Sitting Knitting

Fashion Knits

2010-12-04T08:22:00.000-08:00

Today's issue of How to Spend It from the Financial Times has a great layout of over sized knits. While the "luxury lifestyle" is beyond my means, knitting is not. These photos remind me of the Rowan magazines which I love. I like styles that are innovative, artsy, trendy, and fun to knit. I have finished Relax and have picked up Glade again after a 4-year hiatus. When I left it on holders, I had only knitted 48 rows but I'm a much better knitter now and am finding it much easier to work on than I did originally. I'll post some photos when I get a chance. Check out the photos on the FT site. They are inspiring.

Negative Tides

2010-10-23T10:19:00.000-07:00

It's negative tide season again! Negative tides that happen in the daylight hours, that is. November and December offer some nice afternoon negative tides. Check the tide tables and plan your trip to the cove. Bring kids and cameras. LEAVE THE WILDLIFE!

Small Beginnings

2010-10-09T09:40:00.000-07:00

I managed to get some of my new native plants into the ground before the lovely rains came this week. Way in the back is the White Sage, Salvia apiana. Then come the two Black Sages, Salvia mellifera, 'Skylark,' an Ashyleaf Buckwheat, Eriogonum cinereum, and the Coast Buckwheat, Eriogonum parvifolium. The smallest plants are some California Poppies, Eschscholzia californica. (I accidentally stepped on one while I was putting down the mulch, but it doesn't seem to have minded.) The log rounds came from my tree that was removed last summer. I wanted to use a non-organic mulch, but there was not much of a selection at the garden centers I went to. The mulch made from old tires looked absolutely ghastly, and smelled awful, too. The Bush Lupine, Lupinus longifolius, is still waiting to be planted. It will go where the birch trees used to be. Those overhead sprinklers that you see have been turned off. For now I will hand water the new plants as needed and wait for more rain.

Ready to Plant

2010-10-03T09:01:00.001-07:00

I made it to the Native Plant Sale at the South Coast Botanical Garden on Friday evening and was able to find almost all of the plants on my list. Here's what I got:

Bush Lupine, Lupinus longifolius
Black Sage, Salvia Mellifera 'Skylark'
White Sage, Salvia apiana
Coast Buckwheat, Eriogonum parvifolium
Ashy-leaf Buckwheat, Eriogonum cinereum
Bush Monkeyflower, Mimulus aurantiacus
California Poppy, Eschscholzia californica
California Wild Rose, Rosa californica

I'm so thrilled to have my very own bush lupine. It's beautiful! I bought two of the 'Skylark' Melliferas, which have a deeper purple flower, and the apiana for its gray-green foliage and because it is such an interesting plant. The Coast Buckwheat is the plant that the El Segundo Blue Butterfly lays its eggs on. (I can hope, can't I?) The Monkeyflower was an afterthought to add some yellow color, along with the poppies. I bought the wild rose on a whim and now I don't know where to put it. The roots can be invasive I'm told.

What I didn't get were:

Miniature Lupine, Lupinus bicolor
California Gooseberry, Ribes Californicum
California Everlasting, Gnaphalium californicum

They had some gooseberries, but not this one and the ones they had did not suit my purpose. I was really surprised they didn't have the Gnaphalium, I thought it was rather common. But maybe you find it more in drier inland areas.

Along with all these lovely plants, I bought the Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden book on the Care and Maintenance of Southern California Native Plant Gardens by O'Brien, Landis, and Mackey, a treasure trove of information and well worth the $30 price. The book includes tips on planting, pruning, watering, pest control, just about everything you need to know but geared towards native plants. It's full of information you just can't find elsewhere. Rancho Santa Ana will be having their own plant sale in November (mostly natives), and their Grow Native Nursery will open November 10.

I am hoping that the really hot weather is over because I want to get these plants into the ground. I'll keep you posted on my progress.

Can Blocking Save This Project?

2010-09-29T20:29:00.000-07:00

What happened? I've never had a knitting project come out so misshapen. I followed the directions carefully and my stitches are usually very even. I have ripped this project back twice already and it looks like I may have to do it again. The pattern is from Rowan Magazine No. 47 and the yarn is pure silk Mandalay by Reynolds. The name of the pattern? Relax. Hmmm... Rowan's yarn for this project is only 70% silk and 30% cotton. It's called Summer Tweed. Could the type of yarn have something to do with it? I read on the Internet that silk blocks well, but I think I would rather start again with fresh yarn.

