I have a long and sordid history with food... mostly caused by the diet industry. I'm fat. I've been fat since I hit puberty. For the most part I've resisted dieting but succumbed once in high school and once in the late 80s. Both times I lost weight which I gained back during the couple of years afterwards which keeps me in line with the science studies on the matter.
Then there is the health side of things. I knew my body reacted badly to some types of food. I was raised in the era of Wonderbread and Twinkies. My mother did her best to put meat and veg on the table for our meals but we were also poor and the good stuff ran out pretty fast. If we were still hungry jam sandwiches were often the solution.
When I went off to college, I did the whole vegetarian thing and ate lots of grains, beans and tofu. Then the new food pyramid came out encouraging us to eat 9-12 helpings of grain/bread per day. I was like "woohoo!!! I LOVE sandwiches!". I also learned about hypoglycemia around that time and it sounded really familiar. Back then it was considered quack science so I didn't get very far with it.
After graduation, I dropped the vegetarian thing out of practicality. Working full time I didn't have time to prepare food from scratch everyday and restaurants didn't serve anything like the yummy meals available today. A vegetarian meal often consisted of cheese pizza.
Then the 80s hit and fat became the boogeyman. This is when I went on my first legitimate low fat diet. While I initially lost a ton of weight, after eating low fat for 20 years I gained a ton of weight. I became prediabetic and had heartburn. I became intolerant to gluten and went gluten free. Luckily it was before pre-made baked goods so if I wanted something GF I had to make it from scratch which meant no more bread, cereal or pastas.
This is about the time I revisited hypoglycemia and found the glycemic index. I rejiggered my diet so that I ate low glycemic foods and changed the time of day when I ate certain things. My energy levels improved but my weight stayed the same.
Once I contracted CFS/ME I learned about the Paleo Diet, GAPS diet and Weston Price Diet. I decided to combine all three and went on whole foods paleo diet that included the healing foods from GAPS. While I felt better, my weight didn't budge then I started gaining again. Over 8 years my weight crept up by ~100lbs and I was now at 322. At 5'2", I was around 60 BMI. UGH
Then two years ago all hell broke loose with my gut. I've been having problems with it on and off since the first day I contracted CFS/ME. I'd go through bouts where I couldn't eat solid food and fat bothered me the most. Lots of nausea, IBS, diarrhea, etc. But, this time it was accompanied by brutal stabbing pain in my left side. I went through a huge battery of tests. The results were fatty liver and fatty pancreas. Nothing that explained the ab pain or the 'not being able to eat' problem. The did find evidence of stomach lining inflammation but nothing active. I got put on meds.
Then I discovered that keto is the only fix for fatty liver. I started paleo again. I weaned off the stomach meds. Then weaned off carbs to keto levels. My meals consisted of protein for breakfast, lots of veg and a side of meat for my main meal and a small protein and fat snack for the third meal. Weight started dropping off even though that wasn't my goal.
My liver numbers came down. My blood sugar numbers were good. I was no longer prediabetic. I lost 18 pounds. Then my stomach acted up again and I couldn't eat any fat. It was back to turkey sandwiches and chicken soup. I had to go back on the stomach meds. This cycle happened twice more: keto diet, gut acting up, paleo diet, gut acting up, etc.
Now I just can't seem to get back in the groove. I last a couple of days and then cheat. I use the keto rules to cheat on paleo and the paleo rules to cheat on keto. I can't quite figure out what has me stuck. The cycle of diet/gut fail or the fact that I used to be so poor that I often didn't get enough food to eat or my outright hatred of diets/weight control.
Thing is I felt GREAT on keto. I had tons of energy; my PEM was drastically reduced; and my brain fog lifted so I could read again. And my liver was healing! My doctor did a liver biopsy this year and it came back with no fibrosis which really shocked him. Even my liver scan number came down by a lot.
I feel defeated. I feel out of control. I just can't seem to do this again even though I did really well before. I managed 2 years the first time I did paleo and 4-5 months with the last year's paleo/keto round. There is SO much junk food on the market now. It makes finding 'keto' snacks easy and on bad days it is so hard for me to prep fresh meals. I feel like a failure. Like I don't want to get better.
I want to come up with a food plan but I'm scared I won't stick to it again. I'll cheat too much. Right now I'm eating cough drops due to having a nasty upper respiratory infection and I refuse to use the sugar free drops because of the nasty stuff in them. That means keto is definitely out for now. I guess I'll start on paleo once I get off the cough drops.
Maybe I need to get my mind off weight loss and switch to liver health again. I still have a ways to go to fix it. My numbers improved but I still have a fatty liver. I can't make up my mind if I want to do this cold turkey this time instead of my normal easing into things. Then again my body doesn't do well with sudden changes. I need to come up with a better plan. One that is both food and mental.
Saturday, February 8, 2020
Saturday, September 22, 2018
New Research
Nothing available commercially yet.
“The macrophage takes the nutrient glucose, whose day job it is to provide energy, and surprisingly turns it into itaconate. This then blocks production of inflammatory factors,"
Scientists discover promising ‘off-switch’ for inflammatory diseases
“The macrophage takes the nutrient glucose, whose day job it is to provide energy, and surprisingly turns it into itaconate. This then blocks production of inflammatory factors,"
Scientists Discover The Root Of Autoimmune Diseases – And How We Can Treat Them
"the researchers dulled symptoms [of autoimmune disease] by suppressing the growth of Enterococcus gallinarum"
Brain's Lymphatic Vessels as New Avenue to Treat Multiple Sclerosis
"the brain and the immune system are closely interacting. When these interactions go out of control, pathologies emerge"
Sunday, November 19, 2017
The Key??
New study indicates that there is a genetic defect that reduces the number of T cell receptors in the immune system which leads to the immune system turning on and not being able to turn off. This in turn leads to a feedback loop of inflammation, Krebs cycle malfunction, mito dysfunction and immune system activation. When the mitochondria crap out, everything craps out and it turns into a systemic illness.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4872418/
If this study is verified, then this is most likely THE cause of CFS/ME. It is the root of all the other problems. I'm just wondering if CRISPER could be used to repair the genetic damage and fix this illness once and for all. A girl can dream.....
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4872418/
If this study is verified, then this is most likely THE cause of CFS/ME. It is the root of all the other problems. I'm just wondering if CRISPER could be used to repair the genetic damage and fix this illness once and for all. A girl can dream.....
Wednesday, September 20, 2017
Leucine and KREBS
This is going to be short and sweet because I don't have time to hunt down the original paper links right now. Prudential is demanding that I prove that I still can't work again. Blergh
Davis et al have just shown that the immune system is haywire and the KREBs cycle is broken in PWME. Their mito are fine but don't behave fine when exposed to the plasma of PWME so something is broken in our blood not our mito. Our metabolites are also out of whack.
Along comes this article..
Targeting "Broken" Metabolism in Immune Cells Reduces Inflammatory Disease
http://www.scienceandtechnologyresearchnews.com/targeting-broken-metabolism-immune-cells-reduces-inflammatory-disease/
that discusses how our immune system essentially hijacks the KREBs cycle so it can make molecules to fight bugs (whether they exist for real or not). This leads to some weird ass biochem going on and of course inflammation. They developed a new protein that works well in mice and it is similar to Leucine. (LOL now I remember WHY I bought that huge tub of leucine!!) Hence, my leucine experiment is about to start.
Davis et al have just shown that the immune system is haywire and the KREBs cycle is broken in PWME. Their mito are fine but don't behave fine when exposed to the plasma of PWME so something is broken in our blood not our mito. Our metabolites are also out of whack.
Along comes this article..
Targeting "Broken" Metabolism in Immune Cells Reduces Inflammatory Disease
http://www.scienceandtechnologyresearchnews.com/targeting-broken-metabolism-immune-cells-reduces-inflammatory-disease/
that discusses how our immune system essentially hijacks the KREBs cycle so it can make molecules to fight bugs (whether they exist for real or not). This leads to some weird ass biochem going on and of course inflammation. They developed a new protein that works well in mice and it is similar to Leucine. (LOL now I remember WHY I bought that huge tub of leucine!!) Hence, my leucine experiment is about to start.
Friday, August 11, 2017
The Four Letter Word
I hate typing the word 'diet'. I hate being on a diet. I hate that society wants us to be a certain weight. I hate that people hate me just because I'm fat. I hate that I'm fat. I hate being fat. I hate trying to find 4X clothing that I don't hate. I hate not being able to move easily. I used to be lithe. I used to be able to get up from a chair or even the floor easily and smoothly. This sucks and it is why I'm on a diet. I'm tired of getting stuck in pieces of furniture or having to go to all fours to get up off the floor. Admittedly some of this is due to CFS/ME but even on my good days I can get stuck. Having a waterbed that is underfilled also doesn't help. I have to roll out of it since I don't have the strength to claw my way out. Okay so maybe not all of it is due to me being huge.... Having CFS/ME sucks too.
But I digress.....
I'm coming up on the two week mark. Things are progressing well. I've lost a few pounds. I'm still fiddling with the software tracker, cronometer. I ordered a scale for me that is goes up to 450lbs. I dug out the scale for my food. I've been very good at logging food, supplements, sleep duration, sleep quality, symptoms and activities.
Fiddling with the software has been an interesting experience. I'm almost obsessed with it but it's paid off. I actually watched the training vids and learned a few tricks that aren't intuitive. I've figured out how to put my own foods in if they aren't already in the extensive database and even put in recipes and it does all the math for me. [If you decide to go with this software, just note that typing in brand names will bring up an entirely different list than typing in generic food names. "yogurt" will get you a totally different list than "Brown Cow yogurt" and the brand name item often won't show in the list if the generic term is used. Very weird bug if you ask me but anyway...] Being able to actually see the macro ratios as well as calories has allowed me to adjust in real time what I choose to eat each day. I've cut way down on carbs and increased my fruit & veg intake. I keep trying to increase protein but I don't seem to make the minimum almost daily. It is only when I go over my calorie count that I eat enough protein. Sigh... Right now I tend to make the fat goal with difficulty, carbs always go over and protein under.
I set the tracker up for minimal activity/sedentary with a half pound per week weight loss. This allows me a baseline of 2070 calories a day assuming I burn 2320 calories doing nothing. I found I tend to go slightly over the 2070 mark but I'm happy if I keep it under 2320. Of course the few days leading up to the start of my period went higher and higher. I could always eat a horse the week prior to my period. I'm STARVING!! Now that my period started the hunger is abating and I'm settling back into a 2000 calorie day. If I'm having trouble with this amount of food I can't imagine how many calories I was eating prior to starting this diet. Geesh... no wonder I've lost weight already.
My official weigh in is Saturday morning but of course I couldn't wait. Right now the scale is on the same floor as me so I don't have to go upstairs to use it. So, I keep weighing myself every morning. I always gain and then lose water weight around my period so I'm still not sure what my stable weight is yet. My starting point was the doctor's office at 306.5lbs, which I confirmed when my new scale arrived. This morning I stepped on the scale and I'm down to 303.6lbs already!!! I'm only supposed to be losing a half pound a week and I've already lost 3 and possibly more! Looks like I might be losing 2 pounds per week which is fantastic! Maybe after this Saturday I'm moving the scale very far away from where I usually tread in the house so I won't obsessively weigh myself and keep it to once a week.
I am scared that this whole thing is going to devolve into an eating disorder. The last time I went on a serious diet back in 1992 I almost ended up with an eating disorder. Luckily I got pregnant and was forced to start eating again. Then in 1998 I read "What if Women Stopped Hating Their Bodies" and started eating what I wanted, when I wanted and as much as I wanted. It helped me get over the "you're not allowed to eat that" voice in my head. It helped me stop craving junk foods. I ate french fries so much their allure went away for me. I now only eat them if they are very good fries. This wasn't the case prior. They were forbidden foods so I MUST eat them. It was as much a defiance thing as a food thing.
After that point, I started noticing that some foods made me feel better and some food made me feel worse so I started tinkering with what I ate and when I ate it. I discovered the glycemic index and based my diet on those principles. I moved to a more organic whole grain type diet. I finally managed to get my energy levels on an even keel. I used to crash after lunch and want to sleep under my desk. Now I had energy over the course of the day and no longer wanted to sleep mid afternoon. Then I developed a gluten reaction out of nowhere and had to go gluten free. I did quite well for years but just couldn't lose weight so I decided to exercise more. I was strong, fit, had great numbers for the doc and I was fat. I was a fit fatty as they are called. Anyway....
After getting sick I did a Paleo Whole30 and then ate Primal for two years. I never lost weight on this diet contrary to all the Paleo weight loss miracles out there. However, this healed my guts sufficiently to let grains back into my diet. Things slowly devolved and I was eating lots of carbs at every single meal. I would eat a half a pizza for dinner without blinking. A bowl of pasta for snack. Breakfast sandwiches, lunch sandwiches. etc. Now I'm having to retrain myself yet again. I knew I hadn't been eating enough veg & fruit. I knew I was eating too many carbs. I just didn't realize how much. This experiment has been good for me. I both loathe it and happy that I'm losing weight at the same time. I'm learning things and that always interests me.
