In my late 20s I had a bad chest infection, of which I’ve only had 3 or 4 in my whole 58 years of life. The infection was persistent, even after high doses of tetracycline antibiotics. I was feeling constantly nauseous and unwell, and was craving something but did not know what. Intuition told me that I’d find it in the Adelaide Central Market. So I went to town on market day and walked up and down the aisles of food stalls with no idea what I was looking for (and feeling a bit silly, too).
Cheese? … Really?
Something made me stop at a kind of stall I’d normally pass by as quickly as possible because they smelled strongly of dried fish, fresh oysters, and other things I can’t handle the odour of. However looking at the goods behind the glass, suddenly there was the thing my body wanted!
I still had no idea what it was. A block of some weird greyish-bluish-greenish translucent rubbery stuff, it looked more like a pencil eraser, shoe sole or ‘sea monster’ gristle than food! It turned out to be some kind of cheese, and though I was a great cheese lover then, it did not look appealing at all.
It didn’t matter, because that’s what my body wanted. I bought a piece and went off to try it. It smelled strong but not offensive, was intensely salty and had a weird flavour and texture. But my body said: “Yes!!” So for about 3 days I had tiny pieces of it, no bigger than a fingernail, and loved it!
The Off Switch
About the fourth day I got my weird cheese out of the fridge and could not bear the smell. Something in me had switched off and I felt that my body no longer required it. I had evidently obtained whatever was needed, some uncommon substance or nutrient or microbe not present in my usual food. Crucially, it had stopped the nausea completely and I began to improve rapidly. After the ‘switch off’ I tried a bit of the cheese and almost vomited. It tasted foul and intolerably salty. End of story with that strange cheese!
Here’s what amazed me ever after: how did my body know that in the Adelaide Central Market there was a food I had never seen or heard of before that contained what my body needed to restore itself after the tetracycline therapy?
Spam (and I don’t mean on the internet)
Decades later in 2011 I had another similar experience during a major illness. Again, I’d had a multitude of powerful antibiotics and my guts were very miserable. I was taking a range of probiotics and nutritional supplements, but there must have been something missing. I walked up and down the supermarket aisles ‘following my feeling’ and it stopped me at the Spam shelf.
Spam?! How is that possible? I’m a vegetarian, Spam is meat, it’s preserved and full of chemicals, which I avoid.
But it had whatever that magic thing my body wanted. So I bought a small tin of it, ate it in 2 days, and hey presto! My body got what it wanted and hit the off switch.
After that the mere thought of Spam was revolting again. I got the feeling this episode of craving Spam had something to do with sulphur, but I didn’t really make time to do the research.
Meat
I don’t digest animal protein very well. Usually meat smells, tastes and feels offensive to me. But occasionally, particularly when I’m sick, I suddenly crave meat (usually chicken) and find myself thinking about it against my mind’s will. Then meat suddenly smells good to me and I find myself drawn to the smells in supermarkets and barbecues. So I buy some organically raised chicken. It tastes great, I still have some trouble digesting it and must eat it very slowly with a lot of fresh vegetables, but it works. I know when the ‘switch off’ has occurred, because once again I can’t stand the smell of meat and I don’t feel the need for any more for quite some time.
So I’ve learned: body knows best!
By Dianne Trussell, BSc Honours; 16 years in Biological & Medical Research & Teaching
Further Reading:
The Body Knows
Serge Benhayon on Food and Diet
599 Comments
A beautiful confirmation that our body is much wiser than our mind.
How astute is our body as it will always tell us what is great for us to eat when we are prepared to be open to the on off switch of our body, and in a similar way to you Dianne my body would refuse to eat chocolate at times with my jaw locking up and refusing to chew.
It’s really interesting how our bodies will tell us what it doesn’t want to eat and drink. Wine for instance smells like vinegar, going down the sweets and chocolate isle at the supermarket is easy as there is nothing in my body that wants to hook me into wanting anything from the shelves. It has taken me a long time to truly trust myself and not to run away from myself by indulging in something that has a harming effect on me. I had to take a stop moment to appreciate just how far I have come from all the self abusive ways I devised to stop myself from feeling the magnificence of who I truly am.
This is amazing Diane in so many ways, but mostly that you listened to your body and followed the impulse to let it take you to exactly where you needed to go to get what it needed. It begs the question of how much medical intervention do we actaually really need when we are ill, as its quite possible that our bodies are simply lacking a vital mineral/vitamin/microbe or such like that can so easily be rectified by eating a certain food instead of swallowing a heap of medication.
I love how you follow your Intuition Dianne with regards to food and listenting to what your body needs, and then giving yourself that food with positive results. Yes, the body knows exactly what we need, all we have to do is listen.
It is a very gentle approach to listen to the body and honour what it communicates. We can tend to think the body is less intelligent than the mind, but your body knowing Dianne the specific things it needed to reverse the antibiotic after effects indicates an intelligence way beyond the thinking mind.