This little shrug knitted up in a flash. It's made from some hand-painted yarn I bought while on vacation in Northern Pennsylvania this summer. It's a mohair bouclé called Forever Annie. (Love the name.) The company is called Handmade in the Hills and is owned by Deb Schildt. Check out her website. She has some very interesting stuff. The pattern, Shrug This, came from the book, One Skein Wonders, by Judith Durant.

Last but not least, here is the finished Bam Boo Tank from CEY's Make it Modern. It was done in a hand-painted yarn also called Ambrosia by Knit One Crochet Too. And the name suits it perfectly. At 70% baby alpaca, 20% silk, and 10% cashmere, it is heavenly soft—one of the nicest yarns I have worked with. I have one hank left so I will have to search for a pattern for it. Maybe something for Baby M.

Fall Butterflies and Other Insects

2010-09-19T13:48:00.000-07:00

On a walk through Oak Canyon last week I found so many new plants and new butterflies to identify, that it has kept me busy for several days. The frustrating thing is that for several of the butterflies, there were two, sometimes three species so similar that only dissection would be able to tell them apart. And we don't do that. We just take photos.

Mournful Duskywing, Erynnis tristis, likes oaks and there are plenty of oaks at Oak Canyon. After careful examination of this one, I eliminated Funereal Duskywing because mine doesn't have any pale patches above the white fringe.

This is a Mormon Metalmark, but whether it's Apodemia mormo mormo or Apodemia mormo virgulti I can't tell. This butterfly lays its eggs on Buckwheat but the one in the photo is nectaring on a Sweet Bush, Bebbia juncea. You can see his proboscis going down into the flower.

Vivid Dancer, Argia vivida, (California? Aztec?) mating. Anyway, the male is the pretty blue one. You have to look closely to see the female. Getting this shot was tough because the wind was blowing and I didn't want to disturb them. As it is, they flew off still hooked together (like Monarchs?) before I could really get a good focus on them. Interestingly, the nymphs of these damselflies will live through the winter in the muck at the bottom of the year-round running stream at the canyon.

Woodland Skipper, Ochlodes sylvanoides, nectaring also. Similar species include the Umber Skipper and Rural Skipper. I don't think it is the Rural, so it's either Woodland or Umber. What's a skipper anyway? The name comes from their skipping flight patterns. Skippers generally have larger bodies and are not as colorful as true butterflies, but they do have clubbed antennae, unlike moths. And the club can have a hook at the end. The Duskywing above is also a skipper. Fred Heath in his Introduction to Southern California Butterflies says that skippers are very difficult to identify. He likens them to the "empids" in the bird world, all those confusing little flycatchers. Well, that makes me feel a little better. I still have trouble with the empids after 18 years of birdwatching.

Lorquin's Admiral, Limenitis lorquini, likes Willows, although here you see it on an oak. This one I am sure of. The only other butterfly it resembles on top (dorsal) is totally different underneath (ventral). That is the California Sister. Luckily, I got a good shot of the underneath.

But I have learned that to get really good photos of butterflies, I will need some more equipment to go with my macro lens. In order to stop the motion and increase the depth of field, I need to use a flash. I'll have to look into it, although I wonder what the Dancers would have done if a flash had suddenly gone off in the middle of things.

Native Plant Society Meeting

2010-09-15T13:40:00.000-07:00

Seaside Daisy, Erigeron Glaucus 'Wayne Roderick'

I went to the meeting of the South Coast Chapter of the California Native Plant Society on Monday evening. It was held at the South Coast Botanical Garden on Palos Verdes. The meeting was all about the upcoming native plant sale which will take place on October 2nd at the garden. Tony Baker and Ric Dykzeul were on hand with sample cuttings to tell us about the natives that would grow well in our area. The aroma in the room was wonderful! I was pleased to note that I was familiar with about 80% of the plants on display and many of the ones I was not familiar with were cultivars or hybrids. In all, they had about 35 to 40 plants represented.

After the meeting, Tony told us we could take any of the samples we wanted because they were just going to toss them. So I helped myself to a few, stuck them in water when I got home and took photos.

Red Flowering Currant, Ribes sanguineum var. sanguineum

Black Sage, Salvia melifera 'Skylark'

I hope to get one of these Black Sages called 'Skylark' for my new native plant garden. There will be a preview for members of the Botanical Garden and/or the Native Plant Society on Friday evening October 1st. If I couldn't make the Friday preview, I was told to come early on the 2nd because the plants go fast.

Butterflies, Bumble Bees, Bugs, and Spiders

2010-08-02T11:33:00.000-07:00

My new macro lens has opened up a whole new world for me. While out taking photos of native plants, I have come upon all sorts of insects, many that I would normally pass by without a thought. With all my new lenses, I'll take a photo of a bug and then when I get home, I'll marvel at the detail in the photo. Then I'll search the web for information on the insect and in doing so, I have discovered all kinds of new things.

