Paul Norg

 

As I write this, I am reminded of my journey and how I got to where I am. If you read my headline, you may be wondering, how did he get there in the first place? Just shy of five years ago, I was diagnosed with leukemia, AML to be specific. My hemoglobin has dropped to 6 rather than the 14 to 18 that everybody else has. The day after I had the blood test showing that my hemoglobin was already down to 7 I got a phone call about 2 o'clock in the afternoon saying that I needed to go to the ER immediately. Upon arriving at the ER, I was tested with a metabolic panel, and my hemoglobin was already down to 6. This was within less than a day. It took about four months of chemo and hospital stays along with several medication routines to arrive at the day of getting stem cells to replace my bone marrow. This all happened from August 9th, 2019 with my diagnosis until December 24th, 2019 when I received stem cells. The pain that led up to getting tested for all of this ordeal started in Febr...

     Loss of family and friends will always have some level of impact on each of us with respect to emotional and physical well-being. I've lost track of how many friends and family that I have lost. It is more than all of my fingers and toes put together. Just about 20 years ago we lost my mom and it was pretty rough. I tend not to be outwardly emotional right away when I lose someone.        Through the years I learned to recover from different situations that caused me depression, anxiety, fear, sorrow, and many of the negative emotions many of us have when we lose someone or even break up from a relationship. I’ve learned some of my patterns of recovering from loss come from Gray (n.d.) who wrote many books on dating, relationships, love, loss, and more. For today’s topic, I drew from his books to cope with the loss of my mom. But the reason I read the first book of his, “Mars and Venus, Starting Over” was to deal with the divorce from my ex-wife. ...

  Definition of stress and its impact on physical and mental health.  From “Stress | CAMH" (n.d.) a “normal response” to any situation or event that causes fear or uncomfortable feelings or responses on a biological level in response to danger, threats, and other issues that arise. These can give rise to changes in physiology such as galvanic skin response, heart rate elevation, adrenaline, and other bodily responses (para. 1.)    - Brief overview of various coping mechanisms.  As we grow up, we learn to cope with stress by watching our parents and family, and how they deal with it. And later on, we also learned from our friends and acquaintances. When I attended school as a child, and up through middle school, I did not have a good impression of myself as a destructive person. I was very cautious all the time and avoided danger. I became a very massive person with respect to body weight as I became an adult. And before having a few health issues, I reached ...

The saying "you are what you eat" takes on a new meaning when discussing the relationship between nutrition and mental health. With ongoing research into the gut-brain connection, it's becoming clear that what you consume can significantly affect your mental well-being, including symptoms of depression. Here's how: The Gut-Brain Axis:  - What It Is: The gut-brain axis refers to the biochemical signaling that takes place between the gastrointestinal tract (the gut) and the central nervous system (the brain). There are quite a few other things that make the gut flora balanced.  Lactobacillus rhamnosus  ( The gut-brain axis: interactions between enteric microbiota, central and enteric nervous systems - PMC,  n.d.)   was one of the probiotics I've used to fight lactose intolerance. A few days of taking colony-forming numbers of this form reduced my negative reactions to milk products.  (para. 13.) - Why It Matters: Research shows that an unhealthy gut can negat...