Category: supplementation

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.

This is belonging

This post looks at belonging incorporating the armed forces’ relatively recent advertising campaign.

There are lots of things that can give us that sense of belonging that don’t come along with the chance of becoming a killer or a casualty.

Becoming part of any relatively select club can also give a feeling of belonging?

My relatively select club, as most readers know is the MS Club.

We catch up with familiar faces on screen in various ms clubs and chat about the range of challenges we’ve most recently faced.

We find out that, quite a few other people are going through a similar thing.

As owners of a chronic condition we can, like highly trained soldiers also feel a sense of belonging.

Part of the reason I’ve been away from the keyboard are some things I’m aiming to help reduce some of my MS symptoms:

  • I’m trying out the new Stasis sock from Voxx thanks to my US cousin (Voxx don’t post outside the US and Canada)
  • I started Tavegil (Newsweek article shown to  me by my US auntie originally in 2014 except this time using a meaningful dose.
  • following more meaningfully the SWANK way of eating (very low saturated fat diet, basically.
  • Taking steps to follow Dr Coimbra’s protocol which involves taking in (what the NHS might consider a toxic amount) of vitD using supplementation). The UK recommend taking in 400 possibly up to 2000iu
  • I’m not even going to start on EMFs!

It can feel quite tiring to seek out various methods of healing when it feels like there are very few people that have ‘got our back’?

Really , I guess we’re all suffering from a chronic condition – it’s called being alive!

We can choose from a number of ways to distract us from the trudge that is life some of which work better than others.

The Toolwall I hope illustrates our need to approach life and be able to adapt to whatever situation arises.

Histamine apparently functions as a neurotransmitter. Candace Pert mentioning the work of her PHd tutor’s early continuation of HIS tutor’s work investigating the role of the histamine in human physiology (p.41 of Molecules of Emotion) probably has nothing to do with an OTC antihistamine functioning to help remyelinate the brain. Her talk of basic chemistry pointed out how little I know about the body we are housed in.

I just focus on the body being an amazing thing that WANTS to work.

I’d like to take this opportunity to apologise for unsearchability of previous posts. Doesn’t look like it’s going to change anytime soon?

tools

 

 

Dehumidifying to affect where we are now?

Probably this should be split into a larger number of posts? What for example does dehumidifying have to do with youtube updates?

I recently made an update to my first ever youtube clip. In the more recent update I’m moving around a bit rather than sitting in two locations that I’m mysteriously transported between.

I was able to move better back then than I am now.

I think my inner pessimist shines through when I act as if things are bad. It seems to be a recurring theme, showing up at various points in my life.

The following image was put at the beginning of my updated status report. My own little joke; as you can see I move about the same pace as a snail nowadays.

Keepin’ it real

This isn’t a great way to be portrayed and my first clip demonstrates that I wasn’t comfortable with showing my unsteadiness. I wasn’t used to being a little unsteady and so we’re left to wonder at the mysterious transportation between locations!

This time round (on the suggestion of my filmmaker friend, Toby) we are being a little more ‘authentic’ and honest.

I think it was a good call to make. In these clips I present myself in the best possible light (ignore my grubby hair). I talk about what I’d like to do and aim to do but there are still times when my aim is wide of the mark.

I’m not one of those people who believe there’s no such word as can’t because there patently is.

I’m also one of those people who think things are worth chipping away at because you never know, you might end up a few steps further along than when you started.

A change was better than a rest!

Like many people recently I went to visit family for a couple of days. In that time my whole body worked better but mostly my brain, nose and bladder. on getting back home things eventually returned to the way they were, my walking and thinking slowed and my balance worsened… noticeably. It may all be psychological and perhaps these effects were from visiting family but I don’t think so. I didn’t have a post nasal drip and my family don’t normally affect how my nose does or doesn’t run.

Dehumidify to address mould (it’s everywhere)

My next installment could be looking at harnessing the anti-inflammatory effects of proteolytic enzymes or questioning whether it’s worth worrying about candida (mould in the body) when we have condensation at home (potentially, mould in our environment)?

This link helped get me straight and the man’s midland accent is darling especially when being described by Americans in the comments below it! Some of the American sites addressing the ‘mold’ issue can be a little alarmist but the truth is, unknown damage could be happening to us where we live. Mostly this can be ok, especially if our bodies are working at their tip top best

I bought a HEPA filter after reading on a US site about the perils of mould and its effects on brain health (amongst many other organ systems) before realising that the best way to go at this was to get a dehumidifer to dehumidify or reduce the moisture in our house (we don’t have a tumble dryer so, since moving to a condensing boiler and away from an airing cupbard washing dries near the radiator).

