Heal and Stay Healed with Kelly B Haney
The Heal and Stayed Healed with Kelly B Haney podcast is for anyone who is sick and tired of being sick and tired, particularly those with autoimmune disease or other chronic illness. It's for those who are ready to truly heal, and more importantly, truly STAY healed.
Through my training as a Certified Nutrition Coach, but mostly through insight gained from my personal experience with overcoming severe Ulcerative Colitis, I want to equip you to get better, stay better, and to become healthier than ever.
I've been able to stay completely autoimmune flare-free for well over a decade, and I believe that if I can do it, then you can too! Our bodies want to heal. They know how to heal. We just have to give them the support that they need.
I'm honored to walk alongside you as you take the next step in your own healing journey. Let's heal and stay healed together.
Heal and Stay Healed with Kelly B Haney
Celebrating 13 Years Flare-Free: What’s Helped Me Make it This Far
It's now been 13 years since the end of my horrific flare of the autoimmune disease, Ulcerative Colitis, 13 years since the beginning of my healing journey, and 13 years remaining completely flare-free!
In this episode, I honor this flare-free anniversary by sharing with you 13 of the many things that have helped get me to this place. 13 of the tools, methods, concepts, and strategies that have helped me to heal from years of mild to moderate flares, and then from the fallout of the major flare, and have helped me to successfully stay healed from my disease for all this time. These are the tools that I believe can help to achieve the same results for you too.
The path to healing and staying healed has proved to be a marathon, not a sprint, with both joy and pain as companions. It has encompassed not just physical, but emotional, mental, and spiritual healing as well, and this list reflects and reinforces that. Every moment of this journey has been, and continues to be, so, so worth it. Have a listen to be encouraged and motivated by my “Lucky 13!”
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Welcome to the Heal and Stay Healed podcast, where we talk about healing and, more importantly, staying healed from chronic disease and other ailments and issues. We'll cover all the crazy things about health and life the good, the bad, the ugly and the hilarious. My name is Kelly and I am a survivor and overcomer of severe autoimmune disease, and I can't wait to share with you what I've learned so that you can heal and stay healed too. Thanks for listening and enjoy the show. I am extra excited for this episode today and I am so glad that you've joined me because this time of year is a time of celebration for me. It's the time of year when I celebrate two things. One is the anniversary of the end of my massive, horrific, life-threatening, year-long flair of the chronic autoimmune disease ulcerative colitis that started back in early 2010 and finally ended in early 2011. And the second thing I'm celebrating is another year that's gone by where I am so grateful to have remained healthy and flair-free. So this year I am celebrating lucky number 13. It's now been 13 years since the end of my last flair and the start of my health journey, which began slowly when that flair finally wrapped up and really got kicked off later that year when, in a blessing in disguise situation, side effects forced me to start coming off of what seemed to be the only thing that was keeping me stable immunosuppressant drugs and that's when I knew I had to find a different and better way to continue to heal from all the damage that the flair had done to me but, more importantly, to stay healed, against the odds, from the disease itself. So I've been on this healing journey ever since, and now I can officially say that I have been flair-free from my chronic disease for 13 years and counting, and I have not been on any autoimmune-related pharmaceutical drugs, including any preventative medications, for over 12 years and counting. Whew, that feels so incredible to say, and I am so thankful. If you haven't listened to my full story and that's of interest to you you can hear all about it in the very first full episode of this podcast, and that episode is called my Autoimmune Story from Barely Surviving to Truly Thriving.
