Appreciating the special moments in life

Being diagnosed with any long term health condition is never easy and the first thing we all want to do when we are diagnosed is find answers outside of what the medical establishment tells us. Why? Because once you receive the diagnosis your life flips upside down and your pursuit becomes answers over everything else you have been focusing on. This is great but we often overlook the very small steps that can lead to some of the biggest improvements.

Food is obviously the first area to target with a digestive disease and it's what most of us will do. But we often overlook the other behaviours and habits that are driving our bodies to be in a diseased state. IBD is significantly more prevalent in Western, high-income countries compared to other parts of the world, and it is rising alongside many other autoimmune conditions. We know that food plays a big role in this but what about stress? Lack of sleep? Anxiety? Detachment from nature? Less connection to families? All of these have a big impact on driving our fight or flight response and keeping a lot of us from properly healing. Research into the gut-brain axis — the communication network between our brain and digestive system — has shown that chronic psychological stress can trigger IBD deterioration and worsen symptoms. We are overworked, which means we are wired and end up rushing meal times in order to do more work or in order to detach further by drinking or losing ourselves in a Netflix series. The drive in our societies to always be productive and always be ahead of the next person is also putting us into diseased states where we are never truly able to enter meaningful periods of rest and digest. When we are in this state, we cannot digest food properly and that leads to further symptoms.

So what is the answer? It is not as complicated as we are often led to believe. It starts with permission — permission to slow down. To sit at the table without your phone. To actually taste your food rather than inhale it between tasks. To have a conversation over dinner that has nothing to do with work or deadlines or what needs doing tomorrow.

Think about the moments in your life that have felt most nourishing — not just physically, but in every sense. Chances are they involved people you love, food shared without rushing, and time that felt like it belonged to you. Those moments are not luxuries. For those of us with IBD, they may be some of the most therapeutic things we can do.

Our nervous systems were not built for the pace we are asking them to keep up with. When we are constantly switched on, constantly chasing, constantly performing — our bodies stay in a state of alert that makes healing far more difficult. Rest and digest is not a passive state. It is an active and necessary part of recovery.

You do not need a perfect diet to start feeling better. Sometimes you need a long meal with people who make you laugh. You need a morning without an alarm. You need to stop watching the clock and start noticing what is right in front of you.

The small things are not small. They might be everything.