I look forward to sharing with you how I get on with one of the two different types of dehumidifier on the market.

super quick

Oxygen therapy, what’s involved?


The choice of image at first glance seems to have nothing to do with oxygen therapy. Getting out into the garden on a bright, dry, early spring day when stuff’s growing and spring has almost sprung gives me a similar feeling to the state I’m in after oxygen therapy. I feel good in this environment. Views like this lift my spirits and heart. Future post on the science behind the beneficial effects of nature to follow soon.

So, back to the post at hand: why are there so many names for this oxygen treatment?

HDOT (high dose or high density Oxygen therapy) HBO (Not the American entertainment channel), O2 therapy.

two birds in a tree

The Hyperbaric part of the name refers to the decompression chamber we enter to breathe oxygen. Deep sea divers go into these spaces if they came up too quickly from a dive leaving them with the wrong balance of gas in their bloodstream (the bends).

The chamber recreates what it’s like underwater (no swimsuits required!)

The increased pressure causes oxygen in the bloodstream to become more concentrated, it increases in Density. The increased oxygen creates an improved healing environment in the body. Wherever we have an injury our body’s natural healing process is speeded up.

We can call the process natural as there are no extra substances on top of the air we breathe – there’s just more of it.

We don’t need to breathe extra deeply as the whole thing happens at a cellular level in the blood and tissues of our bodies. We start breathing oxygen through a hood or mask once lots of air has been pushed into the chamber itself to reproduce the effects of greater pressure underwater.

That’s why the chambers are almost spherical, there are portholes and really thick welds so nothing explodes! A similar thing happens when we go up in an aeroplane. To be able to breathe at high altitude we increase the pressure from the thin air at thousands of feet by pushing more air into the body of the plane.

The human body doesn’t feel the change in pressure in a plane or a decompression chamber.

Australian sports scientists and American footballers are just two groups who have known of the decrease in time off the pitch, track or field due to the improvements in bone knitting when players have sessions in the ‘tank’ while recovering from broken limbs.

That’s a layman’s description of what I try to do at least once a week once I’ve taken the risk described in a previous post.

I’m choosing to believe increasing circulating O2 using the above technique aswell as exercise as described elsewhere are worth doing for the state of my mind as much as the state of my blood! I think making the conscious choice to believe I’m doing myself good is just one of the aspects of the therapy that’s making a difference.

Risk:Reward?

It’s a good idea to try and keep aware of all the aspects of the treatments we’re choosing to take; water soluble vitamins (like vit C and some Bvits) don’t carry much risk as the body will get rid of any extra the next time you go to the toilet. The ‘oily’ vitamins (vit A,D,E and K)  also known as the sunshine vitamins) do carry a greater risk of toxicity as the body stores what it doesn’t need in our fat cells.

Depending on the health of our arteries High Intensity Interval Training (mentioned here and here) could bring on a stroke a la Andrew Marr. I’m not suggesting don’t exercise to save yourself! but do take it slowly if you haven’t exercised much recently. But exercise fast or slow is not what this post is about.

dog for the disabled enjoying a rest in the sun

Some of the things I am doing at the moment that I need to work out my risk:reward profiles for:

  • Taking hemp oil (a few drops under the tongue a few times a day) for its CBD (cannabidiol). This is entirely legal so carries no risk of locking me up and throwing away the key but may not be as therapeutic as cannabis derived CBD? I’m not sure how much of an effect it’s having but found this resource which shows one person’s opinion on the miraculous benefits attached to various cannabis derivatives.
  • Another thing I’m doing weekly is hyperbaric oxygen therapy. which I have mentioned here and here and there was a post recently about the therapeutic use of oxygen.
  • A few weeks very unusual interruption of supply via Amazon temporarily halted my supplementation with phospholipids as mentioned in an earlier post.  This Hiatus highlighted even more to me that strengthening the edges of my cells is worth doing. They communicate better with each other which perhaps caused less balance over the past few weeks? It may be down to something else entirely but I’m consciously choosing to believe that this substance is having a good effect.

Luckily, taking the hemp oil doesn’t leave the taker feeling ‘stoned’ or in any way chemically inconvenienced so doesn’t interfere with my driving to get to my local MS Therapy Centre which houses the hyperbaric chamber that creates the environment for increased density of oxygen molecules n the body.

