deezll, Author at Chronic Alternatives • Page 5 of 7

Candida Overgrowth Part 2 and/or SIBO?

This is the second part of my candida cleanse collection of posts.

What can we do after finding our spit sinks first thing in the morning? (please see the previous post for details on sinking spit here).

I’ve entered into this protocol with a bit more vigour than in the past and am now into my 3rd month of a daily diet of pretty much no sugar, booze, yeast and/or vinegar but lots of fresh veg (mostly greens less starch) and no sweet fruit (green apples and blueberries are ok in moderation). Recently I have reintroduced fermented vegetables (I describe the making of them here).

I checked my spit this morning as I’ve been feeling slowly, slightly a little better in a number of areas.

My limbs feel more… reliable,
my balance seems more centred (I don’t feel like I might overbalance and fall over as much and
my head feels clearer. I appreciate none of those statements sound like gamechanging successes but
I no longer crave sugar! That I consider to be a resounding success.
I treated myself with a square of 85% dark chocolate and there’s still a quarter of the square left this morning!

I’m still not great at carrying two cups of hot liquid in both hands at once (a few drops spilt but neither cup tipped) these are all tiny signs (to me at least) that things are changing. Grated ginger in one and loose leaf green tea in a yellow submarine in the other are both I believe, polyphenol rich and therefore, desirable?

I have a question mark as there are so many things I don’t myself have proof of and have to take it on trust that various people on the internet aren’t lying to me and as far as I know, I’m not lying here either but like I mention in various other posts, your best bet is to do lots of reading from lots of different places and become your own research and/or researcher.

Anyway, let’s get on to how these happy changes may have come about.

In the previous post I spoke of hugely reducing my sugar intake, stopping booze, vinegar and generally what could be considered as excess starch consumption. It’s not like I was a booze hound or I ate all the cakes every day but even a tiny amount was giving fuel to the yeasts that I felt had grown out of control in me resulting in recurrent UTIs, fatigue and fierce sugar cravings.

Along with those dietary changes I followed the regimen of antifungals as suggested by Christa Orecchio when talking to Sean Croxton (both of whom I believe I mentioned in the previous post. So, I’m hoping to try and get rid of

recurring yeast infections
remorseless fatigue
bloating and gas
poor memory
brain fog.

At every meal, I have been starving the yeast of its favorite food (by not eating those foods) aswell as, in 4 day rotations, taking two at a time of:

pau d’arco
olive leaf extract
oil of oregano (this one is cruel as the smell reminds me of Italian food!)
grapfruit seed extract
uva ursi

As well as my

Betaine HCL supplements with every meal (the dosing of this supplement deserves its own post – watch this space).

This supplement enhances the amount of stomach acid to help digest a meal. When things are ticking along nicely Hydrochloric acid should be your first line of defense in killing pathogenic bacteria from food but age, a history of disordered eating, antibiotic use, stress and low salt diets can all interfere with our body’s natural ability to produce it. Every morning, before food I take a spoonful of

Diatomaceous Earth and
Bentonite Clay mixed with water.

The clay has a positive charge which can be lessened when it comes into contact with metal. Luckily the company I bought it from supplied a wooden spoon. The DE (food grade) has really sharp edges that scour out your gut and the clay clings to particles. Essentially the two products together behave like Harvey Keitel in any number of his roles as a ‘cleaner’ in films. Combined they remove the evidence of the bacteria’s presence in your body.

I think this subject could be spread into a third post but for the moment I’m stopping here. My spit was floating and I thought it might be safe to have a glass of wine, it wasn’t. So, I’m back to ensuring my spit doesn’t drown! I’ll keep you informed of changes.

I mention SIBO in the title and honestly have little idea of the difference in action of an opportunistc yeast and a Small Intestine Bacterial Overgrowth as I haven’t gone as far as sending my stool off to be analysed. I’ll see what I can do on my own for the moment as I understand there is some overlap between having an overgrowth of one organism when compared to another.

