The Journey

weird 'r us!

Just made my appt for the brain scan. Friday at 10:30.

Hi tak!

Yep, I've been following a lean protein, non-starchy vegetable diet for two months and have completed the weight loss portion of the plan. I'm off one med and about to come off the second one. I may or may not be able to come off the final one (statin), but I'm doing well.

Thanks! I hope you enjoy your lunch.

It's been a busy, busy week of classes (4), regular end of month craziness and 3rd qtr tax prep. I had my MRI on Friday and got the report that there are no changes since Mar '10 and no indications of ongoing TIAs. I'm at full speed ahead to switch over to baby aspirin once my prescription runs out later in the week! WooHoo!!!!! Part B of the Plan is underway and I'm moving forward with renewed enthusiasm.

Now I need to stabilize the weight loss and focus on getting my cholesterol down. I've moved into the "consolidation" phase of the food plan but I'm still losing weight. I'm down 2.0 lbs from last week, weighing in at 168.5 (bmi = 22.85). I've added cheese, whole grain bread/crackers, and fruit into my daily intake and I had a celebration meal and a few cheats. My metabolism has really kicked into overdrive since coming back from New Orleans. I imagine things will settle down soon.

My right knee and leg are bothering me. I twisted my knee Friday morning which changes my gait. I think that's why my leg is acting up again. I didn't walk Friday or Saturday but I am still able to do MB8S in the morning and I was able to do my therapy pool workout yesterday. The gentle marching component of MB8S doesn't bother it but I'll eliminate that if it causes any grief or if I don't think I'm healing. Using the peddler is on hold for the moment.

K is here for a visit. She and Mr B are planning on making popcorn balls for her to take to a Halloween party tonight. I'm going to a bluegrass concert with a friend. M started a new job this week near school. It's hard to believe that it's nearly November and that 2011 is rapidly coming to a close. It's been quite a year!

JPB, Sorry that I didn't continue with my rant, but after lunch, I arrived at the conclusion that you of all people didn't need my input. However, I did have a thought that you might entertain for next year. Come and visit Northern California. We have great jazz and blues music here, and the sightseeing is tops - includuding the wine country. I'll be busy in Jan and may, but will be free to show you around any other time. That's my suggestion for your physical and mental health.

! !

that's a good report!

About cholesterol.. I do not believe it has anything to do with what you eat at all. I know a few people who are think and paranoid about fat, they eat skim milk that is almost whey and non-fat this and non-fat that and they have high cholesterol. What the doctors aren't saying.. Cholesterol build up in the arteries is there doing a job, it is part of a repair job. The more repair jobs there are and the longer it takes for those repairs to take place the more cholesterol your body will make and send to the artery walls to build up and cause problems with blood pressure, plaques that can come off and so on. The question is what are these repair jobs all about? Firstly let me say that under normal conditions the repairs get to be done when the body is at rest. If we suffer from one or both of two particular conditions then the body doesn't get to go to rest. Thus the body attempts to undertake the repairs while the body is too highly active. What are these two conditions?

The first is the emotional group of anger. It might be mild irritation or it might be more. Emotions have nothing to do with psychology and everything to do with whole body function. Anger arises with issues of injustice and violations. They don't have to be serious one, but if they are ongoing and unresolved then we continually feel angry or irritable etc. The changes in the body that are anger are deeper breathing to begin with and that accelerates the heart. When the heart beats faster than the rest /passive conditions of around 65, say at 75 or 80 or more, then the blood pressure goes up because the blood is being pumped faster. This means the blood is rushing around your blood vessels all the time at a much greater speed than normal. Even at normal speed the blood, which is made up of a great variety of particles continually crashes into the arterial walls as it rushes around the body. Under rest conditions the blood does one round of the body every three minutes. That is quite fast when you take into consideration the mileage in blood vessels. The arterial walls get damaged and these damages have to be repaired. If the blood is rushing much faster more damage gets done and what repairs are attempted get knocked about too. So more and more cholesterol gets transported to these areas to do the repairs.

The other condition that causes the same problem has to do with the way a person copes with everyday life. I have identified two basic ways that I call coping mechanisms. Both manipulate the breath. One is shallow breathing and sometimes holding down a breath for a little longer than normal. The other is deeper breathing. The first method lowers the metabolism in the body, particularly the skeletal musculature while the second one raises the metabolism. You might be one that takes deeper breaths. This is the "keep busy keep it (whatever is unpleasant in life) out of mind". It essentialy distracts the attention by making the brain do a whole lot of housekeeping with respect to raised activity in the body. Unfortunately the side affect is raised heart rate and of course with it raised blood pressure. So the effects are the same as the emotion of anger /irritation etc. To resolve an elevated metabolism coping mechanism you need to train yourself to live less and less in a comfort zone. It is not healthy. One of the best ways is meditation. You can incorporate this with your walks an do a slow meditative walk and try and be aware of everything around you as you walk. You could also try sitting meditation but I would advise you to start with just five minutes a day and increase it as you feel inclined.

