Looking for the seven habits for highly effective post-surgery recovery? Looking to ease symptoms of menopause in yourself or a loved one? Read on, you might find a few tweaks that you haven’t heard of anywhere else. This is how I am approaching my recovery from foot surgery.

Here I open the kimono to show you my personalized take on what I see as truly healthy lifestyle habits, learned in part from the French, the ancestral health movement, and from my own historical research as well as cooking with friends, chefs, butchers, and winemakers in France! Getting foot surgery is undoubtedly both a blessing and a curse, as it is the modern phenomenon of strange shoe-wearing, mostly-indoor lifestyle that got me to my surgery in the first place. Nevertheless, having grown up in this modern, shoe-wearing world (and as a woman finally coming into her femininity, I do love the look, though not the feel, of heels), I am ever grateful to my surgeon, anesthesiologist, and nurses for being at the top of their surgical game for my benefit.

I consider each of the habits below a form of NUTRITION. These health hacks have served me well as I have evolved and learned over the past decade plus. I have references and product links if there is general interest I will go into more detail. For now, here are my approaches to an optimized recovery:

1-CONNECTION

Let friends and family know before you have surgery, if possible, so they will be in touch with you in the days and weeks before and after surgery. It will help you maintain the feeling that you are loved and worth it! Connect with friends and family by phone, message, and email. Don’t be afraid to reach out. People are busy and forget to reach out to you, so break the pattern and reach out to them. Everyone will be delighted to hear from you!

2- FOOD

Nutrient Density is the key concept: Bone-Marrow-A-Day, half ounce of my “multivitamin” veal liver every day, bone broth, grassfed beef (ground, steak, stew, roast, hamburger). I eat a bit of liver almost every day and drink raw milk. I have not eaten spinach in years. My surgeon said I had such dense bones, they were hard to saw through… Osteoporosis and osteopenia are not an issue for me, despite it being present “in my family” and my being peri-menopausal. And BTW, my B12 levels are off the charts high from flagging a year ago, thanks to my now eating liver frequently. Sometimes I eat liver not fully cooked after it’s been frozen for days, then thawed, and I’m too lazy to fully cook it. Heat denatures some of the nutrients, so eating reliably sourced meat raw can optimize the nutrient content, especially when it comes to the B vitamins, but also other delicate nutrients and minerals.

Raw milk, kefir, yogurt, and sauerkraut are good for probiotics to counteract the antibiotics you may be given during surgery and after. Raw milk gives you bioavailable calcium, too! Butter, eggs, fruit, (small amounts of) raw honey (for those with high fasting glucose, insulin, or stress/cortisol levels—that would be all modern living peri-menopausal women, I fear.

Need potassium? Try thymus (sweetbreads.) Come over and I’ll show you how to cook them. Notice I don’t include vegetables, because I don’t really eat them. The anti-nutrients in plants to me are high and the vitamins everyone thinks they are getting in vegetables are not necessarily bioavailable, and all that fiber is hard to digest for someone who had major abdominal surgeries in her twenties, from an inflamed colon, which I now realize may have been from the over-consumption of seed oils at the time (while I was a vegetarian in Kazakhstan onto whose market almost-expired condiments from the EU were being dumped in the early nineties. After being medevac’ed to Germany, six weeks in a hospital, three blood transfusions, two major abdominal surgeries, and a partridge in a pear tree, I knew I had to start eating meat again.) Nutrients in meat have been bioavailable to us for hundreds of millions of years. So I prefer eating the cow that ate the grass, rather than eat the grass, the salad, the vegetable, or the vegetable seed oil.

I also have not mentioned processed chemicals parading as “food.” Watch out, because restaurant and prepared foods in addition to packaged “foods” contain inflammatory seed oils. Having family at home who knows your nutritional preferences is key to getting what you need when you can’t do your own cooking. Avoid inflammatory foods: nuts, seeds, legume, grains, oxalate-rich vegetables (potatoes, cassava, leafy greens, especially spinach!) And definitely no linoleic acid in the form of PUFA seed oils – canola oil, safflower oil, sunflower seed oil, soy bean oil, corn oil, “vegetable” oil. Don’t feel sorry for Big Food. Its products are sending us to the sick-care system in ever-increasing numbers. And Big Pharma loves sick people. Reality Check: If they really wanted you healthy, they would tell you the things I am telling you here. It’s unprofitable to cater to a healthy population.

