#31: Johanna Lee Owen
"Life is about motion. When I feel stuck and lose sight of priorities, I make a list of things I could do to improve my life in any way and just pick something."
#31: Johanna Lee Owen
Welcome to Health Gossip. Today’s guest is Johanna Lee Owen a mother, artist, biologist, and pioneer of the narrative text-based Instagram story. Last year, she co-founded Ars Scientia, an experimental arts & science journal whose first edition featured a few friends of Health Gossip. You can find more of her work on Patreon.
Location: Ashland, Oregon
Astrology: Taurus/Libra/Virgo
What does health, or being healthy, mean to you?
In an herbal studies associate’s degree I earned, a middle-aged male pharmacist classmate shared that his definition of healthiness was to be “empty.” This resonated with me, although I would add that the “living state” is never empty, emptiness is more of a heuristic for health. There is always a pro-active reading of the pulse of what ebbs in and flows out. Additionally, lots of people could say they are in a deficit, so how could being empty be the object of health? Well, a deficit comes off as a burden, so a deficit is also not equivalent to emptiness. On a constitutional level I always think illness can be categorized in a “negative” or “positive” sense, and would love to see someone take this analogy even further in the realm of theoretical mathematics.
How would you describe your current lifestyle?
Ever since 2013, I’ve been in an experimental mode of living with erratic changes and phases. I hope to end this and settle on something close to age 30. What separates me from a lot of other experimentalists is that I’m rather financially limited and have always had to balance my approach to health around very pressing working class stakes. For instance, pulling all-nighters to finish university coursework on multiple energy drinks, multiple nights in a row after finishing a full day as the mother of an infant is not something I ruled out… This probably sounds a bit tame compared to a lot of other people’s drug experiences!
How do you start and end your days?
START
Wake up around 6:45 AM with my son who is a toddler.
Straight to the kitchen to start breakfast. Usually eggs, yogurt, leftovers, baked goods, some sort of fruit, meat, or other specialty item added. My husband found an espresso machine at Goodwill for $30 so I make cinnamon whole milk lattes every day with shilajit and liposomal magnesium l-threonate (brain and nervous system treatment). Really ashamed of all the pasteurized milk use in my household. I don't fall for the Internet hype, but when you really are a common domestic user of store-bought milk, something definitely feels off about it. Want to get on a cow share ASAP for raw milk. That's how I was raised!
Other supplements/medications I'm on: lysine (for HSV), periodically some Advil to stay on top of any aches and pains if I have them (better to just eliminate than let it turn into something serious), liposomal glutathione for generic anti-aging/energy levels/immune function, adrenal tonic (doing a two month on, two month off, two month on and then quit treatment plan to address healing from my college lifestyle- adrenal tonics should not be taken as a “daily every day supplement”), molecular hydrogen for hydration in a glass of water, liposomal vitamin B12 + B6.
Supplements I want to be on: seasonal elderberry/ginger syrup for my son and I (have been dropping the ball on making one from scratch since I'm not resonating with any of the options out there). Looking into multivitamins and probiotics for my son and would love advice, since I'm skeptical. My son also takes generic Zyrtec for allergies sometimes, and Rescue Remedy if he seems neurotic. I also feel like Vitamin D is necessary but have so many doubts and questions since this is not a water-soluble vitamin.
Get dressed with my son in a pretty formulaic manner. Brush and floss teeth. Currently wearing my hair in a tight knot at the crown of my head. I trimmed only the thin section of my hairline recently so I have some wisps that pop out instead of looking like a border patrol agent. Usually just lipstick and mascara, sometimes blush.
Drop off at daycare, usually head back home right after or hit up a pressing errand in town.
Days currently are spent in highly variable manners! As every domain of my life is in a middle phase, my full focus is on something almost completely different every day. Hint: I'm currently under-employed, entertaining various gigs, and going through a lot of interpersonal narratives with my family and other people. Plus, my son was only doing half-days, so it was a real 4HL vibe of having mornings to myself and then usually playing at the park or a similar activity all afternoon. The afternoon excursions really eat up a lot of time and after finishing my degree recently, I don't feel like forcing myself to work while dealing with an attention-hungry child anymore (at least not for a while). Great memories made, but there is for sure a bit of unemployed loneliness and loser-ness feeling.