The treamtment is 20 miles away along the main road leading out of one of the largest container ports in Europe. There are many collisions, near misses and stress in response to people driving very close to the car in front. On at least one side of the dual carriageway there’s stationary traffic inching its way past an accident in my 40 mile journey.

Every now and then I find it useful to assess the various supplements and treatments I do to see if they’re worth the time, effort and/or money.

I still believe it’s a therapy worth taking some risk for especially in light of this research. In the Journal Neurology and Neuroscience it has been noticed that there are some bloodflow issues in neurodegenerative conditions. Oxygen therapy, by increasing the level of O2 in the blood addresses possible hypoxia brought on by slowed venous return from the brain to the heart.

At the moment I figure it’s worth keeping my O2 levels topped up as mentioned here in a post from last summer.

In my next post I’ll describe what goes on after the drive to the tank.

Avenues of MS research everywhere!

My own research into increasing variety of movement.

New news, apparently… not the same old news!

Quite often there’s not much to report in MS research or what there is to report is all the same shape – either ineffective or carries the potential of life threatening side effects but… there appear to be a handful of avenues opening up!

A family friend from the US sent me this link last week the way concerned friends do. It’s nice to know that folk care and are thinking about you which can give as much of a lift as anything from a blister pack or bottle.

This article was referenced in the Newsweek article and it prompted me to buy some

  • Tavegil/Clemastine, an OTC (over the counter, no prescription required) antihistamine. It was the only molecule tested (out of a 1000 in their lab) that had any effect on the growing of a myelin like substance on little glass pyramids or something like that (yes, science is strange) but perhaps it will help my body regrow some myelin?
  • I’ve been using phospholipid complex since December (mentioned here) and enjoying a poached egg yolk every day to try and support my brain by giving it building blocks for the last few months.

Interestingly, to an utter non-scientist like myself this page describes part of the reason as to whether there might be a useful effect.

I’ve been signed up to be contacted and perhaps get enrolled in the SMART trial. It will be trialling three existing treatments that were developed for other conditions and, I believe are now out of patent so there is little money to be made from them in their original setting (it could be argued).

  • Ibudilast was one of the three therapies to be tested on secondary progressive MS patients when I showed interest last summer. It has been used in Japan (mostly) for the past 20 years as an asthma therapy. It’s a very good anti-inflammatory, apparently.
  • Riluzole has been used to treat The Ice Bucket Challenge disease or more properly Motor Neurone Disease once also known as ALS or Lou Gehrigs disease, I think?
  • Amiloride which is used to treat heart disease – got no punchlines or interesting facts about that treatment or condition.
  • Fluoxetine (better known as Prozac and usually used to treat depression) is taking the place of Ibudilast.

To a layman, I see the mention of having an effect from the antihistamine on asthma and see that the Japanese asthma treatment has been taken out of the MS trial (being funded by Edinburgh University) and I wonder whether perhaps the drug’s creator might be able to change a molecule or two and get another lease of life out of the out of patent drug by repackaging it as an MS treatment?

Seeing this article about the possible role of a psychedelic drug in the treatment of asthma (well, it worked on mice in the lab) leads me to think the creators of pharmaceutical interventions employ  what seems to be a scattergun approach to the therapies they push on us the patients and it really is worth not holding one’s breath for miracles. I’m an entire human being – my body and brain can’t easily get by without the other!

“What we have demonstrated for the first time is that they are also effective in treating physiological diseases outside of the brain, a completely new and exciting role for this class of drug” says study author Dr. Charles Nichols.

a line of wild animal toys

Whilst keeping an eye on various pharmaceutical offering in the pipeline I think I’ll keep up with my personalised integrative approach. My most recent exercise addition is ‘walking like an animal’ using hands and feet not on hands and knees. I can’t manage the half an hour a day that was recommended to me but after a few goes each day for the last couple of weeks I’m an awful lot better at it than I was!

This physiotherapist in Scotland was reported in New Pathways magazine last year and has now received funding to investigate his results from Edinburgh Napier University. I don’t know how or even whether it is allied to the Edinburgh University conducting the MS SMART trial at the top of this post but I think I’ll continue looking at healing my body from a number of different angles.

D’oh, it’s dopamine!

lights

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.

 

 

 

 

Seeking Health

PEPPERx3

Everything’s relative nowadays and my idea of health is probably quite different to yours or a kitten’s for that matter.

I’ve been doing family this past weekend so that my husband and I’d be at home to pick up our new kitten from the Blue Cross (a pet rehoming charity in the UK). And then stay at home to keep her (and us) entertained. She’s working a treat so far.