This is very inspiring, Dianne, as well as a confirmation of the clear body intuition we all have when we simply listen and honour what we feel. Very different to the push of some cravings that precisely suppress that intuition in the numbness we experience after eating. The more love we bring into our lives, the more discernment we have in distinguishing each one of these options we experience.
This is quite incredible that you followed your intuition to such an extent that you even knew exactly where to go to find what your body needed! We do know exactly how to heal or support ourselves through illness and live in a way where we don’t get ill in the first place. The question is, are we humble enough to listen?
It is incredible, our body is so wise, and I love how this blog captures and confirms that.
It is interesting to read how the body knows what to eat and when. I have the same thing with liver. I never eat it as a rule and then once in a blue moon and usually when I am unwell or trying to recover from an illness, I get the urge to eat liver. Then after about a day, I can’t stand the stuff again, until the next time that is.
Such a great example of the wisdom of our body and to not let the mind interfere with diet rules etc. Our body knows best and when the relationship we have with our body is one of knowing or trusting then the outcome is always honouring our whole system.
I feel a key word here Annelies is honouring, learning to listen to our body and honour what it communicates and how we feel.
I have noticed that with animals (cows or sheep), who will seek and lick some particular soils occasionally. Animals naturally listen to their bodies, we humans have kind of forgotten how to do that but as you share, if we simply listened we would be richly rewarded.
They can also seek out specific plants at times to self medicate when they have different health conditions.
Re-establish an honouring relationship with our body and we have the greatest diviner of truth that we could ask for, on hand 24/7.
Yes the body is constantly working on being in harmony and so often we sabotage that by letting our minds dictate our choices. Great reminder to be open to messages from our bodies whether we are feeling sick or not.
It is amazing how when we allow it to our body can sniff out what is needed in any situation and then when it is no longer needed that switch is switched off and the same substance can make us feel nauseous. The wisdom of the body is far greater than we are often willing to acknowledge.
Our bodies are truly amazing, and I can relate to similar examples, where at certain times I feel my body has really needed something, I was not sure what nutrient was required, but once my body has had what it was craving my body was satisfied, and settled, it feels very lovely to truly honour our bodies.
When it’s a true craving it has that off switch, if it doesn’t, chances are it’s something else we are feeling that needs discerning and expressing. Otherwise there is no off switch.
Thank you Dianne, this is always a joy to read and I laughed at your line “Spam (and I don’t mean on the internet)”. I must pay more attention to my body and what it’s asking for because sometimes I notice I feel really drawn to eating something, like lamb, and the next day it might make me feel nauseous to even consider it.
I’m pregnant at the moment. And in my first trimester – my body wanted bacon. I never eat bacon – but that’s what it wanted. So I honored it, ate it for a few months and then one day – I wanted nothing to do with it. I was amazed about how our bodies can just give us clear messages and how we can lovingly respond.
It is lovely to read about your freedom in food choices. Not constrained by what should or should not be, you are wiling to listen even if this messes with your preconceived ideas, you trust your body no matter what, and this is amazing.
It is interesting that in today’s times this sounds a little odd because we are so used to numbing our bodies that to have this level of responsivity to your body is rare. In the past it would have been considered quite normal to use foods, herbs and other sources in this way.
Using food as medicine is not new but something we have forgotten about in this age of fast food, drive throughs and loads of sugar, salt and dairy.
And as we connect to a deeper and deeper level, we will learn to listen more and more to those messages loud and clear.
Though our bodies, our Soul moves, and though this movement we are able to bring to this world all of who we are, what we are here for. This intelligence that you speak of Dianne, of our bodies, is truly one of the greatest wonders in this world, one that we would be wise to invest in to explore the extensive potential it is continually offering us to live.
If our bodies are made of particles that come from the universe, and if we can get ourselves out of the way by surrendering to living from our soul, our bodies just may show us all kinds of amazing things.
This is a cool sharing.
I had a recently similar experience where my body wanted some lamb and I denied it. So after 2 days of serving up fish, I was feeling sick just by the smell of it. I was going off my food. And funnily enough, my toddler didn’t want the fish either. So I cooked up some lamb mince, served it to both of us, and we ate it all. Now I am craving it anymore. It tells me life is so much simpler when we just listen to our bodies.
Extra-ordinary Dianne Trussel(!) and I do not say that often. When you write a book on true science meeting the whole / all I will definitely read it. It is truly nourishing to the body how you discover the meaning of life so simply through how the body shows it. I always become truly inspired and confirmed in what I have always known and felt myself.
The body can have some surprising messages when we are willing to listen to what it has to say.
As you say Dianne, our body really does know best… The thing is we have to learn to actually listen to our body, and this means listening to ourselves, and this means really starting to tune in, to everything, to the way we speak to the way we listen and to the way we move.
The body knows best in every situation. This is now becoming a regular understanding in my life.
There is an infinite amount of wisdom available to us, all that is required from us is to develop and deepen the relationship with our bodies so we can tune-in to what is needed at any given time.