I do wonder how long I'll be able to keep this up? It will take a year to lose a hundred pounds if I don't plateau, which is an impossibility. Ideally I should lose 150lbs so I'm looking at another two years of dieting. UGH I would just be happy to get rid of my double chin and fit into my size 20 clothing again. I might even get off the CPAP machine!! Now that would be something to celebrate!
But I digress.....
I'm coming up on the two week mark. Things are progressing well. I've lost a few pounds. I'm still fiddling with the software tracker, cronometer. I ordered a scale for me that is goes up to 450lbs. I dug out the scale for my food. I've been very good at logging food, supplements, sleep duration, sleep quality, symptoms and activities.
Fiddling with the software has been an interesting experience. I'm almost obsessed with it but it's paid off. I actually watched the training vids and learned a few tricks that aren't intuitive. I've figured out how to put my own foods in if they aren't already in the extensive database and even put in recipes and it does all the math for me. [If you decide to go with this software, just note that typing in brand names will bring up an entirely different list than typing in generic food names. "yogurt" will get you a totally different list than "Brown Cow yogurt" and the brand name item often won't show in the list if the generic term is used. Very weird bug if you ask me but anyway...] Being able to actually see the macro ratios as well as calories has allowed me to adjust in real time what I choose to eat each day. I've cut way down on carbs and increased my fruit & veg intake. I keep trying to increase protein but I don't seem to make the minimum almost daily. It is only when I go over my calorie count that I eat enough protein. Sigh... Right now I tend to make the fat goal with difficulty, carbs always go over and protein under.
I set the tracker up for minimal activity/sedentary with a half pound per week weight loss. This allows me a baseline of 2070 calories a day assuming I burn 2320 calories doing nothing. I found I tend to go slightly over the 2070 mark but I'm happy if I keep it under 2320. Of course the few days leading up to the start of my period went higher and higher. I could always eat a horse the week prior to my period. I'm STARVING!! Now that my period started the hunger is abating and I'm settling back into a 2000 calorie day. If I'm having trouble with this amount of food I can't imagine how many calories I was eating prior to starting this diet. Geesh... no wonder I've lost weight already.
My official weigh in is Saturday morning but of course I couldn't wait. Right now the scale is on the same floor as me so I don't have to go upstairs to use it. So, I keep weighing myself every morning. I always gain and then lose water weight around my period so I'm still not sure what my stable weight is yet. My starting point was the doctor's office at 306.5lbs, which I confirmed when my new scale arrived. This morning I stepped on the scale and I'm down to 303.6lbs already!!! I'm only supposed to be losing a half pound a week and I've already lost 3 and possibly more! Looks like I might be losing 2 pounds per week which is fantastic! Maybe after this Saturday I'm moving the scale very far away from where I usually tread in the house so I won't obsessively weigh myself and keep it to once a week.
I am scared that this whole thing is going to devolve into an eating disorder. The last time I went on a serious diet back in 1992 I almost ended up with an eating disorder. Luckily I got pregnant and was forced to start eating again. Then in 1998 I read "What if Women Stopped Hating Their Bodies" and started eating what I wanted, when I wanted and as much as I wanted. It helped me get over the "you're not allowed to eat that" voice in my head. It helped me stop craving junk foods. I ate french fries so much their allure went away for me. I now only eat them if they are very good fries. This wasn't the case prior. They were forbidden foods so I MUST eat them. It was as much a defiance thing as a food thing.
After that point, I started noticing that some foods made me feel better and some food made me feel worse so I started tinkering with what I ate and when I ate it. I discovered the glycemic index and based my diet on those principles. I moved to a more organic whole grain type diet. I finally managed to get my energy levels on an even keel. I used to crash after lunch and want to sleep under my desk. Now I had energy over the course of the day and no longer wanted to sleep mid afternoon. Then I developed a gluten reaction out of nowhere and had to go gluten free. I did quite well for years but just couldn't lose weight so I decided to exercise more. I was strong, fit, had great numbers for the doc and I was fat. I was a fit fatty as they are called. Anyway....
After getting sick I did a Paleo Whole30 and then ate Primal for two years. I never lost weight on this diet contrary to all the Paleo weight loss miracles out there. However, this healed my guts sufficiently to let grains back into my diet. Things slowly devolved and I was eating lots of carbs at every single meal. I would eat a half a pizza for dinner without blinking. A bowl of pasta for snack. Breakfast sandwiches, lunch sandwiches. etc. Now I'm having to retrain myself yet again. I knew I hadn't been eating enough veg & fruit. I knew I was eating too many carbs. I just didn't realize how much. This experiment has been good for me. I both loathe it and happy that I'm losing weight at the same time. I'm learning things and that always interests me.
I do wonder how long I'll be able to keep this up? It will take a year to lose a hundred pounds if I don't plateau, which is an impossibility. Ideally I should lose 150lbs so I'm looking at another two years of dieting. UGH I would just be happy to get rid of my double chin and fit into my size 20 clothing again. I might even get off the CPAP machine!! Now that would be something to celebrate!
Thursday, August 3, 2017
Sleep Update
Another experiment in progress....
I discovered that my new very comfy wedge pillow causes my sinuses to swell shut. It must be off-gassing something nasty. The cover stank anyway either from scented laundry detergent or dryer crystals. I like the smell at first whiff but can't stand sleeping on top of it. Anyway, hubs is going to wash the cover for me and I'm going to stick it out on the deck to bake in the sun for a few days. I would hate to add this to my growing pile of 'do not use' pillows. This is getting expensive. Plus this particular one is so darned comfy. I would really like to be able to use it. Sigh......
I discovered that my new very comfy wedge pillow causes my sinuses to swell shut. It must be off-gassing something nasty. The cover stank anyway either from scented laundry detergent or dryer crystals. I like the smell at first whiff but can't stand sleeping on top of it. Anyway, hubs is going to wash the cover for me and I'm going to stick it out on the deck to bake in the sun for a few days. I would hate to add this to my growing pile of 'do not use' pillows. This is getting expensive. Plus this particular one is so darned comfy. I would really like to be able to use it. Sigh......
Wednesday, August 2, 2017
The Great Diet Experiment Part Deux
It's been a few years since I did the whole Paleo thing. It was great for me at the time. Over the course of the following two years I healed my stomach/guts to the point that I can now eat wheat again if it is non-GMO. Now, several years after that, between one thing and another, I eat WAY too many carbs. Back then I did a rough calorie count so I could figure out my macro balance (carbs vs protein vs fat). I estimated that I was eating around 1600-2000 kcals a day. I have no clue what I'm eating these days. I'm no longer cooking from scratch, eating a lot of take out, and eating a lot of prepared foods/snacks. Hence, the new diet experiment. I had been toying with the idea of trying out keto for years now and this is a good chance to see if I can do it.
I downloaded the app, cronometer. It tracks calories, macros and micro nutrients. Of course, rather than trying to do a baseline for a week I dove right in with calorie restriction. Big mistake number one. According to the app, with my height and weight and no exercise, my baseline is ~2300kcal per day. To lose a half pound a week I have to eat ~250kcal/day less than that. Oh easy beans right? I figure cut out my one soda per day and the two chocolate bars I eat a week and I'm golden. Sweet. Big mistake number two.
I started doing data entry on the foods I eat. I can watch in real time or even plan ahead and see how foods alter my calories, macros and micros. WOW!! Man do I eat a LOT of calories. I don't eat horribly. I eat pretty high quality foods but dang they are also calorie dense foods. Between meals and snacks I was probably around 3000kcal/day. Of course, doing the live tracking meant I immediately stopped eating normally. Because I could, I entered the day prior to the day I started tracking and ended up with 2500kcal/day based on just memory, which means I probably forgot stuff.
I immediately tried to stick to the allowed calories and immediately failed. I was starving!! Also I'm nervous about doing calorie restriction while having severe CFS/ME. I eat to make sure both my blood sugar and my energy stay at a pretty even keel. I also try to make sure I have a variety of foods and probiotics to help with my health. But I wasn't able to track any of this before and now I can.
After two days of trying to stick to the calorie count, I gave in. I was like screw it I'm eating the left over pizza in the fridge. I entered it into the food diary and to my surprise it didn't whack my numbers out by too much. Sure high in carbs according to the ratios I set up for myself but I was finding that there was no way to eat little enough carbs and enough fat to balance the macros out the way I wanted. So now I'm just kind of winging it and seeing what happens.
Some background... I've gained weight. Once I became sedentary and managed to start eating again I went up to 250lbs. I'm 5'2" which put me in the morbidly obese range. I had started at 220lbs which I was stuck at despite a good diet and tons of exercise. I was considered healthy obese; one of those quirks of nature that was healthy despite being horribly overweight. I had low blood pressure, okay cholesterol, no diabetes or even prediabetes. Then I got sick. I lost 20lbs right away due to not eating at all. Then gained back 50lbs over the course of several years and then leveled out. Then I went on steroids for a year. After that point, I very slowly crept up in weight until last year when I hit 305lbs. I had stomach problems last year so it fluctuated a bit and now a year later I'm at 306. Which is good. I'm not gaining. Whew! But it still sucks.
I had to buy furniture for our new house and now I have to check the construction to make sure it will hold my weight. Everything has to be wider, bigger and stronger for me to use it. I'm up to a 4X in clothing which means I'm stuck with one of the shittiest clothing manufacturers on the planet. I can no longer buy clothes in the stores. Hence my motivation for losing weight. My bed is uncomfortable; I need a new wider wheelchair; I've almost broken the wheels off my walker/seat; I'm worried about breaking the stairlift. It sucks!!
The whole thing is such an interesting experiment. I have always had body image problems. I've been fighting my body weight since I arrived here in the US in the 70s and suddenly packed on pounds. I hate diets and actively rebel against them every chance I get. We were so poor when I was a kid food scarcity was actually a problem and I was often hungry. Now as an adult I'm very wonky about how much food is in the house and if I have access to food. I used to carry food around with me for when I got hungry.
I keep trying to do the body positive thing but absolutely hate being fat. I had called a truce when I was able to exercise like crazy but now that I'm sedentary and cracked 300lbs I'm done. I want to fix this. I don't care that studies show that people gain the weight back. I don't care that I'm walking proof of those studies. I've been on two diets in my life. I lost weight and then gained it back with a few extra pounds. I keep hearing success stories in the Paleo world and was hoping that pounds would magically melt off me but alas that didn't happen. Again I'm the anomaly.
Back to the present day...
This is now day five of my experiement. I've made a couple of decisions already. I'm not going to stress about sticking to the weight loss calorie count. If I can keep it at or slightly below the metabolic calorie count I'll be happy. It is still way less than what I was eating. The metabolic rate is a guess and probably wrong. If I've been eating between 2500-3000kcal/day and not gaining weight, then sticking to 2200-2500 is a good improvement. Even so I've been shifting what I eat. I'm figuring out what I can eat a lot of and what I have to be careful of. Yes this is getting into the good foods vs bad foods issue. I'm sort of ignoring that for now. I am leary of crossing over into eating disorder territory. I'm weighing my food, counting out tomatoes, pouring stuff into measuring cups,etc. It is dangerous territory. I almost slid into eating disorder territory the one and only other time I went on a serious diet back in the early 90s. While I need to control my eating and food, I really need to not get too hung up on it. It is going to be very difficult.
Other things I've noticed...
I seem to be eating a lot of the time out of boredom. I want to get up and do something and getting a snack is about all I can handle. Also eating eases frustration, anxiety and stress. I love chewing on things when I'm anxious. I love fruit leather for this reason. It is nice and chewy. I can gnaw on it for a while. However, it is really high in calories so I have to watch the amount I eat. I think I have to find a different outlet for my frustration: breathing exercises maybe???
I've overeaten today. I'm stressing out about the blood test coming up in the afternoon. I have to do a 12 hour fast which means that by 4am I have to stop eating and won't have access to food until after 5pm tomorrow. Yikes!! I'm getting a little wonky over it.
I love ice water but it makes me hungry. Ravenously hungry. I also can't drink anything but water or I go way over my calorie count for the day. I manage to sneak in a little kefir but most of the time I'm skipping all the juices, kombuchas, etc that I used to consume almost daily.
Being able to see the micronutrient numbers on a daily basis lets me know which supplements to take. VitE seems to be a fairly common one. I'm surprised at how well I'm doing with most of them. I seem to be keeping up with the Bs, A, K and iron. Potassium I seem to be constantly short and E depends upon my meals for the day. Sometimes I hit it and sometimes I don't. I wonder if I can chart them out. That would be nice to see.
So jury is still out on this. I feel like I'm wrestling a bull by the horns and it is tossing me around a bit. I just ordered a scale that will work with my higher weight. I'm putting it in the remote bathroom so I won't be tempted to step on it every day. Another holdover from my weight obsessing days. I'm going to continue to try to eat a more balanced diet. I already knew I needed to eat more veg and less carbs. I'm going to have to mess around the macro settings though. Not sure I can handle the 50% fat/25% carb/25% protein I originally setup. I'm constantly missing these targets. It is nice seeing the micronutrient numbers though and it helps me with supplementation. There will be more about this. Particularly since I'm an emotional wreck around these issues. I really wish they would figure out why some bodies hold onto their weight while others lose so easily. Sigh. I just want to be under 200lbs. My goal is 140 but I'll settle for anything under 200lbs at this point.
