How to know for sure what helps? How to find the right path. Learn how we discover the most effective things to do to get rid of chronic disease and how you can apply it yourself.
Many say it is not possible to get rid of chronic disease, others have so many different solutions to offer. Many of them are not effective, and some can even be harmful. Others can change your life. Some seem to work for a while, only to later leave you worse off than before you started.
How to know for sure what actually helps with chronic disease?
This is the same question we asked ourselves when starting Ridgetter.com.
When spending time on the internet to find answers, you can easily fall into a rabbit whole. Or come across an influencer or “doctor” that claims this and that cures chronic disease.
For years I was diving whole heartedly into what a healthy lifestyle and diet is. Different people, institutions and experts claim so many different things. After years and years of reading I got closer to some safe and certain answers, but would still fall for some “health trends” and things that were not actually beneficial or even healthy. And I still had so many questions, even after spending a full time job worth of hours reading for years.
Who’s got the answer?
When looking for answers myself, I went everywhere. First to the doctors. Clarely, lots of people were not getting rid of chronic disease because of them. Most of them said it was not even possible. While it is most certainly important and helpful to manage symptoms and get medication when needed, it was clear to me that they did not offer the answers I was looking for. What was the reason behind chronic disease? And how to get rid of it?
I read every book I could find, and could not stop searching. It seemed like no one I had come across had the complete picture. The experts could be mistaken, they could be right and very often they were probably right in one area, but also recommended things that were clearly out of their field of expertise and therefore maybe not helpful or plain out hurtful.
Medication and science
The doctors are normally quite honest in saying that medication will not cure chronic disease, but might help with symptoms. Still we are taught to believe that science “soon has the complete answer” and “the cure is just around the corner”. I believe those headlines too, only until I discovered that there really wasn’t any chronic disease they had found a cure for up until this day. Somehow they still have us believing that the cure for cancer, psoriasis, diabetes etc is “soon to be found”.
Supportive treatments, and life changing treatments
Meditation, affirmations, yoga, acupuncture, mindfulness, music therapy, aromatherapy, exercise, infrared sauna, rebounding, homeopathy, diets, you name it. There is no end to the list, it could easily have 200 suggestions in it. While most of these are certainly positive and may be helpful, it is not like they can reverse chronic disease completely or alone. Not for everyone or lots of people anyway.
Many people swear by some practice they claim changed their life. But what else are they doing? What else contributes to their wellbeing? Or what else have they been doing that led them to be able to change their life?
We wanted to know what the supportive treatments usually are, and what the life changing treatments truly are.
Who to turn to?
It was not possible to come to any certain conclusions without digging even deeper. But who to turn to? The experts did not agree, and many seemed to be too influenced by having their own agendas, their own products to sell, their own “truth” that they identified so strongly with that it did not seem they would even be open to the fact that they were not 100% right on everything. Some more than others of course, and it is certainly possible to find sound and solid information on many topics (The research of Neil Bernard and Colin T. Campbell on reversing chronic disease with diet is one example). But we wanted more. And we wanted all the details that could help people get a better life.
The source
For years I had heard and read stories about someone getting rid of one or more chronic conditions. It was always presented as a “miracle”. Or simplified as a headline with “do this one thing to cure…”. They could not all be miracles, I thought. And how many were there, actually? And what diseases could they heal from, and not?
After slowly getting rid of my own chronic conditions year after year, I got more and more interested in what other people were doing to get rid of theirs. I wanted to help others, but my one story could only help a few. Maybe only the ones with my exact same conditions as myself? And should they also be of the same age as me? What about gender, background, family history.. And what else?
I knew I needed to talk to more people who had gotten rid of chronic disease. To discover who they were, how sick they were, what they had done and how it all came together. I wanted to find the people who had gotten out of their chronic symptoms after years or decades living with it. Getting the details, organizing the facts and seeing what patterns could come out of it. Only then would I know more about what actually gets rid of chronic disease.
What works best for most people?
When starting Ridgetter, we wanted to know more about what stood out as the most important factors helping as many people as possible achieving as much relief as possible, as fast as possible.
What had they done? In what order and with what kind of help, if any? We wanted to catalog and share the information we found. To get to the truth and to help more people like myself and my children have the best possible quality of life.
That’s why we started interviewing survivors of chronic illness. People that have been plagued by serious symptoms for years, some their entire life – before everything changed and they were able to get out of the conditions that they were told would last a lifetime.