Speaker 1:I'll just quickly share, for the sake of context today, that my specific disease again was ulcerative colitis. Ulcerative colitis is an autoimmune disease of the colon, also known as the large intestine. It's one of the two inflammatory bowel diseases, the other one being Crohn's disease. It's characterized by inflammation in the colon leading to ulceration, bleeding, diarrhea, pain, weight loss, malnourishment all kinds of problems and flares of the disease are commonly frequent and can range from mild to severe, all the way up to life-threatening. It's labeled as a chronic, aka incurable condition. So that's why having made it 13 years and counting flare-free is a huge deal to me and that's why I am celebrating big time. So I want to dedicate this episode to sharing many of the things that have helped me make it so long without any flares and without needing to be on any related medications. In honor of this flare-free anniversary today, I'm going to talk about 13 of the many things that have helped me get to this place, 13 of the tools, methods, concepts and strategies that have helped me to heal from years of mild to moderate flares and then from the fallout of that major flare, and have helped me to successfully stay healed from my disease for all of this time. And many of these things that I'm going to mention today are going to be greatly expanded on in future episodes, so I won't go into too great of detail in most of them, at least I'll try not to, or else this would quickly become a 13 hour episode. So, without further ado, let's talk about some of the things 13 of the things, to be specific that have helped me to heal and to stay healed.
Speaker 1:Naturally Number one if you know me at all, then you already know what number one is going to be diet and nutrition. Our diet has to be number one. What we put into our bodies is the most important, most essential part of healing and staying healed. For those of us with autoimmune or other chronic illness, if we want to truly heal and truly stay healed, then we just don't have the luxury of continuing a way of eating that is not full of healing and health promoting foods. Hippocrates nailed it a long time ago when he said let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.
Speaker 1:One thing I was fortunate enough to learn very early on in my healing journey that probably made all the difference was to eat real food, real, whole, nutrient-dense, healing and health-promoting food. Real food is fruits, vegetables, whole grains, beans and legumes, nuts and seeds, and herbs and spices. Real food is essentially food that hasn't been messed with or has things added to it. High quality meat, fish and eggs are other real foods too. What I also learned early on is the importance of limiting or, better yet, avoiding entirely highly and ultra-processed foods, refined sugars, hydrogenated oils, food dyes, chemical preservatives and additives, pesticides and genetically modified foods.
Speaker 1:While, ultimately, for me, it's all about focusing on real food, I do want to add a quick note for anyone who is really going through it right now with IBD or other damaged gut issues. In the very beginning of my healing journey, I not only cut out gluten, which is something that I still fully avoid to this day, but I cut out all grains and legumes entirely for a while, and I believe that really helped my gut to be able to have the time and the space to heal Because, though wonderfully healthy, those foods were actually acting as inflammatory foods towards my gut. That was still pretty messed up at the time, and after a while, after much healing had occurred, I was happily able to incorporate those wonderful foods back into my life again. I'll talk more about that in the future episode, but I thought it was important to just mention that today as food for thought for anyone who is very early on in their healing journey. What I've come to know regarding diet nutrition is that when we clear away the bombardment of fads, magic bullets and misinformation that can lead to disappointment instead of better health. It actually breaks down to something that's fairly simple Eating, nurturing, nourishing, real foods equals healing and health. Eating highly in ultra processed, refined, sugar laden and chemical junk equals sickness and disease. I highly encourage you to take your diet and nutrition super seriously and treat it like the beautiful medicine that it is.
Speaker 1:Number two is movement. Moving my body on a regular basis through various physical activities has definitely helped me to heal and to stay healed. In the beginning of my healing journey, walking and yoga were the two things that really helped me. Walking brought back my stamina and yoga made me feel strong again. Both of them really helped me to regain my endurance, my confidence and my sense of self. They both helped me to feel connected to my body in a positive way for the first time in a long time, and I still do those two things regularly, and they still are my two favorite forms of movement. As my body became more and more healed over time, I was able to incorporate a variety of movement, and over the years I've enjoyed other activities like jogging, hiking, softball, biking, playing badminton and other games with my kid, and now that I'm in my early 40s, I'm in the gym for strength training on a regular basis because I don't just want to heal and stay healed, I want to age well and age gracefully too. My plan is to do this by keeping my body strong and agile as I get older. No matter your age or where you are in your healing journey, whatever movement you can do will be a huge help.
