Are we the product or our past?

I know it's been a while since I have posted here.  I have been trying to learn how to market.
That has been stressful which of course could set off my IBS.  In the past year since I have been on this post let me tell you a bit of what has been happening.


I have met a lot of people who have not had the ideal situations growing up.
Some of them have become a product of their up bringing. 

Most of the time the up bringing was negative.  Then as adults most of these people end up with gut issues, like me.  They are still dealing with past events just in different situations.


Over the last five years I have been working on handling stress differently.  This is starting to work better for me then it did five years ago.  I see where people are now and it reminds me of where I use to be.  Struggling with how to deal with stress and finding confidence in self when it seems like the world or other people around you are against you.


What I have learned is that we all are in the same boat.  All of us have different situations or stressors that we deal with on a daily basis.  If we could just be a little kinder to each other, a little gentler, a little bit more understanding I think we would have a fantastic world.


I write this so that way I hope I can make this world a better place one blog at a time.

Are all yogurts the same?

I have been noticing lately about the many different choices of yogurts that are out there from organic to chobani to activia.  Some of these yogurts are really high in sugar.  Sugar can inflame a persons IBS.  Which yogurt is the right one?  I can't really say.  It's an individual choice on what seems good for you. 
Recently I found out that the organic yogurt seems to contain more sugar then some of the other brands. Ouch!!!
I tried Chobani yogurt for some reason I seem to always pick the ones that don't taste good or that the company is having problems with.
Yopalit  is alright  but I find that the greek style yogurts are far to big for the serving size if people are trying to lose weight.
Now I am trying activia.  I will give it the two week challenge, as they advertise.  See if this helps with the small inflammations I get from time to time when I eat the wrong types of food.

Is pizza like life?

Friday I unexpectedly found myself at my daughter's school for lunch.  As I was there I had pizza with my daughter.  Yes, the pizza had gluten in it.  I seemed to do okay until the middle of the night when my colon decided to thank me for the gluten surprise.  It was very upset.

As I laid in bed with a very upset colon it made me realize how many times in life do we accept other people's crap and take it in as if it were our own. Feel very comfortable with it but some how we don't speak out like my colon and just become comfortable with what people say and do with us or about us.

How many times through our own choices we let people get to us by putting us down, or blaming us. We take it thinking that this is how we are. That we are stupid, or not worthy of anything.
While the whole time our mind is screaming out that whatever people are saying about us isn't true.

I think it happens more often then we would like to admit. We so easily give our power away to things that shouldn't matter and we don't leave room to nurture ourselves.

I think it's time for all of us to take ourselves back and be kind to ourselves and give ourselves a break.  We are all people going through a people experience.  Sometimes we forget that.

Pressure Change

This kidney stone has set off a few chain reactions in my body due to pressure changes as slight as it may be. The pressure change has effected my IBS in some weird way.

I'm back!!

I had a few health issues that I needed to take care of since January.
Just when you think you have have everything figured out something else comes up.

During the time I got my CT scan it showed I had a non obstructive kidney stone.  Yeah.  I figured it was fine because it wasn't causing me any problems. 

Well... the darn stone has shifted and I now have pain from time to time.  I am just waiting for this puppy to pass.  It could take weeks for this thing to pass. 
I am going to try some cyotone.  See if it will help get this kidney stone past so I can go on with life.

To much to see and do.

PS....I love Irish Soda Bread, but it doesn't love me when it is made from wheat.
I am going to see if I can find a gluten free recipe.

Anxiety with IBS flare up

I haven't slept very well in the last couple of weeks due to either because I or a member of my family was sick. Because of it my IBS has flared up. I am on a strict diet and I noticed that I have to exercise to help with the anxiety.  I try to use my out of the box places. It only works so far if I can't get a few nights of good sleep.

Things I could tolerate I am having a hard time being patient with these days. Hopefully I can get some sleep. 

What is the secret to not having flare ups of your IBS?

I had a patient ask me what is my secret for being able to maintain my IBS and not have so many flare ups.
For years I was using anti gas medication, activated charcoal, and Imodium. Then one day my body would start having withdrawals from the Imodium. I knew when the Imodium was wearing off because I would start having cold sweats and then my body would shake and I would feel like I wanted to vomit. This would last for hours. I thought I was going to die.