I downloaded the app, cronometer. It tracks calories, macros and micro nutrients. Of course, rather than trying to do a baseline for a week I dove right in with calorie restriction. Big mistake number one. According to the app, with my height and weight and no exercise, my baseline is ~2300kcal per day. To lose a half pound a week I have to eat ~250kcal/day less than that. Oh easy beans right? I figure cut out my one soda per day and the two chocolate bars I eat a week and I'm golden. Sweet. Big mistake number two.
I started doing data entry on the foods I eat. I can watch in real time or even plan ahead and see how foods alter my calories, macros and micros. WOW!! Man do I eat a LOT of calories. I don't eat horribly. I eat pretty high quality foods but dang they are also calorie dense foods. Between meals and snacks I was probably around 3000kcal/day. Of course, doing the live tracking meant I immediately stopped eating normally. Because I could, I entered the day prior to the day I started tracking and ended up with 2500kcal/day based on just memory, which means I probably forgot stuff.
I immediately tried to stick to the allowed calories and immediately failed. I was starving!! Also I'm nervous about doing calorie restriction while having severe CFS/ME. I eat to make sure both my blood sugar and my energy stay at a pretty even keel. I also try to make sure I have a variety of foods and probiotics to help with my health. But I wasn't able to track any of this before and now I can.
After two days of trying to stick to the calorie count, I gave in. I was like screw it I'm eating the left over pizza in the fridge. I entered it into the food diary and to my surprise it didn't whack my numbers out by too much. Sure high in carbs according to the ratios I set up for myself but I was finding that there was no way to eat little enough carbs and enough fat to balance the macros out the way I wanted. So now I'm just kind of winging it and seeing what happens.
Some background... I've gained weight. Once I became sedentary and managed to start eating again I went up to 250lbs. I'm 5'2" which put me in the morbidly obese range. I had started at 220lbs which I was stuck at despite a good diet and tons of exercise. I was considered healthy obese; one of those quirks of nature that was healthy despite being horribly overweight. I had low blood pressure, okay cholesterol, no diabetes or even prediabetes. Then I got sick. I lost 20lbs right away due to not eating at all. Then gained back 50lbs over the course of several years and then leveled out. Then I went on steroids for a year. After that point, I very slowly crept up in weight until last year when I hit 305lbs. I had stomach problems last year so it fluctuated a bit and now a year later I'm at 306. Which is good. I'm not gaining. Whew! But it still sucks.
I had to buy furniture for our new house and now I have to check the construction to make sure it will hold my weight. Everything has to be wider, bigger and stronger for me to use it. I'm up to a 4X in clothing which means I'm stuck with one of the shittiest clothing manufacturers on the planet. I can no longer buy clothes in the stores. Hence my motivation for losing weight. My bed is uncomfortable; I need a new wider wheelchair; I've almost broken the wheels off my walker/seat; I'm worried about breaking the stairlift. It sucks!!
The whole thing is such an interesting experiment. I have always had body image problems. I've been fighting my body weight since I arrived here in the US in the 70s and suddenly packed on pounds. I hate diets and actively rebel against them every chance I get. We were so poor when I was a kid food scarcity was actually a problem and I was often hungry. Now as an adult I'm very wonky about how much food is in the house and if I have access to food. I used to carry food around with me for when I got hungry.
I keep trying to do the body positive thing but absolutely hate being fat. I had called a truce when I was able to exercise like crazy but now that I'm sedentary and cracked 300lbs I'm done. I want to fix this. I don't care that studies show that people gain the weight back. I don't care that I'm walking proof of those studies. I've been on two diets in my life. I lost weight and then gained it back with a few extra pounds. I keep hearing success stories in the Paleo world and was hoping that pounds would magically melt off me but alas that didn't happen. Again I'm the anomaly.
Back to the present day...
This is now day five of my experiement. I've made a couple of decisions already. I'm not going to stress about sticking to the weight loss calorie count. If I can keep it at or slightly below the metabolic calorie count I'll be happy. It is still way less than what I was eating. The metabolic rate is a guess and probably wrong. If I've been eating between 2500-3000kcal/day and not gaining weight, then sticking to 2200-2500 is a good improvement. Even so I've been shifting what I eat. I'm figuring out what I can eat a lot of and what I have to be careful of. Yes this is getting into the good foods vs bad foods issue. I'm sort of ignoring that for now. I am leary of crossing over into eating disorder territory. I'm weighing my food, counting out tomatoes, pouring stuff into measuring cups,etc. It is dangerous territory. I almost slid into eating disorder territory the one and only other time I went on a serious diet back in the early 90s. While I need to control my eating and food, I really need to not get too hung up on it. It is going to be very difficult.
Other things I've noticed...
I seem to be eating a lot of the time out of boredom. I want to get up and do something and getting a snack is about all I can handle. Also eating eases frustration, anxiety and stress. I love chewing on things when I'm anxious. I love fruit leather for this reason. It is nice and chewy. I can gnaw on it for a while. However, it is really high in calories so I have to watch the amount I eat. I think I have to find a different outlet for my frustration: breathing exercises maybe???
I've overeaten today. I'm stressing out about the blood test coming up in the afternoon. I have to do a 12 hour fast which means that by 4am I have to stop eating and won't have access to food until after 5pm tomorrow. Yikes!! I'm getting a little wonky over it.
I love ice water but it makes me hungry. Ravenously hungry. I also can't drink anything but water or I go way over my calorie count for the day. I manage to sneak in a little kefir but most of the time I'm skipping all the juices, kombuchas, etc that I used to consume almost daily.
Being able to see the micronutrient numbers on a daily basis lets me know which supplements to take. VitE seems to be a fairly common one. I'm surprised at how well I'm doing with most of them. I seem to be keeping up with the Bs, A, K and iron. Potassium I seem to be constantly short and E depends upon my meals for the day. Sometimes I hit it and sometimes I don't. I wonder if I can chart them out. That would be nice to see.
So jury is still out on this. I feel like I'm wrestling a bull by the horns and it is tossing me around a bit. I just ordered a scale that will work with my higher weight. I'm putting it in the remote bathroom so I won't be tempted to step on it every day. Another holdover from my weight obsessing days. I'm going to continue to try to eat a more balanced diet. I already knew I needed to eat more veg and less carbs. I'm going to have to mess around the macro settings though. Not sure I can handle the 50% fat/25% carb/25% protein I originally setup. I'm constantly missing these targets. It is nice seeing the micronutrient numbers though and it helps me with supplementation. There will be more about this. Particularly since I'm an emotional wreck around these issues. I really wish they would figure out why some bodies hold onto their weight while others lose so easily. Sigh. I just want to be under 200lbs. My goal is 140 but I'll settle for anything under 200lbs at this point.
Wednesday, July 26, 2017
To Sleep Perchance To Dream
My apologies to the bard....
Sleep is very VERY important. Even more so when you have CFS/ME. We sleep badly. We sleep badly for all sorts of reasons. I sorted out my sleep meds a long time ago. I take 25mg of trazadone (to stay asleep), magnesium taurate (to initiate sleep) and MSM (for pain) before bed. This past year I've been wrestling with my new CPAP machine and more recently the move to the new house where I had to throw out all my bedding and buy new. Hence the continued search for the perfect pillow.
First CPAP
When I first got sick, I was on a CPAP machine for the first time. My dental appliance wasn't cutting it for my snoring and fits of lack of breathing anymore. I'm from a long line of champion snorers and apparently my tongue is too big for my mouth. Between all of that and my weight voila! Sleep apnea! Well I hated that thing with a passion. Of course when my insurance got all out of whack due to switching from my company policy to Medicare I had to return the machine and I reverted back to my beloved dental appliance. By that point I had lost weight due to my illness so it sufficed for many years.
Well, I've gained back the weight I lost and added on quite a lot of extra pounds. No exercise makes me fat(ter). It all finally caught up with me last year and I ended up at the Brigham and Women's sleep lab. It was the only one where I could arrange for a sleep study during the day. No point in sending me to the local hospital lab. All they would end up doing is watching me watch TV all night. So after a huge nightmare ordeal with the doc's incompetent office staff, I ended up seeing the nicest sleep doc I've had yet. And I'm back on a CPAP machine. The new ones are better. They start at a low pressure and ramp up slowly until you keep breathing while asleep. There are way more mask options than 7 years ago and after the first one was a spectacular failure I got fitted with one that goes over both my mouth and nose. These don't bother me much because I've had to wear facemasks in the lab for work on and off for years. So I've settled in and made peace with the machine. I no longer wake up with headaches from oxygen deprivation or a spectacularly sore throat from snoring hard all night. I have to do have to play the radio to drown out the air flow and air pump or my breathing won't settle into a natural rhythm. This is okay most nights but if I'm flaring badly and can't stand noise sometimes I skip a night with it. I sleep so terrible that I actually look forward to using the machine the next night.
I just had a vid chat with my doc today and I'm doing great on the machine. He lowered the pressure for me so it is much more comfortable to wear. I'm using it almost every single night for an average of 4.5hrs per night with my longest stint at 7hrs! I only stop breathing about once per night which is better than a normal person without true apnea! Woohoo!
I have done a couple of things to make the mask more comfy. I now use a fabric liner from Remzz's. I've also removed the rubber/silicon standoff that rests on my forehead and replaced it with a folded up tissue. I found the mask doesn't adjust down close enough to my face when the rubber standoff is present.
I did come down with shingles around my eye for about a month and had to switch to nasal pillows after sleeping for a week without the CPAP at all. I couldn't tolerate anything touching my face as it felt like a severe sunburn. I couldn't wear the pillows for more than two hours without the inside of my nose hurting severely. Nothing I did would stop this pain from happening so I just tolerated it until I got to switch back to my face mask.
Anyway, I'm happily back to using my regular mask.
The Bed
Ah now this still hasn't been solved. We moved. I have a waterbed. It leaked at one point and I'm highly allergic to mold. I bought all new plastic bits including bladders, liner and cover. I also bought a new foam pad and the cotton cover that makes it look like a normal bed. Now this is a king size bed which means it is slightly longer than wide but you can't tell by looking at it. After we moved, hubs set up the base, then put the foam box on the bed, put the liner in, then the bladders. The bladders get filled with water, one for each side of the bed so we can adjust each side for our preference. Then the foam topper goes on for thermal isolation and finally the cover gets zipped into place. Well we get to the zipper part and the foam doesn't fit properly. It is my strong belief that hubs had put the foam box on the base the wrong way round. It was now too short by several inches and too wide by several inches. But he wasn't to be defeated and forced the foam and the zipper to work. So now the bed has high points at the head and foot of the bed. Problem #1
Oh I still have a slight case of MCS and can't tolerate odors. Particularly chemical odors. The bed now stinks. You know that smell of a cheap new shower curtain. Yeah, like that but from the bed I'm supposed to sleep in and I sleep face down. STINK! Oh so stinky! So I end up in the guest room on the brand new bed I bought for my kid because even though that is a brand new gel topped mattress it doesn't stink. And I had the forethought to purchase an adjustable base so I can put the head and feet exactly the way I want them. Problem #2
We don't own any curtains. The windows are a weird shape; very wide but short. The old shades don't go with the new paint scheme and hubs doesn't want to wrestle with the old hanging system. So both bedrooms have tons of light streaming into them during the day. And because of the positioning of the house it only gets worse as the day goes on. The guest room does still have the old slat blinds mounted in the window so I can reduce the amount of light in that room but it still isn't even close to being dark. Problem #3
The second floor of the new house has almost no air circulation. Even when I open the windows not much air flow happens. When it is sunny out the bedroom turns into an oven easily topping 80F even with the AC on. Turns out that the central AC system for the house is a single zone and underpowered for the size of the house. So while it might be a comfy 75 downstairs the masterbed is 85. I prefer sleeping in 65-70 range. Yeah I kept waking up in a pool of sweat hugely uncomfortable and generally pissed off. I would trudge down the hall to finish sleeping in the slightly cooler guest bedroom with a fan blasting at me. Problem#4
Back to the Bed Again
Turns out the bladder is too full which means I end up with all sorts of body pain when trying to sleep on it. Even now that it doesn't' stink anymore I get woken up with limb, joint or back pain. I had to throw out all my old pillows. I had it setup just right before the move. The bed was really soft and my upper half was cushioned in pillows that didn't make me sweat. Taking water out of the bladder while a pain in a butt is fairly easily fixable. About a half hour's worth of work for hubs.
But the pillow problem oy vey!! The amount of money I've spent on various pillows is in the hundreds of dollars at this point. My son now has three different pillows to choose from that I've rejected for one reason or another. I've bought organic wool, cotton, kapok and latex. Turns out I'm mildly allergic to kapok. Latex just plain old stinks and is very very hot. Wool and cotton pack down which makes them too hard for me to sleep on top of like I was doing in my old house. So I went to Walmart and bought some cheap ass pillows that didn't smell. Well, they turn out to be insanely hot. And the weird synthetic fabric covers on them catch on me when I try to move. This wakes me up as I end up in a wrestling match with the stupid pillows and I'm all sweaty too boot. They now reside inside my closet. They will be the ones that end up inside the decorative shams when I get that far with the bedroom; i.e. they'll get tossed on the floor every night.
