eat Archives • Chronic Alternatives

A weird free hotel (that checked your BP every four hours – awake AND asleep): My recent experience of the NHS.

Tower to incinerate the waste at AddenbrookesHospital — Addenbrookes fixed my bimalleolar (broken ankle) very well

Happy 2020!

I’ve been away from my website for some time (some of which was under my control some of it less so).

I’ve been taking collagen most days especially while my broken ankle heals.

A bimalleolar fracture wasn’t talked about on the ward (many and fairly varied painkillers might have interfered with my memory at the time.)

Both bones in the calf required pins to stop the healed bones in the future growing unevenly. General anaesthetic and an operation (might also have got in the way of perfect recall). It was mentioned on the consultant’s rounds.

The discharge notes were far drier and used other long words.
This is the second week of my second cast (wasn’t mentioned).

Here I’d like to update a previous post about collagen. I hadn’t posted (my mistake) about collagen but ginger!

Both good for a body but in different ways.

With collagen we need to take vitamin C.

Preferably liposomal as it gets into our cells better than the traditional ascorbic acid (which can result in a gyppy tummy as the unabsorbed powder can leave the body quickly).

SO many processes are helped in a body that has enough vitC. Many processes won’t take place in a body deficient of vitC.

Discovering scurvy and it’s treatment helped modern day drug trials take shape!

With enough vit C the body makes energy better so working out ends up with energy getting produced and used better.

Vit C’s a good allrounder

It helps our bodies absorb iron, fight off disease by boosting our immune systems and hair and skin do well too. ODing on vit C I understand requires some determination!

I first started with collagen a few years’ back to keep my body feeling younger for longer.

Collagen works best and is best absorbed on an empty stomach (who knew?)

I’d been taking the powder sprinkled on my food (not being a smoothie fan) Collagen could minimise the menopause too.After after reading more about collagen I now have it b4 breakfast with green juice (no bananas) and liposomal vit C.

I choose the fish derived collagen out of personal choice rather than the beef derived sort but I believe both deliver a version of the jelly I I used to get from a homemade chicken stock using Sunday’s roast chicken bones?

Enhancing skin elasticity will hopefully ward off wrinkles but it didn’t work very well for my easily snappable ankle!

I imagine that these two products together are doing for my bones what Lion’s mane mushroom powder might be doing by regrowing the damaged myelin in my brain and spinal cord.

With the help of ‘my IT guy’ (husband) I look forward to being in more regular contact.

The wonder of the NHS will form a future post

Proteolytic Enzymes

This post will look at proteolytic enzymes and ask what they can do for us.

The last post looked into a newly discovered, high cholesterol level. I didn’t ask for it but have been given a set of numbers to consider (I don’t do enough cardiovascular exercise). I think this is where I might see changes happen rather than dietary approaches. Proteolytic enzymes have the potential to help many different kinds of condition, it’s hard to know where to start!

Now is a good time to revisit a subject from a post written last year that mentions proteolytic enzymes very briefly. I’d just started them on the recommendation of a practitioner I saw to help keep my body working as best as it could. They get referred to after the post’s last heading and before the photo at the bottom of the page.

Enzymes are amazing things, they seem to be able to do all things for all people (where needed) and they could be handy for most folk?
There are around 3000 different types of enzymes in existence and those are just the ones that have names!

Have you heard of digestive enzymes to take with food? Proteolytic enzymes are similar things but work differently and best on an empty stomach.

We are born with some to start with as they help our body digest stuff. We make more in the pancreas as we go through life. Cooked food in particular requires more enzymes to digest it as we did a fair amount of evolving mostly before our skills with cooking came along!

If we make our own enzymes why do we need to take extra enzymes?