I eat some bacon when it’s in front of me but chicken and pork is monogastric and doesn’t convert PUFAs (poly-unsaturated fatty acids) and neither do we. Instead, we store PUFAs in our fat and they wreak havoc on our metabolism. Pigs and chickens tend to eat feed which is grain-based. Grains are high in PUFAs. Look it up. But ruminants do convert PUFAs with the power of their multi-gastric and micro- biotic systems. I eat beef meat and organs almost exclusively because of this and because they are the most nutrient dense human foods. Also, chicken, fish, and pork make me itch – must be from a lifetime of over-consuming linoleic acid in PUFAs. Fish is contaminated with heavy metals, even wild caught.

Are you gaining weight you don’t want? Yes, it may be menopause, so try cutting out prepared foods, restaurant food, and using canola with the halo around its bottleneck – these negatively affect your hormones, and the seed oils are have PFAS, hormone-disrupting chemicals we keep trying to avoid. Big Food and the Legacy Media do NOT want you understanding any of this. Again, it isn’t profitable to have savvy “consumers.”

Drink spring water or RO (reverse osmosis) water, preferably not out of plastic. Municipal tap waters have chemical waste in it, like chlorine, fluoride, and pharmaceuticals that don’t get filtered out of “drinking water.” To help with internal bruising, I take homeopathic arnica montana by mouth. What’s my “cheat” food? During convalescence and otherwise, it’s cream with vanilla (no caffeine) rooibos tea!

3-SUNLIGHT

Expose yourself to natural daylight outdoors without contacts or glasses as much as possible. In fact, do some “earthing” in the morning or throughout the day, putting your bare feet on the ground, in the grass if possible, facing the rising sun. This is bio-hacking at its finest and simplest. This also connects you to the earth’s magnetic field. Think about it, we evolved touching the ground. Animals are grounded, plants are grounded. We are batteries charged by the full spectrum of sunlight hitting the Earth as it has oh, I don’t know, for several billion years? People eager to block the sun don’t want you to know this, either, I dare say.

Avoid artificial “blue” light as much as possible. That means avoiding screens before or after dark. Use red lights to get around in the dark. Don’t wear sunglasses during the day, unless you’re on a snow-covered alp in the sunshine or in the sun-drenched dessert. You need the full spectrum of light into your eyeballs and onto your skin, outdoors. UV and IR light are responsible for our hormone production and dosages, so don’t cheat yourself out of natural light. Keep a window open in the car or in the house when possible. Indoors, you can do some red light therapy using a red sauna light at dawn and dusk, from a low angle, just like the sun is at the horizon at dawn and dusk. Allow the light onto your skin for several minutes at a time. As soon as my bandages come off, I will be putting my foot in front of the red light every day. In the days before surgery, I also allowed the red light to bathe my foot in preparation for surgery.

And yes, I’m saying #nonetflix at night – it’s bathing you in blue light. This is also a great opportunity to arrest your addiction to the news – because let’s face it, it is only there to make your cortisol levels rise unnecessarily and give you the munchies, all of which means high blood sugar, and more insulin resistance. Cut the chord with mass media madness. Get sun on your skin, at different times of the day, sit in the sun and the shade. Outside is the best lighting. (Like right now I am writing this outside at the outdoor table, late afternoon, umbrella down, visor on, so I don’t need to squint. It’s 17°C/63°F, and I’m in a t-shirt and shorts.)

And while we’re on the subject of being outside, cold adaptivity helps build your immune system, something that should have been discussed during a Certain Recent Time Period That Shall Not Be Named. Shiver walks, ice plunging, ocean dipping, etc. when there is no open wound and when you can walk are great ways to adapt your body to the cold. Don’t live your life at 70°F yearround (though Florida does have a point!) Icing near the area of surgery 15 minutes on, 15 off greatly helps with pain and swelling reduction. Elevation for the feet or legs is amazing! In fact, this is a good general practice before bedtime, legs against a wall or up on the seat of a chair for 20 to 30 minutes helps you wind down from the day.

4-SLEEP

Sleep when you’re tired. Sleep when it’s dark. In other words, respect your circadian rhythm. Get up when it’s light. Look towards the sun at sunrise and sunset to help your brain reset its clock properly properly – in the suprachiasmatic nucleus in the hypothalamus, to be exact. (Earthing is great at this time.) Don’t hamper your melatonin production by looking at screens at night. If you do look at a screen to tell the time as you fumble for your crutches for the 5^th time (post-surgery, no joke) in the night, put on your red lens glasses. (Give some to your kids, too.) These will at least block some of the sleep-destroying “blue” light coming from your screen. Take naps in between meals and moments of productivity. I am doing “easy” work like photo editing or journaling as my brain work for now. And writing this blog nine and ten days post-foot-surgery.