Candida Schmandida?

There’s regularly much mention in complementary/well being/alternative circles about troubles with candida albicans, its overgrowth and the many and varied symptoms it can create in humans. This post will be looking at just one strand of how to get a body working better by introducing how to see if it’s a problem for you.

My next post will go into greater detail about how to reduce it’s presence in the body. Have a look online there are many people who suspect it could be an issue for a great many people – not just those with MS or other auto-immune conditions.

Have you had what feels like fatigue out of all proportion to any exertion on your part?
Do you get aching joints not explained away by your activities?

These are just a couple of the symptoms attached to the actions of this opportunistic organism in your system. Fatigue and aching joints could be down to many other things so read on to find out how to rule this culprit out.

When I first started my ‘journey’ towards enhancing my wellbeing (soon after diagnosis) I spent the afternoon in a bookshop choosing which book to buy to tell me something about the condition, Multiple Sclerosis, a self help guide seemed to be the most positive in outlook and full of what appeared useful stuff.

This all happened in the days before I was introduced to the internet but it’s still a great book and the guidelines hold their own against many websites and blogs nowadays. I’m eternally grateful to the author Judy Graham for introducing me to an alternative way of looking at my condition before the tsunami of auto-immune journeys flooded the wellness side of the web.

I’ve hesitated to use the word empowering in previous posts but I think it’s an apt description of the book I read and how I felt after reading it.

Since then all the Ws have arrived and google helped the web become a place to go and find stuff out, whilst not even having to put your shoes on to leave the house… what progress!

Various candida cleanses are available so I thought I’d join in! Seems to me the best place to start is finding out if it might be an issue for you and could be contributing to existing symptoms you may have.

My thanks to Christa Orecchio for some of the detail collected from a talk given to Sean Croxton (I mention his JERFing mantra elsewhere on here). Just eat real food (his mantra) I mention in an earlier post and backed up by Dr Josh Axe and any number of naturopathic practitioners:

first off is candida albicans rampaging in your body?

After getting up in the morning, before you brush your teeth or have a cup of tea/coffee/hot water and lemon juice (helps alkalize your system, I’ll write about this in another post) pour a glass of water and work up some spit in your mouth then spit into the glass and leave it til after you’ve had some breakfast (not somewhere where someone might accidentally drink it!)

After half an hour or so has your spit stayed floating on the surface of the water or has it ‘grown legs’ and some or all of it has sunk to the bottom of the glass?

When everything’s in order and we haven’t been taking another curse* (sic) of antibiotics or been dealing with a range of different stressors on the body (including physiological stress from food intolerances as well as emotional and/or mental stress) we manage to co-exist with an array of symbiotic hitchikers in our systems. These guys live in our gut and help to digest our food when all’s going well and communicate with other parts of us like our brains and fat storing departments.

*Don’t get me wrong, antibiotics have their place but it seems we, as a society have come to rely on them too much which has brought its own well reported troubles.

You may have noticed, as members of the western ‘developed’ world, most of us are pretty good at not allowing our bodies to reach calm. Buddhists consider our constantly gabbling brain to be a ‘monkey mind‘. this incessant internal noise can contribute to a poorly performing immune system which, in turn can pave the way for an opportunist bacteria to make a break for the big time in your belly.

Anway, I should stop showing you evidence of my monkey mind and get back to the detail of this particular candida cleanse.

Did your spit sink?

If it did that’s a sign there are too many things living in your digestive tract (the tube between mouth and anus). In earlier posts I’ve mentioned Hippocrates and him believing that all disease starts in the gut. Most, if not all functional doctors agree.

One of the first things to do is remove from your diet stuff that these rowdy inhabitants of our gut like to eat. Unfortunately it’s the same kind of thing we can be partial to, too:

sugar
vinegar
yeast
alcohol

Incidentally, this is how sugar effects our brain without any need for ‘outside’ help. Sugar it seems doesn’t do us or critters living in us much good.