Because we don’t eat enough raw food/Eat too high a proportion of cooked food.
Enzymes are at the heart of almost all physiological processes in the body including digesting the food we choose to eat. Mostly we ate more, raw veg than we do nowadays.
We can buy digestive enzymes to boost our own digestion allowing us to eat certain foods we may have been avoiding for the various ‘tummy troubles’ they cause.
Digestion starts as we chew, our saliva contains amylase which begins digestion even before we swallow.
We use a lot of energy to digest food so any help we can get in this process will give us more energy.

Have you ever had the feeling that a meal, once eaten, seemed to just sit in your belly? To digest the cooked food we eat uses up lots of our own enzymes. Often the processes that are needed for effective digestion work better with a little bit of warmth but not too much heat as that can destroy them!

Proteolytic Enzymes are good for us outside of digestion.

Sports people use proteolytic enzymes when they have a sports injury that has caused inflammation.
people with high cholesterol levels (have tiny fragments of protein and/or fat which can thicken the blood and cause CVD later on).
Chronically ill people also have a greater amount of inflammation in their bodies (inflammation as part of the disease state).
to aim to look younger by helping to reduce wear and tear on our bodies.

All these groups of people may take proteolytic enzymes to reduce mess in the body such as swelling from injury.

Enzymes are present in the food we eat. They help us get energy from food. Enzymes digest/dissolve stuff and when they have no food to digest they’re digesting no longer needed stuff in our blood and reducing our sticky blood (which can accumulate) if we’re not as active as we know we should be.

A certain amount of inflammation is good if it’s reducing the amount of movement an injured limb can go through but, after a point it’s damaging.

Enzymes a go go!

We can buy a range of enzymes which are more effective when taken with other types of enzymes. Serrapeptase is considered a good one at the moment (fashion seems to play a part in supplements?) Serrapeptase is collected from caterpillars that make silk and the protein they make is something special. Sometimes I wonder a bit about the type of life farmed silk worms have? Other enzymes available mop up different types of proteins but in a similar way:

I was going to list amylase, bromelain, papain, trypsin and other enzymes that process different carbs, fats or proteins in our food but there are more complete lists out there (that require a simple search) before finding the site that does it better than me!

All of these enzymes and more help our body do a range of things better.

High Cholesterol… Says Who?

High cholesterol… according to what measure?

Don’t leave before you read the last few lines! My lipid profile was checked when I was going in for other blood tests at the doctors. The GP surgery pointed me to a website to read as I had ‘high cholesterol’. My level could be considered borderline high according to some measuring, apparently.

My cholesterol numbers are not at the bottom of the UK’s range, but also not at the top.

It seems there are a number of cholesterol measures to take into account and a number of ways to skin this particular cholesterol cat?

This is a UK page I found (the UK and the US seem to measure things differently).

High cholesterol… Says who? There are SO many opinions to hear. We need to decide who to listen to.

I’ve been to have a look at whether my cholesterol levels are fine or not?

We (the Western ‘developed’ world) started avoiding eggs and saturated fat after listening to flawed research in the 1950s!

What follows is a quote from the guy who got us throwing out the best part of an egg (the yolks) to save our hearts and cardiovascular system. In a 2004 editorial in the Journal of American College of Cardiology, Sylvan Lee Weinberg, former president of the American College of Cardiology and outspoken proponent of the diet-heart hypothesis, said

The low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet… may well have played an unintended role in the current epidemics of obesity, lipid abnormalities, type 2 diabetes, and metabolic syndromes. This diet can no longer be defended by appeal to the authority of prestigious medical organizations.

I found this site very heartening (excuse the weak pun) in how it neatly debunks the heart health myths we’re peddled, daily.

Even if we eat NO cholesterol our liver makes cholesterol, this is a good thing as we need it to make hormones that are essential for our wellbeing. that FACT is mentioned less on heart healthy websites!

I can’t help but wonder whether our increasing talk of stranger danger is keeping our children from exercising and being able to deal better with whatever we throw into our stomachs?

It’s being proposed that children from the age of 9 ought to have their cholesterol levels regularly checked?