I finally bought a bamboo covered temperpedic foam core 7" wedge for my torso. It is soft enough and very comfy to lie on top of but I'm back to the stink problem. It is outgassing. Each day it is less stinky but in the meantime I'm back to trying to sleep on my uncomfortable bed.
I also got a weird foam CPAP pillow that has scooped out corners so it doesn't jam into the mask. I still end up with dents on my face in the morning but it is much more supportive and comfortable than trying to faceplant in a regular pillow with a hard plastic mask on your face.
In the End
I'm still wrestling with sleeping in the masterbed. The bladder in the waterbed is still a tad too full so hubs is going to have to play with it some more.
I bought blackout curtains for the windows but the room feels weird and icky with them up. Not sure how to fix that. They were just cheapo curtains for a temporary fix. I couldn't keep sleeping with the sun streaming in the room.
I found that if I had the central AC fan run continuously the upstairs cooled off better than if I let it cycle via the thermostat downstairs. I bought a portable AC unit just for the materbed. Hubs is rigging it for the window casing so it isn't up and running yet but should be in the next few days. This is a temporary measure until we fix the central AC. We have to put a second unit in the attic for cooling the second floor so it will have its own zone. But that isn't going to happen for a few years yet. We have more pressing things to fix/spend money on. I also bought a fan just for the guest bed since that room is going to continue to be too hot.
The wedge pillow will work out once it finishes degassing and my CPAP pillow is fantastic. I still don't have a body pillow that I like and keep ending up with the smaller wool pillow tucked up against me.
Now the other weird ass problem I can't fix easily has to do with the orientation of the bed itself. Both of us have noticed this before in other places, hotels, our old house, etc. We sleep better/worse depending which way the bed is facing. It makes no sense to us but is a real phenomena. Well it turns out I don't sleep well in the masterbed in its present orientation. I sleep WAY better in the guest bed which is 90 degrees different from the masterbed. I've found that when I wake up at the midpoint in my sleep cycle if I climb back in bed across the bed instead of the correct way I sleep much more deeply. Because this is a water bed and because of the doors/windows/ AC vents it can't be moved easily. We are basically stuck with this orientation for the foreseeable future. So I guess I'm stuck sleeping across it rather than along it. The problem this creates is wearing the CPAP mask. I'm tethered to the machine and the way I like to lie in the bed will limit me to sleeping on my left side only when the mask is on. I have yet to find out how feasible this is since I'm currently only sleeping sideways after I take the mask off.
I still have my various weight blankets but need a sheet. I have some pajamas that still fit but a very limited assortment. I vary what I wear and which blankets I use based on the room temp. I need some more pjs of different weights. I want to sew them up myself but the sewing room is currently a storage room and hasn't been unpacked never mind setup. I guess I'm stuck buying from a catalog right now.
In Conclusion
Things are coming along. I have pillows, curtains and my CPAP machine. The AC is in the works and the bed needs less water. The bed doesn't stink anymore. I need to buy more pjs and a sheet or two. Maybe I'll get a wool mattress cover and a wool body pillow but I need to save up for those as they are quite expensive. I think I'll end up with lighter colored curtains eventually with a blackout shade underneath. That way the room doesn't feel so gloomy. I still have work to do but after living here for five months I had had enough and decided to start fixing things even if they were temporary fixes. I need to be able to sleep well. While I like the guestroom more, my son is home more often right now since he lost his apt in NYC (that is another long story) so I need to setup the masterbed properly. I'm getting there. It has taken lots of trial and error and quite a bit of money. I'm not looking forward to my credit card bill next month but, hey, it is getting better.
Sleep is very VERY important. Even more so when you have CFS/ME. We sleep badly. We sleep badly for all sorts of reasons. I sorted out my sleep meds a long time ago. I take 25mg of trazadone (to stay asleep), magnesium taurate (to initiate sleep) and MSM (for pain) before bed. This past year I've been wrestling with my new CPAP machine and more recently the move to the new house where I had to throw out all my bedding and buy new. Hence the continued search for the perfect pillow.
First CPAP
When I first got sick, I was on a CPAP machine for the first time. My dental appliance wasn't cutting it for my snoring and fits of lack of breathing anymore. I'm from a long line of champion snorers and apparently my tongue is too big for my mouth. Between all of that and my weight voila! Sleep apnea! Well I hated that thing with a passion. Of course when my insurance got all out of whack due to switching from my company policy to Medicare I had to return the machine and I reverted back to my beloved dental appliance. By that point I had lost weight due to my illness so it sufficed for many years.
Well, I've gained back the weight I lost and added on quite a lot of extra pounds. No exercise makes me fat(ter). It all finally caught up with me last year and I ended up at the Brigham and Women's sleep lab. It was the only one where I could arrange for a sleep study during the day. No point in sending me to the local hospital lab. All they would end up doing is watching me watch TV all night. So after a huge nightmare ordeal with the doc's incompetent office staff, I ended up seeing the nicest sleep doc I've had yet. And I'm back on a CPAP machine. The new ones are better. They start at a low pressure and ramp up slowly until you keep breathing while asleep. There are way more mask options than 7 years ago and after the first one was a spectacular failure I got fitted with one that goes over both my mouth and nose. These don't bother me much because I've had to wear facemasks in the lab for work on and off for years. So I've settled in and made peace with the machine. I no longer wake up with headaches from oxygen deprivation or a spectacularly sore throat from snoring hard all night. I have to do have to play the radio to drown out the air flow and air pump or my breathing won't settle into a natural rhythm. This is okay most nights but if I'm flaring badly and can't stand noise sometimes I skip a night with it. I sleep so terrible that I actually look forward to using the machine the next night.
I just had a vid chat with my doc today and I'm doing great on the machine. He lowered the pressure for me so it is much more comfortable to wear. I'm using it almost every single night for an average of 4.5hrs per night with my longest stint at 7hrs! I only stop breathing about once per night which is better than a normal person without true apnea! Woohoo!
I have done a couple of things to make the mask more comfy. I now use a fabric liner from Remzz's. I've also removed the rubber/silicon standoff that rests on my forehead and replaced it with a folded up tissue. I found the mask doesn't adjust down close enough to my face when the rubber standoff is present.
I did come down with shingles around my eye for about a month and had to switch to nasal pillows after sleeping for a week without the CPAP at all. I couldn't tolerate anything touching my face as it felt like a severe sunburn. I couldn't wear the pillows for more than two hours without the inside of my nose hurting severely. Nothing I did would stop this pain from happening so I just tolerated it until I got to switch back to my face mask.
Anyway, I'm happily back to using my regular mask.
The Bed
Ah now this still hasn't been solved. We moved. I have a waterbed. It leaked at one point and I'm highly allergic to mold. I bought all new plastic bits including bladders, liner and cover. I also bought a new foam pad and the cotton cover that makes it look like a normal bed. Now this is a king size bed which means it is slightly longer than wide but you can't tell by looking at it. After we moved, hubs set up the base, then put the foam box on the bed, put the liner in, then the bladders. The bladders get filled with water, one for each side of the bed so we can adjust each side for our preference. Then the foam topper goes on for thermal isolation and finally the cover gets zipped into place. Well we get to the zipper part and the foam doesn't fit properly. It is my strong belief that hubs had put the foam box on the base the wrong way round. It was now too short by several inches and too wide by several inches. But he wasn't to be defeated and forced the foam and the zipper to work. So now the bed has high points at the head and foot of the bed. Problem #1
Oh I still have a slight case of MCS and can't tolerate odors. Particularly chemical odors. The bed now stinks. You know that smell of a cheap new shower curtain. Yeah, like that but from the bed I'm supposed to sleep in and I sleep face down. STINK! Oh so stinky! So I end up in the guest room on the brand new bed I bought for my kid because even though that is a brand new gel topped mattress it doesn't stink. And I had the forethought to purchase an adjustable base so I can put the head and feet exactly the way I want them. Problem #2
We don't own any curtains. The windows are a weird shape; very wide but short. The old shades don't go with the new paint scheme and hubs doesn't want to wrestle with the old hanging system. So both bedrooms have tons of light streaming into them during the day. And because of the positioning of the house it only gets worse as the day goes on. The guest room does still have the old slat blinds mounted in the window so I can reduce the amount of light in that room but it still isn't even close to being dark. Problem #3
The second floor of the new house has almost no air circulation. Even when I open the windows not much air flow happens. When it is sunny out the bedroom turns into an oven easily topping 80F even with the AC on. Turns out that the central AC system for the house is a single zone and underpowered for the size of the house. So while it might be a comfy 75 downstairs the masterbed is 85. I prefer sleeping in 65-70 range. Yeah I kept waking up in a pool of sweat hugely uncomfortable and generally pissed off. I would trudge down the hall to finish sleeping in the slightly cooler guest bedroom with a fan blasting at me. Problem#4
Back to the Bed Again
Turns out the bladder is too full which means I end up with all sorts of body pain when trying to sleep on it. Even now that it doesn't' stink anymore I get woken up with limb, joint or back pain. I had to throw out all my old pillows. I had it setup just right before the move. The bed was really soft and my upper half was cushioned in pillows that didn't make me sweat. Taking water out of the bladder while a pain in a butt is fairly easily fixable. About a half hour's worth of work for hubs.
But the pillow problem oy vey!! The amount of money I've spent on various pillows is in the hundreds of dollars at this point. My son now has three different pillows to choose from that I've rejected for one reason or another. I've bought organic wool, cotton, kapok and latex. Turns out I'm mildly allergic to kapok. Latex just plain old stinks and is very very hot. Wool and cotton pack down which makes them too hard for me to sleep on top of like I was doing in my old house. So I went to Walmart and bought some cheap ass pillows that didn't smell. Well, they turn out to be insanely hot. And the weird synthetic fabric covers on them catch on me when I try to move. This wakes me up as I end up in a wrestling match with the stupid pillows and I'm all sweaty too boot. They now reside inside my closet. They will be the ones that end up inside the decorative shams when I get that far with the bedroom; i.e. they'll get tossed on the floor every night.
I finally bought a bamboo covered temperpedic foam core 7" wedge for my torso. It is soft enough and very comfy to lie on top of but I'm back to the stink problem. It is outgassing. Each day it is less stinky but in the meantime I'm back to trying to sleep on my uncomfortable bed.
I also got a weird foam CPAP pillow that has scooped out corners so it doesn't jam into the mask. I still end up with dents on my face in the morning but it is much more supportive and comfortable than trying to faceplant in a regular pillow with a hard plastic mask on your face.
In the End
I'm still wrestling with sleeping in the masterbed. The bladder in the waterbed is still a tad too full so hubs is going to have to play with it some more.
I bought blackout curtains for the windows but the room feels weird and icky with them up. Not sure how to fix that. They were just cheapo curtains for a temporary fix. I couldn't keep sleeping with the sun streaming in the room.
I found that if I had the central AC fan run continuously the upstairs cooled off better than if I let it cycle via the thermostat downstairs. I bought a portable AC unit just for the materbed. Hubs is rigging it for the window casing so it isn't up and running yet but should be in the next few days. This is a temporary measure until we fix the central AC. We have to put a second unit in the attic for cooling the second floor so it will have its own zone. But that isn't going to happen for a few years yet. We have more pressing things to fix/spend money on. I also bought a fan just for the guest bed since that room is going to continue to be too hot.
The wedge pillow will work out once it finishes degassing and my CPAP pillow is fantastic. I still don't have a body pillow that I like and keep ending up with the smaller wool pillow tucked up against me.
Now the other weird ass problem I can't fix easily has to do with the orientation of the bed itself. Both of us have noticed this before in other places, hotels, our old house, etc. We sleep better/worse depending which way the bed is facing. It makes no sense to us but is a real phenomena. Well it turns out I don't sleep well in the masterbed in its present orientation. I sleep WAY better in the guest bed which is 90 degrees different from the masterbed. I've found that when I wake up at the midpoint in my sleep cycle if I climb back in bed across the bed instead of the correct way I sleep much more deeply. Because this is a water bed and because of the doors/windows/ AC vents it can't be moved easily. We are basically stuck with this orientation for the foreseeable future. So I guess I'm stuck sleeping across it rather than along it. The problem this creates is wearing the CPAP mask. I'm tethered to the machine and the way I like to lie in the bed will limit me to sleeping on my left side only when the mask is on. I have yet to find out how feasible this is since I'm currently only sleeping sideways after I take the mask off.
I still have my various weight blankets but need a sheet. I have some pajamas that still fit but a very limited assortment. I vary what I wear and which blankets I use based on the room temp. I need some more pjs of different weights. I want to sew them up myself but the sewing room is currently a storage room and hasn't been unpacked never mind setup. I guess I'm stuck buying from a catalog right now.
In Conclusion
Things are coming along. I have pillows, curtains and my CPAP machine. The AC is in the works and the bed needs less water. The bed doesn't stink anymore. I need to buy more pjs and a sheet or two. Maybe I'll get a wool mattress cover and a wool body pillow but I need to save up for those as they are quite expensive. I think I'll end up with lighter colored curtains eventually with a blackout shade underneath. That way the room doesn't feel so gloomy. I still have work to do but after living here for five months I had had enough and decided to start fixing things even if they were temporary fixes. I need to be able to sleep well. While I like the guestroom more, my son is home more often right now since he lost his apt in NYC (that is another long story) so I need to setup the masterbed properly. I'm getting there. It has taken lots of trial and error and quite a bit of money. I'm not looking forward to my credit card bill next month but, hey, it is getting better.