There’s more to follow but try doing less of these things to start with and see if your body behaves a little better without their influence.

My next post will go into more about the symptoms and the 2+ month protocol involved in slowly removing this energy robber from your system.

I mention Judy Graham as she talked about candida and I read about it some 15 years ago and things might have progressed differently if I’d tackled this situation then.

I appreciate if, if, if don’t amount to a hill o’ beans suffice to say I’m two months in to the no booze or sugar protocol and I think it’s doing me some good but perhaps too early to tell?

disenchanted forest

Sometimes it feels as if my very determined cat has as much chance of getting to the bottom of MS as the current crop of researchers.

What does Russell Brand (famous in the UK for being a non-voter, comedian, actor, past drug user and ex husband of Katy Perry) have to do with the current state of MS research?

Much more than my cat, it turns out.

A number of us with this particular chronic disease are disenchanted by what the medical establishment are offering us.

We may not be debating such lofty subjects as the future of democracy but the stranglehold the MS establishment (neurologists) have over our care is every bit as important in our lives.

A number of us have chosen not to participate in auto-immune theories (and treatments developed from them) and as such we could be considered to be disenfranchised.

disenfranchise

ˌdɪsɪnˈfran(t)ʃʌɪz,ˌdɪsɛn-/

verb

past tense: disenfranchised; past participle: disenfranchised

deprive (someone) of the right to vote.

“the law disenfranchised some 3,000 voters on the basis of a residence qualification”

deprive (someone) of a right or privilege.

“we strongly oppose any measure which would disenfranchise people from access to legal advice”

We, as owners of an as yet impossible to cure disease have been deprived of the right to a second opinion in the research field. MS is many things to many people. Prof, Giovannoni has been receptive as have many others, to the idea that MS is multifactorial meaning it has a number of possible causes including exposure to the Epstein Barr virus, lack of appropriate sun exposure/vitamin D deficiency whilst our bodies develop, a trauma to the head prior to symptom appearance and exposure to emotional trauma to name just a few likely suspects.

So, we believe there isn’t just one story to explore in the process of finding a cure and would rather not be given chemotherapy drugs before the experts entirely know what they’re dealing with

I can’t speak for anyone else but I’ve become pretty disenchanted with the status quo. I have reached a similar conclusion to Russell Brand – it’s best not to hold one’s breath while expecting change.

Another piece of news caught my eye this morning which is sort of related Sir Nicholas Winton. Here is a man who coudn’t stand by and let things carry on as they seemed to be destined to. I’m not comparing a contemporary cenlebrity’s actions to those of a one hundred and five year old’s action on the eve of the 2nd WW but the fact I can mention them in the same paragraph only serves to highlight how few folk there are who are willing to put their heads above the parapet.

The MS treatment I want to explore

In the news today (20 October) the UK was given the proposition that dying folk should be given experimental drugs before they get through the full trial process. Let’s ignore for the moment that the full trial process hasn’t delivered much for MS patients. So what sort of shenanigans are pharmaceutical companies looking for? Extensive testing hasn’t worked in MSers favour so what sort of dark hell might be unleashed without the double blind placebo controlled ‘gold standard’ in place?

Colorado have reported on this idea in May which a bit puts paid to my theory that it was a fine piece of distraction from the venal behaviour of drug companies not investigating an African disease until it starts threatening the monied, developed world.

My first thought was that it was a bit of damage limitation from the pharmaCos to distract us from the fact that curing a killer like ebola just isn’t financially worth them even starting (do they have a union that does pr for ALL their questionable/commercially sound behaviour?).

Bloomberg Businessweek reported on the plan in August.

Why does the treatment of the disease Ebola have any relevance to MS?

Don’t worry, I’m not connecting the two in a symptom sort of way but I believe both conditions have been poorly served by pharmaceutical companies.

