The work of Japanese scientist Masaru Emoto, who photographed the effect of different emotions on the molecular patterning in water has been ground-breaking in showcasing the vibrational reality and impact of our thoughts and feelings. Gratitude, like all emotions, has a unique vibrational and energetic pattern and this ripples through our watery physiology, conducting a harmonious resonance on a cellular level. Like a tuning fork, gratitude can calibrate us to an altogether sweeter note. And it is available to us in each and every moment. 

Gratitude inspires reciprocity. Reciprocity builds goodwill. Goodwill evokes generosity. Generosity yields a sense of abundance. And abundance casts an aura of calm and contentment. 

What’s curious is that we can find our way into a sense of deep gratitude and abundance both from changing what we choose to focus on mentally or emotionally, but also by adjusting our physiology. 

When I take my clients through the WildFit 90 Day Challenge, a three-month nutritional and behavioural change programme, they don’t only change physically. It’s not just that they shed unwanted weight or find themselves feeling much less inclined to eat non-nutritious food. Nor is it simply a way to become free of the inflammation and pains they thought they were stuck with or to overcome metabolically related conditions they have been struggling with. 

What I find particularly moving to witness in my WildFit clients is their change in perception and the exponential ripple effect of benevolent change that occurs throughout their lives as they move through the programme. As the WildFit Challenge unfolds, clients simultaneously gradually ‘take a holiday’ from all foods that don’t serve them (or indeed, any of us) whilst optimising the quality and quantity of their incoming nutrition. For many people, it is the first time their body has ever experienced that degree of superb nutrition. Initially, with such an unprecedented supply of goodness, their body seizes the opportunity to do much-needed repair and recuperation. But as this process stabilises, and their body normalises a sense of nutritional abundance, I notice that they begin to experience abundance in other areas of their life. 

People start to report feeling that they have a sense of spaciousness in their life, with time feeling a little more available to them. Or they describe having launched into clutter clearing and sorting that they’ve been meaning to do for years. Or they have an abundance of energy that compels them to undertake that garden project or home-making mission they had almost given up on. Or they mention feeling more financially abundant even though nothing has changed in their income levels. Or they start feeling more connected with loved ones and more emotionally open, so enriching their relationships. Or they find that their dormant libido begins to awaken and stir into life. Or they begin to shine with that special kind of shine that comes from simply feeling happy for no particular reason. Yet all that has really changed is that in becoming nutritionally abundant, the lens (their body) through which they experience life begins to shift. Gratitude for life and for its simple pleasures begins to take root. There is a sense of ‘enough-ness’, of feeling satiated and nourished, not just physically and nutritionally but in a myriad of subtle yet powerful ways. 

If you would like to find out more about whether the next WildFit 90 Day Challenge starting on July 25 could be right for you, book a free Discovery Call with Freya Sherlock to discuss your health needs and aspirations. Email hello@freyasherlock.com or call 086 127 3148.

While women come into my Chinese Medicine clinic seeking treatment for all the above, there is another dimension to menopause that is available to women at this stage of life that can be incredibly enriching and quite literally, transformative. Chinese Medicine regards the menopause as a woman’s Second Spring. It has the potential to be a time of a total life re-write, an exciting time of re-discovering ourselves on our own terms. As the demands of the many roles we play as a woman within our families and society begin to wane or at least lessen, we can afford to consider what’s important to us from a place of greater freedom and self-expression. 

So often as women, we park our own hopes, dreams, needs and deeper selves in order to nurture, facilitate, support and finance those in our care during our younger decades. These years are of course the era during which we accumulate our valuable life experience, expertise and grow from many of life’s lessons. But our Second Spring is a time of shedding what we have outgrown, of being released from some of our responsibilities, of coming up for air after decades of selfless service and a time in which all our experience, expertise and hard-won growth can begin to distill into wisdom, self-assurance, calm and insight. 

In Chinese Medicine, each of our organ systems are a microcosm that include a corresponding organ-specific spectrum of emotional and mental attributes that have both healthy and unhealthy expression. With our Second Spring, we can begin to have the bandwidth and spaciousness in life to consciously seize the day and ride the wave of physical change to dive more deeply into our own personal journey with unbridled selfhood. 

I encourage women to pause at the juncture that The Change offers and reflect with a sense of curiosity and openness to ask themselves, ‘What is the life that wants to live through me’? It takes courage to re-imagine what our lives are about when our children have flown the nest or when our biology has simply shifted gear and dare to consider what we ‘plan to do with our one wild and precious life’. 

While menopause can be a disorientating time, it can also be a tremendously empowering one, during which we get to reclaim ourselves, sometimes for the first time, and follow the beckoning call of The Woman Within who has waited so quietly and patiently for our time to come. 