Tuesday, July 25, 2017
Ten Perks From Being Housebound
I got the idea for this post from Toni Bernhard's piece in Psychology Today
I changed the title a bit because I DO mind being housebound and would love it if I weren't. Anyway, onto some light hearted fare....
Top Ten Reasons I Don't Mind Being Housebound
I changed the title a bit because I DO mind being housebound and would love it if I weren't. Anyway, onto some light hearted fare....
- Only loosely bound to a schedule. The only time I need to pay attention to a clock is for dinner prep or doctors appointments. Otherwise I can completely ignore it. I no longer need to wear a watch.
- I can sleep whenever I want and don't have to stress over insomnia or an irregular sleeping schedule. When I first got sick I was constantly nodding off wherever I happened to be sitting so I started calling it free range sleeping. Now that I've been sick for six years I've settled into a more consistent sleeping pattern. Since I'm on disability and can't work, I don't have to force myself to sleep on a regular schedule. A few docs' have suggested I take sleep meds but I figure why? I don't need to be up in the morning so why stress over it. I go to bed when I'm tired no matter what time of day it happens to be and sleep for as long as I need to.
- Binge watching entire TV shows. I think the longest binge was the original Stargate series. Nine seasons at 22-24 48min episodes per season. It took me over a month to get through it. I am a bit bummed that the current practice is down to 13 episodes at 41mins a piece. Now it only takes a couple of days to get through one season. Sigh....
- I no longer have a boss to answer to. No more uncomfortable performance reviews where they tell me I'm doing a great job but they can't give me a pay raise because _____. No more office politics. No more misogynistic coworkers.
- No more commute to/from work. OMG this one was getting horrendous by the time I got sick. A 15 mile drive that used to take me about 20mins was up to 45mins on a good day and 3+ hours on a bad day.
- I can go outside into my yard almost whenever I want (I do have the occasional day where this is out of the question). Working in a government lab meant that around the winter solstice I literally never saw daylight. I went to work in the dark, worked in a lab without windows and drove home in the dark. Now I can open shades, open windows, or even walk onto my deck whenever I want. It might be freezing outside but I can stare at the trees whenever I want and breath fresh air whenever I want. During the warm weather I can sit outside for hours.
- I get to have cats around me ALL. THE. TIME. Woohoo!
- I get to drink lattes almost everyday. My son and I go out for coffee most days. We get to chat a bit and have great coffee together. We search out little coffee shops together. This was a tradition that me and my mom started decades ago. We used to go to Dunkin Donuts for a coffee and donut together once or twice a week. I'm so glad that I get to do it with my son now.
- I can wear my pjs all day if I want to. Or I can wear the same clothes for multiple days in a row. And, I don't have to wear coordinated outfits. I can wear sweats or yoga pants or leggings or tee shirts. And I don't have to wear a bra!!!!
- Lots and lots of pillows! This is the one perk that I share with Toni. I have a big pile of pillows on the couch and another pile in my bed.
Monday, July 24, 2017
General Update
My recovery from last year is going really slow. However, I'm coughing way less. We have a buyer for our old house but we haven't closed on it yet. Hubs keeps going over there every weekend so my cough hasn't gone away completely yet. The concept of his showering and changing clothes after being over there has never occurred to him. I'm lucky if he changes his shirt and that only happens if I bug him. Then he sleeps in our bed and contaminates the sheets and blankets. So I'm still coughing. Occasionally I have to use my asthma inhaler. But things are way better than before. A pack of cough drops can last me almost an entire week instead of one day. I'm using my inhaler about once a week instead of daily. I do have setbacks if I'm not careful when unpacking boxes. My son gets it so he showers, changes clothes or handles crap from the old house that hasn't been decon'ed yet. He can see the direct relation between his exposure and my coughing fits. Hubs just gets annoyed that I'm coughing rather than helping out. Sigh.....
I'm still pretty crashed. I'm sofa bound. I'm cooking very simple meals still. Luckily it's summer so we can grill a lot so all I have to make are sides or salads. On my good days I'm scrambling eggs and making coffee for breakfast in addition to the simple dinners. I'm getting out a bit when my son is around (he's currently flying back and forth between here and CO for his work). We go for coffee and late breakfast almost daily when he is here. I get to the supermarket once a week and have just started to go to the farmers market roughly twice a month. I'm not using enough fresh veg to go more than that. It is a waste of spoons. I'm still eating way too much take out but that has been improving. I actually feel better on days where we eat in. Even though I'm not making everything from scratch I'm buying mostly organic nonGMO foods and it makes a marked difference in how I feel. I'm considering hiring a prep cook to batch cook for me. My son has a friend that is interested. Haven't gotten around to arranging it of course but I'm hoping it will happen sooner than later.
After one bust, I managed to find a chiro I really like. (That is a story for another day.) I'm doing phone conferencing with my sleep doc and I FINALLY got it to work so I no longer have to travel to Jamaica Plain to his office. I've an apt with a potentially new internist. She works with Emerson Hospital and has a background in rheumatology so might be familiar with fibro. Here's hoping. My old doc, while not perfect, actually had some exposure to CFS/ME through a relative that ran a clinic for patients. I need some follow-up bloodwork from her: cholesterol, thyroid, vitD, and iron. Tell her/teach her about my illness and get the "lose weight" lecture. I still haven't managed to fill out all the paperwork yet.
Presently I'm push/crash cycling so I have to work on that.
I've been trying to improve my sleep space. I was sleeping in the guest bedroom but my son has been visiting more and more since he no longer has a NYC apt. So far I've purchased blackout drapes for the master bedroom which work great! I bought a wedge pillow which is comfy but still smells weird so I've got it degassing. I think the waterbed still needs some water removed as it is too hard. I still have to find a solution for overheating with the mattress and pillows. Probably need another cotton or wool filled pillow and a cotton or wool filled mattress cover. Right now I wake up and I'm soaked in sweat. I found that if I sleep across the bed I do better than if I sleep normally in it. I also bought an AC unit for the masterbed but it isn't hooked up yet. Turns out the central AC unit is too small for the house and only cools the first floor adequately. The solution is to put a second unit in the attic to cool the second floor. The portable AC is a nice stop gap measure until we refurb the central AC in a year or two. Plus, typically I'm the only one that wants to sleep in a refrigerator. Sleeping during daylight hours means the bedroom I'm in heats up to oven temps which wakes me up and makes me miserable. Both guys sleep at night so the bedrooms aren't too bad for them.
Once I'm done with the masterbed, I'm going to fix the guest bedroom because damn that gel bed is AWESOME!!! Plus I bought the adjustable frame to go under it so I can raise the head and foot of the bed to get it just right for my aches and pains. All the room needs is some new blackout blinds. It is nice to have a second space to sleep in. I'm very comfortable there and sleep the best in that room. Hopefully I can upgrade the masterbed so I'm equally comfortable sleeping in that room also. It is a pain to drag my CPAP gear back and forth between the two bedrooms. Until my kid gets another apt somewhere he'll be here most weekends and some weeks so I get kicked out the room every four days or so.
Other irons in the fire: I'm trying Dr Teitelbaum's protocol for increasing blood volume. I'm still experiencing dizzy spells even with my period problem solved. My biggest hinderance lately is dizziness on standing and getting out of breath really easily. I figure fixing my blood volume will help. So I ordered Vitalyte (formerly known as Gookinaid) and D-ribose powder. I already have CoQ10 and zinc. I like the electrolyte powder. I bought lemon. I add the D-ribose to it and have been drinking two glasses a day. I'm already seeing improved brain function. That is typically the precursor to improved physical function. I haven't started the CoQ10 yet. The protocol also calls for acetyl L carnitine but it is contraindicated in folks with thyroid issues so I'm skipping that part. I might introduce it at a very low dose after I get my thyroid tested by my new doc. That way I'll have a baseline and see how the supplement affects my thyroid.
I'm also trying to sunbathe more. I haven't been going outside due to the heat. I used to sunbathe late in the day after 4pm at my old house but my deck goes into shade pretty early due to all the trees so I can't sunbathe late in the day at my new place. I'm now trying to go out no matter what for 5-15mins around 3:30pm. It isn't long but it is better than nothing and I can tolerate the heat for that time frame particularly since I'm stepping back into the nice AC. I always take ice water outside with me. And I get almost naked so the sun exposure is all over and I get a good dose of sun in a short period of time.
That is about it. This post has gotten way longer than I intended. But I have plans. Lots of plans. I was getting a bit depressed but decided to take the bull by the horns and try to improve things for myself starting with better sleeping conditions. Then food, then sun, then supplements. Maybe new meds after I see my new doc. Hope has returned! Woot!
Things I want to do but haven't even thought about yet; get a new dentist, get a new therapist, hire a house cleaner, detox from mold.
I'm still pretty crashed. I'm sofa bound. I'm cooking very simple meals still. Luckily it's summer so we can grill a lot so all I have to make are sides or salads. On my good days I'm scrambling eggs and making coffee for breakfast in addition to the simple dinners. I'm getting out a bit when my son is around (he's currently flying back and forth between here and CO for his work). We go for coffee and late breakfast almost daily when he is here. I get to the supermarket once a week and have just started to go to the farmers market roughly twice a month. I'm not using enough fresh veg to go more than that. It is a waste of spoons. I'm still eating way too much take out but that has been improving. I actually feel better on days where we eat in. Even though I'm not making everything from scratch I'm buying mostly organic nonGMO foods and it makes a marked difference in how I feel. I'm considering hiring a prep cook to batch cook for me. My son has a friend that is interested. Haven't gotten around to arranging it of course but I'm hoping it will happen sooner than later.
After one bust, I managed to find a chiro I really like. (That is a story for another day.) I'm doing phone conferencing with my sleep doc and I FINALLY got it to work so I no longer have to travel to Jamaica Plain to his office. I've an apt with a potentially new internist. She works with Emerson Hospital and has a background in rheumatology so might be familiar with fibro. Here's hoping. My old doc, while not perfect, actually had some exposure to CFS/ME through a relative that ran a clinic for patients. I need some follow-up bloodwork from her: cholesterol, thyroid, vitD, and iron. Tell her/teach her about my illness and get the "lose weight" lecture. I still haven't managed to fill out all the paperwork yet.
Presently I'm push/crash cycling so I have to work on that.
I've been trying to improve my sleep space. I was sleeping in the guest bedroom but my son has been visiting more and more since he no longer has a NYC apt. So far I've purchased blackout drapes for the master bedroom which work great! I bought a wedge pillow which is comfy but still smells weird so I've got it degassing. I think the waterbed still needs some water removed as it is too hard. I still have to find a solution for overheating with the mattress and pillows. Probably need another cotton or wool filled pillow and a cotton or wool filled mattress cover. Right now I wake up and I'm soaked in sweat. I found that if I sleep across the bed I do better than if I sleep normally in it. I also bought an AC unit for the masterbed but it isn't hooked up yet. Turns out the central AC unit is too small for the house and only cools the first floor adequately. The solution is to put a second unit in the attic to cool the second floor. The portable AC is a nice stop gap measure until we refurb the central AC in a year or two. Plus, typically I'm the only one that wants to sleep in a refrigerator. Sleeping during daylight hours means the bedroom I'm in heats up to oven temps which wakes me up and makes me miserable. Both guys sleep at night so the bedrooms aren't too bad for them.
Once I'm done with the masterbed, I'm going to fix the guest bedroom because damn that gel bed is AWESOME!!! Plus I bought the adjustable frame to go under it so I can raise the head and foot of the bed to get it just right for my aches and pains. All the room needs is some new blackout blinds. It is nice to have a second space to sleep in. I'm very comfortable there and sleep the best in that room. Hopefully I can upgrade the masterbed so I'm equally comfortable sleeping in that room also. It is a pain to drag my CPAP gear back and forth between the two bedrooms. Until my kid gets another apt somewhere he'll be here most weekends and some weeks so I get kicked out the room every four days or so.
Other irons in the fire: I'm trying Dr Teitelbaum's protocol for increasing blood volume. I'm still experiencing dizzy spells even with my period problem solved. My biggest hinderance lately is dizziness on standing and getting out of breath really easily. I figure fixing my blood volume will help. So I ordered Vitalyte (formerly known as Gookinaid) and D-ribose powder. I already have CoQ10 and zinc. I like the electrolyte powder. I bought lemon. I add the D-ribose to it and have been drinking two glasses a day. I'm already seeing improved brain function. That is typically the precursor to improved physical function. I haven't started the CoQ10 yet. The protocol also calls for acetyl L carnitine but it is contraindicated in folks with thyroid issues so I'm skipping that part. I might introduce it at a very low dose after I get my thyroid tested by my new doc. That way I'll have a baseline and see how the supplement affects my thyroid.