I really feel quite uneasy about the treatment that pharmacos have meted out on MS patients throughout my 20 year ‘MS career’. When I couldn’t get hold of DMDs, before they were available in the UK I wanted them very badly, then NICE was born (especially to avoid the ‘postcode lottery’ surrounding MS prescriptions) and they became available so I read up the trial results as I’ve mentioned more than once.

In my mid 20s with not many regular symptoms it didn’t make sense to me to take multiweekly injections for a less than 50/50 chance of benefit. Other than a couple of goes at steroids to get back my ability to walk again after fresher’s flu went bad in me I have stayed pharma free.

I think I’ve talked about a vascular aspect to MS having been spotted by Charcot in the 19th century. He gave this disease a name and yet this aspect of our condition is barely being investigated. I’ve certainly mentioned my own taste of this theory in Brooklyn a couple of years ago, where an ultrasound was taken of my jugular veins from the INside where a valve was seen to be blocked shut.

We have more and more appropriate imaging technology since noticing in 19thC postmortem brains that veins might be implicated. Why is this theory not investigated further with the full force of what we have at our disposal? It doesn’t help to get too stressed about it but, no matter how many times I stamp my feet, life STILL isn’t fair. My blood gently simmers at the injustice of our woefully inadequate treatment from the people we’re supposed to trust. I feel for those who live under the shadow of Ebola and the horrific injustice they face every day when they continue to see no effective science being done in their name.

I’m glad my father encouraged me to question everything (perhaps not consciously but he did). I think it’s stood me in good stead for identifying folk’s motives. Although I s’pose, with pharmaceutical companies you don’t have to dig too deep to see the profit motive.

Perhaps I’m very wrong though? See, that ‘question everything’ trait is shining through!

Improving Prognosis?

The image of ivy is from my back garden and illustrates one of the few things that truly thrive there.

NIHCE have issued guidelines to address which treatments might be worth the NHS providing for MS patients. Aside from the disease activity going on in our brains we have similar symptoms to many other chronic conditions. Some of those symptoms are brought on by our bodies becoming increasingly inactive due to deterioration in our brains. It’s even been cheerily suggested by a London research establishment MS could be rebranded as a form of dementia. With this in mind I thought I’d share a link I was sent that was made with seniors in mind but could be useful for anyone that doesn’t move as much as they used to.

NIHCE have suggested no longer financing injections of B12 to try and reduce fatigue (unfortunately, I’ve never been able to get hold of any through any number of GPs) but perhaps with more people asking for some basic maintenance strategies from their GP things might change?
Vitamin D supplementation is involved in many processes carried out in the body every day and helps regulate the body’s own immune activity. it might be wise to address both of these deficiencies in the general public aswell. A GP can carry out this test.
On the pharmaceutical side NIHCE would also prefer not to pay for Fampridine and Sativex. There wasn’t enough evidence to show statistically significant efficacy for all four supplementation approaches.

News of the Commonweath Fund’s conclusions about the brilliance of the NHS in a global league table of developed nation’s healthcare systems (as long as you don’t have a long term condition) I’ve mentioned in another post. The NIHCE use all sorts of equations and algorithms including weighing up loss of tax earnings for the country if these citizens can no longer earn and contribute. Perhaps the measure for the wellbeing of patients with long term health conditions needs to be adjusted?

I’m conflicted about withdrawing a therapy that has worth for some people but then I remember that the NHS doesn’t have bottomless pockets and whilst some people are missing out on marginally increased walking speeds, baby units and end of life care could perhaps benefit from the spare cash? I’ll still be buying my own supplements even if it doesn’t clearly contribute to improving prognosis on the NIHCE scale of improvement as I’m choosing to believe when their effects are all added up, these therapies are worth applying to help keep my body working as best it can. I think this outlook involving positive thinking may bring its own benefits.