It’s now been established that eating cholesterol has little if no bearing on the fat levels in our blood. Thanks go to Chris Kresser for the link further up.

Continuing to make low fat margarine and low fat other stuff, has created a mighty industry to keep up. You would have thought this would be especially tricky in the face of uncomfortable truth!

Eggs and butter REALLY don’t cause high cholesterol!

I repeat, dietary fat and cholesterol are not our enemy but we have a huge industry interested in keeping us misinformed.

I’ve been using coconut fat in place of butter. It has an equivalent amount of saturated fat to butter but I have been reading recently that butter is a ‘safe’ dairy food. It doesn’t contain as many of the proteins that other dairy products contain? Our bodies can get confused

Since I was little I’ve not liked the idea or taste of consuming another species’ growth fluid (breast milk from another animal) but apparently, because butter is higher fat there’s little space for the rest of the casein I’ve been avoiding by ditching dairy.

I’ll talk about avoiding dairy in another post, soon. Here is another post where I talk about lots of things that go into how our bodies function.

This nutrition lark and high cholesterol (?) is not straightforward!

I refer again to the link near the top of the page which had a number of myth busting bullet points (Myth No.5).

People who have heart attacks have LOWER cholesterol levels than those who DON’T have heart attacks!

I’ve gathered, if we want to live longer then let’s not be concerned with cholesterol levels? On the other hand, our weight and an out of control insulin response to sugar (and everything that contains it) WILL contribute to heart disease and possibly a shorter life!

Adaptive Stress deserves exploration and Three is my Magic Number.

Adaptive stress can make or break us. Today, we’ll look at 3 low cost strategies to better deal with adaptive stress. I believe these 3 strategies help me look younger than I am. I aim to do them at least a few times a week .

Recently, I was visited by a physiotherapist who specialises in walking. I believe she gives talks about fall prevention to hospitals and social centres for the elderly.

How lucky am I?

Her workplace is about two streets from where I live. I aim to be walking to her for our next visit.

Almost the best bit about the appointment was being told I don’t look old enough for my age (She works with elders quite regularly so perhaps this is a regular intro for her to help her clients feel at ease?)

I choose not to think so!

But it got me wondering about a handful of the things I do regularly that might be keeping me looking younger than I am?

Three is the magic number for studying my youth prolonging dealings with adaptive stress

A minute’s blast of cold shower at the end of a regular, hot shower.
Restricting eating to between an 8 and 10 hour window every day.
Drink tea made from grated ginger, regularly.

An Exploration of thriving with Adaptive Stress.

Hormesis can be used to explain the body’s benefit from cold showers, skipping a meal now and then and taking freshly grated, ginger tea. It basically works from Neitzsche’s principal that ‘whatever doesn’t kill us makes us/our cells stronger!

Our physiology could be said to panic a little/adaptive stress but then finds out that cold water won’t cause death and so can be safely experimented with. Actually, the shock seems to wake me up quite well. The bracingness creates a huge boost of mitochondria. This adaptive stress (the powerhouses of our cells is responsible for an efficient conversion of energy/gives us our ‘get up and go’.

Our cells panic for a while in the cold and become flooded with cortisol to help us avoid an undefined ill. This redirects blood away from digestion and to our limbs for running away to better escape the undefined ill.

Restricting our eating to a smaller window of the day is another adaptive stress and gives our body a chance to focus on other essential processes. Everything we eat needs to be ‘read’ and assessed by our body. In this process it passes through the liver which takes time and energy. The liver, brain, heart and kidneys are the biggest users of energy if we live a relatively sedentary life.

Our body decides (mostly thankfully) that it makes sense to keep our legs working ahead of our tummies digesting. Mostly, this is a good thing but not always please see an earlier post here. In times of action our bodies become less equipped to process lunch. There is some truth to ‘don’t swim straight after eating’ but it’s something we can experiment safely with on OUR own body.

