialist. I also incorporated supplements and adjusted my diet based on a sensitivity test. These changes have been transformative. Acupuncture has relieved tension, boosted serotonin, and provided me with much-needed time to myself. Physical therapy has helped me make small but significant improvements, reducing pain and reactivating muscles that had been dormant for years. This holistic approach has allowed me to build an exercise routine, something I struggled with due to pain. I felt so good that my rheumatologist was surprised by my lack of complaints, except for some bursitis. Holistic care and my new routine were truly working wonders.
However, last month, I lost my dog after 12 years of wonderful companionship. This loss disrupted all my routines. My energy plummeted, and my self-care practices fell by the wayside. My psoriasis and arthritis flared up, and my body was in turmoil. The anxiety and lack of sleep leading up to his passing only made things worse. I stopped taking care of myself, and when he passed, it was a wake-up call. My body hurt, I was exhausted, and I had grief to process on top of it all. It took weeks to reintroduce even a few exercises or use my standup desk. Grieving is hard, and it's even harder when your body is attacking you.
Grief has a huge impact on the central nervous system. You can get grief brain, your stress response activates, your pre-frontal cortex takes a vacation and if you are one of the lucky ones with auto-immune disease it can activate your immune system trigging all those pesky flares.
Grief Brain and brain rewiring is your brains way of processing the emotions. You might have trouble remembering or planning things or have other symptoms like depression, irritability or headaches. Add this to the brain fog from your autoimmune disease and you are in for a treat.
Fight or Flight is when your body goes into stress response mode releasing hormones like cortisol and adrenaline to induce a flight or fight response.
Hightened Emotional responses - your pre-frontal cortex because less active, leading to more emotional decisions.
Looking back I realized I needed to prioritize self-care, even in times of grief. Don't get me wrong I did what I had to do to survive, I needed and still need that time to grieve. But next time I hope I will put the energy I was putting into work into myself. Take time off to grieve and to do PT or get a massage or something for myself. I hope you all do the same, you deserve self-care and you need it. 💗
Sources:
(1) How grief rewires the brain and can affect health – and what to do .... https://www.heart.org/en/news/2021/03/10/how-grief-rewires-the-brain-and-can-affect-health-and-what-to-do-about-it.
(2) How the Brain Rewires as We Grieve | Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/laugh-cry-live/202303/as-you-grieve-your-brain-redraws-its-neural-map.
(3) Understanding Grief Brain | Psych Central. https://psychcentral.com/lib/your-health-and-grief.
(4) Healing Your Brain After Loss: How Grief Rewires the Brain. https://www.americanbrainfoundation.org/how-tragedy-affects-the-brain/.
(5) When Grief Gets Physical | Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/understanding-grief/201909/when-grief-gets-physical.
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