NY1’s Jamie Shupak Discovers How To Let Food Be Your Drugs And Let Friends Be Your Dealers

[ok wait, that didn’t sound ~Exactly as good as the original by Hippocrates; … -whatever. Close enough for government work. Moving on…]

-For many of us who have done any kind of research about health, it can be a difficult and obscure endeavor.

Oftentimes there are answers hidden in odd contexts, making it difficult to separate vapor from substance; with lots of trial and error. It can feel at times, a very lonely wilderness.

-Especially when the standard, “Antibiotics, Bloodwork & Stethoscopes” approach doesn’t have all the answers.

SO: when Jamie Shupak shared a tiny snippet of her efforts to mitigate something incurable and the strangely-lucky turn it took, for an interview on the GrubStreet food blog, she found that response to the article more about cures & weak-ties, and less about GrubStreet’s [pun-alert!] meat-and-potatoes: Foodie-ism.

So she’d had Rheumatoid Arthritis for awhile, and starting at quite a young age, too. And after several years of every medical treatment under the sun not working for very long, along came a friend who recommended an acupuncturist.

-Who also happened to be an expert in Eastern Medicine.

Yes. That was the sound of me losing half of you. It’s okay. The rest of us’ll get through it.

So this expert gives her some advice that seems just ludicrous. -Especially to a dedicated, GrubStreet-grade foodie like Jamie.

Except for the single small fact that she broke down in excruciating pain one day; said F**IT!, just tried it,

And it Totally. Freaking. Worked! -And still does.

So fast-forward to the very end of the article-chain, where she now steps backward into the role of her friend. -Responding to not just comments and emails, but taking it a step-further and sharing the whole long strange trip with the interwebs in a dedicated post on her blog, TVDinner.

-Which when you read it, it’s hard to deny the changes in reported pain & symptoms of RA by reducing things like Dairy, etc. are barely a few steps short of Amazing.

Also great is the solution brought to other RA-sufferers and the people it refluxed back into Jamie’s life, like her new sister-in-arms, Margaret; which brings us to the MacGuffin-with-value, the hidden treasure in all of this:

The real miracle is The Human Element.

-You.

…Perhaps Jamie would never have been in the position to help as [ACHTUNG: Network-Speak!!] a Hub-Person to so many “weak-ties” if a friend hadn’t reached-out & helped her in the first place.

The real miracle isn’t the bark, herbs, and anti-inflammatories in the decoction that Nanjing Acupuncture was able to prepare for her. It’s Generosity of Spirit and Your Connections With Others.

-Kinda why we’re all here in the first place, isn’t it?

PS: In a strange coincidence, I’d had this post about Jamie on simmer for quite awhile, and neatly-enough, just finished the one about The Mysterious Microbes of Rheumatoid Arthritis.

-Which I just sent over to her at TVDinner!

Here’s hoping the revelation by Mathis & Littman can help her [and her friends^friends^friends, etc.] even more!

*Check Out The Links for the rest of the Story & Details. And be sure to Keep Sharing Your Own Stories about “Whatever Works”: