Month: April 2015

cracking the wellness code?

This post like many of the others on this site will look at alternative ways of avoiding or possibly lessening lingering unwellness. This applies whether you have a chronic condition or not: After we’ve tried adjusting what, when and how much we eat as well as what, when and how much we move (or be still) we can start to try and address other energy sapping intestinal hitchhikers.

These are approaches I’m trying at the moment to help crack the code of monochrome vibrancy, including the presence of candida and other naturally occurring alien invaders!

  • It’s refreshing to see a doctor acknowledge that yeast overgrowth is a problem and not all in the patient’s head.
  • Shingles (one type of virus we carry, usually without problem) might be an issue for you? If you had chicken pox as a youngster it’s with you for life. When we’re feeling fighting fit this is fine as our immune systems keep it under control but if we have a series of stressful events and life just generally is not feeling like it’s under control the virus that keeps itself to itself most of the time can come out to play by travelling along nerves to make sore blisters/lumps on our skin.

 

 

If you’re one of our regular readers, you may have noticed a change in the way the site looks?

We’re getting happier with its usability. As the volume of posts increase, some visitors had been finding it hard to navigate once they’d reached us.

Let us know what changes you might like to see and we’ll continue to do what we can to make change happen.

 

 

As part of the next installment of my ongoing candida campaign I’ve been taking a biofilm disruptor (between meals) alongside a set of antifungals (with meals) reduced from last autumn.

  • Since reading this page, stumbled into after much searching in frustration at what seemed to be a stall in my chance to get a seat at the wellness table I’ve been taking a disruptor (not dementor). Biofilms are everywhere, apparently: what we brush from our teeth every morning is made up in part from biofilms being created by the bacteria that like living on our teeth.
  • I’ve also started a parasite cleanse consisting of a short course of clove, wormwood and black walnut extracts (read on to find out why).

Yeast (singular or plural? I’m not sure) create Harry Potter style cloaks of  invisibility which leave the yeast impervious to an increasingly inhospitable intestinal tract. It’s one of the reasons antibiotics can sometimes lose their effectiveness (perhaps part of what makes a bug super, too?) After a time, the antifungals including oil of oregano, Uva Ursi, Pau D’Arco, Olive Leaf Extract (amongst others) also stopped working.

My candida reduction protocol started in earnest last August following Christa Orrechio’s suggestions  (mentioned and linked to in another post here) and had been going very well til Christmas.

Things seemed to slide a little as life happened, seasonal celebrations were had and more sugar came into my diet. Shame on me, time to get back on the sugar free wagon, I thought.

Is it blind arrogance to imagine we, as humans are able to gain control of these  opportunistic, hugely successful invaders?

Yeast (in many forms) has been on earth for longer than us and has developed a trick or two to make sure it stays alive. Perhaps we need a certain amount of respect for these immigrants and learn how best to live alongside them?

Whilst facing the yeast shaped beast, we most likely, are also dealing with our addiction to sugar.

I have a handful of skin eruptions on the fingers and thumb of my right hand. It has been suggested to me they could be viral in nature and not, as I’d previously thought: A sign that deeply embedded yeast was on the move in my slowly healing body.

 

makers mark on a building construction

 

This life stuff doesn’t seem to have an easily crackable code to me, yet. But whatever the cause I’ve been feeling pretty good in myself. Sometimes it can be best NOT to look for the code but be glad SOMETHING is working (also referred to as not looking a gift horse in the mouth).

A future post will be about PsychoNeuroImmunology. I was recommended Jo Dispenza’s ‘You Are The Placebo’ as a worthwhile read. It is very worthwhile and also a fascinating, inspiring and empowering way to consider an uneven system.

A nutritionist friend is taking a cPNI training at the moment. I’m excited to see what’s to come, her trainer said he saw people with MS leave him without MS!

Project MS

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s not really Project MS, it’s ‘project me’.

Project managing the most important project of our lives can get pretty stressful if we allow it to. When you think about it, we all project manage our own health (to a greater or lesser extent) every day of our lives.

If we go out to a party we might try and arrange not to have anything too taxing to do the day afterwards. If we help friends celebrate a little too enthusiastically with either cake or booze or a very late night we might take a few more walks, early nights and fewer parties for the next few weeks.

I’m choosing to be aware of my own behaviours in order to get the best care for myself.

We need to be our own project managers and call on the trades that have historically done us well: physiotherapists, nutritionists and a variety of bodywork technicians.

tool kit on the wall

The impact of disordered blood flow in the MS patient, it has been argued, contributes to the lesions or scars in brain tissue and perhaps an overall shrinking of brain volume over time (although reduced activity can also be at fault here?) Deterioration in mobility for people with multiple sclerosis is, in part affected by having less real estate in the brain for messages to get through to where they need to go.

The head needs a steady flow of blood to transport oxygen and glucose to the brain. In MS patients with slower blood flow it has been hypothesised, brain cells can die sooner than for everyone else. Exercise, with its increase in heart rate and breathing might slow down what is apparently inevitable atrophy in the MS’d brain.

The congenital vascular abnormality theory is not widely held by many doctors. It feels like, from this patient’s perspective, medical professionals seem willing to state there are many potential causes for MS but neurologists seem unwilling to accept that the plumbing (fluids flowing in and out of the brain) cannot be one of those mysterious, as yet unidentified causes.

In the case of MS it seems treating the body (for the patient who owns the body) allopathically – dealing with symptoms rather than getting to the root of the condition (what the experts should be up to?) seems to be our best bet for feeling a little better.

Over the past 20 years I’m not sure I can include neurologists in the list of effective tradespeople for the body?

I think I’ll stick to the alternative, functional practitioners. People working in things that affect me every day:

  • Nutritionist, functional doctor,
  • Physiotherapist, Osteopath, Feldenkrais method practitioner,
  • Shiatsu, Acupuncture and Cranio Sacral Therapist.

So far, I’ve found these professionals to be of most use in keeping my body working as best it can… not forgetting doing an awful lot of reading of my own.

At the moment I’m quite taken with You Are The Placebo it brings a refreshing way of looking at the body we inhabit. It was preceded by Biology of Belief which got me thinking differently about a lot of things. Whist working fairly hard on getting my body to do its best I’ve realised it’s time my mind had some attention, too.

 

Circulation Cracked?


what does this image have to do with improved bloodflow?

Nothing, except mackerel is also good for the brain.

So, what if any benefits have I noticed after beginning to address circulation and bloodflow issues in me in 2012? Has improved bloodflow below my head made any sort of difference at all?

I believe it has and will list the three things I’m sure have improved and touch on a couple of other points at the end.

zebrafish

HEAT INTOLERANCE GONE

My brain no longer feels like an overheated computer that’s given up and switched itself off thanks to a prolonged lack of clear flow of air to its cooling fan. The same thing I (and others who believe in Chronic Cerebro Spinal Venous Insufficiency) was happening to my head. Blood was returning to the heart along the equivalent of tiny, country lanes (collaterals) instead of getting onto the motorway and speeding its way back to the heart. This leaves the head, so the theory goes with deoxygenated blood for longer than it should.

BRAIN FOG GONE… MOSTLY.

I still occasionally get a brain freeze like the Green Party Leader when being interviewed in the run up to the UK general election in February, 2015. When that happens, I completely forget what I’m talking and thinking about. She thankfully managed to continue getting words out! Nowadays this mostly happens when I’m stressed (as she was). A meal with more sugars than normal can disrupt the bacterial balance in my gut which I think also gives me a foggy/groggy brain after waking.

FATIGUE GONE.

Aswell as bone crushing tiredness (with no obvious culprit) I was also dozing off after meals which I think was more of an unsteady insulin response but since removing sugar and foods that turn to glucose quickly in the bloodstream this also has gone.

Exercise helped there, too. Specifically, short bursts of intense exercise got my body back to dealing better with sudden rushes of glucose. Raising my heart rate and breathing perhaps jolted my body out of its increasingly sedentary state and reminded it of how it used to function? I mention this as a disordered response to blood sugar also causes fatigue – we’re multifactorial beings so addressing bloodflow from the head was only ever going to be one part of my healing process.

In fact, it’s almost as if the way we treat our bodies has an effect on how they perform for us!

Who knew?

Two more angles to come at the MS symptom problem from are listed below:

I knew my love of zebras was more than just admiring their stripes! This piece of research tells of the zebrafish’s suitability for studying the formation of myelin, (transparent if brief lives). I think it’s safe to say MSers have never been transparent but more importantly in the area being researched in the zebrafish study we can no longer effectively make myelin.

This research makes me wonder why on earth the regrowing of myelin or the vascular aspect of MS not been major topics of investigation?

Sleep and getting useful amounts of it has been touted again in the wellbeing media as one of the kindest things we can do for our brains which is good news to me as I love the stuff!

Eggs are good!

An image of a poached egg on gluten free toast with lots of freshly cracked black pepper, sea salt and coconut oil in place of butter. I’ve used this image as it represents the various changes I’ve made to my diet over the years but perhaps even more since investing in a medical procedure in 2012?

I’m not healed… yet but I firmly believe a positive, open mind that attempts to stay aware of what’s going on around it is going to form the cornerstone of any recovery (no matter how large or small).
  • Eggs have had a bad rap in times past but I choose to aim for about one a day… but without the whites. the runny yolk has a similar consistency to the phospholipid liquid I take every morning (I mention it first, here). Rather than avoid cholesterol containing foods we should seek out clean versions of them. Our body’s use cholesterol for so many essential processes (not least turning sunshine into vitamin D.The whites are the most allergenic part of the egg apparently (and the part I like least) so I don’t find it a problem to avoid but if I’m offered scrambled eggs by a loved one? I’ll take it!
  • Gluten free toast was the first change I made as grains can cause tiny holes in the gutlining letting food into the bloodstream before it’s ready (intestinal permeability) and then can go on to create an immune response from an already confused immune system. gluten free some argue is not much better than gluten containing.
  • Pepper I just like very much and have been eating more of it whilst avoiding members of the nightshade family (dried chili flakes in this instance) to try and heal the leaky gut I spoke of in an earlier post.
  • I use Himalayan, Rock or Sea salt as they taste nicer and choose to avoid the free running granules/table salt as much as possible. It’s when salt is processed and stripped of its naturally occurring minerals (sometimes showing up as colour) that we can end up with problems. Also I have low BP so, at the moment have no need to worry about it rising a little. Increased blood pressure may help a sluggish circulatory system?
  • Coconut oil I also like very much which is also lucky as many people say it’s so damned good for you. Originally we came from the tropics where we’ve gotten used to eating coconuts (is one version I’ve heard to explain why they’re so good and easily digested). The fats from them are quickly turned to energy without needing to use the liver or bile salts, first. The fatty acids it gets quickly broken down into (lauric and caprylic acid) are anti-fungal, anti-microbial and just all sorts of good especially if you’re dealing with fatigue for any number of reasons eg malabsorption lingering infections all stuff that tires the body.

poached egg on gluten free toast

These four approaches represented by the poached egg are me trying not to rock the boat. I want stuff that’s in my gut to stay there til I’ve absorbed everything from it and it’s good and ready to leave! Obviously this isn’t the main part of my diet, that’s non nightshade veg but I find the protein sets me up for the day (with some sprouted seeds in the egg sandwich) future post on sprouts to follow but before that, a post will soon follow on the results of that medical procedure that I think I’ve noticed.

 

as ever, I’m not a doctor and the food choices I’ve made have made sense for me – that’s not to say they’ll make sense for you but it’s still worth paying attention to how our bodies react to the stuff we put in it.