The stories can be so completely different. Some heal fairly quickly while others struggle for years and years. But what do they have in common? What can we learn from these people? What did they do? Where did they start and how long did it take?
Does it come down to the tools they used, the support they got, their mindset or personality or something entirely different? What can we learn from the people who already went through this?
Our information is based on these interviews. On interviews with real people getting rid of chronic disease for good.
The biggest discovery so far
When diving into health articles and stories of people getting rid of disease, one thing became very clear. Lifestyle change that involved diet improvement was always a part of the picture for those who had gotten rid of tons of stubborn symptoms. When we started to interview people, diet change clearly stood out as the factor that really gave amazing results both immediately and over time.
While most people who had gotten rid of chronic disease also did other changes to their lives, such as exercise, mindfulness or anything else, some did only diet change – and had huge improvements still. And everyone we talked to, who had reversed debilitating chronic disease with results that lasted for years and years – had changed their diet.
At Ridgetter we also get into other life style changes, treatments and activities you can do to improve your life and your health. But the reason we focus so much on diet – is simply that it seems to help the most people the fastest, safest and long term.
How can diet change be so helpful?
We are taught to believe that it doesn’t really matter that much what we eat, as long as we eat. In our opinion, this cannot be further from the truth. Again and again we see people who have turned their lives and their health around after decades of debilitating chronic disease, with diet change.
When giving it a second thought, it actually makes quite sense. Our body is built of whatever we put inside it. It is not built from anything else.
We are providing the very building blocks for our body everyday. We might think that our body is built when we are young, and we are only fueling it for energy to move around and think all day. But the food we eat everyday does so much more. Our bodies are built, again and again over the years, from the foods we eat. In addition – food affects every part of our body. Our heart, skin, lungs, nervous system, nails, hair, brain, you name it. The food we eat has the capacity to make us more healthy or more sick. If we don’t provide the right food in adequate amounts, our health will deteriorate.
The different trends, and what works best
Still, within diet change you have so many directions. Raw, vegan, whole food, ancestral and more. We do not place blame, shame, guilt or judge anyone for the way they are eating. We do not take any “side” in the “food wars”. We are simply communicating what we are finding in our research.
Food preferences, habits and traditions are so personal and not always easy to change. Or even to hear or take in another perspective or suggestion.
Still, the only thing we can do is to share what we find. And at this point, the information is clear. To center the diet changes around more fruits, leafy greens, and vegetables is the way that most people get amazing results with chronic diseases.
But what about…?
Yes, there are stories of people going other directions and getting results, but we are looking for what is being told again and again from different people, of different ages and backgrounds. And from the people who were really sick. Not some young, relatively healthy influencer who got “more energy” and “no more stomach ache” from doing a certain diet or activity. We are talking about the people who were bedridden for years or severely struggling with their health.
Luckily, what we find to be the most helpful and effective, is also a safe option. There are many trends out there that are straight out dangerous, and that give people struggling with chronic disease tremendous setbacks.
The diet change we recommend is the one that we find gives people more and more amazing results each year and each decade. The diet change does not result in new symptoms sneaking up after 3-5 years such as constipation, brain fog, heart disease, the constant need for coffee etc.
Adding more fruits and greens to your diet (simply put) is the safer – and most effective – way to start your journey to getting rid of your chronic disease.
Lifestyle plays a role
When going down the road to improve your diet, you might be inspired (and get the energy) to change other aspects of your life as well.
Let the diet be your main focus. Let it lead the way and keep you on track. And after you created a good, solid habit, fill up with whatever other healthy habit you wish to include at the moment as well. If and when you feel like it.
For many people, making any kind of lifestyle change can be too much. So starting with getting more fruits and vegetables in the diet can be
more than enough. So many people started there and then gradually let the change grow into a new lifestyle that over the years altered their lives and gave them so much more freedom, energy and life.
People helping people
At Ridgetter we study survivors. We collect data, organize it and share the common denominators. To help others. We spread the information in order for you to take informed choices concerning your health. People helping people is powerful. And many of the people who were sick, they KNOW what you are going through. Others have been there, and they want to help.
We want to inform, inspire and motivate. Because we know that you can get there.
Grateful
This mission has led us to discoveries we could never have imagined when starting. And we are thrilled to share it all with you as we continue our work. We are so deeply grateful to be able to do this work, talk to all these wonderful people, get all the heartwarming feedback from our readers and help people get their lives back. We will do all we can to help, support and motivate you on your journey to the health you deserve.
Sincerely, the Ridgetter team