I particularly enjoy working with women during this powerful time. Within each organ system lies a path of personal growth and Chinese Medicine offers a framework for not only understanding how to help a woman with the physiology of menopause but also how to help harness the interpersonal and even spiritual opportunity of menopause. For instance, perhaps her Liver system needs tonifying to enhance her sense of vision for her life (the Liver channels opens into the eyes supplying both physical and metaphysical vision) and to transmute any residual anger, irritability or intolerance she may have previously experienced (from Liver Qi stagnation) into the virtues of the Liver: benevolence, kindness and compassion. Or perhaps her Gallbladder needs support to cultivate courage, conscious action, and decisiveness. Alternatively, her Lung system may need treating to help her navigate life’s losses and sorrows (grief is stored in the Lungs) to cultivate a greater capacity for letting go with forgiveness, or to nurture her sense of self-worth since issues of vulnerability and feeling valued are rooted in the Lungs. 

Above all, Second Spring is our second bite at the cherry of life. It’s a time to look your hopes, dreams and quiet callings in the eye and ask yourself, ‘If not now, then when?’ 

It’s our time to flourish, to cherish the life we have and to honour the woman we have become. 

In Chinese Medicine, a holistic approach is taken that begins ideally, pre-conception. Yang Sheng, is an aspect of Chinese Medicine that advocates and fosters lifestyle practices to ‘nourish life’. Indeed, the whole Chinese Medicine tradition is as much about cultivating habits, practices and methods to support and nourish vibrant health as it is about treating illness. Traditionally women would embark on an extensive period of pre-conception Yang Sheng, to nourish and invigorate her Blood (the health of Blood is fundamental for both mother and baby), to potentise her Jing or Essence (vital for conception), to strengthen her Qi (loosely translated as life force, which she will need in abundance) as well as balancing and supporting the inter-relationship and function of all her organ systems. 

In addition, women were encouraged to create a harmonious ‘palace’ for her forthcoming child with the understanding that the in-utero environment and experience will contribute to the temperament and character of the growing baby. Women were encouraged to cultivate a pure heart, to speak kind words, foster positive thoughts, practice emotional equanimity, live a calm lifestyle and maintain healthy sleep and eating habits. The emotional life of the mother was particularly safe-guarded given the close relationship between emotional states and the limbic system of the cerebral cortex and central nervous system. Thus, the internal emotional environment of the mother was considered a vital factor in the creating a healthy ‘palace’ for the baby to grow in. As such, meditation, mindfulness and relaxation practices were advocated from pre-conception onwards whilst the husband and family were tasked with the role of protecting the mother from the stresses and strains of everyday life. 

Fast forward to the 21st century and this can all seem a somewhat unachievable idyll with the relentless challenges of life in the modern era. Nevertheless, it can be helpful to adopt Yang Sheng principles in ways that do feel manageable, and create a more soulful approach to conception, pregnancy and birth. 

Chinese Medicine offers an understanding of child development that is both fascinating and clinically useful. It maps the formation of the foetus’ energetic body from the very first cell division, with the primary division from one cell to two halves being the creation of the Ren Mai channel (also known as a meridian) that runs down our front centre-line from the nose to the perieneum, and the Du Mai which runs down the centre-line of the back from the head to the tailbone. The next cell division, which results in four cells is seen as the formation of the Dai Mai channel, the only channel to travel horizontally around the body and intersects our midsection at the waist level. The next cell division, resulting in eight cells, is regarded as being the foundation of the Eight Extrordinary Channels (which includes the Ren, Du and Dai Mai’s), and these are the channels which we use in clinic to treat the deeper psycho-emotional and spirtual aspects of a patient’s health issue. 

As gestation progresses, Chinese Medicine correlates each organ system as having a particular month during which it is the primary focus of formation and development, both energetically and physically. As such, a pregnant woman, even if in good health with no pregnancy related issues, would ideally have a monthly treatment throughout her pregnancy to support healthy child-development. Embryology in Chinese Medicine is of course, a huge and fascinating subject and one that is well worth exploring if you are planning a family or are already pregnant, both to gain insight into the deeper aspects of growing a healthy and happy baby but also to support you in doing so.

In part, life is the art of riding these waves as graciously as we can, somehow finding a way to ‘be in the world’ and fully participating with good heart and soul, but also not ‘completely of it’ either, and able to keep a sense of centred-ness, no matter what the events and dramas of the day. 

As the world gets increasingly unpredictable, this can feel easier said than done. As we collectively limp from one world crisis to another, barely pausing for breath before facing into the next round of threats, while the rising cost of living escalates with G-force speed, remembering to smile and take joy in simple pleasures can feel a distant and absurd dream. 

