Disease (Doubt Risk Live)

Some might ask, how did you come to have the beliefs you currently entertain? Why did you step away from society, and so far? What was it that nudged you into giving up water altogether? Or to begin experimenting with the fundamentals of life in general? And with each question, only more sprout.

The truth is, I threw myself into literature. I hadn't picked up a book since I was in sixth grade or so, and all of those required reads in high school, then college, I skimmed and Googled away to complete my assignments. But then I wanted to know what the supposed experts had to say pertaining to specific diseases. I needed to see if there was some sort of connection. If disease was tethered to our poor choices or if it was just another piece to the stroll we call life. So as I delved into some of the most lifeless books available, something began to grow within me.

That book about celiac disease, the first of the many books I would eventually read, was dry, but a different sort of dry. It was a dry I was unfamiliar with. The seemingly endless words themselves may have parched my tongue, but their message, enough to get me off the grain-train and to set off a knocking of neurons that only continues to knock today. Ideas began. Interconnections created and strengthened. Each read built off the previous, and soon enough, I became the well-aware reader, criticizing the author or filling the gaps as needed.

There were times when I would hold on for dear life. Defending certain beliefs, both adamantly and in a way that was cowardly to some extent, being fearful of losing touch with things that had intimately become part of who I was and what I believed. Whether it be the quinoa that my mind couldn't reckon as a grain. The tea that I sipped so often. The nuts that couldn't be anything but natural. All these little growing pains as my mind began to readjust itself and become open to the idea that no idea is permanent and that every belief needs doubt in order to be truly worthy of any consideration.

And soon enough, I found myself taking shots of water with ten plus spices mixed-in, especially turmeric, and blending up fifteen to twenty fruits and vegetables, all in an effort to get the variety literature seemed to recommend.

You find yourself in a situation where you want to grasp onto all this knowledge. The trouble is, when one author contradicts another, and then another. There's this inevitable pull. This learning curve that must be mounted in order to proceed. You cannot help but fight it, that's entirely natural. Instinctual. And this battle of knowledge and the awareness it becomes is a very worthy battle. I cannot help but stress the importance of connecting all the dots and maintaining that interconnection. These experts, of all the books that follow, remain within the boundaries of their disease all too often, instead of doing as I had. In doing so, they limit their ability to perceive not only their disease, but health in general, and that's where our focus needs to be--health in general. Not diabetes, cancer, or heart disease. Health in general as it relates to the big picture.

And that's all I ask of you--nothing more. I've asthma-ed my way through thousands upon thousands of pages of tinder-worthy literature, only to become the person I am today. October 30, 2011 marks the day I first released that first article about celiac disease. Half a year later, on May 9, 2012, I decided to stop drinking water. If that's not evidence enough to compel you to do something about your own health and wellbeing, as well as your perspective, I don't know what is.

It appears to happen so gradually, but if you remain ever-open, you cannot help but be surprised someday--looking back, fully astonished by the individual that exists now compared to the one only a few short months ago. We need to...