Update: I have been mixing this into my morning protein shake. If it’s warmer out, I don’t want something hot.
Then I did an experiment on myself…as I occasionally do, I “test” my body, so I can note how things may or may not change after trying a new product. I did that test with this product.
I quit taking it for approximately two weeks, to see how I felt. (If you follow me you know that I have autoimmune disease, and mental health diagnoses.).
What I noticed after about 4 days without this product:
Increased body pain, specifically in my joints.
Increased anxiety
Bowel “differences”… I’ll just leave it at that.. I think you get the drift…(lets just say it was worse, and not consistent.)
Increased mental fog
Increased depression
These are just my experiences. But it’s convinced me that natural plants and products DO help me.
Pain is a life killer for me. So if I can get relief the natural way, and not have to turn to my pharma, you can bet your booty I will.
You can get your own HERE. (You’ll also get a $10 coupon via this link)
(Click any picture or underlined word to go to the site. )
I ordered the Medicinal Mushroom Hot Chocolate mix from my favorite store, The Humble Collective CBD. Mixed it up and tried it for the first time this morning. All I can say is yummy! I did add raw sugar and my collagen supplement, which is flavorless. (It can be added to anything, soup, drinks, prepared food.. whatever you want.).
UPDATE: Medicinal Mushroom Hot Chocolate, here’s what I’ve learned.
Here’s the kicker, the medicinal mushrooms in the mix. They are as follows:
Humble Collective sources their Hot Chocolate from Roots to Remedies. This mix contains 10 mg of CBD isolate as well, there is no THC in this hot chocolate.
Here’s a quick video of what I used… Unsweetened organic almond milk, raw turbinado cane sugar, collagen supplement, and mushroom cocoa mix.
St Patty’s day is coming up…though we all might think we are Irish and embark on a pub crawl… but some of us still want to eat. 😂.
Then there’s EASTER…I remember getting together and visiting with people and eating a bunch of food during that time. I wish I had known about this company back then… I could have escaped the kitchen duty. 😁.
What happened to that? Life is such an experience. I’ve found that since I’m getting older, everything about me has changed. Most of that is because I’m growing and learning, but most is just the evolution of life. Always changing. Ebbing and flowing… Anyway, this post isn’t about going through all of my “stuff”, it’s to share this great company, and place my own order. Chocolate covered strawberries sounds AMAZING.
You can click on any of the underlined words, or pictures to take you directly to website to order.
St Patty’s day is coming up…want some munchies? Eat your decorations..YUMMY & Delicious
You can get an edible arrangement for any occasion. They offer fruit bouquets, chocolate covered strawberries and gift delivery. Birthdays, Anniversaries, Weddings….whatever you need, they can create an arrangement for anything. The products are highly rated and REALLY good.
After I let the ingredients soak for a few weeks, I just strained the jars through some cheesecloth, and mixed half of the juice with raw honey. 1:1 ratio. You can adjust it the way you want to, there’s no “official” way it’s supposed to be done.
The syrup is powerful, and you can take a maintenance small dose everyday, or if you are sick take it up to three times a day, with lots of water… as we all know that our body can’t run without it.
Once the ingredients are done “steeping”…not sure of another word to call it, the rest is easy, just mix and store in the fridge.
This is the part one of homemade elderberry syrup.
Ingredients are:
Sliced onion
Sliced orange
Slice lime (or lemon, all I had on hand was a lime)
Raw ginger cut up
Whole garlic cloves
Turmeric
Pepper
Sage
Rosemary
Oregano
Whole cinnamon sticks
Elderberries (I bought mine freeze dried and they reconstituted in the soak)
Vinegar with the mother.
This recipe can be tweaked, I just put all of what I had in my kitchen in the jars, covered it with the vinegar, and let it sit a few weeks. Part two is coming up.
I posted about mushrooms helping with mental health, and now lets talk about mushrooms for overall body health.
