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?

alternative healthcare

engulfing“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!

we need a new, functional way


DSC00804

This post will mainly be about how the folk in white coats aren’t always going to be aware of the best direction for us to go in so we’d best make ourselves aware of our options. This was in the news in July. It questions how equipped doctors are for reading results of tests they’ve suggested for their patients and their ability to assess their patient’s risk in choosing action or inaction in light of them.

Apart from a small minority of adult patients most of us are compliant with what our healthcare providers suggest. Although the internet has made it possible for that minority who have decided to investigate their own health and treat themselves to communicate with one another and draw support from their ‘go it alone’ peers.

The men in white coats are the experts – they’re trained in this stuff  ‘all I know is my body isn’t working as I’d like it to – they’re expert, they MUST know more than me?’

We need only consider Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs to understand why and how this situation arises. When one of our foundations is rocked (health) we revert to feeling as we did as a child; surrounded by grownups who obviously know more than us. We’ll happily listen to any medical professional in the strong hope that they are the experts we’ve been brought up to believe live in those white coats. When they’re on the scene we can safely be the child that lets the grownups make decisions on their behalf.

Experts don’t appear to be in ready supply for a range of chronic conditions. The clue is in the name. These conditions are considered chronic/long term because no one has yet found a cure.

I’ve just been sent a link to this site which highlights the foods we’ve been taught to believe are bad for us in reality (and moderation) are in fact pretty good for us.

Times they are a changing!

Functional medicine works with how our bodies are right now. Here is a site that takes a functional approach to exercise. For people who are short on energy we choose to conserve it for the important things (exercise, let’s be honest, is rarely one of those things). Making best use of remaining energy is the smart person’s choice. we must also keep in the back of our mind that as we move less we will become less able to move.

Medical professionals aren’t at present set up to look at the body’s fuel: out of approximately 7 year’s worth of gp training they spend not much more than a week on nutrition!

There are some out there like NHS Dr Marios Hadjivassiliou who runs the ataxia clinic in Sheffield who acknowledge that the fuel we run our bodies with has an effect on our performance. He cites gluten as a problem protein for the body to digest and it’s ill effects have the potential to cause trouble in more than just the digestive tract (celiac disease).

There are enough suggestions of nutritional approaches all over the web so I’ll point you toward a resource that has links to reliable research into alternative ways of treating a poorly functioning body.

 I’ll use cognitive dysfunction to account for the scattered nature of this post. All the links on this page really go to show that healthcare is not a binary thing. there isn’t one way to make things better. it sounds horrifically West Coast but Instead we need to love ourselves and those around us enough to want to find ways of making life better for ourselves.

This is a frightening proposition, but only at first. Further into your selfcare journey you’ll come across posts and sites perhaps like this one and be able to critically think about the worth of what’s being suggested!

 

Happy travels!

 

Inflammation? Oohh Matron!

 

garlic's good for you.
garlic has many and varied benefits not just its vampiric connections!

ms* was described as an autoimmune disorder on wikipedia and then a few years ago it was changed to an inflammatory disease. I’m not holding wikipedia up as the fount of all knowledge but yes ms, parkinsons and alzheimers all have a degree of neurodegeneration perhaps brought on by swelling in the brain (not necessarily of the entire brain).

Our lesions, if they were visible would look like swollen, red areas you’d get around a cut on your skin. This swelling is the body’s ‘soldiers’ standing about and making sure no infection takes hold. Glial cells provide support to neurons which send and receive the messages that control our body’s functioning.

There are four members of the glial family: microglia, astrocytes, myelin and oligodendrocytes which create a structural framework for neurons, they maintain homoeostasis and offer protection from harmful bacteria and drugs. They either clear up damaged cells or, having gone rogue they mistakenly nibble bits off myelin (like pipe lagging around nerves) causing a neuron’s messages to get mangled.

Whatever your preferred belief system, inflammation is present in both the vascular injury model of ms (with us through postmortem studies since the mid 19th century) and the autoimmune model that has held sway since the 1920s (which coincidentally is when drug companies began their inexorable march to world domination). Theories seem to be changing and it’s worth looking into a few of them so at least you can talk with your caregivers rather than just being talked to.

All human’s brains shrink over time, msers especially (and to some extent those on the way to becoming type II diabetics, Alzheimers has been dubbed Type III Diabetes by some in the medical profession). It certainly seems an awareness of what we eat can’t do any harm as there are some changes we can make to our daily lives that could have an impact on the day to day functioning of our brains.

About 8% of our brain is made up of stem cells so yes, brain cells do have the potential to regenerate and in healthy brains there is a constant turnover of these glial cells which are created as, where and when they’re needed.

As the brain is approximately 50/50 fat and water (more like 60;40 but i can’t remember which way round) how we choose to consume both fat and water can make a real difference. There are lots of resources online to suggest ways of ingesting fats that your brain would appreciate but it also seems to be about what we choose NOT to eat that can help here. Our bodies have little need of pastry, bread, pasta or biscuits.

Blood sugar imbalances brought about by too many carbohydrates over many years in the diet (which turn into sugars in the blood) which eventually fuel our muscles and brain need to be paid attention to.

Avocados are a pretty good food for us and keeps our brains happy too or so I’ve been led to believe by various online resources (not just the avocado marketing board).

Too many carbs damage the brain as does too few.

All this looking after ourselves is far from straightforward!

Get with your body’s new program and look for the alternatives!

Happy googling!

 

*I choose to keep ms in lower case as it seems to have less importance to it (in my own tiny mind anyway).

Decisions for the The Long Game

DSC_2514As an owner of a chronic condition things could go better if we think of life a little differently. I don’t want to be at an increased risk of getting Alzheimers and this strategy could be a way to reduce that risk.

One thing that we definitely do have control of is what we choose to eat and not eat. There are a host of folk online who have thoughts about what, when, where, how and why we should make certain food decisions. I very much hope this site doesn’t slot into that category, as somewhere that uses the word ‘should’ alot (I’m trying not to use it on myself) so, please let me know if there’s any whiff of the preach going on here!

I spend quite a lot of time online and it’s not always cats playing pianos, although there is a bit of that. What we choose to fuel ourselves with can’t NOT have an effect on our output.

When we have a certain amount of degeneration on the cards any and all slight wins are vital but “my leg doesn’t drag as much” sounds very like a lack of success to the fit and healthy.

There’s always going to be a mismatch between the outlook of both groups of people but if you can tread a path through what consultants say and what you feel then you’re winning!

Check back to see what’s caught my eye recently (this is just as likely to be something about cats and pianos as it is a recent study on nutrition or exercise).