I didn't know what else to do now that I couldn't take Imodium any more. The activated charcoal only worked so well as I was also taking about 6 capsules every 4 hours or so of the anti-gas medications.

I was a wreck. I couldn't go anywhere without having a game plan on knowing where the bathrooms were and I couldn't go to the park with my daughter without having to turn around and head back home or go to the bathroom every 5 minutes. I was letting my medical condition control me. Not the other way around.

I finally decided to start working on myself. When I mean working on myself and I mean the whole thing. Spiritual, Emotional, and Physical. The easy part was the physical. That is all exercise and diet. The hard part was the emotional/spiritual part. I had to dig deep. Go where I didn't want to go. I thought I knew how to deal with life, but I was wrong.

I was seeing myself as a person who was more then half empty instead of seeing myself as someone who was whole and complete.  I started with reading books which lead me to go to support groups and to finally knowing what I was doing and how I have a choice everyday on how I'm going to handle and look at a situation.

It was a hard road looking at how I made my own drama and how I was contributing to other people's drama.  I still have times where I fall flat on my face, but learning to have a more positive outlook of myself and life has helped with keeping the flare ups down with my IBS.

Yes I still have IBS, but I don't let it control me anymore because I know that I am a whole and complete person even with having IBS.

Respect of Self and IBS

It has been a while since I posted. The clinic is getting busy.

While that has been going on I started to notice about respect. Do you have respect for ourselves to tell the truth to us about our health?

I noticed that when I stopped having respect for myself and not slowing down that my IBS was getting worse. When I put in the time to exercise, get plenty of sleep, and eating healthy I can maintain my IBS better.

What is respecting one's self? I think it's a lot of things.

Here are a few examples:

Not telling yourself you are fat or ugly or any other negative comment.

Not saying "yes" to everything.

Knowing your bodies limits each day and not going beyond it.

Not being around people who don't respect you.

Not undervaluing yourself.

Being true to you. Not changing yourself to fit someone else's image of who they think you should be.

I can't jog!!!

School is back in full swing I thought I would go outside and see if I could pick up jogging again.
With in seconds I realized why I don't jog.  I have 2 cysts on my liver that are 2 inches each rubbing against my ribs if I try any jogging, jump roping, and etc. I get nauseous rather quickly if I try to jog. 

I will stay with the bike riding, speed walking and weights to get a good workout. Yoga works too.

Jogging isn't for everybody.

Is remission of IBS permenant?

The answer to that question is very complicated because there are a lot of variables involved.

I think that a lot of people can be in remission from flare ups with their IBS for years.
Flare ups can still occur if there is stress or if one eats the wrong foods again or the body decides it's going to be allergic to something different then what was already on your food allergy list.

Other factors like hormone imbalance can sometimes bring on flare ups as well.

The point is to learn to enjoy where you are at in the moment that you have it. Whether it's a good day or a bad day. Even if the flare ups are bad it will still help to see it as a blessing to make it through the day.

On my bad days I forgive myself for not being able to do everything and just know that I it alright.
Because it is alright to rest and recoup.

Going in Circles

Yesterday on my radio show "Here's to your Heath with Dr. Burns" I talked with Dr. Allan Hunter.
In his book Gratitude and Beyond he talks about how we go in circles and continue to think about things that aren't good for us for our energy and bring us down.

Then I started thinking about this with health and with gut issues. If we have anxiety about our gut issues, then it spurs inflammation in the gut and then we get even more anxious about it having the gut issue. We end up in this vicious until we finally had it and start thinking differently.

Dr Hunter stated we all seem to change when we have a type of near death experience. This experience could be literal, emotional,  mental, and etc.

There was a research project that was done and it seems by the conclusion of this research that we inherently go in circles. If we don't have a focal point for us to stay in a straight line we go in circles and end up in the same place that we were before.

How do we get out of these inherent circles when it comes to our health?

Start setting goals a little at a time, maybe the goal is to seek a second or third opinion about your health condition. Maybe the goal is to focus on what you can do instead of what you can't do.

Get your own personal board of directors to help you get our of your circles if that is what it takes.
If you are saying the same things over and over again to your board then maybe there is a change in you that needs to happen.

Lets all start going straight instead of going in circles. Start looking for the landmarks we need in life to get to where we need to go. 

Is it Hollywood or Human nature?