A UK MS researcher agreed that good things appear to happen during O2 therapy after being asked for his opinion on a study on this website where Israeli long term stroke patients found new brain cell growth/synaptogenesis after receiving intensive O2 therapy in a decompression chamber. There are things we can do for ourselves that might help a little. I appreciate this isn’t a very rock and roll closing statement but it seems we, as owners of chronic conditions are in charge of improving our prognosis.

Simple strategies for living well

Take a piece of string, measure your height with it and fold it in half, does it fit around your waist?

Waist to height measurement is a pretty good indicator of whether you really need that extra helping of… cake/pie/favourite foodstuff!

A balanced diet is made up (thanks to Paul Chek for this simplification) of food with eyes (protein and fats) and food with no eyes (carbohydrates). Avocados and nuts are exceptions to that rule but generally vegetables growing above ground like leafy greens will be less starchy than vegetables grown below ground: potatoes, sweet potato, beetroot, parsnips and carrots to name a few.

Why does all this matter?

There are a growing number of people that believe the gut is at the heart of most disease. Hippocrates got there first over two thousand years ago but a growing number of people alive today are also questioning the quality of the food we eat nowadays and are looking for simpler/less procesed foods to eat. Stuff that our bodies have evolved to digest over multiple dozens of millennia.

There are many different versions of the ‘Just Eat Real Food‘ sentiment. Eat food, not too much and mostly plants is the simple guideline given by journalist Michael Pollan in his book In Defence of Foods.

Food = Epigenetic information. Which is a new way to think of our morning break fast.

Every piece of food we eat ‘talks to’ the cells in our body. These conversations can shape how our bodies continue to exist in their environment. I think but am not fully read up on the research yet, that what we eat over time can impact how our bodies respond to everything around us. And our decendants!

Epigenetics is a fascinating area of research: A 2nd WW dutch famine had repercussions for the grandchildren of those who lived through it. Our DNA forms the building blocks of who we are but those building blocks can be shaped by the world around us, too.

This nutrition lark seems to be far from straightforward!

I attended an online summit called the Evolution of Medicine at the end of September 2014. In it a number of functional medicine experts and enlightened ‘regular’ doctors were interviewed and issues were identified that needed to and were beginning to change in mainstream medicine.

We have a slew of chronic disease – much of it could be considered to be mediated by the way we live. Type II diabetes is better dealt with by addressing what you eat and how you move now rather than waiting for a profoundly reduced insulin response to turn into heart disease, stroke, nerve damage, wonky eyes (my wording)… the list goes on.

We eat a diet so far removed from what our bodies have been designed to cope with, no wonder they’re ‘slipping up’ and creating disease in us. It’s not just GM foods that could be storing up trouble for us and our children. Food is just one aspect of how we can make our lives a little better.

Small changes to how and how much we move can have surprisingly satisfying results. Getting outside and going for a walk every day is good for the soul as well as our heart and lungs. I’ve been performing my own version of HIIT (high intensity interval training) on my exercise bike. I can’t walk very far and have a wheelchair for events that call for more walking than say, getting round a supermarket with a trolley to hold onto so it’s not often that I can achieve a change in my heart rate.

There are a wide variety of websites I visit and gather what I hope is useful information to me and I assume others including a number of strands of research from around the world. Change in my body (including not getting out of breath so quickly) seems to be happening… slowly but I think getting the heart rate up must get more blood pumping round the body and that includes the brain so, a handful of 30 second bursts on the static bike every other day with the resistance turned up is giving my brain a treat. It also has a happy side effect of warming perpetually cold hands and feet!

To a continually pumping heart the brain is just another extremity (like hands and feet) that the pressure and circulation doesn’t always reach. Gravity works against the brain here, unfortunately.

Always low blood pressure can be as problematic as high BP resulting in fatigue perhaps partly because the brain isn’t getting enough glucose or oxygen to function optimally.