I'm also trying to sunbathe more. I haven't been going outside due to the heat. I used to sunbathe late in the day after 4pm at my old house but my deck goes into shade pretty early due to all the trees so I can't sunbathe late in the day at my new place. I'm now trying to go out no matter what for 5-15mins around 3:30pm. It isn't long but it is better than nothing and I can tolerate the heat for that time frame particularly since I'm stepping back into the nice AC. I always take ice water outside with me. And I get almost naked so the sun exposure is all over and I get a good dose of sun in a short period of time.
That is about it. This post has gotten way longer than I intended. But I have plans. Lots of plans. I was getting a bit depressed but decided to take the bull by the horns and try to improve things for myself starting with better sleeping conditions. Then food, then sun, then supplements. Maybe new meds after I see my new doc. Hope has returned! Woot!
Things I want to do but haven't even thought about yet; get a new dentist, get a new therapist, hire a house cleaner, detox from mold.
Tuesday, April 18, 2017
New Pain Drugs?
Some interesting findings coming out of China regarding pain signalling. While these experiments were done in mice and rats, the human nervous system is similar enough that the scientists expect a similar system to be in operation in humans but needs to be proved. The upshot is that both GABA and ion channel gates seem to be involved in pain signal regulation in the peripheral nervous system: i.e. the intensity of pain is regulated locally in the body rather than in the brain. If this proves to be true, the authors claim that an entirely different class of pain drugs could be developed that help relieve pain locally rather than using opiates and the like that affect the brain. I somewhat have my doubts about this last blanket statement since both GABA and ion channels exist in the brain as well as in the peripheral nervous system so a drug that affects one will probably affect the other unless they make it so that it can't cross the blood brain barrier. Anyhow, greater minds than mine are working on this and it is exciting for CRPS, fibro, CFS/ME and any other chronic pain patient.
"After spending five years studying ganglia cells taken from mice and rats in the lab, they found that they could actually exchange information with each other with the help of the signalling molecule GABA - an ability that was previously believed to be restricted to the central nervous system.
More than that, when the researchers stimulated pain signals in rats, they found evidence through this GABA pathway that the ganglia cells were communicating with each other, and regulating and changing the signal they sent on to the central nervous system."
Monday, April 17, 2017
A Long Hard Year
It has been a crazy year both on a health front and personal front. At the beginning of 2016, I started with a new CFS/ME doc which triggered a cascade of new doc apts. However, these were all in Boston or south of Boston in Jamaica Plain which all meant pretty bad crashes both from the car trips and the lengthy appointments. I had a running tally of all the apts and hospital visits and it was quite ridiculous. Undoubtedly in random order: CFS/ME doc at MGH, the head of neurology at MGH (this was a Dr House style visit with him and his staff), sleep study, multiple sleep doc visits, pulmonary doc and cardiologist. This was on top of my regular doc, chiro and shrink visits. I ended up in the ER several times due to a kidney infection and almost dying from the morphine they gave me in the ER and a recurrent UTI that they were scared would end up in another kidney infection. Then of course when I managed to get through all of that I went in twice for procedures that I had been putting off due to all the other doc visits. So I went under anesthesia for the first time since having CFS/ME. The doctors and anesthetists were great. They read the literature I brought and dosed me properly and I had very little side effects from the surgeries. I think I crashed more from the stress of it than the actual procedure. Lets just say the near death experience didn't help allay my fears about going under anesthesia for the first time since having severe neuro symptoms from my illness. Anyway, this has all wound down for now. I came out the other end of all of this with a diagnosis of severe sleep apnea which resulted in a CPAP machine and a diagnosis of an enlarged uterus which the doc wants to take out. I'm still on the fence about that one.
On a personal front we were house shopping and fixing up our current house while all this medical crap was going on. Last spring we decided that the kitchen had to be gutted completely and a new kitchen put in for us to sell our house at the price it should go for in this market. So hubs proceeds to demolish stuff. Dust everywhere and then the bad thing happened. He opened the wall up when I was sitting on the couch next to the kitchen. Black mold filled an entire bay. Turns out the roof had been leaking probably for one to two years but the leak was inside the wall. It was damp inside and covered in mold. I immediately started coughing hard. A year later and I still have a bad cough. The pulmonologist who isn't mold savvy tried me on three different inhalers before we found one that didn't send my neuro symptoms into a tailspin. It didn't help. All I could do was eat cough drops all day. And of course my CFS/ME got WAY worse. I also gained weight due to both increased inactivity and eating take out almost everyday. I was off my normal semi-healthy diet. I got worse. Instead of the 2-3 months we were quoted it was closer to six months for everything to be complete. Everything trigger coughing fits: dust, walking, breathing. Hubs stopped the cleaning lady from coming over during construction so the place got outrageously filthy. The dust was staggering. The house was open concept so even with the plastic sheets up (which the cats ripped doors into so they could access the kitchen) the dust, noise, and fumes were a daily problem. Then there were the times I had to chase the cats down in the backyard when the construction guys accidentally let them out. I got worse. On the weekends we were going to open houses which meant I was often climbing stairs to see the other floors if we were going to bid on the house. This also meant more car trips. I got worse. We kept being outbid so we had to keep shopping. It took us three years of shopping but we finally closed on a new house in November. Now the packing started.
But the mold contamination was a problem and hubs wanted to ignore the whole contamination thing. I did manage to talk him out of bringing the upholstered furniture to the new place. We threw tons of stuff away but this was a large house with 16 years of stuff accumulated and I couldn't help. Ideally everything should be washed and encased in plastic before moving. HA! Like that was going to happen. The stuff that would take forever to decontaminate should go into the basement while the easily cleaned stuff go into the living space. Again HA! Hubs really doesn't take this seriously. I'm being paranoid. Imagining it. However, every time I went to the new house, even though it also had construction dust I didn't have the nasty coughing fits I would at the regular house. Hubs put together a huge list of repairs that needed to happen before he would let us move to the new place due to dust and smells. It was torture knowing that I had a pristine place to move into but I had to wait. My mom came to visit and she helped me clean and pack the kitchen up. I also managed some of my clothes. I labeled the boxes "washed" and "needs washing" since our washer decided to kick the bucket and put a halt to all laundry proceedings. I couldn't get out to the cleaners to get stuff washed so I gave up. Just pack it and I'll deal with it at the other end. Not ideal but there was nothing I could do. I was tired. Oh so very very tired. I often had days with the shakes or days I could NOT get out of bed. My muscles literally wouldn't work and I couldn't get up.
Good news is: I'm moved. I'm coughing less. I'm improving. Still eating way too much take out and processed foods. I've had to use instant meal stuff like premade meatballs or trays of mannicotti or boxed pulled pork. Not ideal but a tad better than takeout. The deck on the new house has full sun in the afternoon so I literally step out the backdoor and can sunbathe. I don't need to be able to get up or down steps, walk over to a sunny patch, haul a chair around. I just walk two steps out and sit down. I'm also facing the woods so naked sunbathing is an option. I've done it once so far. Topless has been happening regularly though. My old yard I could only go topless in certain spots where I was hidden from the neighbors and even then I had to be lying on the ground. Much easier here. My new furniture isn't bothering me from a chemical standpoint which is a minor miracle. The new couch is wicked comfy and I ended up sleeping on it until the water bed made it here. A stair lift was installed so I have complete access to the second floor and the master bed & bath. I have a walk in shower with a handheld head which makes showering so much easier than it used to be. While the tub is difficult to climb into and out of with the help of hubs it isn't impossible. I had my first bath the other week and OMG it is awesome! It is a soaking tub with jets. I didn't turn the jets on but to be in a large tub with lots of water was divine! My old tub was tiny because the bathroom was tiny. As I got bigger I no longer fit well in the old tub. Now I've got tons of room!
Life is getting better. I'm slowly improving. I managed to cook an entire dinner today mostly by myself. That is the first time in many many many months. I'm slowly getting my diet back on track. Slowly taking my supplements again. I've noticed I can read for longer and read more complex material. I seem to be able to write again. Not very organized but still I'm writing again! It has been a tough year. I love my new house though. I still have to go through the exercise of finding new docs near me. I've lucked out and found one that treats mold illness that is the next town over. Haven't gone yet since I have to do extensive tests prior to my first visit. Hubs is still playing with the old house prepping it for sale. My kid moved to NYC so transportation is a problem. Plus I just want to settle down first. I want a couple of weeks without apts or places to be. I want to eat better food for a while. I want to improve a bit more before starting another doc apt barrage.
So that is where I've been for the last year. In and out of hospitals, doc apts, renovations, moving, etc etc. Things are settling down and I'm enjoying things again. I have so many plans. I hope I continue to improve. I would like to be able to cook again. I also want to start sewing my own clothes. There is shite available when you get over size 28. It sucks. I have plans.
On a personal front we were house shopping and fixing up our current house while all this medical crap was going on. Last spring we decided that the kitchen had to be gutted completely and a new kitchen put in for us to sell our house at the price it should go for in this market. So hubs proceeds to demolish stuff. Dust everywhere and then the bad thing happened. He opened the wall up when I was sitting on the couch next to the kitchen. Black mold filled an entire bay. Turns out the roof had been leaking probably for one to two years but the leak was inside the wall. It was damp inside and covered in mold. I immediately started coughing hard. A year later and I still have a bad cough. The pulmonologist who isn't mold savvy tried me on three different inhalers before we found one that didn't send my neuro symptoms into a tailspin. It didn't help. All I could do was eat cough drops all day. And of course my CFS/ME got WAY worse. I also gained weight due to both increased inactivity and eating take out almost everyday. I was off my normal semi-healthy diet. I got worse. Instead of the 2-3 months we were quoted it was closer to six months for everything to be complete. Everything trigger coughing fits: dust, walking, breathing. Hubs stopped the cleaning lady from coming over during construction so the place got outrageously filthy. The dust was staggering. The house was open concept so even with the plastic sheets up (which the cats ripped doors into so they could access the kitchen) the dust, noise, and fumes were a daily problem. Then there were the times I had to chase the cats down in the backyard when the construction guys accidentally let them out. I got worse. On the weekends we were going to open houses which meant I was often climbing stairs to see the other floors if we were going to bid on the house. This also meant more car trips. I got worse. We kept being outbid so we had to keep shopping. It took us three years of shopping but we finally closed on a new house in November. Now the packing started.
But the mold contamination was a problem and hubs wanted to ignore the whole contamination thing. I did manage to talk him out of bringing the upholstered furniture to the new place. We threw tons of stuff away but this was a large house with 16 years of stuff accumulated and I couldn't help. Ideally everything should be washed and encased in plastic before moving. HA! Like that was going to happen. The stuff that would take forever to decontaminate should go into the basement while the easily cleaned stuff go into the living space. Again HA! Hubs really doesn't take this seriously. I'm being paranoid. Imagining it. However, every time I went to the new house, even though it also had construction dust I didn't have the nasty coughing fits I would at the regular house. Hubs put together a huge list of repairs that needed to happen before he would let us move to the new place due to dust and smells. It was torture knowing that I had a pristine place to move into but I had to wait. My mom came to visit and she helped me clean and pack the kitchen up. I also managed some of my clothes. I labeled the boxes "washed" and "needs washing" since our washer decided to kick the bucket and put a halt to all laundry proceedings. I couldn't get out to the cleaners to get stuff washed so I gave up. Just pack it and I'll deal with it at the other end. Not ideal but there was nothing I could do. I was tired. Oh so very very tired. I often had days with the shakes or days I could NOT get out of bed. My muscles literally wouldn't work and I couldn't get up.
Good news is: I'm moved. I'm coughing less. I'm improving. Still eating way too much take out and processed foods. I've had to use instant meal stuff like premade meatballs or trays of mannicotti or boxed pulled pork. Not ideal but a tad better than takeout. The deck on the new house has full sun in the afternoon so I literally step out the backdoor and can sunbathe. I don't need to be able to get up or down steps, walk over to a sunny patch, haul a chair around. I just walk two steps out and sit down. I'm also facing the woods so naked sunbathing is an option. I've done it once so far. Topless has been happening regularly though. My old yard I could only go topless in certain spots where I was hidden from the neighbors and even then I had to be lying on the ground. Much easier here. My new furniture isn't bothering me from a chemical standpoint which is a minor miracle. The new couch is wicked comfy and I ended up sleeping on it until the water bed made it here. A stair lift was installed so I have complete access to the second floor and the master bed & bath. I have a walk in shower with a handheld head which makes showering so much easier than it used to be. While the tub is difficult to climb into and out of with the help of hubs it isn't impossible. I had my first bath the other week and OMG it is awesome! It is a soaking tub with jets. I didn't turn the jets on but to be in a large tub with lots of water was divine! My old tub was tiny because the bathroom was tiny. As I got bigger I no longer fit well in the old tub. Now I've got tons of room!
Life is getting better. I'm slowly improving. I managed to cook an entire dinner today mostly by myself. That is the first time in many many many months. I'm slowly getting my diet back on track. Slowly taking my supplements again. I've noticed I can read for longer and read more complex material. I seem to be able to write again. Not very organized but still I'm writing again! It has been a tough year. I love my new house though. I still have to go through the exercise of finding new docs near me. I've lucked out and found one that treats mold illness that is the next town over. Haven't gone yet since I have to do extensive tests prior to my first visit. Hubs is still playing with the old house prepping it for sale. My kid moved to NYC so transportation is a problem. Plus I just want to settle down first. I want a couple of weeks without apts or places to be. I want to eat better food for a while. I want to improve a bit more before starting another doc apt barrage.