Speaker 1:Movement is vital for our health. It flushes out toxins that can contribute to disease. It strengthens the immune system, thereby preventing and healing disease. It improves sleep, which sleep itself comes with a multitude of benefits, and it also improves cognitive, mental and emotional health, among many other things. So I'm convinced that movement is one of the things that has contributed greatly to my success, not just physically, but emotionally as well. I've learned to appreciate movement so much and I've learned to really enjoy it, and now, on days when I don't move enough, it just doesn't feel right. So consider starting where you are today, moving in whatever ways, feel good.
Speaker 1:Number three sleep. Sweet, sweet sleep. When I was recovering from my massive flare 13 years ago, I slept for about 10 hours a night for many months. I was so fortunate to be able to have the time to do that as I recovered from the flare, and I know that that not only gave my body the required time to heal, but it most certainly helped me to heal faster. 13 years later, I continue to make sleep a huge priority, both sleep quantity and quality, as I understand more and more how the body undergoes vital processes while we're sleeping it cleanses, regenerates and defends us from infection, disease and inflammation. I prioritize sleep so much that I even make fun of myself now for my sleep habits. I go to bed pretty early most nights and my sleep regimen involves blackout curtains, a sleep mask, a white noise machine, earplugs, a ceiling fan and I have a system involving up to four pillows for myself, all to help make sure that I sleep as well as possible. So I'm obviously a total sleep nerd, but that's how much I respect sleep as a tool for healing and staying healed.
Speaker 1:On to number four. Number four is my naturopath. I am so thankful for my naturopath and her seemingly endless wisdom when it comes to natural medicine and treatments. Naturopaths, as well as functional medicine providers, are physicians who believe in natural healing. They work to find the source of the issue and they work to treat it naturally as much as possible, therefore leading to true healing. And my favorite part they focus on educating their patients, which not only informs us, but it empowers us.
Speaker 1:I found my naturopath when I was a couple years into my healing journey, but looking back, I can see that I found her at exactly the right time for me. I had made it over the initial hump of healing and remaining flare-free for a while, and then, when she joined my team, it felt like I moved up to the next level of healing Through her guidance and support. She's been just an angel in my life and I give her so much credit for all that she's done to get me on the right track and to keep me on the right track. There was lots of clean-up work that my body had to do after being so beat up for a whole year and after being on a wide array of toxic medications for so long as well, and my naturopath supported me through all of it, and she continues to support me to this day as my trusted guide. I can come to her with pretty much anything, knowing that she will have some answers for me. I highly recommend anyone with any health issue, but especially those with autoimmune or other chronic disease, look into finding a naturopath or a functional medicine provider, if you are able.
Speaker 1:Number five is therapy. I'll say it over and, over and over because I believe it so much Physical, mental, emotional and spiritual health are all connected. They are all intertwined and while one may take precedence over the others in certain times, eventually we have to really look at all of them in order to truly heal. I started therapy actually in the middle of my year-long flare and initially it helped me deal with what I was going through, and then, once the flare was over, it helped me to start to process what had just happened to me. And then it helped me to start to recover from the trauma of the flare. And then, over time, therapy helped me to start digging into all of the other stuff that was already there and that likely contributed to me getting sick in the first place.
Speaker 1:I've learned over the years just how much stress, certain emotions, trauma, suppressed memories, etc. How all of these things can have a direct and powerful impact on our physical health. And there is more and more evidence to suggest that unmanaged stress and undelt with trauma are big triggers of many chronic diseases, including autoimmune disease, in terms of the disease onset and subsequent flares. So it's not always fun, it's not always comfortable, to say the least. But to truly heal and to truly stay healed, I wholeheartedly believe that we've got to deal with the stress of the present and we've got to face the trauma of the past. I continue to meet with my therapist every other week and there's still plenty for us to look at and dig into, plenty to keep us busy during our sessions. Now it's often present day challenges or situations that I want to walk through with her, but we certainly still spend a lot of time visiting the past to continue the process of healing childhood wounds which we all have. So big fan of therapy and not just talk therapy. There are many kinds of therapy out there and I highly encourage you to give it a try and find what works well for you. Having a trusted therapist all these years has definitely played a massive role in my healing and staying healed. The more I heal emotionally, the more confidence I have in my physical healing as well.