Gray Hairstreak, Strymon melinus

Butterflies are only slightly easier than birds to catch in a photo, but this fellow obliged by sitting still for the longest time. I actually took this shot with the macro and not a telephoto, he let me get that close to him. He was rubbing his hindwings back and forth, a sign he was "nectaring."

West Coast Lady, Vanessa annabella

White Checkered-Skipper, Pyrgus albescens

Western Pygmy-Blue, Brephidium exile

This butterfly is tiny! Yvetta alerted me to its presence or else I never would have seen it.

Purple Sage, Salvia leucophylla with Bumble Bee

Bladderpod, Isomeris arborea with Harlequin Bugs, Murgantia histrionica

The one on the right is a later nymph (young bug). These are true bugs.

Bladderpod, Isomeris arborea with Harlequin Bug eggs

The little white barrels with two black hoops around (or in this case, one black and one brown) are the eggs. You can see a row of these barrels in the previous photo to the lower left of the bugs.

Silver Argiope, Argiope argentata, with meal

This spider makes an orb web with shiny, radiating "stabilimenta" (sing. stabilimentum). It was the stabilimenta that caught my eye.

Funnel Web made by a Funnel Weaver Spider (family: Agelenidae)

I took this photo just because I thought it was unusual (and pretty). It wasn't until my son asked me about it that I discovered that the funnel was created on purpose. The funnel was about two inches in diameter.

It's a funnel web, and as you see consists of a flat, horizontal sheet of web that "funnels" into a tunnel-like hole. That hole is where the spider stays. An insect blunders onto the web, inside the hole the spider feels vibrations of the hapless critter on his web, the spider rushes out, bites the insect, and carries it back into the funnel. As the spider grows it adds new layers to the flat web, so you can look at the web and judge how large the spider is.

I'd say this one was pretty large!

Tree Therapy

2010-07-27T18:21:00.000-07:00

Forests -- and other natural, green settings -- can reduce stress, improve moods, reduce anger and aggressiveness and increase overall happiness. Forest visits may also strengthen our immune system by increasing the activity and number of natural killer cells that destroy cancer cells.

This quote is from a recent Science Daily news article about the research done by Dr. Eeva Karjalainen, of the Finnish Forest Research Institute, Metla. But this is not news to a lot of us, especially those trying to live a well-rounded healthy life that includes the right diet and exercise, plenty of sunshine for the vitamin D, good posture, going barefoot, getting to bed soon after dark, and other lifestyle changes that mimic the way our paleo ancestors lived. Mark's Daily Apple had an interesting piece on the subject just ten days before this article came out called Forest Bathing.

One wonders if an ocean atmosphere would have the same effect. I've always thought that the salt sea air was the best air you could breathe and "everyone knows" how healthy seafood is. But I have always loved trees and have often wondered how I ever found myself living in a desert.

Anyway imagine my angst when I recently had to have a 40-year-old tree, a Canariensis pine, removed from my property because it was getting too big, making cracks in the walls between me and my neighbors, not to mention dropping needles in my neighbor's pool and generally making a mess every August. My husband and I had been saying for years that sometime that tree would have to go, I just finally decided that the time was now.

It was actually fascinating to watch how the men did it without damaging anything on my property or my neighbors.' Only one guy worked up in the tree, while three others worked on the ground to remove the branches as soon as they fell. After all the side branches were removed, the cutter tied heavy ropes around the remaining trunk in several places with two long ropes extending to the ground at the top and bottom. Then he cut between the ropes. Meanwhile the men on the ground pulled on the top rope to guide the trunk piece down on my side of the wall. The cut piece was caught by the ropes and hit the remaining trunk. From there, they pulled it down to the ground where it could be cut into smaller pieces.

I miss the tree, but since it wasn't a California native, it wasn't popular with the birds and local animals although the squirrels did love to eat the cones. But now I will have the opportunity to plant natives that will attract more of the native birds and fauna.

Bacteriotherapy

2010-07-18T07:11:00.000-07:00

When I casually mentioned "fecal transplants" in my post on probiotics, I was being slightly facetious. But a recent NY Times article on How microbes Defend and Define Us indicates that the concept has been tried in this country and that our body's microbial community is one of the hot topics of the day. According to Jeffrey Gordon of Washington University in St. Louis School of Medicine, "there are ten times more microbial cells in or on our bodies than human cells... and more microbes in our gut than other parts of our bodies." We are all unique, but did you know that our resident bacteria is also unique? People with asthma have a different collection of microbes than healthy people and obese people also have a different set of species in their guts than people of normal weight. Bacteriotherapy, or fecal transplants, takes bacteria from a healthy person and injects them into a sick person's intestines with the intent of curing their disease.