There has been this never ending pursuit for perfection. Due to internet and media outlets and photo editing we can now finally have what we want, to be flawless.  Yet people still aren't happy. Why is this? You can photo crop as much as we want, but reality is that we are flawed. We are fighting against the thing that makes us who we are that gives us our personality.

We make ourselves stressed out because we are not perfect.  We don't embrace that which makes us different from everyone else.  I use to fight my flaws so hard that I was making things worse instead of better. I wasn't centered, I was creating chaos and I was miserable.  I was doing the total opposite of what I should've been doing.....

Embracing my flaws....

This sounds crazy, but it works. Only after embracing the fact that we all have flaws and that we are not perfect can we move forward and over come our weaknesses.  We need to celebrate being human and that we are not robots.  I look at my daughter and my dog and they live fully in the moment and it doesn't matter what is going on around them and if they make a mistake.  They know who they are and embrace it. I love that about them. It makes them who they are.

At first I use to get upset because I always forget where I park my car because I have other things going through my mind that I forget to stop and see where I am. When I learned to live in the moment I can stop and see around me landmarks that help me find my car again. If I don't remember I can laugh and make a game out of  it and say "Where is my car" instead of "Where is Waldo" LOL.

It takes time and hard work to learn how to enjoy being human again.  It is totally worth it.

I love the Monkees song "I said laugh"  this is so true.

Lesson I learned from a cockroach.

This morning I am walking my dog and see this dead cockroach being eaten by a group of ants. It is going to take a while for these ants to pull that cockroach apart.

I looked at the cockroach as obstacles or weaknesses we have in our lives.  How many times do we let the cockroach win?  How many times do we fall back to old habits instead of being patient with ourselves when we start to change? 

The ants are like the changes we make in our lives just chipping away at the old habits and making way for the new ones. It takes time to replace one thing with another.  Just like it takes time for ants to pull apart a cockroach.

I think it's time we all start looking at our successes no matter how small they may be.

IBS Support Group

We are starting an IBS support group in Phoenix, Az.
Our first meeting is at 7 pm Elevate Coffee on Happy Valley and I-17
We hope to see you there.

Does taking offense increase flare ups of IBS?

I would have to say yes on that one.  Any type of negative stresser will effect the IBS and will create flare ups.

Not taking offense is easier said then done. It takes a lot of practice to master this.  The only way to master this one is to be confident about yourself.

Mr. Ruiz, author of "The Four Assigments" is right.  When you are able not to take offense it does free your world up of all the negativity we all seem to hold on too. This is when we become defensive and want to fight back because we feel we have to stand up for ourselves.

There is a good way and a bad way to stand up for ourselves. The bad way is going in prepared for battle.
That will flare up your IBS as well.

Before you can "not take offense" you must work on yourself first and sure up the weaknesses. Part of this is letting of the fact that you can control everything.  Which in reality we can't.  Once we can acknowledge that then the rest will come.  We don't have as much power as we think we have is scary.  We can only control ourselves and no one else. 

That was a big bubble bursting moment for me when I figured that out. It has really helped me be able to manage my stress better.

Sugar Fetish and Agave Juice

I have such a sweet tooth. My IBS flares up when I have anything with sugar in it. Unless I make it with agave juice. Agave juice is my saving grace so that way I can still have something sweet.
Gluten free flour and agave juice is a great combination.

Radio Show

Hey everyone I have my own radio show on bbs radio station 2 called "Here's to your health with Dr. Burns"
We have all sorts of interesting topics and guest on the show. We aire on Thursdays at 2pm pacific time.
http://www.bbsradio.com/herestoyourhealth/

Beware of Lentil Soup

Little did I know that eating a fresh bowl of lentil soup would soon lead me to being cleaned out within a couple of minutes.

Moral to the story. Eat lentils at home. LOL

Not so bad

I had my MRI and I found out that it is open at both ends. When I looked up the machine was very close to my face. I just kept my eyes closed. The time went by quickly.
I have 2 cysts on my right liver that are about 2 inches.  Jogging is out since they rub up against my ribs.
Now comes the exciting part of what I can and can't do as far as exercise.

Getting my tincture to help reduce the size of these cysts.

We will see where this adventure takes me next.

MRI scan

I am getting ready for my MRI scan tomorrow. I am a bit scared of closed in places so we will see how I do with being strapped down and stuck in a tube for 30 minutes. All of this just to rule out cancer.