Speaker 1:Number six is meditation. Meditation is just so great and it's really only been a part of my journey for the past few years. But when I really started experimenting with meditation, I quickly learned what I had been missing out on this practice. Even for just brief periods of time, like 10 to 15 minutes a day, or even less than that, can really help my state of mind. It's actually kind of ridiculous how effective it's been for me. It's helped my anxiety and stress levels not just in the moment, but overall. I've noticed it's helped me with mental clarity and with being a little more present throughout the day too, and it's really helped me with being less reactive, with thinking more before reacting, and that is something I've been working on for years. And since I've started meditating, I have straight up marveled at the fact that I can feel myself in the moment, slowing down and thinking before reacting, and that has been good for me and certainly has been good for my closest relationships too.
Speaker 1:If you haven't tried meditating, there's a zillion free guided meditations out there on YouTube. Look for a simple one, one that's maybe 10 minutes long and has a bunch of good reviews on it, so that you know it's probably going to be a nice one. Or just start with closing your eyes and counting 10 deep, cleansing breaths in and out. It really doesn't take much to get some benefit. Meditation has been one of my favorite additions to my healing journey in the recent years. Number seven is supplements.
Speaker 1:My naturopath has frequently tested me over the years for vitamin deficiencies, and that has allowed us to know the areas where my body needs some extra support when it comes to vitamins. For me, that's mostly things like folate, b12 and vitamin D, as well as some herbal support from various other herbal supplements. For those with inflammatory bowel disease. We can have problems properly absorbing nutrients due to scarring and damage in the colon, and many people, even without IBD, have damaged guts for a variety of reasons, which can lead to similar absorption issues. Another culprit of vitamin deficiencies is our soil. The soil where crops are grown today generally is less vitamin and mineral rich than it was decades ago, and when our soil is depleted, we can become depleted too. So while it's ideal to get all that we need from eating real, whole, beautiful, healing foods, between the depleted soil and or our gut damage, supplementation can still be necessary. So taking the right kind of quality supplements has been super important for me, because to heal and to stay healed, we need to make sure that, as much as possible, our bodies are fully equipped with what they need. Over the years, there's been times where I've needed different supplements and different amounts, and this is where it's important to have a naturopath or functional medicine provider help to guide you according to your unique needs. And if you can't see a naturopath or functional medicine provider, conventional doctors can certainly test for a lot of nutrient deficiencies as well.
Speaker 1:Number eight number eight is minimalism slash simplicity. I used to just use the word minimalism, but I think that that can cause folks to kind of shrink back at that term, because unfortunately, minimalism has kind of a stigma now of being like, oh, you've got to get rid of all your stuff and go live in a van, which is not what minimalism really is. So a word that I've found to be much better and much more encompassing is simplicity, because it's not just about the stuff that we own. It's really more about the way that we live our lives. Keeping my life as simple and uncomplicated as I reasonably can has been huge in my healing and staying healed Physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. Simplicity hits it all. It plays a role in everything.
Speaker 1:As mentioned earlier regarding therapy with autoimmune disease and other chronic illness, stress can be all that it takes to bring on a flare. That has certainly been true for me in the past, and so one thing that I intuitively knew when I started out on my healing journey is that I have to try to keep my life simplified. Now, of course, I, like everyone else, don't actually have a whole lot of control in terms of what happens throughout the course of my life, but I realized early on that there are some areas where I can control what I can control, and I came to understand that I could simplify in these areas. What I've come to know is that excess in any area leads to stress, which can lead to sickness. Less to manage, to clean, to store, to repair and maintain, less to deal with is less to stress about.