I think I need to get back to short posts. The ability to edit myself and turn one post into two or three had left me while dealing with our dying cat but, as you can see I don’t think I’ll be distracted by old age and possible pain of another being for the moment rather, enthusiastic exuberance and the idiocy of youth!

Bring it on.

The first thing that caught my eye on my return was an article about untested Ebola treatments causing a UK team of medics to walk out of their voluntary positions in Ebola treatment centres in Freetown, Sierra Leone.

The team felt it would be unprofessional giving a treatment originally developed for heart conditions to a group of physically weakened and physiologically complicated sufferers (liver and kidney failure are amongst Ebola patients’ complications). The treatment had limited antiviral properties. The WHO had identified over 50 other treatments that had greater anti-viral strengths. The team were exposing themselves to the patients’ contagious blood all for questionable benefit.

This is another article that’s been brought to my attention. Statins are a drug that have been around for a while and have had some very good PR behind them as you’ll see from the post that explains the difficulties that arise when equating the NNT (Number Needed to Treat in order to see a worthwhile treatment outcome) for preventive medicines where you’re not saving lives rather, preventing deaths.

It’s fascinating stuff and really worth reading if only to get a bit of a handle on how we are so easily persuaded of a thing’s worth by sets of numbers which get mistakenly conflated with other meanings of numbers in other scenarios.

I could list the sorts of pharmaceutical therapies involving supplementation that have received similar treatments but this is a short post as it’s Christmas Day, I’ve just been playing with the kitten at the top of the page and now need to get me some xmas w friends.

Happy Christmas folks.

New Year post will be a rundown of the various strategies we can all do to help us feel at our best.

Happy New Year (depending on the depth of my gluten free mince pie haze) there maybe a post before NYE!

challenge, perhaps?

a challenge to let the right ones in

in this post I’d like to add a supplement that I’d left off my previous two yeast posts. You could argue it was one of the most important additions during an effective dismantling of an overgrowth of candida.

  • Permavite powder; I didn’t use it for the first two months of my candida clearout which I mention here and here while I focused on reducing the invasive parasite which itself, I’ve been told was causing holes in my gut. Intestinal permeability can be caused by many things including a bedded in overgrowth of the yeast candida. When the parasite has been allowed to multiply unchallenged its form changes and it turns into a fungus, creating a thread like structure called hypha which can burrow beyond the gut and set up home all over the body.
  • HCL supplements; as we age we naturally produce less hydrochloric acid in our stomachs. When all is working well this is our first line of defense against bacteria that comes into the digestive tract in and on the food we eat. If we eat a low salt diet this can also impact how much acid we produce as sodium is needed in the creation of this essential acid.

There’s a whole other post on the finer details of our salt consumption (table salt=bad, rock or sea salt=good) but here is someone else’s version for the moment. Processed (ie table salt) versions of sodium have been stripped don’t hold the minerals that our bodies were developed to ingest at the same time as the electrolyte sodium.

If you’re getting heartburn or recurrent UTIs consider looking into the benefits of taking an HCL supplement with every meal. It may be responsible for reducing tiredness/fatigue after eating. This tiredness could also be down to eating foods your system has an intolerance to or a disordered bloodsugar response which I talk about briefly here.

A number of naturopathic approaches say these holes, which are sometimes referred to as Leaky Gut Syndrome can lead to undigested food particles entering the bloodstream. When this happens the immune system sees stuff that is not ‘self’ and mounts an immune response.

‘Leaky gut’s’ very existence is hotly debated in certain circles but some of the people questioning the theory’s existence (in my experience) talk of mysterious triggering of auto-immune conditions but so far have offered no better alternative.

  • Gluten
  • Legumes
  • Nightshade family of vegetables
  • Long term use of antibiotics, ibuprofen and any number of other medications.

Having the troops on high alert, facing a challenge with every forkful and behaving in a twitchy, trigger happy manner, attacking anything that looks a little bit different to self (a little like some members of the US police force) is not a long term strategy for any body.

As I started to see signs the overgrowth was lessening including waking with a clearer head, not feeling so… puffy and swollen and the size of my potbelly reducing aswell as losing 7 pounds and counting (whilst not even trying to) I started to use Permavite with each meal to build up my gut lining.

Slippery Elm, Aloe Vera and Marshmallow root supplements, okra green foodstuff and chia and flaxseed all have mucilaginous properties (they go gooey with water) and soothe the GI tract by creating another barrier to protect the gut lining from bacteria in the belly.