END
Focus on dinner while managing an activity for my son to do while I prepare things.
Often checking in with people via text or calls, or checking in with my husband about various issues.
Crossing items off on our analogue calendar that hangs next to the fridge, and writing in new scheduling items we need to be aware of for the coming days. Also a good time to do light financial planning.
Eat dinner, sometimes distracted.
Model bedtime routine for my son to get him to follow along: change into pajamas, brush and floss teeth, read a book (my son doesn't like me to read so he just flips the pages and makes his own comments about the book, I jump in and trace the reading with my finger to some degree), turn the moon-shaped light our neighbor gave to my son onto its red setting and turn all the other lights out, play quiet bedtime stories over audio.
Was there a specific moment in life that made you change your approach to health, or become more conscious generally?
I interred myself to a mental hospital at age 16 and kind of came out of feeling like all I needed were regular meals, nightly sleep, and some level of forced stimulation (i.e., not being allowed to sleep in and having to participate in journaling, group therapy, etc). The lack of screentime probably also played a role in my rehabilitation, but I hate to admit that. On some level my specialists also acknowledged that I had been unintentionally anorexic due to parental neglect and had severe insomnia, probably just needing a place to rest and relax. Ever since then I've had some level of routine that was just not there before.
What’s your relationship to self-healing?
First I want to say that I see the corporate medical infrastructure mainly as a source for testing, which can sometimes extend to calming my anxiety about a condition. For example, I went to the emergency room after having food poisoning to make sure it wasn't a lingering form of food poisoning, happened to learn a lot of useful stuff about different forms of food poisoning by asking. I usually don’t hesitate to visit the immediate care clinic if I have a real concern. I just go with the mindset that clinics and such are for finding out what is going on and not necessarily to get treatment. Unfortunately not everyone is treated as though they are “worth using the resources on,” time-wise or otherwise. I'm not always treated this way but feel like I am given special treatment a lot of the time. The ability to test/screen and check vitals or other levels is something that I really wish was more accessible to the general population.
I’d say I generally try to get as much information as possible on an illness and determine the realistic risks and limitations for home treatment before going the corporate route. Doctors are in fact good consultants for this if you treat them like experts rather than authorities. This means being strategic about how I speak to medical professionals and ask questions. Being straightforward about my ideal outcomes and preferences with medical professionals usually goes well. I only have public health insurance and really wish I had one of those cushy plans that hit all of your health domains by including stuff like regular physical therapy, etc. I’m ready for retired medical-grade spa life.
As a trained herbalist I thought I'd have more to say about self-healing, but I really just go by the book most of the time! I am a minimalist and believe in preventative measures for sure. I’m the type of person who wishes I could have state of the art medical-grade surgeries privately at home, not the type who eschews modern medicine fundamentally. I'm very into “state-of-the art” healing.
Do you have any guiding principles?
Life is about motion. When I feel stuck and lose sight of priorities, I make a list of things I could do to improve my life in any way and just pick something. When my priorities and demands for survival are clear, I write down the small steps that are needed and try to focus on those. Usually it is more productive to combine everything I need to do into one handwritten notebook and one list, instead of separate work tasks from housecleaning, from family time, from creative pursuits, etc. It’s all the same to-do list and the goal is to live.
Effective communication is the key to social well-being. Non-violent communication guides, guides to workplace communication for people with ADHD, and documentaries on body language have all helped me. Just be pro-active about telling people stuff they need to know and asking questions about things that are bothering you.
Where do you look to for information or advice?
I'll just share the herbal studies curriculum that was curated for me and let people go from there:
Green Pharmacy by Barbara Griggs on the history of herbal medicine
Principles and Practice of Constitutional Physiology for Herbalists by Michael Moore
Specific Indications for Herbs in General Use by Michael Moore
The Herbal Handbook by David Hoffman
Writings of Hippocrates, Galen, Nicholas Culpeper, Ibn Sina-Rosemary Gladstar
Ina May Gaskin midwifery, her 2003 Guide to Childbirth is EXCELLENT and I haven't even read her iconic 1970s stuff.
