The Importance of Tracking Your Symptoms

All of us experience little symptoms here and there, one day or the other, turn of the season or just springtime. So it's easy for us to say we get springtime allergies or a seasonal cold or a stomach ache with gluten. But what we don't pay attention to is why does our body express these particular symptoms? What can we learn by tracking our symptoms?

Having an annual physical and getting annual blood testing does not tell us if we're healthy. It simply tells us that we are not noticeably ill. Often it doesn't even tell us why we have the symptoms we have. So it's really up to us. There is only one person living in your body - you. Therefore you know what is "normal" and what is not. Unless the symptoms you experience alter your body chemistry sufficiently for it to appear on a conventional test, your physician will be generally unable to give you an explanation as to why. But if you get into the habit of tracking symptoms, you may have a very good idea why.

So begin a health journal ... your health journal. The word journal derives from the early French meaning "that which occurs daily". This is the best way to understand what your body is doing. Start with each body system: Skin/Epithelial Tissue, Musculoskeletal, Nervous, Respiratory, Circulatory, Digestive, Endocrine (glands), Immune & Lymphatic, Urinary, Reproductive. Now list all the illnesses, surgeries, injuries that you can remember extending all the way into childhood and list them under all the systems that were involved. For instance a viral infection is immune, but it may also have affected digestion, respiratory and musculoskeletal. If anything created lasting or longer symptoms, list those separately but linked to how they began, like pain that continued long after a surgery.

Now list symptoms that you have had at any point, even if you don't know why. For instance, migraines: frequency, severity, what systems were involved. Now on a separate page list all the health tests you have ever had and the results. With blood tests, be sure to highlight anytime your result changed from one test to another, even if it was still in a normal range. If a test showed anything, list that under the system that was the source of the anomaly.

Now take a walk around the block a couple of times to clear your head and then sit down and begin looking for patterns. You may be utterly amazed at what you notice. You may not have realized how frequently or for how long you have had a particular symptom. Symptoms that recur, illnesses that seem to resurface, test results that don't stay in range. Try to pinpoint which systems of the body express the most frequent and the most chronic symptoms.

Let's take the Digestive system as an example. Typical symptoms of the digestive system include bloating, cramping, heartburn, nausea, constipation, diarrhea. When do these symptoms happen? If it's within one hour after eating, even immediately, then it's a stomach issue. If it's longer than that it is a small intestine issue. If it's bowel frequency then it's a large intestine issue. But the big question is WHY. Simply saying you react to gluten doesn't explain why. There is a problem with the small intestine and simply eliminating the trigger (such as gluten) may reduce the symptoms, but it doesn't resolve the issue. So look at your symptoms more closely. Most issues in the small intestine are related to the lining of the gut or an accessory organ. If food is undigested or if you have blood sugar issues, then you may be looking at the pancreas because it creates and releases digestive enzymes. If you have bloating, constipation plus skin problems, asthma, allergies or joint stiffness, then the liver/gallbladder deserves a peak. If you notice pain under the right side of the ribs that will build up and then suddenly release, ahhh, a bile duct problem. Or perhaps it's lots of symptoms that begin an hour after eating and reduce slowly over time ... now we're looking at the lining. The lining of the gut can be eroded, damaged or compromised for many reasons including chronic inflammation, stress, poor lymphatic flow, dehydration, pharmaceutical use. So we need to improve the living tissue of the gut lining, the microbiome.

What about symptoms that are completely out of character for you? Such as vomiting when you've never vomited before or a headache when you never get headaches. These are special red flags that point towards something unusual. For instance, vomiting followed by a fever tends to be a pathogen exposure that triggers an immune response (generally viral or bacterial). Vomiting occurs both when the pathogen enters with food, water or air, but it can also be the body stopping digestive action to isolate a pathogen and free up immune resources for the body to use. Fevering is another great signal that the immune system is at work.

Even inflammation is not necessarily a bad thing. After all it is the first step in the healing process and it is a key method the body uses to isolate areas. So chronic inflammation is healing or cleansing that cannot achieve resolution. Whatever tissues are involved points towards the underlying issue. Simply stopping inflammation without understanding it, is removing one of the body's coping mechanisms that it is using to manage something. If something isn't healing, why? Do we have enough antioxidants? Are our pathways of elimination blocked or insufficient? Is our stress level too high so that the body is spending all its time and resources dealing with that instead of the healing process?

Understanding the patterns and purposes for your symptoms as well as what is a typical symptom for you, will help you to decipher your tendencies and weaknesses. Knowing these will give you a great roadmap towards what you should be including in your daily routines. If you tend to get joint symptoms, then running would not be a good option for your exercise choice. If you get digestive symptoms when you overeat, then you may need to reduce your food volume at each meal or your number of meals. If you get headaches, then including foods and herbs that inspire better circulation such as ginger and cayenne pepper can make a difference over time.

Our choices should not be based on what our friend finds helpful, or what the internet claims is miraculous or what the clerk at the health food store says is a big seller. We have to get to know our own body over time. It's that essential body conversation that is the key...