It’s widely known that mushrooms help the body. They can decrease the risk of cancer, lower sodium intake, help lower cholesterol, help with keeping your gut healthy, and help boost your immune system. (sourced directly from HERE)
I hear people say….”eeewww…mushrooms are fungus”. Well, yea. But with all the health benefits that come with them, and the many many ways they can be eaten, drank, and prepared, that complaint is really null. I once was told by a person I was cooking for that they would “absolutely not eat a mushroom”. Well, lets just say that the meal I prepared had mushrooms, and this person didn’t even notice, and complimented me on the meal. HEHEHEHE…
In this post I’m continuing on with my product highlights from Humble Collective CBD. They have a Medicinal Mushroom and CBD hot chocolate mix. I mean, really, you get all of the benefits of CBD, mushrooms, AND CHOCOLATE. How could you go wrong? Well, you can’t.
I have all of my links in 1 place, my Linktree! (I also talk about the big O)
All you have to do is scan this QR code to get there. Or you can click this link to get there.
I have a surprise new link . 😊 I’ll just say it.. ORGASM. We need those. Seriously. Sex and our sexuality are an important part of life. Not to mention the health aspects of having an orgasm. I don’t want this post to be silly, or dumb. I am an open minded person and like mental health; sexual health is important as well. So I partnered with Vush. They make high end, waterproof, AMAZING products.
You don’t have to take my word for it. Here is more information about how an good orgasm can help you. This publication from Avant Gynecology goes in to detail the health benefits of bringing your body to orgasm.
This article explains in simple terms, what and how the body achieves an orgasm, and how it can help raise dopamine levels.
I didn’t plan on talking about orgasms when I started writing this post, but it just went that way, so why not? I’m not afraid to say what everyone is thinking. 🤷🏻♀️
If you have a close relationship with your partner, you can experiment in the bedroom…keeping that fire lit is important. (In my opinion).
So anyway, scan the QR code, or click any of the underlined words to go to that product, or peruse my Linktr.ee/hrsygirl.
I have used this service, and the food is great, instructions are easy to read, and the ingredients and quality of the product is amazing. I have NEVER had a bad meal with this program.
With Hello Fresh you can choose from 50 weekly menu + market items that include vegetarian, kid and low calorie meals, crafted and curated by chefs. Add ready to eat salads, sandwiches, soups and many more options.
Get pre-measured ingredients and recipe cards delivered right to your door. Enjoy fresh takes on meals that are on the table in ~30 minutes. I have personally used this service and it is GREAT!
You can add extra meals to any week’s order, change your delivery day or menu preferences, skip a week or cancel. They save you serious time and money compared to grocery stores and restaurants. Do you know what’s better? You can also forget about making last-minute trips to the grocery store because you’ll have everything you need delivered to your doorstep!
Update: Vagus nerve. I saw a video about resetting the vagus nerve, and thought I’d think out-loud via a blog. The vagus nerve runs from top to bottom throughout your body.
**Sorry this took so long, I’ve been running twelve different directions, and reading a lot. I’ve tried to condense this down to be a shorter read, with links to some of the information I have read.**
What is the vegus nerve? It is one of 12 cranial nerves that run throughout your body, and it affects both motor and sensory functions. It helps control digestion, heart rate, breathing, cardiovascular activity and reflex reactions such as sneezing. It comes from the Latin word “wandering” because it basically wanders from top to bottom throughout your body. It helps regulate your immune system, helps control the fight or flight response, inflammation in response to disease.
“It has four main functions: sensory, special sensory, motor and parasympathetic.”(Cited from this trusted source). It has a back and front (dorsal and ventral). Cues are activated along these during neuroception during times of safety, or times of, what you may perceive as danger. Safety cues are activated through the ventral, and danger cues are activated through the dorsal side.
“According to the Polyvagal theory, the vagus nerve is the key phylogenetic substrate that supports efficient emotion recognition for promoting safety and survival. Previous studies showed that the vagus nerve affects people’s ability to recognize emotions based on eye regions and whole facial images, but not static bodies. “(Cited from this trusted source.)
The vegus nerve can get out of whack, to explain it easily. It’s the longest cranial nerve running from the base of the brain, down to the colon. Damage to the vegus nerve can affect cardio function, or anything else that it helps to regulate. There’s a lot of other info via this trusted source, if you would like to read more from that publication.
