Cocooned by this crazy Covid-19, I’m more determined than ever to stay healthy by strengthening my immune system. I need to protect my good life of pain free, medication free and hospital visit free.
Two things I make sure I do every day, on top of diligent handwashing and face-masking when shopping. One, to get Zinc, and, two, to get Vitamin-D. It’s to fortify my lungs and fend off invasion of corona virus — a tip from Dr. Berg on YouTube.
On the list of foods rich with Zinc, according to Dr. Berg, almonds are number one. So, I eat at least a few roasted almonds a day. And, for Vitamin-D, I’m already getting it from the natural resources: the sun, plus the UV light to kill the virus. And I walk/jog at least three miles a day, which I’ve been doing for years. After all, 生命在於運動lifelies in keeping our body in motion, says the good old Chinese proverb.
On top of this, I also have one more important thing to do to keep my overall health in check. That is, to keep my internal traffic flow, meaning, not to get constipated.
Constipation is no fun and is painful. It’s very unpleasant, to say the least. It causes serious health problems like the heavy traffic jam on the highway, or the backed-up overflowing toilet.
Dr. G: The Medical Examiner is a great TV show based on real life events. I find it very informative. The step-by-step autopsy she performs helps solve mystery deaths to the concerned families. It shows the layman world how our internal organs work and what specific ailment caused death. They are wake up calls to the living.
One of Dr. G’s mystery death cases re-confirmed my fear of constipation.
A man in his early 30’s became severely depressed after his divorce, especially losing the custody of his toddler daughter. He confined himself indoors and wouldn’t take care of himself. Then one day he suddenly died. His sister, also his caregiver, was puzzled. Her brother had no other apparent physical illness but normal depression. What could’ve caused his untimely death?
Dr. G’s autopsy found the answer.
The young man hadn’t had a bowel movement for too long. The solid waste accumulated inside his intestines was like raw manure fermenting. It produced poisonous gas, which became explosive and blew holes in his intestines. And the leaked gas went on to lethally poison his other organs. And this caused the young man’s death.
Common sense also tells me that colon cancer, one of the highest death rates among Americans, is mostly due to physically inactive lifestyle and/or due to eating refined, low or no-fibred foods.
I suffered from painful constipation throughout my growing up years.
During Mao’s Cultural Revolution (1966-76), food, water, clothes were all in severe shortage and strictly rationed. Watery millet soup with some starchy jelly was our regular family dinner. I only had a bowel movement once every several days. I remember the painful struggle, like trying to push out rough-edged pebble stones. I could feel warm blood dripping out. And no one knew about my pain.
My parents, like all adults in China, were divided into two political factions. During the day, they fought against their rivals, and when they finally came home at night, they fought with each other; there were either days of explosions or silence. Each of my two younger brothers was the favorite child to one of my parents. I was no one’s favorite but a child servant ever since Grandpa dropped me off to live with them at age eight. My mother’s silent eyes and mysteriously angry face made my heart shudder, and my father’s yelling, slapping and kicking stiffened my spine. Every day felt like walking on eggshells. I cooked and washed for all four of them. My heart tightly pinched, I wished to not make a mistake doing my chores.
In the city’s blue-collar dirt yard, we lived in two bare-walled rooms on the second floor in what used to be a huge three-story office building. As China’s population exploded, the office building immediately became a residential building. The long hallway was a dark tunnel filled with lung-piercing thick smoke from many open chimneys, as every family cooked in the hall at their doorway on make-shift coal burning stoves made of brick and mud. From age ten to eighteen, I stood cooking and heating water at our family’s stove for hours every day and breathed the choking coal smoke. What a miracle I escaped unscathed.
There was no indoor plumbing inside any family’s rooms. The only place for the dozens of families on each of the three floors to get water was from the small dark room down the hallway. The floor was permanently slippery with grime. There were two water faucets over the long coarse cement sink and three squat-over toilet stalls for dozens of families to share.
Water trickled out in a pencil thin stream, when it wasn’t constantly cut off every day. In each of the three squat-over toilet bowls, there were always solid human wastes piled up a foot high. The trickling water couldn’t flush it down.
I remember feeling dread every time I had to use the toilets. Not because of the lung-piercing stench, but of my painful constipation with a bleeding hemorrhoid, which one day led to the discovery of my father’s kindness to me.
“When you’re constipated,” he said to me, out of the blue, his angry eyes now soft, his yelling voice strangely kind. He actually sounded sympathetic to me. It was a too good to be true moment in my young child’s mind. “Don’t push it too hard. Try to relax and it will come out smoothly.”
I was surprised, but more embarrassed. How did my father figure out it was my bloody “pebble-stones” on top of the foot-high piled up solid wastes in the public toilet? I then realized he’d seen me exiting the toilet stall.
And I didn’t realize until this very moment, half a century later, as I’m writing it, that I have never thought of feeling thankful to my explosive father for his helpful tip. For indeed it was a good coping technique.
Okay, father, here’s to you. RIP (1931 – 2017)
I was eighteen when I met my boyfriend. He gave me a more efficient tip after finding out about my painful constipation with a bleeding hemorrhoid. “Drink a lot of water,” he said. “Have a bowel movement first thing in the morning right out of bed and make it your daily habit.” He was knowledgeable about healthy living because his parents were college professors and his grandfather, a famous traditional Chinese acupuncture doctor.
I was very grateful to him, for it’s been a lifesaving good habit that spared me a lot of pain, although the constipation still occurred from time to time when food wasn’t adequate. For the next twenty years, before I finally got my divorce, I’d remind myself of his kindness whenever I resented being stuck in the miserable marriage with him.
I count my blessings for living in wondrous food-paradise America after surviving famine, starvation and filth most of my first thirty years in China. I now have the luxury to choose from the amazing variety of fresh and healthy high-fibered foods, such as kale, broccoli, celery, green beans, egg plants, whole grained oatmeal, nuts and seeds, high-pulp orange juice, and also bananas and honey, etc., etc.
My kitchen is my source for good health. I also find my healing in America’s bright sunshine, under the pleasant clear blue sky, breathing the lung-cleansing crispy fresh air, while walking and jogging in picturesque outdoors alongside the velvet green lawns, fragrant flowers, exotic plants and majestic trees.
Constipation Be Gone! I’ve been able to keep my “internal traffic” flowing smoothly with my good American life. Well, most of the time.
Thank you, beautiful America, my beloved new home country. I’m forever grateful to you.
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