Speaker 1:But, like I said, minimalism slash, simplicity is so much more than just the stuff and physical possessions. It's about simplifying our time, simplifying how we spend our energy, and really it's about simplifying our whole approach to life as we move towards breaking away from the culture of glorified busyness, keeping up with the Joneses and status competitions. These are stressors that lead to deteriorating physical, mental, emotional and spiritual health. Yet we've all grown accustomed to it, as air quotes, normal in our society. Simplicity creates the time, space and energy needed to focus on healing. Okay, I'm going to cut myself off on this topic for now before I get too amped up, but I love talking about this so much. I have so much more to share, so trust that I will be doing a dedicated episode on simplicity very soon. For now I'll just say simplicity has brought me so much healing.
Speaker 1:Number nine is mindset. As you move to living a life that is health promoting and healing, changing the major things about your life is not easy, and I learned very quickly that having the right mindset on a healing journey can make everything easier. Having the right kind of mindset can make all the difference really. There will be lots of trial and error, some missteps, some days will be harder than others and in the beginning everything can feel really difficult. It can be hard to let go of the old. It can be a challenge to accept the new, even when you know it's for your great benefit. A mindset of commitment, perseverance, positive self-talk and optimism are all a must. And it's funny and I'm laughing because in other areas of life I am a recovering pessimist. My natural tendency is not one of seeing the glass half full and I've had to work really hard on that as part of my healing journey and I'm still working on it, but I'm so grateful that when I was starting out, this was an area where I immediately had a positive attitude and mindset. I had made up my mind that I was going to do whatever it takes to heal and to stay healed, and through the help of my why, which I've talked about in earlier episodes, I was able to go in with the right mindset and to keep the right mindset throughout, even on those more challenging days, and I'm confident that that has made a world of difference in my staying healed.
Speaker 1:Number 10 is my support network. The people you surround yourself with on your healing journey can really help to make you or break you. When I talk about a support network, I'm, of course, talking about your physical and mental health team, but the medical team that you put together is only part of the support network. The emotional support that you get from family or friends is so important too. Those friends and family who can be there to encourage you and to help keep you motivated as you travel your path of healing can truly be a lifeline. If you aren't getting support from your closest relationships, you can seek it out in the other relationships that you currently have in your life. And if you still can't find support IRL, then there are many super supportive online forums and groups that can likely be found, specific to whatever your particular health challenge is there. Strangers can become like family through the common bond of walking a path of natural healing together. But ideally, your closest family and friends will be on board and will be there to support you. Having a support network goes hand-in-hand with having a solid mindset, because when others believe in you, it's so much easier to believe in yourself. I have been so fortunate to have an incredibly supportive network and that has been huge for me. All of them deserve my sincerest gratitude.
Speaker 1:Number 11, laughter and humor. Laughter really is the best medicine. Laughter can significantly improve our short-term and long-term health. A simple thing like laughter, it's amazing. Laughter relieves stress, improves mood and boosts the immune system, sometimes dramatically. So I try to find the humor in life as often as I can, whether that's telling or hearing funny stories and laughing with others, watching a hilarious movie or TV show, or just cracking jokes in my own head, which I actually do a lot of. Looking for the less serious side of things has been a great help in my healing, for sure. So right now, in a nod to laughter. Here is my favorite joke of all time Are you ready? Grasshopper walks into a bar. Bartender says hey, grasshopper, we have a drink named after you. Grasshopper says Really, you have a drink named Steve. Come on, did you laugh? I'm laughing and I've told that joke like a thousand times. It's just so funny. Okay, moving on, number 12, music.