I read this in a fascinating book Why Isn’t My Brain Working by Datis Kharrazian. He has used a similar functional approach to identify strategies to improve an underperforming thyroid.

It’s always a good idea to get an MOT from your gp to check that your body can cope with the changes you’d be asking of it with a new exercise regime. I never used to be much of an exercise person but I was also a smoker as a youngster so i wasn’t really caring what my body may have been trying to tell me!

Small things can make a difference and some simple strategies have got to be worth a go, no?

eat your greens!

We can science-ize the term ‘eating your greens’ for the 21st century by talking about the beneficial effects of folate on our methylation cycle.

As people with a long term condition we can seem easy prey for all sorts of quackery. This is an article that I believe might chime with our innate penchant for experts. This is another article that mentions the therapeutic use of a substance for a range of chronic conditions. This, on the other hand is an article about a therapy that has fallen from favour since its birth at the beginning of the 20th century. I don’t include mention of this therapy because I advocate its use (it could be great, I haven’t looked into or had experience of it) but rather as an example of how science and medicine (it appears) aren’t ruled by efficacy but fashion, chance and luck.

The author of the science based medicine blog (a laudable fondness, it would be nice if mainstream ms treatments could follow that same model!) doesn’t damn the little known therapy out of hand. He could find no data to say the therapy didn’t work so wonders why it did fall from favour?

My cynical self wonders if its demise coincides with the growing clout of the pharmaceutical industry and it’s love of treating symptoms rather than getting to the root of the problem. But I could just be a bitter old cynic!

Another area of research that in an earlier post I said I’d be getting back to you about looks at the level of homocysteine in us (it’s a naturally occurring substance created as waste products of essential bodily processes involving mitochondria, like making ATP (these little aliens in all our cells are the energy factories). and when our bodies are functioning at their best we are able to process it. This is good as it’s apparently a better indicator for cardiovascular disease in the future (in all its flavours) than any number of HorLDL cholesterol measurements. When we’re functioning optimally our bodies are able to break down and disperse homocysteine as part of the methylation process.

You may be able to tell, this is still quite new to me. From what I’ve gathered from Ben Lynch’s presentation on the MTHFR gene mutation when things aren’t performing optimally the body gets tired and like all of us, when that happens things start to go wrong. It shows in a number of ways including a variety of chronic conditions or cancers.

We can begin to address this by getting in touch with 23andme.com to get our DNA sequenced which, apart from letting us know where our ancestors are likely to have come from can also (after the data is interpreted by a functional medicine practitioner) let us know of some common markers that identify the potential shape of future disease in us. Personal healthcare is getting personaller!

I’ve begun this process as my dad’s family left Ukraine at the end of the 19th century and I’m nosy and would like to find out more. Not just to identify gene mutations or SNPs as I believe they’re called but to get in touch with my ‘roots’. This information can give you percentage likelihoods of getting certain diseases (if you ask your practitioner for that information to be revealed to you).

I figure knowledge is power and if I’m aware of potential problems I can head them off at the pass and reduce the possibility of that potential by how I live my life right now.

Before I start to think about the results of any of this information coming back to me (the process takes a few months) I plan to eat even more fresh greens. Folate is pretty important at helping our bodies function at their best so, when your mum told you to eat your greens when you were little it seems she was talking some sense and perhaps we should have tucked in and shouldn’t have rolled our eyes so much?

alternative healthcare

“Right now, they [mspatients] are not getting the kind of information we as [health care] providers would like them to get,” Wray said.”

This is quoted from a Boston Globe article of the 11th September. ACTRIMS – ECTRIMS researchers were apparently concerned about the ‘perceptions’ of ms patients.

I’d like to know where would doctors and MS researchers present at the conference rather patients get information from?

Surely not them?

Are these the same groups of people who didn’t believe in the possibility of an overgrowth of candida albicans? (thinking of more than one old GP when i make this statement)?

