Toxic Washing Detergent and Personal Boundaries
What does it mean to set boundaries in real life? What follows is a personal example from May 2018: In May 2018, me and my partner at this time spent a week away on holidays. When coming back, we had the impression of opening the door to a washing saloon. Some well-intended soul had washed […]
Mental Health & Mind-Body Nutrition
Mental Health is directly influenced by physical health, and vice versa. Nutrient deficiencies, compromised gut health (leaky gut and/or imbalances in gut flora) and inflammation in the body all negatively impact metabolism and as such brain function. The gut-brain connection is a very hot topic in the functional medicine and holistic nutrition world. Here is a good […]
What is the healthiest and most sustainable fish to eat in Belgium?
Fish is a great source for easy-to-digest proteins, healthy fats (more or less fat depending on the type of fish) and key nutrients such as iodine, zinc and selenium (which are all crucial for the thyroid). When it comes to fish, we have to select smartly though, because of potential heavy-metal contamination and of course, […]
Pregnancy after miscarriage: How to deal with fear
When I found myself pregnant again after having suffered a miscarriage just a few months earlier, I was forced to face some very deep fears around loss and suffering. I still remember how in the midst of the 12 hours of contractions that proceeded the first miscarriage I asked my partner how we could ever […]
Why I am not in favor of supplementing with isolated vitamin D
During autumn and winter, it is more difficult to get our vitamin D needs met through sunshine. We would have to expose at least our arms and face to 30min of unprotected sunshine every day to cover our basic needs – and that simply is not going to happen during those colder times. So we […]
What if we stopped trying to make things happen?
In “The Surrender Experiment”, Michael A. Singer promotes the idea that instead of following one’s own preferences, one lets Life be in charge, and simply surrenders to whatever it asks us to do or puts on our path, whether we like it or not. The premise behind is that Life ultimately knows best what we need […]
What I learned from my miscarriages – Part 2
In July 2017, the ground was pulled under my feet when my embryo(s) got flushed down the toilet at 9.5 weeks of my first pregnancy. Apart from the excruciating physical suffering, it was a tremendous emotional shock, since it came completely out of the blue for me (us). Not even once had I considered the […]
Come Full Circle – Miscarriage Poem
You came to usAs an unexpected giftSecretly and silentlyYou installed yourself in my wombMaking yourself comfortableEven if just for a little while Despite the writings on the wallI did not notice you were thereOr ratherI was not able to see the obviousEven though I suspected at timesBut it seemed impossible to my mindAnd as Goethe […]
What I learned from my miscarriage – Part 1
Let’s get pregnancy loss out of the dark. It’s only when I experienced it myself, that I realized how common it is. What a weird world where we are supposed to hide the joy of our pregnancy for 3 months only to then hide the pain if we do indeed lose it. I say let’s […]
The two main reasons people stay up later than they know is good for them
A good night’s sleep CRUCIAL for balanced hormones and metabolism in general. It’s at night that we recover and rebuild. In fact, every organ has its “time” and from 11pm to 3am it’s gallbladder and liver time. This iswhy you would ideally be in bed at 10pm, so you give those organs the chance to […]