Addressing super clean people
by Nechama Dina Smith
BS"D
Busy women, to keep sane, tend to focus (besides for their parenting or their job), on either keeping the house clean or on cooking nice meals. We are all superheroes so we do it all, but I find that usually a person focuses more on one than the other.
But when it comes to cooking healthy food for your family, I’d like to appeal to both types!
For the type that just loves hanging out in the kitchen, adjusting the seasonings in her salad till she reaches a mouth-watering result that will guarantee her salad bowl will be fully emptied, I can see her listening to my recommendations, the wheels in her brain spinning, thinking of creative ways to enliven and add nutrition to each dish she prepares.
But how can I appeal to the wife whose satisfaction comes from eyeing her sparkly, freshly washed floors and giving a final straightening to her perfectly organized cabinet?
How can I convince her to want to be bothered by mundane things like replacing mediocre fats with nourishing oils? Or checking ingredients before she buys snacks? There are pots to be scrubbed! Windows to wipe a smudge off of! Shelves to dust!
So I realized I have something to say to the industrious housekeepers, who, by the way, I admire so much. (I once brought a meal over to a new mother, and I found her on her hands and knees scrubbing her already clean kitchen floor. I asked what she was doing, and she said, I just can’t help it, I have OCD for cleaning my house!)
You know how children thrive in a clean, organized environment? If there are two rooms, one messy and one clean, which will they want to play in? It will be the clean one! There is no joy in messing up an already messy room! (Send me feedback if your kids are like that too.) So, you perfectionistic, clean people, you are doing a wonderful job.
But the same is true in our internal environment.
One of the key foundations in health is a healthy digestive system. When the gut flora is generously populated with friendly bacteria nourishing and protecting the lining of our intestines from invading harmful bacteria, and the cells lining the intestines are robust, strong, and tightly bound together so there is no leaky gut, the internal environment is a dream. Neat, strong, clean, everything is where it is supposed to be. When there is leaky gut--which is when undigested food can leak prematurely through the intestinal walls and into the bloodstream, that is not clean! Leaky gut is very messy and problematic! When there’s not enough hydrochloric acid to help the food get broken down, and not enough nicely thinned bile smoothing out and emulsifying all the fats that are eaten to be evenly distributed and digested so the body can use all it receives from food to give it what it needs in terms of life and energy… and when the food is not able to be broken down the way it needs for that to happen, you are left with an immune system mess! The body doesn’t know what to do with the food particles it finds in the bloodstream, especially the protein particles. “Is that an enemy? Yes, maybe! Should I attack? Yes, I should!” And the liver, if unclean and overwhelmed with way too many toxins for it to handle, cannot do its job of neutralizing and getting rid of those food particles floating around.
I’m thinking of Uncle Moishy’s song: “And the mess grew bigger, every single day. The mess grew bigger, we couldn’t stop it growing, and the mess grew bigger, he should have cleaned it right away.”
Remember we said, children--and adults–do not thrive in a mess?
We all know about serious allergies, when the body creates antibodies and fights incoming food (or dust, or animal hair, etc). There could be hives, rashes, asthma, and sometimes even anaphylactic shock.
Yet there are other hidden allergies and sensitivities that come up. Fatigue, for one. Dark circles under the eyes, signifying kidney distress. Headaches. Digestion problems: bloating, or diarrhea, or constipation. None of these are fun! It’s no fun to be tired or exhausted all the time. And no fun at all to have a blasting headache. And it is hardly enjoyable to need the bathroom and not be able to go, or to have stomach aches all the time.
Ok, so now do you see how housekeeping inside our very own bodies is so important? Making the right choice of food, eating it the right way, keeping our insides clean and beautiful, the way we like to function in our homes--this will yield you a productive day. You will feel amazing, like you are supposed to!
You can start right now. Fill your pantry and refrigerator shelves with health-giving, nourishing products, and fresh vitamin-and-mineral-filled food.
For all those OCD cleaners, use a little of your obsessiveness (not too much!) and keep your bodies clean.
If you need hand-holding advice--herbal, lifestyle and nutritional--don’t hesitate to talk to me about if you are a fit for nutritional therapy. If you want guidance, I am so looking forward to helping you along your journey. Email me! Nechamasmith@gmail.com
Have a great day!
Nechama Dina Smith
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