I don’t want to say I am easily swayed, but I am easily swayed.
I am a sales person’s most coveted customer. I once was wooed into ordering a subscription to Men’s Health by a door-to-door salesman while I was babysitting at age 16 because he said my boyfriend would probably like it. I didn’t have a boyfriend, but the flattery prompted me to accept that maybe like “Field of Dreams,” if I bought a subscription to Men’s Health, a boyfriend would come. I didn’t get a boyfriend until I was 23, so fat lot of good that Men’s Health did me.
I also became a Mary Kay sales lady when I thought I was merely getting a “free” facial and what instead turned into my purchasing the princess face-care package for $265 (when, to this day, I wash my face with a bar of men’s soap) and then writing another check to become a consultant. I have never sold an ounce of Mark Kay, but if I ever decide to, I have the whole start-up box in my parent’s basement.
Now as far as food, health and holistic healing go I buy into what everyone’s selling. It started at a young age with my mom telling me that putting a banana peel on my head would cure my migraines. It didn’t, but I faithfully put banana peels on my head throughout the majority of my youth, still convinced in the healing properties of potassium.
A chiropractor friend (not the one who called me pregnant) told me baby carrots had chlorine in them and I immediately stopped buying and/or eating them and promptly informed my loved ones that baby carrots were basically poison. Then I saw an article de-bunking the chlorine in carrots myth and I happily believed that and started eating baby carrots again.
I read an article on Facebook, (which is obviously akin to literary health journals) about oil pulling where you gurgle coconut oil for twenty minutes to pull toxins from your body. I did it, though I gagged horrifically and thought I was going to spew all over my kitchen, while my eyes watered and my boyfriend told me to just spit it out. But I had committed. I was going to de-toxify my body the way the ancients, or at least some blogger on Facebook, did and it would be incredible.
Butter on a bruise helps slow the discoloration of the skin. (This one actually works.) And warm honey on a white head dissolves it. (This works, too.)
Soy is amazing! Bring on the soy crumbles and soy in my latte. Haven’t you heard? Soy may not be so great.
Clearly, I get a little overzealous over being a health crusader. And anytime a new remedy, health food or cure for an ailment using a lemon or quinoa appears on the scene, I am already on board, lifejacket fastened. Lucky for me, it’s only when it comes to health and all natural remedies that I am all in. I was never easily swayed to say join a cult or use heroine, but I credit watching “Requiem for a Dream” and a lot of Lifetime movies for swaying me in the right direction there. Oh, and good parenting.
This is what I have learned though. Do some research. Suss out the facts and read more than one article, and get second opinions from your health professionals before you’re certain it’s for you. And don’t discount a little trial and error. I wouldn’t have known that honey is a god-send for my face if I hadn’t Google’d it and then ran to try. Just because everyone and their Cocker Spaniel is gluten free, doesn’t mean you have to be as well. Read “Wheat Belly“. Or be a radical and don’t read “Wheat Belly”. There is plenty of health excitement going around. And as long as you’re getting fired up about being healthy and not trying a cayenne pepper cleanse that a Kardashian is doing, then go at it with as much gusto as I reserve for chocolate cake. Which is a lot of gusto. Happy health-ing!
-Cassandra