I was introduced to the idea by Dr. Art Ayres at Cooling Inflammation and the Times article relates many of the things I have already learned on his blog. I found it fascinating that our guts are sterile until birth and that we get many of the bacteria that will be with us for life from our mothers, from our journey through the birth canal and later from her milk.

And it has been found that bacteria can communicate with each other. Here is a fascinating TED Talk by Bonnie Bassler, the molecular biologist whose team discovered this fact. Her talk is a good introduction to bacteria in general and she also presents an ingenious new approach to antibiotics that gets around the problem of resistance. Using this same technology, scientists eventually hope to promote the good bacteria that make us healthy.

Everybody wants to find a "cure" for obesity and here is a Nature streaming video by Jeffrey Gordon on Human Gut Microbes that explores the idea of injecting the intestines of an obese person with bacteria from a slim person, a fecal transplant, to see if that will cause the obese person to lose weight. I don't think the results have been published yet, but it looks promising.

But fecal transplants are not new science and they are not just for curing obesity. As Konstantin Monastyrsky (I call him the "King of Poop") states on his Gut Sense website, eastern European countries have been doing this for years.

The proper way of inoculating the large intestine with fecal flora is called fecal bacteriotherapy. It’s been employed for ages by natural practitioners of Eastern medicine to ward off diarrhea and constipation. Even some allopathic (mainstream) doctors, although not in the United States, aren’t too squeamish about it, because it effectively cures otherwise incurable ulcerative colitis.

Monastyrsky, while not a doctor, has put together an enormous amount of material on matters relating to our digestive system, especially the lower half. I have recommended his book, The Fiber Menace, previously.

So what about probiotics? Can they do any good? After all, they only provide a small amount of the gut flora our bodies need and apparently are short-lived. Ayres says that the probiotics we take settle in the region of the appendix while femented foods foods focus just on bacteria that may act as probiotics for the upper part of the digestive tract. To feed the rest of the gut flora that also influence the immune system (even though that resides in lining of the small intestines) other plant polysaccharides are needed. So Ayres suggests eating a variety of veggies.

I think that probiotics inhabit the GALT (gut associated lymphatic tissue) region of the intestines, which is a low oxygen region near the appendix. The probiotics are temporary residents that can contribute to shift in the gut flora toward normalcy, but are only a handful of the hundreds of species that are needed for health.

He also recommends not being excessively clean and to insure that you come into contact with healthy people and animals. You will benefit from their healthy flora.

—you must be optimistic that the bacteria that rub off on you will bring more good than harm. If you are healthy, then pathogens don't matter. If you are immunocompromised, then isolation is needed for survival.

If you can't get a fecal transplant then be prepared to take months to alter your gut flora for the better using probiotics, prebiotics, and other methods. "Gut flora development takes time and persistence."

Two Canyon Walks

2010-07-14T13:00:00.000-07:00

We went on our regular Canyon Walk at Lunada Canyon recently and I also went back to Forrestal Preserve. The spring plants had pretty much done their thing and the summer plants were coming into bloom. The California Buckwheat, Eriogonum fasciculatum, above, was abundant, and it's cousin, the Ashyleaf Buckwheat, Eriogonim cinereum, below, was trying to outdo it. In fact at Forrestal, it seemed to be everywhere, even in places I had not noticed before.

I like to photograph the plants in all of their seasons and under all conditions. The main reason I went back to Forrestal was to see if there was anything left of the lilies (Catalina Mariposa Lily, Calochortus catalinae) that were so beautiful in April. It has pretty much died back. It looked like this a month ago, and now only a few seed pods remain.

If you remember, I have blogged about one particular Bladderpod plant, Isomeris arborea, at Lunada Canyon before. Here is what it looked like in July of 2008, and here is what it looks like now, full of pods and new growth. It's holding its own despite all the fog and overcast weather we had in June and early July.

The purple sage, Salvia leucophylla, however, that was just glorious everywhere this spring, is now looking very sad, indeed. I don't remember the flowers turning black like this before and I am wondering if the foggy weather has caused a mildew to take hold.