So that is where I've been for the last year. In and out of hospitals, doc apts, renovations, moving, etc etc. Things are settling down and I'm enjoying things again. I have so many plans. I hope I continue to improve. I would like to be able to cook again. I also want to start sewing my own clothes. There is shite available when you get over size 28. It sucks. I have plans.
Friday, February 19, 2016
Treatments with Unobtainium
"Unobtainium is a highly desirable material that is hypothetical, scientifically impossible, extremely rare, costly, or fictional, or has some of these properties in combination." --Google
Conspiracy theories aside, here are three unobtainium treatments:
1) Phage treatment for gut infections
This involves the use of a virus that is bred to take out specific strains of bacteria, C. diff for instance, while leaving the regular gut bacteria untouched. This is a huge benefit since the health of our microbiome is tantamount to our overall health. Since there is a possibility I might have Whipple's, which is a weird rare bacterial infection of the gut, I would greatly benefit from phage treatment if I tested positive. The current treatment for Whipple's is IV antibiotics for several weeks followed by 1-2 years of treatment with doxycycline. I can't imagine the damage to the microbiome from this treatment regimen. UGH.
Clearing Gut Infections by Jyoti Madhusoodanan The Scientist Jan 1, 2016
2) Vagus Nerve Stimulation
I've been reading about this one for a while. I've long suspected vagus nerve involvement with CFS/ME possibly even a viral infection migrated into the nerve itself causing inflammation. Anyway, there have been great results in fibro patients with vagus nerve stimulation with many patients going into complete remission. Although there are subcutaneous stimulators that are implanted like a pacemaker via surgery and also noninvasive stimulators that clip to the ear lobes, neither one is available in the US. The subcutaneous ones are in the US but only for seizure disorders and of course the easy peasy noninvasive clip ons are only available in Europe. Geesh! Proven tech that isn't allowed in the US. If I could travel I would take a medical trip to the UK to get my hands on one of these puppies. WTF!?!!? So much for the US being the center for medical excellence.
Vagus Nerve Stimulation, Fibromyalgia and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS) by Cort Johnson Health Rising Jan 11, 20163) Hyperbaric Oxygen Treatment
Again proven not only to relieve pain in fibro patients but also to reverse brain damage caused by the illness. Most doctors will NOT prescribe this treatment. You would think that with the CDC taking away our opioid meds they would allow this safe effective pain treatment to become standard but no.
Hyperbaric Hope for Fibromyalgia Sufferers by Mike Williams Rice University Jun 2, 2015
Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy Can Diminish Fibromyalgia Syndrome - Prospective Clinical Trial by Shai Efrati et al PLOS One May 26, 2015
Tuesday, February 16, 2016
Procrastination
Why oh why do I HATE showering so much? I used to like showers but not since I got sick.
Is it because:
Is it because:
- it wipes me out just to prep for a shower; gathering towels, setting up the shower chair, fetching shampoo or soap, disrobing, combing out my hair, etc
- i hate showering in a shower chair; spots get missed
- it uses up tons of spoons to get clean; all that scrubbing and hair washing
- i now have to shampoo my hair several times to get all the oil out of it
- i have to use all sort of concoctions to get rid of the armpit stink
- i almost alway run out of hot water before I'm finished
- i can't reach everywhere that needs soap
- the cat is slowly ripping apart my scrubbie and I keep forgetting to buy a new one
- i can never dry myself off very well because I'm sitting on the edge of the tub while toweling off
- combing my hair out makes my arms ache
- my hair takes forever to dry
- i only smell/look good for about 24 hours but can only shower once or twice a week i.e. it is an enormous exercise in futility
- i don't want to undress in the cold
That about covers it. And yes I really should be in the shower right now instead of writing about how much I don't want to shower.
Thursday, January 28, 2016
CFS/ME vs Mitochondrial Dysfunction
This paper is a totally different take on mitochondria's role in CFS/ME than the standard idea brought forth by Dr. Myhill (mito ATP is broken and needs repair). Of note, Dr Myhill is a general practitioner who treats patients in a regular clinical setting and is not a researcher per say. This paper was done by genetics researchers using patient data from a central database. Okay with that caveat let's proceed...
If. IF! I am reading this paper correctly, then the authors looked at three things in the mitochondria (mito) of PWME/CFS and age/sex matched controls: the haplogroups, SNPs and heteroplasmy. Think of haplogroups as the ancestral lines of the mito DNA. If you come from the UK you will have slightly different mito DNA than someone that comes from Asia. These lines can be traced back for thousands of years over hundreds of generations. As an aside, the lineage of humans was traced back through maternal mito DNA.
SNPs are single nucleotide polymorphisms which are single locations on a gene. Each location can have one of two proteins that encodes the genetic information for accurate cell reproduction or genetic recipe if you will. A single SNP error can potentially lead to illness or disease but not always as the body often has work arounds and redundant systems in place to ensure survival despite coding errors. A single disease often has clusters of SNP associated with it rather than a single SNP.
Heteroplasmy is the case where a single cell has mitochondria with different types of DNA. Sometimes this diversity is good and can lead to long life and other times it can lead to disease. I know too little about this in general to add to this. Right now this is just paraphrased from the wiki entry on heteroplasmy.
So, this study looked at the ancestry of the mito DNA, the single genetic errors in the mito DNA and the number of different types of mito DNA in patients. And some very interesting data popped out:
which is VERY important to understand. While there seems to be no difference in mitochondrial DNA between the sick folk and controls, the mito DNA haplotypes do affect how the illness presents itself.
Of course this research needs to be duplicated to be confirmed but it is super cool none the less.
Here is the link to the very technical paper:
If. IF! I am reading this paper correctly, then the authors looked at three things in the mitochondria (mito) of PWME/CFS and age/sex matched controls: the haplogroups, SNPs and heteroplasmy. Think of haplogroups as the ancestral lines of the mito DNA. If you come from the UK you will have slightly different mito DNA than someone that comes from Asia. These lines can be traced back for thousands of years over hundreds of generations. As an aside, the lineage of humans was traced back through maternal mito DNA.
SNPs are single nucleotide polymorphisms which are single locations on a gene. Each location can have one of two proteins that encodes the genetic information for accurate cell reproduction or genetic recipe if you will. A single SNP error can potentially lead to illness or disease but not always as the body often has work arounds and redundant systems in place to ensure survival despite coding errors. A single disease often has clusters of SNP associated with it rather than a single SNP.
Heteroplasmy is the case where a single cell has mitochondria with different types of DNA. Sometimes this diversity is good and can lead to long life and other times it can lead to disease. I know too little about this in general to add to this. Right now this is just paraphrased from the wiki entry on heteroplasmy.
So, this study looked at the ancestry of the mito DNA, the single genetic errors in the mito DNA and the number of different types of mito DNA in patients. And some very interesting data popped out:
- when all the variables are adjusted for there are no specific SNPs associated with CFS/ME
- there were no significant differences in the heteroplasmy of CFS/ME patients and healthy controls
- This is the interesting bit: while there were no significant differences between CFS/ME patients and healthy controls with regard to haplotype, each haplotype is predictive of the subclass of CFS/ME patients. In other words, while a single or combination of haplotypes could not predict illness necessarily happening it could predict the symptoms once illness is present. So one haplotype would have more neuro symptoms, while another would have more gastric symptoms while a third would have more energy production problems. Wicked cool!!
The significance of these results is that...
"The variation in symptom constellation that occurs in ME/CFS could be due to genetic variation in individuals, rather than differences in underlying cause of the disease."
which is VERY important to understand. While there seems to be no difference in mitochondrial DNA between the sick folk and controls, the mito DNA haplotypes do affect how the illness presents itself.
Of course this research needs to be duplicated to be confirmed but it is super cool none the less.
Here is the link to the very technical paper:
Mitochondrial DNA variants correlate with symptoms in myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome Paul Billing-Ross1†, Arnaud Germain2†, Kaixiong Ye3, Alon Keinan3, Zhenglong Gu1 andMaureen R. Hanson2*
Wednesday, January 27, 2016
AMPK Triggers Mitochondrial Repair
This very interesting paper just came out of the Salk Institute. It is a tad technical but it might be key to CFS/ME treatments in the future.
Mitochondria are the little power plants for ALL of our cells. Every single cell in our body has mito in it. It is fairly well accepted that mitochondria don't work properly in PWME but the mechanism by which it is broken isn't well understood.. See Dr. Myhill's page for more info on mitochondria and CFS/ME.
The paper that just came out from Salk shows the mechanism responsible for the dismemberment of damaged mito and its regrowth.
Oooh almost forgot the links to the papers:
Mitochondria are the little power plants for ALL of our cells. Every single cell in our body has mito in it. It is fairly well accepted that mitochondria don't work properly in PWME but the mechanism by which it is broken isn't well understood.. See Dr. Myhill's page for more info on mitochondria and CFS/ME.
The paper that just came out from Salk shows the mechanism responsible for the dismemberment of damaged mito and its regrowth.
"Earlier research has shown that AMPK helps to recycle damaged mitochondrial pieces, and signals to the cell when to make new mitochondria." (1)
"When mitochondria are subjected to damage in the form of environmental stress, toxins, or genetic mutations, [which in turn causes AMPK to trigger] the cell [to] take the mitochondria apart, remove the damaged pieces, and re-assemble the mitochondria." (1)
"AMPK, which can be seen as a cellular fuel indicator, is activated by the diabetes drug metformin. Exercise and a restricted diet are also known to activate the enzyme, indicating that these therapies work, at least in part, by promoting mitochondrial health." (1)This makes me wonder about the effects of prolonged fasting on PWME. It looks like fasting not only would knock out B cells but also induce the production of fresh mitochondria. Both of which could potentially be very good for PWME. Now if I could only muster up the willpower to do a three day fast. My blood sugar goes really wonky when I don't eat properly.
Oooh almost forgot the links to the papers:
- Mitochondrial Repair Mechanisms Seen in Study, Offering Insights into Diseases by Magdalena Kegel
- AMP-activated Protein Kinase Mediates Mitochondrial Fission in Response to Energy Stress by Erin Quan Toyama et al
One thing I do want to look into are the SNPs that control MFF which might be part of my Genetic Genie report. Not sure. Will have to get back to you on that one if I remember.
Tuesday, January 26, 2016
Immune System Reboot
There is a new treatment for MS that was developed in the UK where patients go for the standard chemo rounds to knock out the immune system and then are implanted with stem cells to regenerate it. The new cells aren't damaged so the body stops attacking itself and the myelin sheath around the nerves regenerates giving the patients their health and functionality back.
There has been some speculation in the CFS/ME world wondering if this would work for us as well. Trouble is we don't know if this is an autoimmune illness or just an illness that hijacks the immune system; i.e. is the body under attack from the immune system or is it just overactive and then underactive? This is a critical difference. There is some evidence that it is indeed an autoimmune condition in at least some patients as seen in the Rituximab trials. Rituximab, another cancer drug, knocks out the b cells and works in some but not all CFS/ME patients. If there is any lingering viruses in our bodies then once the immune system is knocked out the virus reactivates and a raging infection occurs so there are significant risks to CFS/ME patients particularly those that had a viral onset.
The million dollar question is 'Is CFS/ME an autoimmune condition?'.
Talking of rebooting the immune system, turns out it can also be done without the drugs. Prolonged fasting causes the body to 'eat' the white cells (b cells) which forces the body to replace them with new ones essentially rebooting the immune system. I don't know if anyone in the CFS/ME community has done cyclic prolonged fasting. Myself I get loopy very very quickly if I don't eat regularly. Also I don't know if this works on women as well as men since they tend to react to fasting differently than men. Anyway, here is the article on prolonged fasting and the immune system...
I am SO tempted to try a multiday fast but I'm very scared of ending up bedbound. If you want to give it a go drink LOTS of fluid. LOTS. Otherwise you get dehydrated and end up in hospital with other problems.
Cancer Treatment for MS Patients Gives "Remarkable" Results by Fergus Walsh BBC News
There has been some speculation in the CFS/ME world wondering if this would work for us as well. Trouble is we don't know if this is an autoimmune illness or just an illness that hijacks the immune system; i.e. is the body under attack from the immune system or is it just overactive and then underactive? This is a critical difference. There is some evidence that it is indeed an autoimmune condition in at least some patients as seen in the Rituximab trials. Rituximab, another cancer drug, knocks out the b cells and works in some but not all CFS/ME patients. If there is any lingering viruses in our bodies then once the immune system is knocked out the virus reactivates and a raging infection occurs so there are significant risks to CFS/ME patients particularly those that had a viral onset.
B Lymphocyte Depletion in Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. An Open Phase II Study with Rituximab Maintenance Treatment by Oysten Fluge et al
Antibody Wipeout Found to Relieve Chronic Fatigue Syndrome by New Scientist
The million dollar question is 'Is CFS/ME an autoimmune condition?'.
Talking of rebooting the immune system, turns out it can also be done without the drugs. Prolonged fasting causes the body to 'eat' the white cells (b cells) which forces the body to replace them with new ones essentially rebooting the immune system. I don't know if anyone in the CFS/ME community has done cyclic prolonged fasting. Myself I get loopy very very quickly if I don't eat regularly. Also I don't know if this works on women as well as men since they tend to react to fasting differently than men. Anyway, here is the article on prolonged fasting and the immune system...