So as I’m reading all of this, and researching, what I’m understanding is this. If you ever get a gut feeling, your vagus nerve is involved, if you are ever in a traumatic situation, your vagus nerve is deciding which emotion, or feeling is going to be sent to the brain. In my case, I had a home invasion. During the actual event, I was feeling anxiety and fear. How this affects my diagnosis of ptsd, I believe is relevant. The brain tells the body what to do, but the body has built in survival mechanisms…one being this cranial nerve. But it’s been years since the home invasion….so is my vagus nerve still reacting? I believe the answer is yes. In the moment, the body defaults to survive. But the brain remembers the trauma, and it’s chemical makeup in changed after trauma. So during times when I have episodes of flashbacks, or anxiety, I believe the brain sends fight or flight signals to the vagus nerve, which can then cause physical manifestations of the original trauma. Elevated heart rate, nausea, rapid thoughts.
This also applies to a persons ability to empathetic. Good things come from the vagus nerve.
“However, sometimes we do not receive this care and love in our relationships. Relational trauma impair our trust in others and, like all traumatic events is held in the body and is often maintained as dysregulation of the autonomic nervous system (ANS). The ANS is the part of your nervous system that manages how you respond to stress. In addition, the ANS also helps you to find healthy relaxation into a felt experience of safety. All of this is directly related to the tone and health of your vagus nerve.” (Cited directly from this trusted source from Dr. Arielle Schwartz.)
So now that I’ve done this research, in layman’s terms, this cranial nerve can directly impact your emotion, physical well being, and correlate happy and sad events. Traumatic events, being in love, how we are going to respond, if we have symptoms of ptsd, ect. So that can explain my question to myself, below, can trauma, ect cause damage. Yes it can. It rewires things sometimes.
How can we repair our vagus nerve. I’m including a link here to explain all of that. Alternating nasal breathing, going out in nature. (I do this, it works), changing your diet to unprocessed Whole Foods. (Here’s a link to start changing your diet). I have changed my diet, to nothing processed. Nothing. Processed foods make me feel bad, and cause autoimmune flare ups for me.
In answer to this question: YES. ➡️What I’m wondering, is can trauma; be it physical, mental, emotional etc., cause damage, and exacerbate existing mental health issues, by causing small injuries to the vagus nerve. Obviously physical damage can do that.. car wreck, a fall. Can a person who has undiagnosed autoimmune, personality disorder, or any other mental health disorder become more symptomatic if the vegus nerve is damaged and goes undetected? Or are a lot of those caused from a damaged vegus nerve?
I’m probably overthinking it…but I’m going to do some research. I already know that people with the MTHFR polymorphism, can be affected by the bodies inability to absorb other nutrients, thus causing more issues. It can also lead to early onset Alzheimers. I’m just wondering how and IF it’s affected me and my diagnoses.
This is my centralized location for everything. It’s all here in one place.
You can scan this into your phone, and it will take you right there.
Please considering donating to camper/van fund. All donations are tax deductible and I will have an accountability person, all funds will be open for inspection. Complete transparency where your donations will go.
Just a quick note. My mental health cycles, and I have to take time out some days to cope.
Today is the day. Traditionally we’d all run out to the stores and get into the hustle and bustle of the kickoff of the holiday season. It’s 30 days until Christmas.
I can’t believe another year is almost over. I think that’s the most freaky thing to me… how time is just flying by. We made it through a worldwide “pandemic”. Deaths of close friends and family, starting a business, and redefining what that goal is, and how it looks. Wild crazy weather, drought, rain.
I honestly want to get away from it all. Seriously. I’m starting a fundraiser to help with finding a camper/van.
Anyway. Back to Black Friday. Here’s my Amazon store finds. Just a few because I tend to be on the techy side, and not everyone is that way. I’m also sharing my Overstock link for shopping as well. Not everyone shops on Amazon. I’ll put in a few just in case.
I was going to put up a bunch of products, but that felt like I was trying to sell you something. When you click the link, you can search for products. I’ve listed a couple, just to make sure the links work, and what I would purchase, but the options are endless. You can find anything online.
Just a quick post to say that I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving, or however you chose to spend your day. I’m, as usual, crunching trying to get my NaNoWriMo finished. I’ve spend too much time “thinking” about it, and am only at about 17k words at this moment. Also the depression, ptsd, autoimmune struggle has been rough. Really rough.
I’m also sharing my fundraising campaign for a camper/van. I have listed the reasons within the campaign, and if you follow me, you’ll know.
Here’s a Story 