Let me tell you a secret that I have never mentioned in my previous books: between the age of seven and eight, something unexplainable occurred in my state of health. Suddenly a "monster" came and sat next to me and stayed with me for fifty years.
It was the "migraine monster."
At that age, I started having episodes of severe migraines without apparent cause, which is known as migraine headaches (intense and lasting headache accompanied by other symptoms). The headache suddenly appeared in my life and without a known cause.
At that time I could not, nor my parents, imagine that began a via crucis of pain that would last fifty years in search of a solution to that problem. It has been fifty years of suffering one of the most disabling ailments. Without having more response than ineffective analgesics that surely only worsened the problem (rebound headaches and other side effects).
That was going to mark the rest of my life.
My headaches were intense and completely incapacitated me, usually appeared after noon, gaining in intensity unstoppably and sending me to bed in the middle of the afternoon. Until the next day, they were almost always accompanied by vomiting, sensitivity to light and noise. For a child: the end of the world.
Aspirin and other pain killers soon stopped working, each time I needed higher, more frequent doses, and their side effects took their toll. Gastritis, dizziness, eczema, vomiting, my body complained about these aggressions, now I know that I was attacking it chemically and that was not the way.
Well-being is not achieved by declaring chemical warfare on your body. The only thing that ended with those migrainous episodes was a restful night (that when I was a child, after I was older, it was no longer the solution). Years later, not even rest one night would do me any good. Yes, as an adult, I went to bed with a headache and woke up with a headache after a bad night.
Back then, after a night of rest, I remember that I woke up as new, euphoric, and grateful for living the end of the nightmare. The storm in a cup had stopped. The question was: how long?
And as a person he was resurrected until the next episode, in which he succumbed again to pain. It went from bad to worse. And that was only going to get worse.
I do not have to say that all the medicines to alleviate the symptoms did not help. I even took antidepressants (I was only a child!), Prescribed by one of my doctors, from the dozens of doctors I visited. And none could help me. When I travel through Barcelona today, I still remember, as I passed by, the portals of the buildings where I once visited a doctor with my mother.
I was the youngest of three brothers, also the least physically strong. I guess when it was my turn, my mother did not have many resources or strength left. I was always the thinnest, the most vulnerable and the most sensitive to any influence of the environment. My parents had a hard time getting ahead.
In fact, in my childhood, three times I was about to die for causes that do not come to mind. I suppose heaven wanted me to remain on earth. Since I was little I have always had the feeling of living on loan. That is why I am very grateful, everything that has come after has been a gift.
My frequent headaches, one or more a week, led me to a pilgrimage through countless consultations of doctors of different specialties: general, neurologist, sight, psychologist, ear ... But none found the origin of my headaches.
I remember that my after-school activity was going to the doctor, for me it was normal. After school my mother took me from one doctor to another. My doctors (in the plural) tried different medications with me: from the conventional to the more specific, but the migraines kept coming one after the other.
Perhaps the most traumatic test I suffered was to rule out a brain tumor. When I was ten years old, I ended up at the operating room table to analyze my spinal cord and rule out a tumor. To verify, I was admitted to a hospital and under general anesthesia they extracted a sample from the spinal cord, a very delicate test. I remember that the headache I went through when I woke up from anesthesia was one of the hardest in my life. To recover from that test I spent a week lying in bed because only by getting up I lost my balance.
Today would be different, but in the sixties in Spain there was not much technology or sophistication. The result of the test: negative, they found nothing. But my head hurt.
Another useless test was to check my vision. I did not need glasses but it would have to be evaluated, one of the doctors said. This time the test, or torture, was to put a few drops in the eyes that would dilate my pupils. That was in the morning, and in the afternoon the doctor would examine me with an optical device for that purpose. After putting on the drops, the view became so blurred and out of focus that I needed help walking.
Even if you do not believe it, that day they took me to school and then to the doctor; but it turned out that on that day, bad luck, the optician's apparatus had broken down to examine me. I spent a total of about 12 hours almost blindly, not at all. I remember that my mother, disconsolate, gave me a toy as a prize, with which I could not play because I simply could not see it clearly.
More pain, more frustration, more loss of time and hope ... I can tell stories like this until I get bored. I know firsthand what it is like to feel a defective, limited, tare child.
The good thing about the bad that I can recognize now is that the weakness made me very humble. He knew that he was coming from misfortune and that at any moment he could return to the most absolute misery. He knew where he came from and that he could go back there again. Within minutes I could declare a crisis that would knock me out for a whole day or more. That horizon does not allow you to make many plans and leads you to live in the here and now, and tomorrow you will see. That is why, when my crises were resolved, I was moved and cried with gratitude.
I know, from a very young age, what it is to suffer an unbearable pain that pierces your head and lasts for hours and hours; and what is worse: for which he had no effective remedy. I was frustrated because I did not have a remedy. And if I felt bad, I can now imagine how my parents felt Impotence and despair. See how his little boy was consumed with pain in the bed without much to do except comfort him.