While our emotional life can overwhelm us, and the thought processes that fuel our emotions seem so believable and compelling, it’s perhaps worth bearing in mind that both thoughts and emotions can be fickle creatures and are totally susceptible to and responsive to the machinations of our endocrine system and the internal pharmacy of our biochemistry. We are literally like a walking drug store, with uppers and downers of hormones and neuropeptides that are dispensed, swiftly on the spot in response to our environment, both externally and the internal environment we create with our thoughts, beliefs, expectations, fears, anxieties, triumphs and feelings.

Chinese Medicine understands our entire human nature and physiology to be matter at different levels of frequency and wave form, much like quantum physics now corroborates. In other words, the Liver organ for instance, is dense energy wave manifesting in physical form, whereas the emotional spectrum that arises from both a healthy or an unhealthy Liver state is matter resonating at a much finer, more subtle frequency with no physical form as such, but nevertheless corresponding to the Liver specific energy wave. As such, matter (body) and non-matter (mind/emotions) are two sides of the same coin. We can approach treatment from either side of the coin, improving mental and emotional life to positively effect physical health but equally, we can improve physiological harmony to positively effect our mental and emotional experience. 

I have had clients come in chronic grief states, or with debilitating anxiety, or entrenched in depression or struggling to reconcile a traumatic history. All such emotional states impact our physiology, setting off a domino effect of biochemical responses, disrupting the corresponding organ systems and depleting or stagnating our Blood, Qi and Body Fluids in various ways. And while there are always understandable and legitimate reasons for why we feel what we feel, it is nevertheless also true that we can ease this suffering by treating the impact at the level of our physiology. It is always so moving to see how treatment with acupuncture and Chinese herbs can make such a positive difference. Like watching the morning mist slowly evaporate and a sunny day emerge from underneath the dense cloud cover of heavy emotion, I watch people over the course of treatment slowly but surely come back to themselves and come back to life. 

If you are finding that your quality of life is being undermined by difficult emotional states, please seek help. It may need a combination of therapies to help untangle the knot, but a tailored treatment plan that addresses your situation at the levels of both mind and body will lead to a much more effective resolution. 

Phone: 086 127 3148 www.freyasherlock.com

However, following an in-depth consultation that takes a whole-system view, a well-constructed Chinese herbal formula is designed to address the multifaceted nature of illness. For instance, if we consider our woman described above, her formula and treatment strategy will need to contain some herbal medicinals that help to build Blood volume and velocity while other herbs are attending to breaking down accumulations of Blood Stasis (stagnation) that is contributing to her menstrual pain, fibroids, cysts, PCOS or endometriosis. In addition, she will need medicinals that discharge Internal Damp and escort it out of the body via the urine and stool in order to reduce the burden of this Damp on the internal organs, enabling those organs to work more efficiently. She may have a Cold uterus that needs strongly warming herbs that have a specific affinity with the organ channels that enter the uterus in order to thaw out the Internal Cold that afflicts so many women, compromising their fertility (hence why hot water bottles can provide temporary relief from menstrual cramps). Meanwhile, we must not neglect the Internal Heat that has developed from the stagnation so more herbs will be needed, that envoy specifically to the Liver, in order to cool and harmonise the Liver. She will quickly feel the effects of this in terms of stablising her mood, reducing acne or spots and de-escalating headaches or acid reflux. Furthermore, if she has an irregular cycle, she may need one formula that works with the dynamics of her follicular phase (Day 1-14 of a typical menstrual cycle) and oestrogen production, switching to a second formula for her luteal phase (typically Day 15-28) to promote her progesterone, thereby addressing the causes of her cycle irregularity. In essence, the architecture of a Chinese herbal formula can be constructed to both nourish Blood and move Blood, to both cool certain organs or areas of inflammation whilst warming and stoking other organs of aspects of our physiology. It can work on the physical dimension of a person’s health, and at the same time, support the emotional consequence of these pathologies, as each organ system gives rise to its own emotional patterns. And it can address multiple organs and physiological processes simultaneously. So, whether the patient is grappling with digestive problems, mental health challenges, pain and orthopaedic conditions, or autoimmune diseases to name but a few, these complex pathologies can be tackled with an intelligently nuanced medicine that is designed to work with each patient’s unique symptom presentation. In this way, we enable the medicine to fit the person, not the person to fit the medicine. 

Consultations and treatment with Freya Sherlock can be booked online at www.freyasherlock.com or by phone on 086-1273148. 

There is a palpable collective sigh of relief in the air as the pandemic wanes and a sense of normal life and freedom begins to take hold again. There is much to be celebrated and appreciated in coming out the other side but for some, they still carry the legacy of having had Covid with a reduced sense of health or symptoms that still impact their quality of life. This isn’t confined to Covid alone, but following tonsilitis, glandular fever, lung infections etc, post viral fatigue, depression, lethargy and compromised respiratory or digestive symptoms can commonly linger long after the acute phase of illness has passed. 