To avoid the pitfalls of too much adaptive stress, there are a range of answers about what the optimal time for intermittent fasting is.

Women’s needs are different to men’s (we have different hormones and fat deposition). Our processing of fat/energy is less forgiving than men’s who have a higher level of testosterone and, if chosen, are better suited to use energy and remain lean. Also, men aren’t built to potentially house developing babies. Women apparently won’t benefit fasting intermittently for longer than around 14 hours between meals without raising our cortisol levels high enough to promote inflammation?

Grated ginger tea is another technique for keeping the body on its toes. I feel this creates another, acceptable form of adaptive stress (hormesis).

Some types of stress are worth seeking out and can do us good. I wonder whether these tips/tricks/life hacks perhaps contribute to my body appearing younger than it is?

The image I’ve chosen to illustrate this post is of my neighbour. As he grows he gets more interested in the world around him. Just one way he is becoming better suited to cope well with adaptive stress.

Continuous Improvement

Continuous Improvement mostly doesn’t involve chocolate!

Marginal Gains help us to reach similar actions of an industrial engineering expert writing in Linkedin. He talks about the squeeze on profits from multiple directions in the modern commercial world. Dave Harnett highlights the need for continuous, enterprise-wide improvements to shave spending here and there and protect the company’s bottom line in the process.

Team Sky (the UK cycling team from the 2012 Olympics) refer to the process when aiming to make Marginal Gains wherever possible. Looking at every tiny thing (outfit material and cut, breakfast choices, study of sleeping habits etc) that might shave hundredths of seconds off a competing time for their athletes .

Owners of chronic conditions also need to see the management of their bodies in a similar way to companies or elite sports people wishing to seek continuous improvement and become more competitive.

Continuous Improvement mostly doesn’t involve chocolate!

We may not have the bottom line and shareholders to worry about but we face the hardest manager of all, ourselves. We can choose to focus on aspects of our health… like inflammation or pay no attention to the food we bring into our bodies?

Inflammation is at the heart of many long term conditions. Runaway/unmanaged inflammation contributes to ongoing, long term damage to cells in the body. It stands to reason if we can minimise its impact on our bodies our bodies might function better for longer?

Bearing in mind that Continuous improvement mostly doesn’t involve chocoloate I’d like to present some lists of anti and pro-inflammatory foods it could be wise for us to do more or less of?
We can experiment on ourselves by take stuff out of our diets for a week or two and observe if it has any beneficial effects on our bodies?

Pro-inflammatory

Sugar
Wheat
Corn
Milk
Alcohol
Soy

These 6 things are the most common foods for provoking an immune response in humans. It’s not an exhaustive list of inflammatory foods (we’re all different for a start). It may be your body is utterly equipped to deal with these things in which case you’ve spent a week finding out and now you can go back to them without any worries.

Anti-inflammatory substances

‘eat the rainbow’ not a psychedelic instruction from an earlier decade but the suggestion to eat a spectrum of fruit and vegetables in the diet every day.

including herbs, spices and dark green leafy vegetables.

Fish and fish oils (flaxseed oil if you’re not keen on fish it’s not as good as fish oil but still better than nothing).
Coconut oil for cooking
Olive oil for salad dressing
Berries as part of the rainbow.

Continuous Improvement mostly doesn’t involve chocolate!

All these things are good for a body. We’ve spent a few hundred thousand years evolving whilst eating versions of these foodstuffs.

delightfully created chocolate rabbits unfortunately are proinflammatory being made with milk chocolate (I’d imagine) which contains one of the taxing foods for our bodies that might not work for us?

Life ultimately is about finding our own middle way and not sticking to hard and fast rules. If we get to talk to people when we eat various foodstuffs we can find a benefit from that. Don’t get silly about it but instead, treat your body with the respect it deserves.

Pleiotropic… what?

Pleiotropic, this word explains why the posts on this site are a little scattered and not yet bundled into nice easy sections.