I grew up with the "migraine monster" by my side. Knowing that at anytime my life as a child, as a young person, as a student and in my leisure activities ... I could enter a sudden standby, full of pain, with life postponed. Of greater would be equal always apologizing to others, always giving explanations that sometimes did not understand. And they interpreted as excuses. I do not blame them, when you have not gone through something similar it is impossible to get an idea of what it means.
It should be noted that headache is the third cause of school absenteeism, but some still believe that it is an excuse, unless it is migrainous. I guess whoever reads this, and something similar has happened, knows what I'm talking about.
Someone told me that a child with migraine has all the odds of continuing to suffer as an adult (about 65 per cent of possibilities). What a panorama.
With the passing of the years, on the one hand I was assuming that it was my nature, my genes, the DNA and all that roll. And that I would die with the "migraine monster" after accompanying me all my life. In fact, many times I thought that death should be something very good because I would get rid of the headache. The prospect of dying had a great advantage: to stop suffering.
On the one hand, as I said, I was satisfied and accepted it. After all, many people suffered from the same and the world was still spinning. I investigated and saw that many of humanity's characters had suffered from headaches. I was one more, nothing to object.
But on the other hand, I was reluctant to believe that suffering, and disease in general, are normal or even acceptable. So I explored alternative medicine, already disillusioned with conventional medicine.
I tried almost everything: reiki, hypnosis, acupuncture, herbal medicine, osteopathy, massage, traditional Chinese medicine, homeopathy, Bach flowers, reflexotherapy, EFT, biomagnetic pair, chiropractic, yoga, and various energy therapies that I can not remember. Imagine the money and time spent. I'm not saying they did not work, they did not do it with my problem.
Some disciplines helped me on time, but they did not "cure" me. Others did not help me at all. I arrived at the absolute satiety after spending a lot of time and money without getting results in more frustration and despair.
I read dozens and dozens of books on the subject of the headache but his approach was very mental or scientific, nothing to write home about. You end up knowing what happens but not why or how to solve it. Add it to the previous budget.
A day when I was not expecting anything (acceptance is also a medicine, at least for the ego), a copy of the magazine Discovery Salud, a very transgressive publication, with an article that seemed to have nothing to do with it, fell into my hands with me: the gluten. But I did have although at that time I did not know it.
Thanks to that article, today this book exists.
Discovering that gluten could be linked to headache lit the bulb. My research took a year and led me to eliminate many of the foods that are generally considered healthy and, in reality, were creating serious problems in my digestive system. Once the digestive system is affected, the symptoms are noticed, for example, in the head as was my case.
I was exploring a new line of research that was going to take me to solve the case. I was like Sherlock Holmes or Hercules Poirot trying to solve a mystery (nutritional).
I also discovered that I had to improve my lifestyle (simplify and reduce stress) and, in addition, to supplement my cells lacking the essential nutrients that I did not obtain with food.
Of all this I will speak to you in this book.
The feeding was an unexplored terrain that now investigated. In fact, none of the doctors I consulted were very interested in what I ate or stopped eating. I understand that in medicine, food is not studied in depth and that doctors rely more on drugs than on food as medicine. But I find it hard to understand that they are not curious about it.
One test led to another, a sign became a revelation. Then I discovered, by my own means, the focus of the fire that consumed my well-being:
- leaky gut syndrome
- gluten intolerance
- histamine intolerance
- Chronic inflammation
At last, I had identified the suspects to cause my problem. And apparently, I suffered from that, all at once. Oh my God (OMG)
It is as if the light entered a room that had been dark for fifty years.
The magazine I mentioned (Discovery Salud, available online in spanish) based his article on the experience of a US doctor (Dr. David Perlmutter) and, since this doctor had several books published, I read them. Reading has always helped me in all aspects of life, and once again I was about to solve my biggest challenge.
A book took me to another book. I read tirelessly about health, and the fruit of the experiences that these readings created in me is this book.
In case you did not know, the "leaky gut" is a dysfunction of the layer that separates the digestive tract from the immune system. You get to that after a lot of gluten, many medicines that eliminate the good bacteria in the digestive system, and many inflammatory foods (the list is not exactly short). From there to develop an autoimmune disease there are a few steps. Fortunately, I have not developed any, but I take this whole thing as a priority.
The principle is the same: the cereal, certain medicines ... damage the walls of the intestine, and at the same time destroys the balance of the intestinal flora (microbiota, to be exact), and from there intolerances, allergies and autoimmune diseases they are the following.
I've been lucky, I'm not a celiac (which is the most extreme form of gluten intolerance). You see, with everything I feel lucky, it could have been much worse.