This can make it hard to resume working life as the more obvious symptoms that warrant sick leave and elicit compassion from friends and family have long passed but energy, appetite, lung capacity, and positive mood are slower to catch up. Understanding this dynamic from a Chinese Medicine perspective can be helpful.

In simplified terms, Chinese Medicine regards contagious illness as being located at different ‘layers’ of the body, the External Layer, the Internal Layer and the Half External/Half Internal Layer. When we contract a virus, it penetrates through the External Layer of the body, and our symptom picture is correspondingly External in nature: body aches, shivering, chills and raised temperature, sore throat, headaches, runny nose – we are all too familiar with the experience. Our body knows how to deal with pathogens on the Exterior Layer and will ordinarily induce a light sweat to effectively shed the pathogens back out through the Exterior Layer. 

If this process isn’t successful and pathogenic invasion begins to penetrate to the Interior Layer, it starts to disrupt our finely balanced homeostasis and depending on the person’s own particular constitution, will typically impact digestive and respiratory health (since both have a link with the external environment via the mouth and nose). Again, our body knows how to self-heal disease on the Internal Layer and will typically discharge the internal heat and damp of infection that arises as result of the body’s battle with illness via bowel movements, vomiting or urine. 

However, when disease becomes lodged at the Half Exterior/Half Interior Layer, it is much harder for the body to resolve this without additional support. Since the pathogens are no longer just on the Exterior, sweating won’t be sufficient to expel them. Since they are not entirely on the Interior, the usual means of discharging pathogenic debris will equally not be effective. So we can end up in a twilight zone, oscillating between cycles of undulating health, with reoccurring symptoms that don’t fully resolve. 

Pathogens and disease trapped at the Half and Half Layer typically linger, as we normalise phases of feeling better and more buoyant as our body gets the upper hand with phases of sinking back into breathlessness, low appetite, temperature dysregulation, chronic sore throat or low grade cough, headaches, poor energy, insomnia, and low mood or even depression as the trapped pathogens at the Half Exterior/Half Interior layer get the upper hand and impact a whole spectrum of organ systems. It’s a dance that can go on for months, even years. 

Fortunately, with a long history of treating epidemics and a wide variety of viruses and contagious illness, Chinese Medicine offers a way to support our body in resolving illness that has chronically lodged in this Half Exterior/Half Interior layer. 

If your quality of life is being impacted by a post viral illness and you need help in getting back to feeling like yourself again, you can make an appointment with Freya by calling her on 086 127 3148 or emailing hello@freyasherlock.com.

Lifestyle Medicine is premised on six key pillars that all influence and contribute to our health: 1. Physical activity and exercise 2. Diet and nutrition 3. Sleep 4. Stress reduction and mental health 5. Reduction or cessation of harmful substances and influences (tobacco, alcohol, drugs, various chemicals) 6. Healthy relationships. Interestingly however, it also acknowledges other significant factors that impact health on a more societal level such as deprivation, social isolation, lack of hope, climate change anxiety and health inequality to mention a few. 

Take Dr. Aseem Malhotra for instance, the highly esteemed, award-winning cardiologist who is regarded as a ‘medical game-changer’ with his mission to not only highlight the links between sugar consumption and a raft of obesity and heart-related diseases but who bravely speaks out with his voice of professional authority about the potential dangers of some pharmaceutical drugs through his work on ‘A Statin-Free Life’. Then there’s Dr. Chatterjee, whose ethos is “to empower you to become the architect of your own health”. His ‘Feel Better, Live More’ podcast regularly tops the Apple Podcasts chart across the UK and Europe as people become hungrier for a more wholesome approach to life, living and health. Another example is Dr. Rob Verkerk PhD who founded the Alliance for Natural Health. His work includes directing legal actions to protect the right to natural health and has been on the forefront of developing a new model for proactive health regeneration and health system sustainability with his ongoing research, education and campaigns that focus on building multi-system resilience through such cornerstones as healthy diet, lifestyle and targeted supplements. 