Matthew Wood’s Earthwise herbal guides
Wild Roots by Doug Elliott
Anthroposophic medicine and biodynamic agriculture are fun rabbit holes.
The Bootstrap Guide to Medicinal Herbs in the Garden, Field & Marketplace
John Uri Lloyd and the eclectic medicine school. Check out Lloyd's psychedelic scientific allegory novel Etidorhpa; Or, The End of Earth, published in 1895. Early chronicles of North American colonial medicine often took the form of logs, where these experimentalists would sample things on themselves and take notes—like the website Erowid but for plants, and in the 19th century. John Uri Lloyd did this.
Chinese Herbal Medicine: Formulas and Strategies by Eastland Press
Medical anthropology textbooks, mini-series, articles, public health papers, etc.
Databases such as DrugBank, NCBI, NIH, PubMed, etc! You may come out of it learning just as much about economics as health.
In terms of diet, I'm really into the wild food artist Pascal Baudar right now and want to live by his example. In terms of exercise, I'm trying to get more into isometrics, the ELDOA method, pilates, and dance. I like seasonal food and foraging guides specific to my area. I love the food co-op and the community bulletin board.
What’s your perfect meal?
I just like fresh ingredients and cuisine. I like when things are prepared correctly but I enjoy some food trends or wacky hobo recipes, too. I'm more of a meat and three person than a burrito-pizza-burger person.
Bangers and vinegar mash with green onions, little gem salad greens with probiotic cilantro lime dressing, and OJ.
What advice would you give to your past self?
Don't listen to your parents. Especially about things they aren’t experts on, like art or finances.
What advice would you give to the person reading this?
Keeping a record of illness, treatments, and health practices in your lifetime, and what has worked or hasn't, is a great way to inform your own practice. It is easy to forget about chronic issues until they escalate again, unless you are constantly researching them and informing your approach to living. I write down my anxieties about health issues I have or feel at risk of and try to focus on dealing with those concerns in terms of research (i.e., personalized research). One can do this for their loved ones or children as well. Online forums can be a great starting point in research for both health and beauty issues, although there is obviously tons of terrible advice on them, too.
Having a health philosophy is good, but the reality is that treatment and lifestyle revolves around products, routines, and practices in the real world. It’s all about specifics and personalization. You don’t need to worry about an overall philosophy too much if you’ve got the specifics down to deal with the issues that you and those you are responsible for are likely to encounter. So in reality, a lot of being a mom or a chronically ill person is just doing consumer research extended to the level of hygiene products or diet.
An approach to information gathering I would recommend is to gain a full perspective on all the options and approaches available for any specific illness or wellness/beauty concern and systematically eliminating what doesn't work for you. Test up in terms of intrusiveness (try the least intrusive approach first and work up from there if needed). I gained this approach from Susun Weed's “Seven Steps to Approaching Healing” [also called “Seven Rivers of Healing”], which starts with ‘do nothing’ and ends with ‘invasive Medical Interventions with side effects.’ I'm not sure I would grant Susun Weed the overall seal of approval, but she is for sure a respected herbalist despite a lot of controversy.
What would you like to see/create more of in the world?
Nothing beats the resources I accessed in formal training for pre-med. Standard advanced medical knowledge needs to be much more incorporated into public knowledge, especially topics like developmental biology or genomics. There are great video-based resources such as documentaries as well as textbooks and articles. I trained for medical scribing for three months and then quit after training, now I’m stuck with the enthusiasm of a newly minted paramedic-type who is over-eager about basic knowledge on topics like diabetes or musculoskeletal disorders. I get that the corporate American model is busted, but the way out of that is to co-opt the infrastructure, not to discard it.
I think people should embrace stuff like emergency first aid training. If someone in your life has a serious illness, they deserve the best possible home care that a specialized doctor could give them. People deserve access to the best possible technology and most updated knowledge. This comes down to specialized knowledge. It's not that I want everyone to be indoctrinated, it’s that I want people to have equitable access to state-of-the-art medicine and specialized personnel if they want it. I think about medicine in a biopunk way.
Note: this Q&A was originally published via Mailchimp. Read the full issue here.
 | A guest post by
|