It’s not just because my brain hasn’t felt sharp enough to turn on a concise, subject dividing sixpence recently!

Also, life isn’t neat and tidy: Everything is interconnected!

what does pleiotropic mean?

Dr Tom O Bryan defined pleiotropic for his followers a few years back… multi-pronged essentially. Wellness and healing take time – they don’t happen overnight. this makes them unsexy and unlikely to grab any headlines. Can you imagine for example?

Extra, Extra, Read All About It:

“Woman makes her life a little bit better by doing a bit of exercise every day, improving sleeping habits, finding a hobby, connecting with friends and eating real food.”

it’ll barely fit on one line for a start!

This whole site is about going at making life a little bit better. Whether you are a person with diagnosed illness or just knackered the whole time and feel like the sparkle has gone from life you will find a post that could be of use. It’s tricky to find the line between being preachy about what we know deep down will be good for us (decent sleep and relaxation) and providing posts of actual use.

This recent link from an employee at the NIH (US National Institute of Health) touches on why we all have to be our own doctor. The institutions around us on the whole don’t make their best profits from well adjusted, healthy customers. It’s not in the food industry’s interest either to encourage us to skip a meal every now and then.

There are many ways we can get life flowing a little better, only one of which is food. Another life improver is exercise: choosing a type that fits into our lives makes it more likely we’ll keep up that New Year’s resolution that fails every year by around March!

I believe the pages on this site can help to make life a little bit better.

It’s perhaps not a huge claim but one that is achievable and when we achieve one thing then we feel more positive about tackling another thing and another…

Marginal improvements are still improvements!

A series recently aired on the BBC, Doctor in the House illustrated this multi-pronged approach to living a better life by living life a little bit better.

positivity, because you’re worth it!

It’s been a kind of a busy season including the most recent piece in my health and wellbeing puzzle which involved a welcome shot of positivity… and an overnight stay in den Haag last month.

Most if not all the posts in this blog from the last year and more, address something in life which can be adapted or adjusted to make our life a little bit better.

Life hacks?

Hardly, as I lack the dedication to attach scientific rigour to things I’ve found out and chosen to share with anyone that’s interested.

Looking online; reporting on hacks would appear to be a mainly male pursuit, or perhaps they’re just the ones that better broadcast their results?

Anyway, speaking to the dutch therapist and walking away with a stack of his handwritten notes has left me googling quite a lot!

…”And then I discovered the PADs.

Well, I didn’t discover them, of course — they’ve been known for decades — but what I learned in my little sabbatical from corporate science here at Atlas is that autoimmune disease is caused by autoantigens.

Duh, you say.

But that statement has more content than your typical tautology. Autoantigens are active participants in the initiation and development of autoimmunity. After all, breaking tolerance is not a trivial thing — we have elaborate mechanisms to make sure that it doesn’t happen. So you need to produce autoantigens in sufficient quantity and context to prompt your immune system into performing an unnatural act. Then, over subsequent years and decades, you have to continue to produce autoantigens to mature the immune response to the point that it becomes clinically relevant. Once disease gets going, autoantigens are the raw fuel for the inflammatory cycle that sets up in target organs, and they drive the formation and deposition of immune complexes, which account for much of the morbidity and mortality in patients.

So, yeah, autoantigens are kind of a big deal. What if you could stop the body from producing them? What if you could deprive the immune system of its inflammatory fuel?”

PAD inhibition, just one amongst a stack of other scribbles from the dutchman,

led me to the quote above which is the most rational description I’ve seen for contracting a variety of chronic conditions and explains the relative lack of effectiveness of immunomodulators

I feel like I’ve been given a lifeline! Having a condition that people don’t seem able to treat effectively can ultimately be quite lonely. The consultation with a Dutchman left me feeling more optimistic than I have for a long time.

I believe that positivity, now bathing my body’s cells in place of state engineered defeatism is as much of a boost to my health as any amount of exercise and personalised physio. In the next few posts I’ll go further into what I’ve been told and found out, including breathing exercises and eating plenty of good fats, no stuff from packets and a little less than a kilo of veg a day!