While this new generation of medics and thought leaders is incredibly encouraging for the future of health provision, I can’t help smiling to myself. Is it really all that ‘new’? Chinese Medicine is fundamentally premised on the principles of lifestyle medicine. It IS ‘lifestyle medicine’. The Chinese and indeed Japanese culture of yesteryear made lifestyle medicine an art form: the more profoundly in harmony and balanced your lifestyle and sense of selfhood, the more revered you were. No living on Starbucks coffee and fast food to get through your white-knuckle-ride of a day for those guys. While cherry blossom bliss and existential simplicity may seem like an unachievable myth to us now, the art of lifestyle medicine or Yang Sheng Fa as it’s called in the Chinese medical tradition is really about a shift towards deeply aligning ourselves with all that supports us to flourish in a profoundly coherent way. Of course that means nourishing ourselves with food that is wholesome and vitalised. Inevitably that includes leaning into the rhythms of the day, the week and the seasons with life-work balance and an appreciation for the value of relaxation and quality sleep. It naturally advocates for tremendous physical engagement, activity, suppleness and fitness. But more than that, it understands that we are beings of consciousness and energy in physical form, and therefore models of health and disease need to reflect this. It’s not enough to attend to just the physicality of health and illness as this is simply the endpoint. It is to embrace the absolute interconnectedness between our psychological, emotional, and spiritual life with our physical health. It is to know that equanimity, kindness, optimism, patience, dignity and resilience are powerful medicine. It’s to grasp that living with a sense of purpose, inclusion and community is a tonic for the soul. And that the depth of our capacity to relate and communicate with authenticity is a balm for the heart. It is to grasp, viscerally, that our environment does affect us and being out in nature is a tonic like no other. Furthermore, it is to not underestimate the powerful potential of supporting ourselves to eat, sleep, relax, move, relate, share, express, laugh, love, care, cry, forgive, strive, play, create, reflect and pray for initiating a transformative healing journey that really can begin to reverse chronic illness. 

Or are you more laissez-faire? Do you spend today and worry tomorrow? Do you readily take loans so you can have what you want now, and then chase your tail keeping up with the interest and repayments? 

Whatever your modus operandi is financially, perhaps pause for a moment and reflect on whether you treat your health in the same way. We have a kind of ‘Health Bank Account’. Of course, this is in part determined by any legacies left to you by your parents and more specifically (in terms of Chinese Medicine philosophy) your grandparents. Did they bestow a wealth of awesome genes and rude constitutional health into your account? 

In Chinese Medicine this is referred to as your Jing – your Essence, that special vitalised metaphorical oil in your barrel that you will draw on throughout your life. This is tantamount to being your savings account. The kidneys are the storehouse for your Jing, so taking care of one’s kidneys is of particular interest in Chinese Medicine, ensuring that you don’t burnout, work or play too hard, have gazillions for children, burn the candle at both ends or run into health deficit. 

Meanwhile, we also have a health current account with much the same income and expenditure dynamic. Eating nutritious food, sleeping well and at appropriate hours, finding our sweet spot in life between output with our engagement in the world and input with more tranquil, nourishing and restorative interludes, feeling connected to loved ones with a sense of belonging and a lifestyle that evokes plenty of joy, laughter and fulfillment are all ways we can cultivate our health income. 

Conversely, we can spend like crazy and run up significant health debt. Endlessly worrying like a dog gnawing on a bone, being habitually stressed, over-riding our need for quality restorative sleep, eating non-functional, biologically alien foods that tax our body and resources heavily, sacrificing ourselves on the altar of our jobs, necking medications instead of attending to the root cause of dis-ease…let’s face it, we are not short of ways to run up a pretty daunting health debt these days. Indeed, it seems there can be a bizarre kudos in running yourself into the ground in some circles, as if your worth is measured in terms of how darn hard you’ve worked and how much you’ve neglected your own basic needs. 

By contrast, in Chinese Medicine we revere those who master the art of living in a profoundly balanced way. Understanding our output as Yang, our input as Yin, our expenditure as Yang, our savings as Yin, we aim to keep the Yin and Yang of life and health in exquisite balance, dancing in tune with the undulating seasons of the year and all the natural cycles and dynamics that we are inextricably part of and whether we like it or not, are affected by. 

The onset of illness is not the best time to start attending to your health. You can’t simultaneously pay off your debts and save money. And if you have had a lifestyle of drawing on your reserves and your savings, then you will have little to buffer you during the hard times of illness or those inevitably intense patches in life (work deadlines, relationship troubles, moving house, family dynamics, pandemics) when you most need some savings in your health bank. 

In Chinese Medicine we aim to be several jumps ahead, tending to the health of our patients in a way that fosters accruing some savings in advance of needing them. Of course, for the most part, I see patients in my clinic who are running low on their reserves, perhaps even exhausted them, and their body is sending them a plethora of memos on a daily basis to attend to their overdraft urgently, aka your red reminders in the post!

Occasionally someone comes in looking for pre-emptive treatment and for me as a practitioner, this is always a particular joy. I encourage my patients to look ahead, to consciously and proactively invest in their Health Savings and manage their Health Current Account wisely. If you know that you are prone to winter ails, flus, coughs, and seasonal lurgies, then in Chinese Medicine we advise addressing this at least one if not two seasons earlier – so do a course of treatment in summer or early autumn. If you know that you are wanting to start to a family, come in for treatment to optimise your menstrual cycles and promote egg quality six to 12 months earlier at least. If you can see your menopause coming down the track, come five to 10 years earlier – you will seriously thank yourself. If you know that you have a demanding time coming up (you’re competing in a tournament, running a marathon, moving to a new job with a steep learning curve, writing your thesis or sitting exams, facing an unavoidable operation, going through a separation or house move) come for some sessions to build up your inner resources before you need to spend them. Ultimately, it’s about understanding that we can influence the trajectory of our health far more than we perhaps realise. So be the captain of your own ship and steer yourself to calm and harmonious waters. Your Future Self will thank you. 

