Goddesses Never Age: The Secret Prescription for Radiance, Vitality, and Well-Being (12 page)

DON’T FEAR YOUR TEST SCORES!

Numbers on a diagnostic test can be helpful indicators of a condition that needs to be addressed, but don’t give them too much weight and let them worry you. According to Gerd Gigerenzer, director of the Harding Center for Risk Literacy in Berlin and the author of the book
Risk Savvy
(Viking, 2014), both doctors and patients tend to overestimate risk for disease of all kinds—which leads to far too many unnecessary procedures in general. Here’s the truth: your thoughts and beliefs have a far bigger impact on your health than your medical test scores do (just as they also have a bigger impact on your health than your genes do). I once witnessed a man who was intubated and in the intensive care unit, with an oxygen level so low he should have
been unconscious, sit up and write his last will and testament on a yellow legal pad. This should have been impossible, but his mind compelled his body to follow its dictates. I’ve also seen more than my share of vibrantly healthy people in their 80s with cholesterol levels above 300. It’s a good thing no one ever put them on statins to lower their levels, which clearly weren’t causing them health problems.

Medical tests are far less reliable than most people think. How often has someone said, “I went to the doctor and I got a clean bill of health” and been reassured by a test score, only to have a heart attack the next day? Conversely, how often has someone felt just fine and then been given a diagnosis of some dread disease—and died within months? When a patient is told bad news, it’s often the news itself and the stress hormone reaction to it that hastens the progress of the disease. In fact, research has shown that stress hormones actually produce substances that speed up the growth of certain types of cancers.
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Sometimes test results show a problem, but when you repeat the test, the numbers are in the normal range. I’ve had several patients go to the operating room only to find that the original abnormality was gone by the time they got there. This happens more than we’re led to believe. Also, doctors are human—and fallible. Five different pathologists can read your biopsy report and give you five different interpretations. Which lab you use, who is on duty reading lab results, and the time of day can all affect the accuracy of any test.

The problem with all medical testing is that once you find an abnormality, you’re obligated to keep looking for more things—doctors don’t want to “miss” something. That’s all part of the training and the system. It’s hard for doctors and patients to adopt an attitude of “wait and see” and emphasize making better lifestyle choices. One example is a bimanual pelvic exam. If you aren’t experiencing any symptoms of a disease or disorder, there is no reason why your ob/gyn has to put on gloves, insert two fingers into your vagina, and push down on your belly to feel your uterus and ovaries. I was trained to do this on every woman. And more times than I’d like to admit, I’d feel something that I wasn’t sure about, so I’d have to send the woman for an ultrasound.
Then, if that wasn’t definitive, I’d have to schedule her for a laparoscopy—a surgery that requires general anesthesia. Most of the time, everything was normal. On the other hand, I sometimes found things I wasn’t expecting—like endometriosis—in a completely healthy and symptom-free woman! I have learned that just having a diagnosis doesn’t actually mean you are sick.

Increasingly, we’re realizing we’ve been far too aggressive in treating conditions that indicate a problem
may
develop in the future. I’ve already mentioned the drawbacks of screening mammograms, which, because of the new high-resolution machines, are picking up an increasing number of lesions that would never have caused any problems. The Pap smear is another test that requires rethinking. There is almost no reason for a woman to have a yearly Pap smear if she’s healthy. In the U.S., we’re spending $5.4 billion annually administering Pap smears and $1.2 million in follow-up examinations to find the 1 percent of women tested whose scrapings of cervical cells indicate there could be a problem. Cervical cancer is on the decline, and the 2002 rate was 8.2 per 100,000 women. The American Society for Colposcopy and Cervical Pathology now recommends that women be screened for cervical cancer every five years, not every year, if they test negative for cervical cytology (which is what the Pap test is screening for) and also for HPV.
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And happily, the vast majority of women with healthy immune systems clear HPV from their systems on their own. In other words, it usually does
not
present a problem in the vast majority of women.