Gorgeous gluten free brownies

After speaking to a number of people I feel assured that the batch of dairy and gluten free ginger brownies made recently is worth sharing.

It’s been tricky trying to be mindful of following a reduced sugar diet whilst also testing chocolate brownie recipes (bearing in mind my candida/leaky gut posts of the last few months). Notice my use of the word ‘mindful’. I wouldn’t have made the brownies at all if I were following a strictly low sugar lifestyle 100% of the time.

But, I figure life needs to be considered in the round: making these brownies has given me an excuse to consume more sugar but it also causes me to see the appreciation and enjoyment in people’s faces when they eat the product I’ve made.

I think my soul benefits more from that social interaction than my digestive tract suffers from dealing with its temporarily higher sugar contents!

I’d love to enter into a debate about whether its healthy to use sugar as a reward in society but it seems pretty ingrained and I’m trying to address my ease to fall into argument (it doesn’t make our cells happy but that’s a topic for another post)!

(I’m not an anthropologist or dietician (not even sure how to spell it) so the above statement hasn’t been scientifically verified).

There does seem to be quite a lot of delight seen in people’s faces when they taste these gluten free brownies. Especially when you introduce them as a reduced sugar, vegetable based, gluten and dairy free, sweet treat.

People don’t tend to expect an awful lot with that sort of billing.

Ginger and chocolate brownies using sweet potato allows for reduced sugar and serves as the sweet route to one of our five a day!

I’m glad I saw this post online recently. Apart from the sugar you could call this recipe a healthfood 😉

Ingredients and method:

2x100g slab of dark chocolate
2x eggs
2x teaspoons of vanilla extract
5x balls of ginger in syrup chopped up (from cake making aisle of supermarket)
200g of cooked sweet potato
125g of brown sugar (no need to use special sorts)
100g of gluten free plain flour
100g of coconut oil
A pinch of baking powder (less than a ¼ teaspoon)

Optional extras

Up to 100g of whatever else you like in brownies; flaked almond, crushed walnuts, brazils and pecans all work.
fresh blueberries, dried cranberries soaked in ginger wine
A rounded tablespoon of cocoa powder
A teaspoon of ginger powder.

Line a shallow baking tray (eg 26x20cmx3cm depth) with greaseproof paper (some recipes suggest putting the oven on at the start but I don’t like working against the clock) turn it up to 180C (160 fan oven) gas mark 4/350f

Get two, big mixing bowls (don’t try doing it all in one bowl, it’ll work but the extra washing up extravagance is worth it). The sweet potato flesh can make the finished brownie quite heavy. I know the point of brownies is that they’re not cake but the finished texture is a little less vegetal lumpen)

FIRST BOWL: break up a pack and a half of the chocolate slabs and spoon the coconut oil on top (exact measurements don’t seem to have been essential: if stuff is a few grams under it doesn’t seem to have mattered). Microwave for a minute or so until the mixture is well on its way to melted.

Add the sweet potato flesh and flour, a pinch of baking powder (ginger and cocoa powder, if using), break up the remaining half bar of chocolate, add that + whatever extras you might be choosing.

SECOND BOWL: add the sugar and eggs and whiskn for a minute or two (so the mix is airy but we’re not looking for meringue consistency). Our household’s first electric whisk a few months back was a revelation.

Tip the FIRST BOWL,into the SECOND BOWL, stir gently together until well mixed, pour into the lined tray and put in the heated oven for 20 minutes (check at 18 minutes, an overdone brownie is a terrible thing!)

Look out for my chocolate beetroot brownie recipe coming soon.

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.

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.

D’oh, it’s dopamine!

We’ve made it through the holidays.

Hurrah!

This post might seem long but it’s kind of all connected.