There is so much to be grateful for with all the extraordinary advances we now enjoy with modern living. For most of us, even on our toughest days, we have an ease of lifestyle that even our grandparent’s generation would scarcely have dared to imagine. Here in Ireland, in many ways, we’ve never had it so easy – access to food, water, housing, warmth, communications, transport, career opportunities, clothing, medicine, healthcare, entertainment and relative safety – when you stop to consider how different your life would have been even 100 years ago let alone 1,000, a mere blink of the proverbial eye, it is breath-taking how rapidly human society has developed. 

However, have our comfortable lifestyles come at a price? In the pursuit of convenience, when it comes to food and food production, has the need to produce quantity and profit led to an increasing loss of integrity and quality? 

While we have certainly evolved with whiplash speed socially and culturally, biologically we really haven’t changed that much over the millennia. What this means is that our human biology is still mandated to require our fundamental human diet. Every species has a diet. Pandas have a diet that requires and can make use of bamboo. Beavers have a diet that requires and can make use of timber. And dung-beetles, well, the clue is in the name! We humans couldn’t hope to survive on bamboo, timber or excrement. While this sounds obvious and simplistic, what’s less obvious is how far we have strayed and how quickly we have forgotten the natural path of the human diet and moreover, how we fail to add to two and two. 

So, what is the answer to this particular equation? Our ancestors were hunter gatherers. Consequently, we evolved to require and be capable of processing meat, eggs, fish, certain vegetation, fruit and honey. We gained domesticity, increased certainty in food supply and grain crops with the dawn of agriculture and more recently, with the advent of the industrial age, we entered the era of food engineering and food chemistry. As my elderly neighbour once said, “Too clever isn’t clever at all”. 

Today we are confronted by row upon row of supermarket shelves stacked high with a dazzling abundance of consumable goods. But in truth, these alleged foods contain varying degrees of ingredients that we not only don’t need, but our bodies cannot make use of in any meaningful or beneficial way. We simply haven’t evolved to need them or make use of them. 

Type 2 diabetes is just one of a myriad examples that reveal the extent to which our bodies are adversely impacted by our modern diet and lifestyle. As weight gain and obesity levels soar in global populations across all age groups and demographics, leading to unprecedented rates of pre-diabetic and diabetes type 2 conditions developing, it really is time we add two and two.  

While Type 1 Diabetes is a congenital condition that needs careful lifelong management, Type 2 is regarded as a ‘lifestyle’ illness. This subtly shifts the blame to hold individuals entirely at fault for their diabetic condition. And yet, in truth, we have become blinkered by a food industry that has duped the masses and entrained the ‘people’ to buy and consume a plethora of non-functional foods; foods that our bodies do not understand, do not require, cannot make use of and are adversely affected by. Perhaps equally accountable therefore, is a food industry that coerces consumption of fake food? 

Fundamentally, in simplistic terms, Type 2 Diabetes is effectively a repetitive strain injury to the pancreas. Many of the foods we commonly eat on a daily basis are consistently taxing and depleting the pancreas (with a domino effect and impact on all the vital organs) until the pancreas is simply no longer able to meet the daily challenge of processing modern foods, loaded with hidden sugars, additives and chemicals.

What is remarkable however, is that while we can spend years, decades even, drip-feeding our bodies daily hidden sugars and damaging foods that continually nudge it towards a diabetic condition, given half a chance with the correct nourishment and true human diet in abundance, and the body will usually rally itself and is capable of the most extraordinary repair and recovery.

Just one example from my clinic is that of a woman in her 50s who came to me in June, alarmed by her rapidly worsening condition. Her whole life, she had only ever gained weight, little by little, year after year, until at 20 stone she quickly went from a pre-diabetic range (7.8 -11.5 blood sugar levels) to a dangerously high blood sugar reading of 22.5 putting her at risk of a stroke (normal blood sugar range is below 7.8, anything above 11.5 is considered diabetic). By the time she reached out to me for help, she had suddenly lost her vision, had repeated styes and irritated eyes, savage insatiable thirst, relentless urination day and night and was on the brink of being put on a range of medications, which she desperately wanted to avoid. She joined my WildFit 90 Day Programme, which gave her the education, understanding in food and behavioural psychology and regular supportive coaching to jump in wholeheartedly with making the necessary nutritional changes. 