Of course, if you’re having pain, discharge, bloating, or spotting, you should look into what’s going on in your body and your emotions. But if you make the mistake of thinking that disease screening is actually health care, you won’t tap into your most vibrant, healthy self. You’ll be in neutral waiting for something bad to happen instead of in a state of flourishing and vibrancy. Go ahead and get medical tests, but if you don’t like the results of a test, address the issue with the power of the mind and emotions—and then take the test again. Don’t be surprised if you see a very different result.

There are certain tests that truly can assist you in creating better health. Fasting blood sugar is one of them. Your fasting
blood sugar should be no higher than 85 mg/dl, and an hour after a meal, your blood sugar should go no higher than 120 mg/dl. It’s useful to get a glucometer (you can pick one up at a drugstore for about $10) and test your blood sugar regularly to know exactly what foods and activities spike it too high. It’s also useful to measure your fasting insulin level. Testing for vitamin D levels is a very good idea too. For vitamin D, get a 25(OH)D blood test, not a 1,25(OH)2D test. It’s the 25(OH)D that will tell you how much vitamin D is in your blood. This can be done through your doctor or an online lab (see Resources for online labs I recommend). Your level should be 40–80 ng/ml—and it will usually take at least 5,000 IU of vitamin D a day to get it there and keep it there. You’ll want to be sure that your blood pressure is around 120/70, give or take a few points either way. Note that the values I’m citing here for blood sugar are lower than standard medicine allows and the levels of vitamin D are higher. These reflect the difference between optimal levels and minimal levels. Ageless goddesses shoot for what’s optimal.

So while modern medicine and medical tests have their place, never underestimate the power of your beliefs to affect your health for the better—or the worse. Alternative health practitioner and author Andrew Weil, M.D., told me years ago that one of the primary sins of modern medicine is its ability to undermine people’s experience of how they feel. If your sense of how well you’re doing conflicts with the numbers shown on your medical test, question that. Former New York City mayor Ed Koch, known for his casual folksiness, used to stand at subway entrances, shaking the hands of commuters and asking, “How’m I doin’?” Medical tests are for asking, “How’m I doin’?” and checking in with how well you’re engaging in self-care. They are not meant to provoke anxiety about any potential signs of disaster.

And remember this: no matter what your diagnosis may be, there’s always hope. In the last 20 years, we’ve come a long way with our understanding of the mind/body connection and its impact on the body. For example, in
You Are the Placebo,
Dr. Joe Dispenza documents his extensive research (done using modern brain scanning techniques) that proves it’s entirely possible to learn how to change the biology of our brains and bodies by
harnessing the power of the placebo—meaning that when you expect something to work, it often does. And in her studies of those whose advanced cancer has inexplicably reversed, Kelly Turner, Ph.D., author of
Radical Remission: Surviving Cancer Against All Odds
(HarperOne, 2014), has identified a number of factors that favor survival even when modern medicine has nothing further to offer. Many of these factors are identical to those recommended in the Ageless Goddess Program, such as releasing suppressed emotions, embracing social support, deepening spiritual connection, changing your diet, and so on.

The earlier you respond to any condition you have, the greater your chances of resolving it for good—and that includes pesky things like allergies! Trust Divine Love and make use of the placebo effect by generating positive beliefs about your health and ability to return to a state of well-being. Recognize the power of the mind to create illness or health. And avoid chronic negative self-talk, which too many women habitually engage in. It’s incredible how many times an hour we can beat ourselves up with self-criticism. Writer Anne Lamott says the mind is too often a bad neighborhood and you shouldn’t go there alone!

I don’t mean to imply that if you have a health condition, somehow you are to “blame” for it—far from it. The mind is powerful, but so are the collective mind and the mind of the Divine. We can’t always know why everything happens, what the larger plan is, or why we develop a medical condition despite our best efforts to stay positive. What we do know is that by looking at every situation in life as an opportunity for deeper healing, deeper love, and deeper compassion for ourselves and others, we optimize our health and the health of our communities.