 

I listened to a presentation by Suzy Cohen the author of Drug Muggers, a pharmacist and functional medicine practitioner in the US, recently. In the book she talks about the various interactions prescription drugs can have with each other and the food we eat (fruit juice and cholesterol lowering drugs don’t mix, apparently) and the side effects they can have on our bodies.

Ability to edit myself has slipped (you may have noticed) while dealing with a dying cat at home.

She’s no longer in pain so I’m hoping to get back to doing the things I do every day to feel a little bit better.

Any port in a storm?

water water everywhere

I chose this image of mine to illustrate the need of any port in a storm but it’s a disordered environment, really. The glowering images of a storm on a Norwegian sea I’d thought of to illustrate this post are on a packed away external drive at the moment. I feel now, this image works better – something’s wrong with what would normally be a charming image of rural countryside.

There might be any number of contributing factors that bring a hint of the nautical to what should be a bucolic agrarian scene.

Brain you tube: The body will keep circulation for as long as possible to basic stuff like breathing. The newer stuff – thinking, writing poems, doing a One Direction dance are not worth saving at all costs by the brain. They’re less important because they aren’t essential for our survival. I think it’s good to get an image of how things are supposed to be.

Fecal transplants seem to be something that’s been helping conditions obviously affecting the gut – Clostridium Difficile for example. Now it’s also being suggested for neurological disorders such as MS, Parkinsons and Autism.

This post will be full of things that have caught my eye recently. Here’s one to throw into the mix: alkalize for health. We all know that veg especially greens are good for us (read previous post here where I speak about folate) but also making our body less acid has untold benefits for a body that’s become used to one too many cakes or steaks (both food items I heartily approve of but probably not that extra helping?) Trying to increase the number and variety of veg in the diet I see as the take home message of the page.

Get to know your body whether it’s behaving well or not. I had my genome sequenced. I mention my experience of the process in previous posts here and here. It’s pointed out that my supplementing with

  • vitamin B12 will be better being done with hydroxy rather than methyl B12.
  • My vitamin D receptors aren’t working properly which could explain my especially bad SAD in December/January.
  • certain glutathione processing SNiPs were completely missing so it seems it would be a good thing to supplement with glutathione (I’m using a cream applied under the ribs (over the liver) that will be absorbed transdermally and will hopefully give my liver a bit of a leg up and help it rid the body of general day to day toxins. I hope this might result eventually in a bit more energy. I probably have a lot more reading to do!

Here is another page that highlights why we want to get all the vitamin D we can. The methylation cycle is fiendishly tricky to understand (well, it is for me anyway).You may have noticed from the flavour of the posts on here so far that I’ll point you toward things that aren’t necessarily cures – the approach, protocol or exercise regime won’t make you all better by tomorrow but I’ll suggest things that might make life a little better whether you may be someone with a condition, care for someone with a condition or, you’re entirely well and somehow ended up on this site.

How does this help?

It might not help anyone else but I take some comfort knowing there may have been an underlying reason I didn’t fully engage in life at school and could never have been considered life and soul of the party! Half the population are thought to have impaired SNiPs. The information I’ve found out about me makes me wonder about the worth of double blind placebo controlled trials for complex conditions and also all the people who grew up being told they were slow, stupid or lazy.

All these lines of investigation and exploration might help an individual a little bit. I believe any port in a storm will do for me. Having a chronic, neurological disorder I believe can sometimes be likened to being lost at sea. You can’t rely on a stable base or solid ground or anything!

Dr Amy Yasko, a molecular biologist with an interest in healing her child’s autism has written about the process she has taken to getting a disordered brain back to some kind of normal.

I consider myself to be at the beginning of this process.

  • I took a food intolerance test over 10 years ago so know what foods my insides prefer not to deal with (dairy and gliadin, gluten essentially).
  • I got 23andme’d this summer and have found out I need to reshape a malfunctioning (from birth) methylation cycle and
  • I’ve been on a candida clearout for the past few months (please read 2 earlier posts on the subject here and here).

I wonder whether a body not working optimally from before birth also contributed to some of the vascular issues whose existence is being debated in cases of MS. I went to get CCSVI’d by Dr Sclafani in Brooklyn two years ago and have mentioned it here)The hypothesis that Dr Paulo Zamboni first put forward in 2009 but was initially investigated by Dr Franz Schelling (which i talk about here) is called ccsvi.


As we know, MS (and life) is multifactorial.