Hey Steemies!
I came across this contest and the end date has been extended until Sunday, check it out. I think it's a great idea for a post anyway, reflecting on another epic year for the books and I challenge every one of you to enter at least for the fun. Here are the details :
https://steemit.com/blocktradescontest/@anomadsoul/contest-my-2018-achievements-and-failures-or-100-steem-in-prizes-4dac490ac4b85est
What is a year? A cycle around the sun? 365 days? 8 760 hours? 525 600 minutes? 31 536 000 seconds? (How many of them were wasted just now right !?! lol) Sometimes it seems like just a short while, like it was yesterday, we were here again revisiting our success and failures of the previous year yet it's long enough for so much to happen and to be able to see our personal improvements or did we spiral right into a black hole? We may all be unique but one thing we have in common is life takes us on a roller-coaster of adventures and emotions both good and bad, we can't get it all right but we also can't get it all wrong even when we think we do.
U of A Botanic Garden, Devon, AB.
THE ACHIEVEMENT #1
I kept myself alive for one more year...YAY. I know it doesn't sound like much of an accomplishment since we all do that but I have an Auto-Immune disorder that is triggered by food and environmental factors that can get me really sick. For those of you who don't really get it, I have life threatening allergies to soybeans and it is in all of the North-American food, it is hidden under 80 different names, all the conventional farm animals and fish eat it (they and their by-products are toxic to me). It is also all over our world in soaps, ink, air freshers, paint and most building materials, paper, anything with pulp or fiber, in other words anything that has been processed in some shape or form.
Basically every time I get exposed by eating touching or breathing in particles containing soy, It makes my immune system attack my internal organs and my blood as if my body was the enemy, sometimes with the regular anaphilaxis symptoms depending on the severity of the contamination. Long story short Anaphilaxis is when the airways swell up until I can't breathe and then my body slowly starts to shutdown due to lack of oxygen until my heart stops beating unless I get to the hospital in time for it to at least stop beating while I'm at the hospital. Luckily there is epi-pen (sometimes, they have been unavailable in Canada for parts of this year) to get my heart pumping more and that buys me a bit of time to seek medical treatment when it happens from there a cocktail steroids and benadryll with a dash of epinephrine keep me from going back into shock for a week. Of course that is not daily but it happens this badly a few times a year sometimes but it does get close to that point several times per month. On a good day, the constant small accidental exposures give me chronic inflammation in my digestive and respiratory systems. In other words, I have felt like I have a sinus cold and a stomach flu for every day of my life and the only way I can avoid it is by never leaving the house or eat again...not really feasible. Now you can see , each year I keep myself alive is more complicated than it really sounds.
THE FAILURES
There is a lot of miss information on a government and research level, therefore the education available to food producers and manufacturers is also inaccurate. There are major flaws in the labeling system, many companies substitute their product with sub par products like soybean and sell it to the consumer as something else like chicken, beef burger or olive oil at a premium prices( just a few of many examples). Back on the research aspect, there is a misconception that soy lecithin, soy protein and soybean oil is safe and hypoallergenic because of the way it's processed and it's perfectly safe even for those who have allergies to consume. If it is contained under a certain quantity, it does not need to be labeled. That is soooo false it's not even funny and unfortunately I have had to find out the hard way...not fun at all. I know life isn't fair but that's just cruel.
How does soy secretly make it into our food? Natural & artificial coloring and flavoring, when food is enriched (flour) it is enriched with soy vitamins. Anywhere you might see pulp, typical in cheese. Often the foods that are specially prepared for those of my condition are packaged in boxes made from soy fiber and printed in soy ink like it's some morbid joke. What about fruits and vegetables? that's pretty natural right? Haha...if only. The gentle mist they spray on the vegetables to keep them fresh is actually a soy solution. How did I find out? The water sprayed my skin once and it instantly started to swell up and glow red...I'm telling you this shit is my kryptonite. My point is, there is no need for all these accidental exposures if companies and governments didn't have research full of holes and somewhat controlled results to over-represent the safety of the product and there is certainly no need for it to be in all of the food, most of the time it's actually pretty useless, it's simply comes down to $$ and deceiving you the customer because most people never look at the labels of the food they buy or even know what they are really eating.
My mission was to try to spread awareness and get the government and companies to recognized that more research needs to be done before putting all over the food chain excessively and calling it safe for everyone. To get them to recognize that not everybody is following the proper labeling regulations and that they are already too lax as they are and it can cause serious health consequences when it isn't properly labeled . Of course everything is fine everyone is fine the food is perfectly safe and the labeling laws are very strict...Right...Everyone with my condition says otherwise. We conducted a facebook poll within our group to see who could tolerate the "hypo allergenic" ingredients that do not require to be labeled, out of 70 respondent, 64 could not tolerate and only 6 could consume it without serious consequences. I know it's not solid research and all but it should be worthy of looking into yet it's not. After always getting shutdown, I kinda gave up. So that's a big fail on my part. Like I have just accepted my fate that I will be conquered by soya...but when?
Then my mission became to spread awareness on better eating habits, stepping away from a pre- packaged world and start making our food from scratch again, from local farmers instead of big chain farmers, take back our health and our food chain. Help our local communities grow instead of putting the money into agri-giants and mega corporation who don't care about the health of your family and have food laced with all kinds of chemicals, salt and sugar. But then I realized that we live in the age where convenience is everyone's #1 priority at any cost. Not many people cared enough to even read a label because it's not convenient and they would quickly realize that their favorite foods are really bad, your kids snacks are really bad,in fact hardly even food at all, even when advertised as healthy. We live in an age where there is a rise in illness in both adults and children in western societies like diabetes, obesity, cancer, chronic inflammation, headaches, food allergies and other food related illnesses. I kind of gave up on that idea because even trying to educate my family members has proved to be mission impossible. Simply not worth the frustration and it does affect my opinion of the people around me when they can't seem to even try to get it. So spreading awareness on cleaner eating habits is a definite fail. Only @silvergingerman gets it but he sees and lives the struggles with me and they are very traumatic moments for both of us but also has felt the benefits of a more natural diet.
THE ACCOMPLISHMENT #2
Everything about life, especially during the hardest of times, is mindset. A lot of things are out of our control in this fast pace world. My health and food predicament is by far the largest source of stress in my life and if that is not enough stress, stress is also a symptom of the reactions, it's like a double whammy and it becomes overwhelming and hard to cope mentally while my body is in chaos and under physical stress. One of the skills I have gained is mastering remaining as calm as I can during stressful moments where I just want to scream for my life or I know my life is about to end if I don't keep it together and think rationally enough to get me to safety when it feels impossible to do so. A little dark and twisted I know, to be fair it's unnatural to be as aware of my mortality as I am at my age and to have already tasted death enough times to not really care anymore. I'm not sure if it's an accomplishment or giving up but then I look back at how I use what could be my short time here and see that I live everyday as I feel like it, like it's my last.
Go visit that museum, go to that beach, go for that vacation, spend my time with who I want to spend it with learn to have fun in life and savor every moment no matter how simple because they are all precious even if we don't realize it and at the end of our journey, they will be a collection of memories for our souls to take with us we just have to take the time and make it happen. We can keep putting life and our interests off until next time but no matter who we are or how long we live,even in the best of conditions, at some point we all run out of time. Our great experiences give us good memories but our challenges make us grow, make us better people, every bad situation has tools to teach us towards a better life for ourselves and those around us. When I write my travel posts, I'm truly taking you with me on my bucket list. It is my mission to visit and take pictures of as many different things our world has to offer for as long as I can, like my own little slice of sanity in a chaotic world.
Cheers! X🐞X