Fasting Triggers Stem Cell Regeneration of Damaged, Old Immune System by Suzanne Wu University of Southern California
I am SO tempted to try a multiday fast but I'm very scared of ending up bedbound. If you want to give it a go drink LOTS of fluid. LOTS. Otherwise you get dehydrated and end up in hospital with other problems.
Friday, January 22, 2016
The Detoxification of Women's Bodies
Detoxing is all the rage. However, its definition is a tad fuzzy and there are tons of unscrupulous folk willing to scam you out of your money over it. My first clue regarding the definition was when I told my CFS doc that I was having detox problems with my glutathione IVs. He asked me what exactly I meant by that and I had to go into a lengthy explanation of what was happening to my body. This should have cued me into the ramifications of detoxification language but I was messed up enough at the time to only get slightly aggravated with my doc for being so dense. Lately, however, I've noticed something that I find disturbing. I don't know if this is new since I'm relatively new in the chronic illness sphere. It might have been around for years or decades. Also, this is fairly difficult for me to describe since the evidence for my disquietude is subtle. So let me start with language.
Language is a powerful thing and the way we use language can give us insight into how the mind is functioning both in a neurophysical sense and a psychological sense. An example of a neurophysical glitch would be word loss/substitution. Calling your pets your furbabies might be an indication that you are substituting your pets for actual children on a psychological level. What is disturbing me is the way women tend to discuss detoxification.
Our bodies do indeed have many real detoxification pathways that can break. The methylation (MTHFR) pathway broke in me and I got very sick as a result. I needed glutathione IVs, activated charcoal, bentonite clay and B12 to get thing working again. There are also liver pathways (CY9 SNPs), the lymphatic system and probably a few others I don't know anything about yet. Our bodies can also break in another way; for example leaky gut, where toxins that normally wouldn't be allowed in, sneak in through gaps between the cells lining the gut. So there are ways that we can break that allow stuff in (leaky gut or leaky brain barrier or even broken skin) and ways that we can break where we can't adequately eliminate toxins from our system (MTHFR, CY9 defects or even not being able to poop regularly). These are biochemical and physical glitches in our system. They can be tested for and for the most part fixed or worked around given the right supplements and/or meds and/or diet.
We can also reduce the toxic burden on our bodies by eating clean, removing toxins from our environment, using air and water filters, etc. The idea is that the fewer toxins we are exposed to then the less the body has to work to eliminate because the toxins were never ingested/absorbed in the first place.
Now here is where it starts to get weird. When I first started the B12 and folate protocol for MTHFR I started bleeding heavily for weeks on end. It took me a while to figure out that it coincided with the vitamins. When I asked about it I was told by several women "Oh that is just the body detoxing. Don't worry about it.". I accepted this explanation and tried to continue with the protocol. This lead to anemia from the excessive blood loss. I even ended up in the ER at one point with a UT probe up my hoohoo (very uncomfortable BTW) with no evidence that there was anything causing the bleeding. Taking high doses of fish oil leads to the same thing for me. I was put on high doses of progesterone to halt the bleeding and there was even talk about cauterization of my uterus to prevent it from happening again. Not a route I wanted to go so I stopped taking fish oil, B12 and folate which stopped the bleeding. But this idea that my uterus was detoxing started niggling at me.
Other women were experiencing the same side effects as me but I have yet to find a scientific explanation for it. The male docs I talked to had never heard of it and the women assumed that their bodies were toxic/dirty and trying to self correct through a detox process that doesn't exist. While you do indeed detox via breath, sweat, pee and poop, I've never EVER heard of detoxing through the uterus. I certainly didn't bleed heavily while I was on glutathione IVs even though the detoxification was so drastic that I had to take charcoal or clay after a treatment to reduce the herxing.
Now you have to realize that women have been told for centuries that bleeding is dirty. Our lady parts are dirty. They must be cleaned, deodorized and sanitized. Companies make a fortune convincing us to use tampons, pads, deodorants, soaps, shampoos and, more recently, shaving all our hair off. So the idea that our uterus must be detoxed isn't a stretch. In fact I just found this article:
which describes little herbal sachets that go into your vagina to cleanse it.
I've noticed in some of the patient pages that women often go for the detoxing first. They assume that their bodies are contaminated and dirty and need cleaning. This is even before they get tested for ANYTHING, genetics, vitamin deficiency, glutathione levels, ANYTHING. I never seen the guys do this. True these spaces are mostly populated by female patients so my sampling is severely skewed, BUT given the history of "dirty women's bodies that must be cleansed" it isn't much of a stretch that women are now assuming that they must be detoxed with little to no evidence. You see it in the huge sales of juice fasts, sugar detox diets, Whole30 resets, etc. It is just assumed that our bodies are contaminated and must be fixed.
I'm still trying to work through these ideas. There is some line that needs to be drawn between actual physical problems when the body breaks and this idea that we are necessarily dirty and must be cleansed at all costs. If our bodies work properly, then they detox themselves just fine. There are rumors about yoga gurus that can drink poison without any ill effects because they have trained their body to detox itself very efficiently, but I digress... I guess I'm trying to get away from the idea that women are necessarily dirty, that our natural state is unclean or that because we are sick we must be toxic. I keep seeing in the patient forums the language women use to describe detoxing in relation to their bodies and it often reminds me of the "women are dirty and must be cleansed" line of thought. While we might break, we are most often fixable but we are not necessarily dirty. It is very hard to find examples of the language I'm referring to since it is very subtle. For me, it has been a cumulative thing rather than one big glaring example. Never the less it still worries me. We need to hold ourselves in higher esteem. Get tested first. Don't assume that you are dirty/contaminated. Find out what is broken and fix that rather than going on random and possibly dangerous detoxification protocols that might not have any science behind them at all. Our bodies are miraculous objects that can handle toxins when working properly. And, no, you do NOT detox through uterine bleeding. That is just plain nonsense akin to bloodletting with leeches. If you are bleeding, stop the protocol before you get anemia.
However, I still have no idea why B12, folate and fish oil cause heavy bleeding. In that regard, the medical mystery continues. In the meantime, I do want to be more mindful about how I discuss and think about detoxification. Language matters and my uterus does NOT need detoxifying, thank you very much.
Language is a powerful thing and the way we use language can give us insight into how the mind is functioning both in a neurophysical sense and a psychological sense. An example of a neurophysical glitch would be word loss/substitution. Calling your pets your furbabies might be an indication that you are substituting your pets for actual children on a psychological level. What is disturbing me is the way women tend to discuss detoxification.
Our bodies do indeed have many real detoxification pathways that can break. The methylation (MTHFR) pathway broke in me and I got very sick as a result. I needed glutathione IVs, activated charcoal, bentonite clay and B12 to get thing working again. There are also liver pathways (CY9 SNPs), the lymphatic system and probably a few others I don't know anything about yet. Our bodies can also break in another way; for example leaky gut, where toxins that normally wouldn't be allowed in, sneak in through gaps between the cells lining the gut. So there are ways that we can break that allow stuff in (leaky gut or leaky brain barrier or even broken skin) and ways that we can break where we can't adequately eliminate toxins from our system (MTHFR, CY9 defects or even not being able to poop regularly). These are biochemical and physical glitches in our system. They can be tested for and for the most part fixed or worked around given the right supplements and/or meds and/or diet.
We can also reduce the toxic burden on our bodies by eating clean, removing toxins from our environment, using air and water filters, etc. The idea is that the fewer toxins we are exposed to then the less the body has to work to eliminate because the toxins were never ingested/absorbed in the first place.
Now here is where it starts to get weird. When I first started the B12 and folate protocol for MTHFR I started bleeding heavily for weeks on end. It took me a while to figure out that it coincided with the vitamins. When I asked about it I was told by several women "Oh that is just the body detoxing. Don't worry about it.". I accepted this explanation and tried to continue with the protocol. This lead to anemia from the excessive blood loss. I even ended up in the ER at one point with a UT probe up my hoohoo (very uncomfortable BTW) with no evidence that there was anything causing the bleeding. Taking high doses of fish oil leads to the same thing for me. I was put on high doses of progesterone to halt the bleeding and there was even talk about cauterization of my uterus to prevent it from happening again. Not a route I wanted to go so I stopped taking fish oil, B12 and folate which stopped the bleeding. But this idea that my uterus was detoxing started niggling at me.
Other women were experiencing the same side effects as me but I have yet to find a scientific explanation for it. The male docs I talked to had never heard of it and the women assumed that their bodies were toxic/dirty and trying to self correct through a detox process that doesn't exist. While you do indeed detox via breath, sweat, pee and poop, I've never EVER heard of detoxing through the uterus. I certainly didn't bleed heavily while I was on glutathione IVs even though the detoxification was so drastic that I had to take charcoal or clay after a treatment to reduce the herxing.
Now you have to realize that women have been told for centuries that bleeding is dirty. Our lady parts are dirty. They must be cleaned, deodorized and sanitized. Companies make a fortune convincing us to use tampons, pads, deodorants, soaps, shampoos and, more recently, shaving all our hair off. So the idea that our uterus must be detoxed isn't a stretch. In fact I just found this article:
Doctors Warn Against Using Herbal Tampons To "Detox the Womb"
which describes little herbal sachets that go into your vagina to cleanse it.
I've noticed in some of the patient pages that women often go for the detoxing first. They assume that their bodies are contaminated and dirty and need cleaning. This is even before they get tested for ANYTHING, genetics, vitamin deficiency, glutathione levels, ANYTHING. I never seen the guys do this. True these spaces are mostly populated by female patients so my sampling is severely skewed, BUT given the history of "dirty women's bodies that must be cleansed" it isn't much of a stretch that women are now assuming that they must be detoxed with little to no evidence. You see it in the huge sales of juice fasts, sugar detox diets, Whole30 resets, etc. It is just assumed that our bodies are contaminated and must be fixed.
I'm still trying to work through these ideas. There is some line that needs to be drawn between actual physical problems when the body breaks and this idea that we are necessarily dirty and must be cleansed at all costs. If our bodies work properly, then they detox themselves just fine. There are rumors about yoga gurus that can drink poison without any ill effects because they have trained their body to detox itself very efficiently, but I digress... I guess I'm trying to get away from the idea that women are necessarily dirty, that our natural state is unclean or that because we are sick we must be toxic. I keep seeing in the patient forums the language women use to describe detoxing in relation to their bodies and it often reminds me of the "women are dirty and must be cleansed" line of thought. While we might break, we are most often fixable but we are not necessarily dirty. It is very hard to find examples of the language I'm referring to since it is very subtle. For me, it has been a cumulative thing rather than one big glaring example. Never the less it still worries me. We need to hold ourselves in higher esteem. Get tested first. Don't assume that you are dirty/contaminated. Find out what is broken and fix that rather than going on random and possibly dangerous detoxification protocols that might not have any science behind them at all. Our bodies are miraculous objects that can handle toxins when working properly. And, no, you do NOT detox through uterine bleeding. That is just plain nonsense akin to bloodletting with leeches. If you are bleeding, stop the protocol before you get anemia.
However, I still have no idea why B12, folate and fish oil cause heavy bleeding. In that regard, the medical mystery continues. In the meantime, I do want to be more mindful about how I discuss and think about detoxification. Language matters and my uterus does NOT need detoxifying, thank you very much.
Monday, January 11, 2016
Gait and CFS/ME
One of the hallmarks of this illness is the fact that we can NOT multitask. One of Dr. Bell's tests was asking his patients random questions while clicking a pen. That pen clicking was just enough to distract the patient and make them unable to answer questions. It was one of his low tech tests for CFS/ME as no other patients would be affected by pen clicking as severely as PWME. So from his unscientific country doctor test we go to the scientific study that show this to be true:
That paper basically says that when you distract a PWME while they are walking they stop walking as they can't walk and pay attention to something else at the same time. Personally I've known this since my illness started. On my severe days where I have trouble walking at all, the least little thing distracts me and I freeze in place until I can refocus on walking again. It is like the pen clicking test. The least little distraction causes me to stop walking and stand like a statue. My brain can't handle processing that much information at the same time. Walking is one of the more difficult tasks we do as humans which means that it takes a lot of brain power to perform the act of walking. PWME just don't have the processing capability to walk, talk and chew gum at the same time.
Reduced gait automaticity in female patients with chronic fatigue syndrome: Case-control studyJan b Eyskens, MSc PT, DO, Pr Ph;1* Jo Nijs, PhD;2 Kristien Wouters;3–4 Greta Moorkens, MD, PhD1,4
That paper basically says that when you distract a PWME while they are walking they stop walking as they can't walk and pay attention to something else at the same time. Personally I've known this since my illness started. On my severe days where I have trouble walking at all, the least little thing distracts me and I freeze in place until I can refocus on walking again. It is like the pen clicking test. The least little distraction causes me to stop walking and stand like a statue. My brain can't handle processing that much information at the same time. Walking is one of the more difficult tasks we do as humans which means that it takes a lot of brain power to perform the act of walking. PWME just don't have the processing capability to walk, talk and chew gum at the same time.
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