Solving The Crohn's & Colitis Puzzle pinpoints the top 7 body, mind/emotional, and spiritual strategies the author used to piece together her picture of optimal health and vitality after becoming deathly ill with Crohn's Disease, deemed incurable by the traditional medicine. It's designed to help the reader quickly identify ways to improve their own picture of optimal health. It is informative as well as interactive for each strategy described in a simple easy to read way with action (s) the reader can do to apply them in their own lives. The book has suggested action steps for each strategy and a resource guide at the end of each chapter. In this way, they can begin to piece their "healing puzzles" together.
Piecing Together Your Picture of Optimal Health & Vitality
FROM THE AUTHOR:
Have you ever been told your condition is hopeless or incurable? Well, about twenty-five years ago I was, when I was diagnosed with Crohn's disease. At some point when I was near death weighing 90 pounds, I stopped believing this story the medical community told me and created my own with a happier ending. Now, I am in my early fifties and in the best shape of my life enjoying a radiant state of health.
This guide is designed to help you discover, like I did, how to take control of your life, especially in the areas of mind, body, spiritual health and well-being, which play a significant role in our path to disease (or as I call it, dis-ease). Unrest of the mind, emotions and spirit come first. It's when we fail to deal with them that disease manifests in our bodies, usually in an area where we are susceptible both genetically and emotionally. Each emotion is linked to a specific organ, such as worry for the digestive organ system, particularly the stomach and spleen according to Eastern Medicine.
Unfortunately, when we're born, we don't receive a manual on how to take care of our bodies, deal with our emotions and stay spiritually connected. In the absence of proper teachings, we tend to develop, and are frequently given dysfunctional disease causing habits by others who didn't get the instructional course of life either. So, we go from being bright, radiant and shining lights of love, happiness and (usually) health to becoming dull, not so happy or healthy and stressed. The information presented in this first series is based on my research and personal experiences of healing from a chronic autoimmune illness of the intestinal tract, called Crohn's Disease. This is considered incurable in the traditional diseasefocused, symptom treating model of medicine.
Traditional medicine mainly has only medications to suppress symptoms, and surgery to cut things out, in its toolbox for chronic illnesses. Instead of restoring one back to health, that model creates a vicious cycle of further illness and undesired side effects. On the other hand, I must put a disclaimer in this guide that this is not actual medical advice nor is it intended to tell you not to seek medical attention.
I was able to reclaim my health by choosing to no longer sit passively on the sidelines by just blindly following what I was told by the medical profession. Instead, I became an active participant by regaining control of the driver's seat of my life. My turnaround started when the gastroenterologists wanted to give me an immunosuppressive drug to shut off my overactive immune system. This, the doctors informed me, would leave me so vulnerable that a cold could turn into deadly pneumonia, because I would have no defense system. Incidentally, my old college roommate recently informed me how her son, who has Crohn's, developed bone marrow cancer from taking the current prescribed immunosuppressive drug of choice. I was already in a severely weakened state at that time, weighing only 90 pounds as I mentioned before, and my life's radiance was all but gone.
A strong wind could've done me in, so taking such a harsh medication seemed way too extreme and scary. It was then that I had my epiphany -- I stopped buying into this incurable disease philosophy, and began firmly believing in a way back to health. It occurred to me to think of it as simply solving a puzzle. One puzzle got me ill, so another puzzle had to get me better. All I had to do was fill in the right pieces. By using a lot of trial and error, and researching a plethora of techniques, I finally found those pieces that were the best fit for my health puzzle.
By sharing what I learned and condensing it into this guide book, it is my intention to help you more easily streamline your ability to strategize and find the pieces you need to complete your picture of radiant health. Thereby, hopefully, saving you much of the time and effort that it took me. However, your optimal health and vitality puzzle may not look exactly like mine. As humans we have many similarities collectively, yet we are also uniquely different as individuals, so not all the pieces we need will be the same. However, this guide gives a good starting point and foundation from which to begin putting your puzzle together.
Barbara Steingas is a native of New Jersey and an award winning author. She has written two other books. The first, Germans Are Funny, Too! Stories Of My Cuckoo Kraut Family, is a mostly humorous account of her German family to show the warmer, fuzzier side of that culture and how we can all learn to laugh at our own family dysfunctions.
The second, which is titled The Healing Puzzle: Overcoming A Chronic Illness Through Unconditional Love, won fourth place and honorable mention in the self-help or inspirational category in a global contest held by a California publishing firm. The book chronicles her inspirational journey of healing.
Solving The Crohn's & Colitis Puzzle from Crohn's Colitis, an autoimmune disease deemed incurable by the traditional medical field, and how the unconditional love of her late husband solidified the mind, body and spiritual pieces of her puzzle. She is a physical therapist by trade and has been at Overlook Medical Center of Atlantic Health Systems for over 25 years, and is also a Radiant Life Coach and inspirational speaker to help guide others in finding their missing healing puzzle pieces and fully live the life they deserve by optimizing their health and vitality.
PRAISE FOR BARBARA'S PROGRAM
“Barbara is a radiant soul with a beautiful heart. Not only does she talk the talk but she walks the walk. During several of my hospital stays, Barbara came to visit me and always came with a source of inspiration which has helped me in my journey. I was the biggest skeptic of alternative methods but slowly became an “open-minded skeptic.” Today, I am a complete convert. This is not to take away what conventional medicine has to offer, it enhances the care already given. Barbara gives sound advice and is a terrific life coach! I know my path is much brighter after meeting her. Great read and resources!”
~ Sharon Coyle-Saeed, CEO/Founder of ibdjourneys