I believe it's based.on each individual's physiology, and the ability to process fat.

When it comes down to the nuts and bolts we all got the same hardware. It is our life experience that makes the difference. The sorts of relationship we engage in and the type of others we interact with in our life contribute enormously to our life experience and that means we experience a variety of emotional states. The problem is that the medical industry doesn't want us to realize this because they make money from treating symptoms. They talk about chemical and hormonal imbalances when in reality there are none. If you are fearful, anxious, angry, happy, sad, worried etc then you are going to have different modifications to the way the organs in your body work. And those modifications include all manner of hormonal differences and electrochemical differences. These are differences from what is happening in the body at rest conditions but they are normal. Once you deal with an issue the emotional state of the body changes back to rest conditions. There are continual changes in the way our body functions. The problems arise when emotional states become enduring and/or we try to escape any unpleasantness in our lives and opt out for a comfort zone. A comfort zone might seem okay in times that are not very unpleasant but in crisis situations the comfort zone can be deadly because it may either seriously conflict with other/ particularly emotional states or on the other hand it may over load some body system(s), most especially the heart.

I disagree; emotional states are based on our personal psychology; some are normal worriers and others are not. It also depends on our life experiences too, but some are able to handle stress more than others. That's proven by the fact that many children commit suicide, because they can't handle stress.
Some children under similar conditions survive to make a relatively good life for themselves.

As for the medical industry wanting us to be ignorant of health issues is a red herring; it doesn't exist. In many cases, all they can do is treat the symptoms , and it depends a great deal on what they are told, what they observe and find by lab work.

I don't know who your doctor is, but I think you're due for a change.

This is going to be a classic thread.

Just read most of it for the first time.

Joe(waytogo)Nation

Great idea! I haven't been to northern CA in years and I love it there. I'll definitely keep it in mind.



Thank you! Yep, I'm walking a lot lighter in more ways than one.



And



I agree with both of you in part. I don't think anything physiological is as black and white as kYRANI paints nor as genetically driven as CI's position. It's similar to the nature and nurture argument. I don't think it's all of one or the other but a combination of both. I'll give you an example. From my many years of working in blood banking I know that certain disease states are more prevalent in some blood types than others. For instance, most of the coronary patients tend to be blood group O and most of the GI bleeders (ulcers, etc) tend to be blood type A. That's not absolute, of course, but in general we'd transfuse a lot of type O blood during open heart surgeries and a lot of type A blood to GI bleeders.

Can a person with a genetic predisposition to heart disease be aided by meditation, exercise and diet to prevent a heart attack? Surely. A different person might see a benefit to his ulcers, which has nothing to do with cholesterol but with the lining of his gut and the acids he produces.

Meditation, diet and exercise can help in many ways - but they will probably help each person uniquely depending on their genetic makeup.

Thank you both for your comments!



Thanks, Joe! Glad you stopped by. Feel free to throw in your own experiences as you choose.

wow, it's amazing that you're still losing weight, JPB! I am also glad that your MRI showed positive results, but just to be on the safe side, you should have another one about 3 months after you've been off Plavix and your other meds.

Other than that, congratulations!!