In my case, probably, so many years of taking analgesics for the headache had decimated my microbiota, creating additional problems such as leaky gut and hypersensitivity to gluten and lectins, which ended up creating more and more migraines ... and so on. An endless loop, a more analgesic, such as ibuprofen or paracetamol, which I took tons, worse intestinal health, more complications in the digestive tract, worse health ... and my headaches still did not disappear. Quite the opposite: they were chronicled.
From what is revealed the uselessness of my procedure: if my head hurt, I went to the pharmacy to get an analgesic. I did what the doctors had told me. I was obedient. This is the mistake that most people make, they listen to others without listening to themselves. There are no guilty parties, only unconsciousness. In defense of all, I will say that medicine and the pharmaceutical industry have trained us all to behave in this way.
What happens if the organism becomes inflamed? In case of not stopping the inflammation, the risk of suffering a serious autoimmune disease, or a neurological disease, is high. And yes, we are all intolerant to gluten and modern cereal, to a greater or lesser degree, and it all ends up affecting us in some way in the long term. 99% of those affected do not discover it, they do not have symptoms, until the big problem appears.
Again I think I have been lucky: the symptoms may have saved me from greater evils and even life.
What happens if the intestine is damaged? Naturally, you will realize that nothing good. If the intestines are permeable, you submit to your body certain substances that should not have penetrated the digestive tract. They just should not have reached your bloodstream because they are toxic. I do not want to anticipate what I will reveal in the next chapters. Follow me and you will understand the magnitude of the problem that affects all people with symptoms or without them.
I had found the cause. Now it was time to apply the solution and believe me it is not easy at all. But you already know me, I love the difficult so I turned in body and soul.
One day of total despair, I promised myself that if I came up with the headache remedy I would write a book to help people as desperate as I am. This book is my promise fulfilled. If I was only born to suffer first and to help others later, my life will be glorious.
Reader, you can lend this book to the people you want, because I did not write it for my benefit, but for the poor people who like me know too well what the headache means. Make it run from hand to hand. This book is a vow, a penance, a promise fulfilled, a debt settled. It is a promise to God.
I did not do all the way alone but only one part.
I found a medical center of "integrative medicine" that combines conventional medicine with complementary therapies scientifically validated and I kept moving forward. I also started to visit regularly, as a preventive therapy, an Ayurvedic medicine center. I let myself be helped by loving hands who took care of me.
And I also had the wisdom of the authors, doctors of a new medicine, which I read relentlessly for three years. I thank all of them, they are my guardian angels.
And here is the book, promise fulfilled, debt paid.
What follows is what I discovered in my research during these three years -five years after the problem began- and that my migraine has resolved. Reader, there have been fifty years of pain, incessant search, frustration, and finally of discovery. It was worth not giving up.
I owed it to my inner child because one day I, the adult that I am, promised him that I would take care of him and that he would not allow anything to harm him. I whispered in his ear that I loved him, I hugged him in silence and promised him I would solve that problem. I went to the future, healed myself and went back to the past to show him that I would be fine. I have not failed you. If you have a problem in life, commit to your inner child and solve the problem. He is only a boy and he only has you. Do not fail him.
If you wonder if I still have a crisis, I will say yes but very few and very mild, they are not incapacitating. Now I know why they occur, I identify the cause in a punctual indulgence. But they are low intensity and I can reverse them and control them with extreme ease. There have been many years of research, proving in myself the unimaginable.
I used to live 100% of my time in pre-migraine or migraine. Now I experience a spectacular mental clarity that allows me to live at 100% intensity from a level of energy and well-being that I did not know (or had forgotten).
No one gave it to me, nobody healed me, I got it with my unshakeable will to get it; and above all, with my decision never to give up. Unfortunately, today my parents do not live to tell and celebrate together.
I will share with you the changes in my diet, in my lifestyle, and in my supplementation that made a huge difference in my condition. I still find it hard to believe, but my level of well-being and energy have skyrocketed to the unimaginable. I want everyone to benefit from it. I do not know if what I discovered is also for you, I am neither a doctor nor a therapist, but I share it with you anyway.
My wish is that you benefit from what I learned in my process to end the brain storm of migraine. If the headache is not your problem, congratulations (you do not know what you have been spared), but keep reading because this book contains information equally good for anyone who wants vibrant health and radiant youth.
What you will discover in this book not only saved me from headaches, but it led me to a state of health never before known to me; and to rejuvenate my physical appearance. Many people around me ask me what is my secret of health and abundant youth, they confess that they see me younger, better than ever. I will reveal everything in this book.
When they ask me that they know my age, they are always surprised. In the year of publication of this book I am 60 years old. The photo on the cover is now, now 59 years old. I'm supposed to be fifteen years younger (now you'll understand the title of this book). And the extraordinary thing is that I feel better than at any time in my life before. Better than in my 10's, 20's, 30's, 40's, and 50's.
Imagine that at the age of fifty or sixty there is an abyss between biological age and chronological age ... this is what this book is about, hacking the code of well-being and youth.
Are you ready?
Let's go for it.