The same people who throw antibiotics at a problem as a first line of defence? (thinking of an old GP when I make this statement) rather than further investigation of the problem. I appreciate GPs have little time per patient but perhaps we could consult a ‘project manager’ for our bodies or even be entrusted to be our own project managers?

We are perhaps the best people to be put in charge of enhancing our own health?

The same group of people who, along with most of the rest of us didn’t know the significance of a microbiota until we found out from various TED talks over the last few years and recently a BBC2 Horizon programme on allergies (I referred to one of the over 1,000,000 pages google finds on the subject in an earlier post?

The same people who thought stomach ulcers were caused by stress not an infection?

The same people who believe that what we eat can’t have as much effect on how we feel and function than their questionably effective pharmaceutical offerings? (thinking of an old neurologist when i make this statement).

The status quo can’t continue.

The image above comes from a collection of mine with the name Earth Abides, Ecclesiastes 1:4. It was the title of a 1949 American sci fi book my dad gave me by George R Stewart. The world’s population gets wiped out and civilisation goes about starting again amongst the remains of our current civilisation.

Looking back, to get an apocalyptic tale as I was on the cusp of becoming a teenager was very good. It taught me to question everything. The message I chose to take from the book was ‘nothing that lives on earth is forever but that’s ok because we can choose to adapt’ and the planet will continue.

Things seem to be changing and we now have architecture acknowledging the presence of and creating designs specifically to take advantage of omni present bacteria.

If we believe that the 20th century was all about stamping out pathogens and healthcare was involved in a mighty struggle between us and them (evil bacteria causing disease left right and centre). Then the 21st century shape of healthcare will be all about harnessing the power of these omnipresent beings to help us, the puny human.

Some question our faltering scientific progress in medicine (as an owner of a chronic condition one of those ‘some’ is me) and ask whether antibiotics represented the only noteworthy advance in medicine since William Harvey’s discovery of blood’s circulation in the body in the early 17thC. This discovery rather neatly yet arrogantly ignores the Ancient Chinese’ awareness of body systems (please see earlier post).

Perhaps I’m biased but I choose to firmly believe that asking questions and finding out answers can only be good for our brains.

I feel the image above still stands as a representation of all that we live amongst and stands as a fine illustration of the impermanence of man. This too shall pass could be an alternative title and probably, bacteria will continue, relentlessly, to play their part long after our petrol shops have gone!

Is feeling a bit better as good as a cure?

I remember when as youngsters who knew no better, we used to wave our inebriation like a badge of honour; happy happy days but not really suitable as a long term strategy!

I think a bit differently about life now and have different priorities.

Whilst I’m with Dylan Thomas on this one and all in favour of not going gently into that good night I don’t like the fight, struggle and battle analogies common with various types of illness. Why would you want to create further imbalance in your body than it obviously already has?

We’re here, let’s get invested into making life as good as it can be. We may as well investigate how we can make life a little better. To use a lottery saying and adapt it to life – We’ve got to be in it to win it.

Receiving a chronic diagnosis changes everything.

It can change everything in a number of ways depending on the choices we make:

We can choose to see the future as an everlasting dance with our own body.

we are after all, hopefully in this for the long haul so conserving energy isn’t the choice of a wimp rather the enightened individual.

Does the dusting need to be done as regularly as before?

Does it matter if the kitchen floor isn’t clean enough to eat off of?

Realising what’s important (and what isn’t important in life) somewhat focuses the mind. Listening to our bodies is something that might make our life a little easier. There’s at least one school of thought that puts unattended issues in your mind and the always interconnected body at the heart of later chronic disease. A recurring fungal infection is a sign that you’r body is not working optimally. Usually we coexist with a variety of parasites living in our body quite happily – it’s a beautifully functioning, symbiotic relationship – they help digest our food, make vitamins, form an immune response to foreign invaders and perform other vital services but if you have recurring bouts of athlete’s foot or UTIs for example, your immune system is not strong enough to be able to keep everything in balance.

