March is Autoimmune Disease Awareness month. There are about 100 different autoimmune diseases, and they affect over 24 million people in the United States (though some estimates are double that number). In February 2021, I officially became one of those people when I was diagnosed with hyperthyroidism due to Graves’ Disease.
Since December 2020 I had been experiencing a strange constellation of symptoms that all seemed unrelated, and I chalked them up to the stress of the holidays during COVID, and the state of the world in general. But a few of the symptoms became too strong to ignore, so I went to my doctor and everything was figured out. I started taking two new medications, and I am feeling much better. I feel blessed to have easy access to excellent modern healthcare, because in generations past this disease could have killed me.
However, the first thing I felt when I was diagnosed with an autoimmune condition was guilt.
Even though, or perhaps because of, the fact that doctors and researchers still don’t know why autoimmune diseases arise, I felt like there was something I must have done to allow this to happen to me. As a yoga teacher and massage therapist I am supposed to espouse and model a healthy lifestyle in all areas from sleep hygiene to diet to exercise to injury recovery. Perhaps this happened to me because I started eating dairy again during the pandemic, or because I wasn’t getting acupuncture anymore. This wasn’t supposed to happen to ME! The Wellness Guilt Complex had gotten in my head.
However, I have an equal number of frustrations with our contemporary western healthcare industry. The fact that money and power determine so much of what is researched and what isn’t has left the natural and alternative treatments to devolve into anecdotal evidence. It is very hard to research whether a certain sequence of yoga poses actually helps sciatica, because it is hard to create a double blind trial around that, and no one is going to make money from the results the way drug companies make money from medications, so the research is rarely done.
Western medical providers do not typically study alternative health treatments or are even aware of how they interact with Western treatments, which leaves the patient with dangerous choices to make on their own. Western doctors are constrained by the financial and legal complexities of our medical system, which keeps them from looking at the whole person, how all the parts work together and how to blend modern medicine and complementary/alternative medicine.
Here I am, with one foot in each world.
On the one hand, I believe we each have some agency over our health. Making healthy choices DOES matter, and it can mitigate or manage many diseases. We now know that emotional stress can bring on physical illness, (especially autoimmune conditions!) and so when I make the choice to get a massage or meditate I am making a choice that has untold benefits that we as modern humans are just starting to understand.
When I remembered that I hold these seemingly contradictory beliefs, my guilt melted away. And I realized that being diagnosed with Graves’ Disease didn’t mean I failed. It didn’t mean that “the yoga wasn’t working;” in fact, it was quite the opposite. I was reminded that yoga and other wellness modalities and treatments give me the tools I need to ride out any storm in life. I believe that my body is always trying to heal itself, it is always trying to get back to homeostasis and equilibrium. But we need to help it along, sometimes through our lifestyle and self-care, and sometimes through pharmaceutics, and sometimes through acceptance that all life is impermanent.
So yes, I will take my vaccines with a side of acupuncture, thank you very much!
