I woke up at about 7 with a nasty crimp in my neck and am quick to take some over the counter (OTC) pain meds. At this point, I am finally getting around to reading that book I started in January about health and wellness and diet and and how the mind and body are connected. Many of the health problems women face today in society are diagnosed without enough analysis and doctors are quick to just prescribe “something” to help. The book I am reading is all about getting to the root cause of the problem to nip it at the source and remove the necessity for those drugs.

The chapter I just read yesterday was all about OTC pain meds and the negative affects those things have as well as other environmental factors we commonly use and don’t give a second thought to like lotions and even tap water. The author makes a good case for why people should not take acetaminophen or Ibuprofen or naproxen.

I’m guilty of regularly taking Tylenol (sometimes daily) for headaches and general pain and ibuprofen for cramps so when I read that chapter I was alarmed by what potential “silent” side effects I could have been inflicting on my body all these years. Sometimes I dismiss it when I read claims like these, but the thing I like about this book is that she backs all of it up with evidence from research studies and things that have been learned through years and years of scientific evaluation of how different aspects in the human body are connected.

Part of this book is making a case for alternative/natural medicines and the other part is a dietary plan to put someone on a path to good health. I have had a hard time getting through it because much of it reads like a reference guide and I historically don’t get through those kinds of books easily.

In fact, I started this one in January or February with the intent of getting through the first section so that I could employ the dietary plan in the second section sometime in the spring, but that never happened because I stopped reading.

In the last week, and now that I feel as though I’m meeting with success on the exercise front, I want to couple that with healthy eating and so I’ve picked it back up again with the intent to make September the starting point for making positive changes in my diet. I didn’t count on that including changing anything about my OTC pain med habit, but since reading that chapter yesterday I am totally rethinking that.

However, I have yet gotten to the real “alternate solution” chapter on what to do when you wake up with a headache or a sore neck and I will likely have to get to some store so that I actually have those alternates available when I need them. So this morning it was business as usual with the Tylenol. I’m getting ready to head to the gym now for some cardio on the elliptical and might just skim ahead to see if I can get the info I need on the subject.

Time to get after it!
Welcome to September,
~Miss SugarCookie

PS. The book is called “A Mind of Your Own” by Kelly Brogan, MD