LISTEN TO YOUR INSTINCTS

To awaken your inner healer, you have to listen to your intuition and instincts about your own body. If a medical practitioner gives you advice that doesn’t ring true for you in your unique situation, listen to your resistance and explore it. Sometimes you just know something isn’t right for you, even if you can’t explain why. Other times, when you do a little research, you realize that
research and logic back up your instincts. We’ve had it drilled into us that we shouldn’t trust ourselves, only our doctors, but our bodies and our spirits don’t lie to us. You might find yourself having a symbolic dream that gives you insight into your situation, or you might feel a heaviness or emotional resistance that isn’t coming from fear but from an inner knowing. When that happens, don’t ignore it. I used to say to all of my patients who were facing surgery that they could call me anytime beforehand and cancel. I told them I’d happily wheel them out of the operating room before their procedure if, on the day of their surgery, they changed their minds! Believe me, this permission to listen to yourself really reduces fear and clears the path for your inner healer to speak!

Not all medical advice fits every person, but I need to call out the media on its constant fearmongering that scares people into herd mentality. Flu shots are an example. Vaccines for shingles are another. I can’t help but notice that the number of people getting shingles has skyrocketed ever since the chicken pox vaccine became standard. They are the same virus, for heaven’s sakes! You have to ask yourself, “What is going on here?” And the evidence to support widespread use of the flu vaccine, which is formulated based on the best guess of which flu viruses will affect people in flu season, is much less robust than the public has been led to believe. What is really being sold here is a sense of safety and security. If
not
getting a flu shot makes you feel really vulnerable, then the shot might be fine for you. After all, it’s our sense of safety and security that directly and powerfully affects our immunity. But given that vaccines are not 100 percent safe, I recommend shoring up your sense of safety in other ways that don’t involve needless risks. The flu vaccine—which, by the way, almost always contains mercury, a known neurotoxin, as a preservative—has also been known to set off autoimmune disorders in some people. And the flu vaccine isn’t 100 percent effective. We all know people who got the shot and then had the worst flu of their lives. The herd mentality that drives people to automatically get a vaccine or take a pill because they’re afraid of not getting one is not creating herd immunity. If you get a flu vaccine every year, ask yourself whether you’re doing it to avoid taking
care of yourself in other ways. Just as with doing medical tests, the question is, why aren’t you taking care of yourself anyway?

The alternative to giving in to your fear and automatically getting a flu shot (or taking a statin drug, or getting a hysterectomy, or making any choice simply because you’ve been told it’s “the best thing to do” in your situation) is to follow the basic formula of health:

~ Increase your body’s ability to fend off germs and viruses.

~ Reduce inflammation and free radical activity that damages cells and tissues.

~ Allow your body the time, space, and environment to repair and heal itself when necessary, which includes taking good antioxidant supplements.

~ Use whatever you are drawn to—surgery, pharmaceutical drugs, whatever feels and seems right to you—to control deterioration, damage, and symptoms when necessary.

When it comes to any vaccine, medication, or operation, read about its pros and cons—and get more than one medical opinion if you’re considering an operation. Then check in with your inner healer. If it feels right and makes sense for
you
to have this treatment, let go of any fear. Say a prayer of blessing as you receive it, imbue it with Divine Love, and ask Spirit to use it to protect you and help you to be your healthiest self. If you receive a medical diagnosis or test results that frighten you, take a few relaxing breaths, and connect with the Creator and that still, small voice within. Turn over your diagnosis and your body to the Creator—as an offering. The Divine made you. The Divine knows what to do. Now wait for guidance.

Here’s a prayer I use all the time: “With my spirit and the angels’ help, I focus Divine Love throughout my system and bring Divine Love into my (area of the body you are concerned about). I ask that this problem now be resolved with Divine Love according to the Creator’s will.” After saying this, draw in your breath, hold it for about four seconds, and then exhale in bursts through
your nose, as though clearing it of mucus. Gently focus on that area of your body and imagine Divine Love filling it with light and healing.

Keep in mind that what I’m describing is a spiritual process, not a mind/body process. When you sincerely ask for Divine Help, it always comes. Divine Love does the rest of the work. After asking for Divine Love to help, pay attention to any guidance you receive. While taking a friend through this recently, I asked her to do the petition and then tell me what she “heard” or “saw” afterward. She said, “Sadness.” Then she simply asked that the sadness be released with Divine Love.