If you don’t address this issue it can develop and eventually become something else after years of putting off doing something about it. Possibly an autoimmune disorder?

It’s worth listening to what our often ignored bodies are trying to tell us. People found here can help us sort through the unknowns about our health. They dig a little deeper than our GPs have time to.

In the spirit of paying attention to things to advantage ourselves I was finding out about the 9 circles of Hell in Dante’s Inferno. This goes into it in a little more detail. The 8th circle interested me most – fraud (which includes flatterers, sorcerers, seducers and liars). I can think of two professions that could fit the bill but which ones have you come into contact with that would fit right in to your circle of hell? Advertisers, marketeers and certain parts of the contemporary scientific process fit into mine!

My dissatisfaction with the scientific process may be related to the fact that not only has mainstream science not come up with a cure for ms but they also are not aware of things that could make life a little better. In the spirit of focusing on what’s important in life (making life a little better to be up there in the top 10) I am into my 2nd week of a candida cleanse (my eating habits have rarely been exemplary and I took antibiotics last year) I will post details soon. Acknowledging candida is just one part of getting on board with the existence of a microbiome.

Are doctors beginning to get it?

Everything is awesome! (apologies, I watched a movie yesterday, Lego related post to follow)

This piece of news came out on the anniversary of the start of the 2nd WW. One has no bearing on the other, I’m not big into coincidences and fate (I wanted to take this opportunity to let you know that even though I use a word later on in this post I don’t knit my own muesli or believe in numerology). That’s not to say they don’t hold worth for some people but I’m not one of them.

Nowadays I spend my time researching or more precisely, wading through online ‘cures for MS’. For the record, I don’t think those words sit well in a statement and am highly wary of anyone who tries to jam them into a sentence together.

I’ve been building up to a post that was to be asking ‘Why Doctors Don’t Get It’. In it I refer to the Aesop’s fable of the wind and sun competing to get a man’s coat. We all know that the persuasive heat of the sun was far more effective than the brute force of the North wind.

Seeing this particular application of research based on dampening the allergic response in folk with troublesome allergies we have a sign that medical professionals are getting it. They may no longer see the words MS and choose to research treatments that, you could argue, are akin to using sledgehammers to crack nuts. It feels like doctors/consultants/experts don’t especially consider the bodies that carry the condition they’re creating a treatment for.

Does fear of this condition perhaps lie at the heart of why it’s been considered a perfectly acceptable treatment option to wipe out a fairly essential part of a human’s functioning? We need our immune system to defend against the many external assaults a body faces every day. Or is it that Western science practitioners, like small children are using a mallet to hammer a square peg into a round hole rather than examine the qualities of either component?

AIDS drugs and cancer therapies have been suggested and offered as a way to address our brain’s apparently self destructive tendencies. Let’s rush instead shall we to pharmaceutically punish the MSpatient/EMO self harmer by offering an already confused brain Lemtrada/alemtuzamab (a recycled cancer drug).

There’s nothing much binary about the human body so why has it been, until this recent development, that research has involved switching things off and on again?

Doctors can be so much more than IT support workers dealing with squashy cabinets!

I used to howl at the moon In an earlier blog and there I pondered on the difference between Eastern and Western medical practice. Both types seem to deal with the human body very differently.

From what I’ve experienced and read Eastern medicine considers our wobbling sacks of bones and processes holistically. I hesitate to use that word because I know it gets laughed out of a Western doctor’s waiting room (this is the word I was talking about at the beginning of the post). As if treating symptoms without addressing why a thing is happening has been shown to be a terribly evolved way of approaching the human body… please take a look at an earlier post I’d written about acupuncture at the beginning of the year in response to a frankly arrogant medical professional’s somewhat childish assessment of a science/methodology he’s chosen not to find out about. Like Western medicine has all the answers?