I sleep on a small grounding mat that is connected by a wire that runs out my window into a stake in the earth below. It’s an all-night inflammation reducer. I have a body voltage meter (yes, I’m a geek) and have tested my body voltage touching and not touching the grounding mat. My excess environmental electrical exposure reduces to almost zero when I’m touching the mat. Turn off wi-fi (and your phone, or airplane mode) when not in use. You don’t need the extraneous EMF radiation. Reduce your exposure where possible. And keep your online shopping to daylight hours.

5-MEDITATION

Meditation à la Dr. Joe Dispenza or others will help you heal your way out of your predicament. Remember that “you are the placebo.” As for medication, I take it when it hurts. I know it’s not forever, just a few weeks/days. I don’t want my brain remembering pain. No need to be a martyr, you only hurt yourself. En plus, menopause makes post-surgery pain worse, because, you know those frozen shoulders you’ve been having? Well they kinda come back while you’re wrestling with knee scooters and crutches and over-compensating for your injury. It’s delightful. I have found I need ibuprofen for my shoulder at day ten more than for my stitched foot! I have found a combination of meditation and pain medication helpful in the first two weeks of recovery. Both of these also help you rest. Rest frequently. This is coming from an over-achiever addicted to productivity.

6-MOVEMENT

I have found that when I awake in pain at night, the best remedy is to GET UP, move around, disrupt the pattern of pain. I drink raw milk or eat half a banana with my meds as needed, but I have been able to put off painkillers by just moving around. Personally, I am impatient to get back to the gym. So I do some upper body movement at home for now. If you are pre-surgery, go for a walk outdoors and get to the gym EVERY DAY and build your muscle mass! That’s an order! The more you build pre-surgery, the more muscle mass you have and the sooner you can get it back. You have to be able to move your bodyweight with one limb in “limbo”! The stronger you are going in, the stronger and less helpless you will feel post-surgery. Rest in between movement and “outings.”

7-AUDIO

I insist on OWNING my music (I have 200 cassettes, fifty+ LPs, fifty+ 35s, 150+ CDs….), but after some family pressure and interest, I signed us up for the family premium on Spotify, which has been around for over a decade, I hear? But Spotify also has audiobooks, podcasts, a few Joe Dispenza meditations, etc., as well as music. I also have a shared Audible account and two libraries online with Libby by Overdrive, so I can listen to the good old classics like the fun-filled Dostoevskiy novel, Brothers Karamazov. I am actually so behind on all the books I have wanted to read all my life, but I don’t like to “read,” right now, so I listen. I learn by listening and doing, anyway. And this is a way to listen while also resting my eyes and not needing the screen to tell me what to picture. Audio is magic! I have been able to make playlists of my favorite songs, even ones I don’t otherwise “own,” so of course this is revolutionary to me. I’ll take it while it lasts. When it all comes crashing down, I’ll still have my battery-operated boom box and 80s cassettes, and books on tape!

Voilà, these are my hacks for optimal recovery. Consider them good for regular life, too.

Let’s redefine what “health” and “healthy” really mean, independent of current conventional “wisdom” and let’s heal ourselves for real! Let me know what you do or what you would like to know more about. Achtung: Proceed at your own risk. Side effects may include feeling better.

Sign up for my newsletter, and find out in the next installment what I will be using on my scars once the bandages come off!

Tania’s BIO

Hi! I am the Founder and Supreme Allied Commander of the small grassfed tallow beauty products company Bordeaux Kitchen Naturals, and I am the author of the award-winning, international bestselling gastronomic-travel compendium, The Bordeaux Kitchen: An Immersion into French Food and Wine, Inspired by Ancestral Traditions. I have been studying ancestral lifestyle hacks in the French and others for over a decade. I create and lead exclusive small group tours to Bordeaux, Paris, and the Swiss Alps.

My mission is with Bordeaux Kitchen Naturals is to give people natural products made from real ingredients sourced from regenerative agriculture that honors animals, the soil, and communities.  I believe in Nature’s wisdom, proven over millennia, and that it’s better to use well-raised animals as the foundation for food and skin care than highly processed plants grown in mono crops using GMO seeds and pesticides that degrade soil, pollute water, and kill the animals in the surrounding ecosystem.  Well-raised and managed herbivores should be seen as a key part of the SOLUTION to climate change by improving soil and sequestering carbon rather than blamed for methane emissions.

Key Words: Maximize Healing Successful Recovery Treatment Wellness Health Grounding Dispenza Meditation Sleep Nutrition Light Bone Density Diet Menopause Peri-Menopause Health Habits Osteoporosis Liver Bone Marrow