Speaker 1:Music has played a very important role in my healing. It's one of my favorite tools. I'm one of those people that finds deep meaning and connection in song lyrics. I always have. Ever since I was a kid, I've been looking to music to express what my own feelings and words just can't quite communicate. I find deep meaning, contentment and healing in connecting with the stories that music tells, and for me, it has always been one of the tools that I've used to process through emotions, trauma and grief. I'm talking about finding healing in songs of all genres rock, rap, pop, gospel, country and even in classical music, especially some modern-day classical, which is highly emotion-provoking, and I can find myself connecting deeply to it even when there are no words. So many songs from so many different kinds of music have helped me make it through the tough times and have lifted me even higher in the good times. Okay, we've made it to number 13 on the list of things that have helped me to heal and stay healed.
Speaker 1:Number 13 is giving back and though this one is relatively new, it is the closest one to my heart. I remember the confusion and concern I felt when I was diagnosed with a chronic disease as a teenager. I remember the frustration and depression that came with dealing with years of mild to moderate, life-disrupting, embarrassing flares throughout my 20s, and I remember the darkness, helplessness and hopelessness that I was consumed by during my horrific flair of 2010. What I would have given for someone to come into my life during that time and tell me that there could be a way out, that I could not only survive but that I could thrive. Someone to give me the hope that I was so desperate for and to stand before me as walking, talking, living proof that healing is possible. Someone to help me understand that a life controlled by my disease doesn't have to be my destiny.
Speaker 1:So when I say that my number 13 is getting to give back, I say that with the utmost humility and gratitude, because now, after traveling the path of natural healing for all these years, with all the ups and downs, twists and turns, trials and errors, all the lessons learned. Now I get to be that person that I so desperately wished for during those hopeless, frightening days of being ill. I get to have the extreme honor and privilege of being that person for others now. So giving back is my number 13 in the list of things that have helped me heal and stay healed, because the act of giving back helps others, yes, and that's absolutely what I want to spend my days doing, but it's not completely selfless. Giving back a part of what's been given to me on this journey certainly helps me too. It is helping me to continue to heal and stay healed, too, because, as I strive to support others in their healing journey, I feel as though I am honoring my younger self, that young woman who was so sick for so long, who didn't get to have someone coming in and telling her with confidence that there is a path to healing. I feel like I'm returning to her, my scared, suffering younger self. I'm returning to her and saying all of this will not be in vain. It's so beautiful how, in giving back, by working to heal others, we can contribute to our own continued healing as well.
Speaker 1:As I work to give back, I do so with the humbleness of knowing that, while I'm beyond thankful to have learned as much as I have and to have made it so far, I certainly haven't arrived. I can't sit back now and crack open a case of beer or tear into a bag of fast food. I can't ever neglect exercise or sleep or meditation or any of the other 13 things discussed today. I can't quit therapy, throw away my supplements or fire my support network. I know I have to stay vigilant. I have to keep making healing and health-promoting choices every single day.
Speaker 1:If I want to have the best shot of making it to 14 years, 15 years and so on, remaining flare-free, I have to continue on the path of healing forever. Or a better way of saying it is I get to continue on the path of healing forever. Healing and staying healed is a lifelong commitment and a lifelong adventure. The journey never ends, and so I will be happily walking this path of healing for the rest of my life. So there we are. We did it 13 of the many things that have helped me to heal and stay healed.
Speaker 1:It's been 13 wonderful, difficult, thrilling, challenging, joy-filled, pain-filled, beautiful years of life, and I'd be remiss if I didn't say that behind these 13 and all of the other things that have played a role in my healing and staying healed, there absolutely is a miracle to be found. Here too, friends, I've said it before and I'll say it again If I can do it, then I believe you can too. Likewise, if a miracle can happen for me, then I believe it can happen for you too. I so hope you have found this episode helpful, motivating and encouraging as you walk your own path of healing. If you have found value in this episode, I would greatly appreciate it if you would take a moment to subscribe to the podcast rate and review and to download this episode and please share it with anyone who you think may find value in it as well. No matter where you are on your healing journey, I am honored to walk alongside of you as we heal and stay healed together.