Within 15 days, her blood sugar level had dropped from 22.5 to 5.9 and has remained stable at around 5.7-6.2 ever since. Her eyesight has gradually reinstated and all other symptoms have completely resolved. For the first time in her life, literally, she is shedding weight. She is delighted to be discovering the outline of hips and ribs she hasn’t felt for decades with her clothing becoming looser and looser each week and an increasing level of energy that sees her bounding out the door for daily long walks. We have a year-long plan in place to work with re-calibrating her body and health through WildFit, Acupuncture and Chinese Herbs but she has already dodged the diabetes bullet. This kind of recovery from diabetes is increasingly familiar, so much so that in WildFit and nutritional circles, the term post-diabetic is emerging. That said, remaining in remission does require maintaining a human-friendly diet. 

So, let’s wise up. We don’t have to throw the baby out with the bath water – but we do have to get much more discerning and empowered. We can enjoy all the benefits of modern living but take back control of our nutrition in a way that supports our bodies to be radically healthy. Two plus two isn’t such a complicated sum after all, what we put into our bodies will impact, influence and determine our health, for better or for worse. 

Have you ever sat back and wondered what kind of life your ‘future self’ will be living? Of course, we have endless future selves – the one that lives next week’s life, or your life in a year or decade even from now. With life’s beautiful, if a little unnerving unpredictability, how can we possibly really picture what life will be like for our future self in term of circumstances, as opportunities, careers, relationships, and phases all come and go? Indeed, if nothing else, the past 18 months has illustrated how even the unimaginable is still entirely possible. 

However, the one rock-solid reliable feature of any future we are fortunate to have, is indeed ourselves. As sure as night follows day, we will trundle towards our future self, be it tomorrow, next month, next year with a certain inevitability (for as long as we are spared our encounter with the final horizon!). Many of us are indeed prudent planners when it comes to taking care of our future self financially with pensions and retirement plans, or career wise, setting ourselves on course to become who we conceive ourselves to be through education. But in my observation, we are more prone to a couple of significant blind spots, with a greater disconnect from this quiet yet unwavering fact when it comes to our health and the environment, as if the person we are today and the way we are living today will bear no influence on the life and health our future self will enjoy. For now, let’s take a look at health. 

As an acupuncturist, Chinese Medicine practitioner and WildFit coach, I find the art and practice of holistic medicine is an intriguing process of consciously meeting a person in ‘the now’, at the threshold of their past and future selves. The consultation process is about archeologically sifting through all they have experienced and how they have lived, physically, nutritionally, psychologically, emotionally, and spiritually up until this point and all that their body now symptomatically reveals as an honest reflection of their biography. 

Like art, which isn’t so much a process of imposing form but revealing and releasing what is calling to be expressed, similarly the treatment process is one of listening deeply to the quiet whisper of a person’s future self and helping to strengthen their bond to a more positive potentiality. Much like a ship set on a course in one direction, one that may be heading towards a future self fraught with poor physical or mental health, illness, and compromised quality of life, through a highly individualised treatment process, that course can be adjusted by several degrees, which when followed over years of metaphorical miles will indeed lead to an entirely different and more wholesome destination. 

I have a particular passion for empowering people to realise just how much they can radically alter the life and health of their future self for themselves simply by overhauling their nutrition. This is a relatively simple yet immensely impactful and practical route to a whole new level of rude health that we are often not aware of. We have so lost sight of all that we as humans need for a true human diet, set aside from all that is on the shelves masquerading as food, that we can genuinely believe we are eating well, not realising that our body begs to differ. 

Yet in my clinical life, I see the results of the modern diet all the time and it isn’t pretty. My role is to listen to the body’s cries for help and believe me it can be a resounding wail that even the custodian of the body is oblivious to. People come in because their diabetes, IBS, UTI’s, ME, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, auto-immune conditions or post-Covid syndrome has brought them, or their pains and inflammation has made them book an appointment, or their anxiety, depression and existential angst compelled them to look for help, or their post-chemo fatigue is debilitating them, or their menstrual life is a monthly hell for them or their longing to conceive a baby brings them in or their menopause is wreaking havoc with them. 

No matter what brings them in to my clinic, in almost all cases, if I could wave a magic wand for them, the most important thing they need to address first and foremost which would have the most incredible qualitative impact on their health and well-being is what they are putting into their body each and every day. 

Our bodies are so immensely forgiving and work tirelessly all day, every single day to mitigate the effects of all the sugars, chemicals and non-functional foods we consume on drip feed throughout the day, often without even realising it. And often, the very symptoms that bring people in for treatment are simply a) a reflection that the body is no longer coping with this low-grade but ever-present toxic load and b) the body’s attempt to discharge that toxic load somehow, someway, in a bid to keep YOU alive and as well as possible. All that inflammation is simply toxicity stored in the joints away from your vital organs. All those UTI’s, skin conditions, troublesome bowels and copious phlegm are your body valiantly trying to find ways to discharge what it can’t cope with, while mental and emotional health is, in part, a demonstration of the body-mind continuum in action. So on and so forth.