This post will be looking at how we might think a bit differently about aspects of ourselves by becoming more aware of the role of dopamine. You may have noticed from my somewhat nightmarish vision of christmas decorations and my language that I don’t relish the season we’ve now turned our back on. I’m preferring instead to embrace all that a New Year can bring. I don’t think I’ve ever been considered the life and soul of a party but that’s ok with me.

lacking drive?
low on motivation?
finding it hard to engage and live life fully?

All of the above could describe what I’ve always felt was part of my ‘nature’. Since signing up to 23andme (previous mentions of it here, here and here). I’m beginning to see that the chemistry lab in us all is shaped by our genes and so an impaired neurotransmitter production here and utilisation issue there might explain me sometimes preferring a good book to a good party.

I’m finding out the bits of me that don’t work as well as they could and realising my inner curmudgeon might in part, be thanks to the chemistry lab.

Many of the posts on this site are about investigating how to make life a little better. Sugar’s not come out smelling of roses on these pages. I’ve not been able to find anything good it can bring to the table apart from cake which we all know is really nice (for birthdays and very special occasions).

Having indulged in various sugary confections over the holidays I’m eager to get started on reducing the sugar again and getting back to a simpler way of eating. I talked about noticing the difference here but got a little distracted from my sugar free desires by birthday cake!

I found out something which might stiffen my resolve when it comes to the sweet stuff.

23andme analysis has thrown up some interesting things about dopamine in me. There are ways to protect what we have and get more, naturally. Finding I’m low in/poor at using this stuff through having wonky vitamin Dreceptors could answer an awful lot of questions about my behaviour in years past and the actions of a reformed sugar addict when relapsing with (gluten free) mince pies in recent weeks.

A diet high in sugar can wear out the dopamine receptors which can make what dopamine there is in the system less useful again.

One thing I’ll definitely be continuing with is supplementing with phospholipids over and above the

krill oil I take daily. I also started, back at the beginning of December taking two teaspoonfuls every morning of
Empirical Labs Phospholipid Complex. I bumped into this site whilst researching the stuff.

Go to about halfway down the NCBI post, The US National Centre for Biotechnology Information (better known as the reliable and often cited PubMed) for studies on depression, improvements in coping with stress as well as repairing brain matter. It really seems to be a wonder substance. It has a consistency a bit like bitumen or treacle (for its stickiness not sweetness). When I first started I thought it could waterproof the hull of any nearby boat. It helps strengthen the edges of all our cells not just those in the brain.

I think I feel… less… wobbly? Like I’m more in charge of keeping my body under control (both mentally and physically). I feel less prone to overbalancing whilst standing completely still. I thought this increased stability may have come from reducing a candida overgrowth since Septembe but the stability’s still there even after struggling to reduce my sugar consumption since a sugary christmas. more to follow on this struggle in another post.

Whatever caused the improvement I’m happy about it and whilst it would be nice to treat my body as an experiment and only change one variable at a time I also don’t want to hang about getting myself well.

After reading the US Pubmed post I’m going to make sure I never run out of this phospholipid complex ever again!

I think it’s fascinating the many and varied roles dopamine plays, including

brain function,
metabolism,
energy production aswell as affecting mood as mentioned at the top of this post.

The role that phospholipids seem to play in our harvesting of dopamine I’ve only just scratched at the surface of. You can perhaps tell I still have a lot more reading to do on the subject but thought I’d share this burst of enthusiasm with you!

There are so many possible suspects involved in us not feeling our best. I’m choosing to see the addressing of potential problems as a challenge to be entered into with curiosity and an open mind.

New Year’s resolutions are for the birds, feeling better is a lifelong undertaking (albeit taking in a few duvet days along the way). Cutting ourselves some slack/being kind to ourselves is just one way to get the best for and from us.

I hope, with a return to low sugar food in my diet and a regular intake of healthy fats I will achieve weight loss , my pre christmas energy levels and will have no need to make this noise.

happy New Year.