What is stress? Most doctors will tell you that it has to do with lifestyle and trying to juggle family with work and stuff like that. However stress has to do with bodily malfunction and that comes about by the simultaneous existence4 of two or more emotions that conflict the body. For example anxiety, that they want to classify as a mental disorder! There are two main types of anxiety, one is fear and worry mixed and the other is anger/irritation and worry mix. Fear and anger both raise the metabolism which means the heart rate is increased etc. Worry does the opposite. The brain is required in thinking and if the problem is one of security or a violation then we can't just say oh I'll think about it tomorrow. We need to resolve it urgently. If the person doesn't have enough information then they can not resolve it but they can't let it go either. What happens for the brain to do heavy duty thinking is that the body needs to be brought to rest so that the brain doesn't have to compete with the musculature for fuel materials (oxygen, sugars). This means that the heart is signaled to go slow. However fear/anger means the heart is also getting signals to go fast. The net result is the heart malfunctions. It is the key organ but other organs are also conflicted. The one key symptom that a lot of people report is a feeling of vibration in the muscles. This means the muscles are not making enough energy even for heat requirements. Why does that happen? Because if the heart muscles are getting signals to go fast and slow at the same time they become fatigued and/or confused and spasm. The end result is that the heart no longer functions efficiently as a pump and can't pump the blood as required. But hey if they call it a mental disorder then the problem doesn't get fixed and down the road the heart becomes damaged. These a lot of money in heart disease and that is just one variety.
I don't have a doctor, I have handled all my medical needs myself without drugs and without doctors. It been years since I been to a doctor and I am being harrassed savagely by the toxic underculture to try and shut me up. I have been able to avoid strokes, heart attacks and I have reversed a dozen different cancers. Indeed I have learnt enough to stage manage my body's responses so I don't develop any masses (barrier/resistance cells-shields) in the first place. And the more they hassel me the more ground I gain. I know I will expose them all because what I have helps a person get well without doctors.

I also want to say that I don't believe there is any such animal as a "normal worrier". All of the people, particularly women that I have seen worried, it turns out in the end have a legitimate reason to worry. Most often it is a toxic spouse or work mate.

Stress comes in many forms; sometimes it's a matter of the chemistry in our brains that results in "stress," while other causes can be environmental.

Students expected to get perfect grades by their parents or peers can be stressful. Job, family, and friend relationships can be stressful. Being short of money can be stressful. Losing ones job and/or home can be stressful.

Looking for a job - and job interviews can be stressful. Health issues can be stressful.

Fear of death can be stressful.

We all react to these "stressful" events in different ways, and yes, stress can be harmful to our health, but some stress is all part and parcel of living.

Glad to hear about the MRI.

Glad you're eager to be starting on the aspirin and getting rid of the Plavix.

Not glad to hear about the knee and leg.

Enjoy the concert.

This is such good news. Charlie and I were holding hands for you on Thursday night - have told her all about your achievements and sending her the link - she's chuffed to bits for you too.

What a relief JPB... WoooooooHoooooooooooo! Go girl, love you ((((((JPB))))) x

I agree with you there may be many different stressors in a person's daily life and they do have an effect on the person's health but the stress, which plagues modern societies the world over today are not the usual ones. And I say this recognizing that we live in difficult econonmic times. The stress that is damaging to health is that which comes about in toxic relationships. It is in a very real sense all about personal terrorism. The biggest problems in recognizing the cause of this stress is that firstly toxic people are seriously two faced and exceedingly deceitful and without remorse for the hurt that they cause others with whom they are related. The only thing that concerns them is getting their own way. For them relationships are a battle ground. The other problem is that the medical industry well recognizes the problem that toxic people create and they have moved to protect them by what I at least see as medical misinformation. The idea of brain chemisty being a cause of stress is certainly a part of this misinformation. When a person recognizes the reality of how toxic relationships do harm then armed with that knowledge they can stay well even in the most fierce adverse conditions. Why fill a doctor's pockets with your money when you can spend it on things that bring you pleasure instead? But to do that you have to be aware of the true causes of the diseases that plague our modern day world.

Partly, perhaps mostly, but not entirely. I think you give more power to those outside of the individual to wholly influence one's well being.



We have many kinds of relationships. We can have relationships with food, or alcohol and other substances which dull our senses including natural and pharmaceutical products, as well as our relationships with people. Any, or all, of those relationships can be toxic and any, or all, of them can influence our overall health. I don't accept that it's only our relationships with people who push or drive us into toxic relationships with food or other substances. There's a nature and nurture component that I think you're ignoring. We are complicated beings who make personal choices based on many factors, not all of which are good for us, but not all of which are based on our relationships with others.



I don't entirely disagree with this, but then again, it paints a one-size-fits-all picture of a complicated thing that it is to be human.

I agree with you that it is not cut and dry, there are many factors. And I am not about handing power to others. On the contrary I am about how to regain your power and keep it so that even under the worst circumstances you can withstand adversity. Whether we like it or not we all affect one another through our many and varied relationships. And that is not only on the personal one to one or even one to many level. It is also true of the way the state relates to us and other groups in society. On the personal level however a lot of harm can be done to person who is being deceived. Toxic people whom that person is relating are not what they appear to be and worse still such deceitful persons are networked with other like minded people. And a person may be an unsuspecting not because they are ignorant of what sort of foul games are played but also because they may be misinformed about the way our bodies function and about the meaning of symptoms.