Personally, I love nothing more than helping people to build a whole new relationship with themselves and their remarkable body, to discover how much they can do to re-write the trajectory they are on and with a combination of acupuncture, Chinese herbal prescriptions and WildFit coaching, help them fall in love with being and feeling vibrantly healthy. So please, spare a thought and advocate for your future self today in a way that She or He will thank you for! 

I love exploring the art of living, discovering ways to infuse daily life with soulfulness, expanding how I do things, see things, and make meaning of things, contemplating our individual and collective potential in today’s world and seeking practices that support our own and each other’s evolution.  

For me, attending to our health is Step One. We all know ‘our health is our wealth’ and yet, in my clinical life as an Acupuncturist and Chinese Medicine practitioner, I see how challenging it can be for so many people to feel truly healthy, physically, mentally and emotionally. Finding ways to alleviate the suffering that diminished health can bring has been my life’s calling. 

My quest over the past 35 years has taken me across North America, Europe, Asia and China where I have been blessed to study with some extraordinary teachers and healers; I endeavour to weave all these threads into the tapestry of my clinical practice. 

I am equally enthralled by the immense wisdom of ancient cultures and medical traditions as with the often-stunning advances in modern science and society and so honouring, bridging and integrating both these domains of knowledge, understanding and skill is personally and professionally important to me. 

The past 18 months, human health has literally and metaphorically been under the microscope. And in the climate of fear, uncertainty, anxiety, and confusion it can be hard to discern what is the solid ground we can confidently stand on in terms of how to move forward with our individual and collective health. The pandemic rumbles on, morphing into variants and unleashing immeasurable consequences on all our lives, like an existential tsunami with multi-faceted devastation still rippling the world over. And yet, every crisis bears its gifts. 

So, what are the pearls we can fashion from this global grit? These too I feel, are numerous and widespread, from a healthy re-evaluation of how we’ve been collectively hurtling along on an unsustainable crash course as a species on this planet through to re-inventing new and perhaps more balanced ways of living, working and being, as priorities have necessarily adjusted. 

Perhaps one of the real silver linings is that this experience has brought into sharp relief that none of us can take our health for granted. While Covid 19 was initially regarded as being somewhat ageist, a problematic stance at best in terms of encouraging social responsibility towards our older folk, it would now seem that this virus is simply health-ist, with far more gravity and threat for those with pre-existing health issues and/or excess weight.

Futhermore, this pandemic has shown us how our medical services are not only delivered by untenably overworked and underpaid angels, but that in the face of such a medical crisis, all other health needs are necessarily side-lined. With medical services not as readily available for our more chronic ails, the onus falls to us to take more extreme responsibility for our health and to do so as a matter of good practice, and basic lifestyle, far in advance of experiencing health issues. 

I have a vision of a day, when it is the ‘new normal’ for people to realise just how much they can positively effect and even amplify their level of health and wellbeing through nutrition alone, and that if issues still arise, that robust natural medicine services are available as primary care. I harbour a hope that over time, we can reduce the burden on our hospitals and medics by accepting that we ourselves influence our health so much through what we consume. And since scientists predict that variants of Covid are likely to be a thing of the future, I encourage you to take this opportunity of the lull before the next storm, to dive into your nutritional life, into learning how to run your metabolism efficiently and effectively through what you eat and raise the bar for yourself in terms of just how healthy and symptom free you can feel. 

The problem is that many of us can get away with eating unhelpful or even non-functional junk and convenience foods and our bodies simply gets on with coping with it. There is a huge awareness gap between the foods we eat today, and the long-term effects of those foods, so that we typically fail to make the link between the way we’re eating now and the resulting health issues that develop gradually over time, as our body’s best efforts to mitigate the effects become weaker. I would like to suggest that there is almost no health issue that cannot be improved and benefitted by removing burdensome foods and increasing the foods we are evolutionarily designed to eat and are biologically capable of processing. So much of our modern diet is loaded with ingredients that our bodies find confusing, harmful and ultimately toxic, even if we don’t realise this is the case until it’s too late and we have developed symptoms and illnesses. And yet our quality of life, our productivity, our wellbeing, our psycho-emotional stability is completely and inextricably intertwined with our levels of health. Call me old-fashioned, but it seems a no-brainer to live each day with as much rude health, energetic capacity and good-natured equilibrium as possible! 

To that end, I am delighted to be pioneering WildFit, a programme in Ireland, created by the powerhouse, Eric Edmeades, which dovetails behavioural science and psychology with nutritional education to help you re-set your body and in doing so, re-set your life. For further information on how to join this upcoming programme starting on July 12 please do contact me. 

Over the next few issues of West Cork People, I will be exploring topical health and wellness issues through the lens of Chinese Medicine and nutritional wisdom.

Freya can be contacted by phone on 086 127 3148 or email hello@freyasherlock.com. www.freyasherlock.com