But a new plant has made an appearance, Tarweed. Yvetta and I puzzled over the species of this one for several days. One of the reasons we had trouble is because there are so many tarplants and the other is because the species is undergoing a name change. I finally decided on Fascicled Tarplant, Deinandra fasciculata var. ramosissima. It's other name is Hemizonia ramosissima. This link will describe some of the changes taking place in the taxonomy of the plants of Southern Californis and the headaches that this can cause. Calflora uses both names, hemizonia and deinandra, and on one page says the former is the new name and on another, it says the latter is the new name. Oh well, "a rose by any other name... "

Liesegang Rings

2010-07-13T10:42:00.000-07:00

After reading my post about lenticular clouds, Yvetta asked me if I had heard of liesegang rings. Well, I thought I had. Maybe it was from her. Anyway, after looking at the links she sent me, I thought of the rocks at Abalone Cove. It seemed to me they were full of liesegang rings.

Don't ask me to explain how the rings are formed, I don't remember enough of the chemistry I took years ago and I never took geology. Anyway, I am not sure that the chemists know exactly what causes them either. You are welcome to read the Wikipedia list of theories, and if you understand them, tell me about it. It has something to do with periodic precipitation. (More waves? More symmetry.) Let's just enjoy their beauty.

Apparently, the "rings" can be textural, too.

You may have to click on this photo to see a larger version that makes the rings more apparent.

Here is a link to some other photos similar to the ones I am showing here. And finally, there is also this Hungarian site that tells you more than you ever wanted to know about liesegang rings.

Those Amazing California Natives

2010-07-12T19:17:00.000-07:00

At the end of June, I finally got a chance to hike in Oak Canyon again. Since we have not had significant rain since May, I was expecting to see the plants dried up and dormant for the summer. Imagine my surprise to see the canyon still bursting with blooms! And plants that were not blooming were putting out colorful berries like the Holly-leaf Buckthorn, Rhamnus ilicifolia above. Other plants had leaf color like this Fuchsia-flowered Gooseberry, Ribes speciosum below.

It was good to find Fringed Indian Pink, Silene laciniata blooming just where I found it last year only it seemed like there were many more flowers this year.

A new plant for me was this Heart-leaved Bush-penstemon, Keckiella cordifolia, although I don't know how I could have missed it before. Whole hillsides were covered with it!

Another new plant I found was this Sacapellote, Acourtia microcephala. There was only one of those, so I am not surprised I haven't seen it before. Sacapellote is the Spanish name for this plant and a concoction made from the roots has been used as a treatment for asthma. It is in the daisy family.

But the star of the day was the Toyon, Heteromeles arbutifolia. Toyon was everywhere and in full bloom. In December, all those white flowers will have turned into red berries. Spectacular!

Lenticular Clouds

2010-07-11T20:28:00.000-07:00

Some time ago, Yvetta sent me an email of photos of lenticular clouds over Mt. Ranier. That was the first I had ever heard of such clouds. But last month when my son, his family, and I were in the Sierras for a vacation, we were lucky to see these clouds from our condo. They were very strange and very beautiful. They seemed almost stationary and I took several photos as the evening progressed and the sun set.

Lenticular clouds are usually formed at high altitudes over mountains. The name lenticular comes from the lens shape these clouds sometimes take. In fact, many have been mistaken for UFOs. But they also frequently form layers such as these due to some very complicated wind patterns.

These clouds are named "lenticular" because they are lens shaped. Strong wind passing over a high mountain produces standing waves in the air above and somewhat downwind of the mountain. If the air is moist, changing pressure (compression followed by decompression) in these waves results in condensation making the shape of these standing waves visible. Their formal name is: "altocumulus standing lenticularis" meaning a high heap of lens shaped clouds formed by a standing wave. Pilots of powered planes and pilots of sail planes (gliders) are particularly interested in "lennies" as they are not only associated with high wind but also vertical wind. They are usually avoided by power plane pilots because of the turbulence but are sought by glider pilots for the rapid vertical lift they give. Some physicists, including the author, think that standing waves are the basic building block of matter and thus the universe. Hence my fascination with lenticular clouds as they give me a visual demonstration of how matter is formed.
D. Mayo, at Lake Ohau, NZ.

I've always been intrigued by standing waves because violin strings vibrate in standing waves. If you Google "lenticular clouds," you can find some strikingly beautiful photos such as those here, here, and here.

My Dream Doctor

2010-07-11T11:29:00.001-07:00

I just had to post one more comment from Dr. Ayres:

I have been trying to come up with approaches to regulation of gut flora and biofilms, but there are problems. First is the lack of information. Second is the potential power of modifications. And third is the susceptibility of people with dysfunctional GI tracts to further damage by rapid alterations of gut flora. We already know that gut flora can be very inflammatory and that is exacerbated by any disruption of the gut flora. Thus, a quick fix for the gut flora could initially be highly inflammatory and exacerbate existing symptoms.

This means that manipulation of gut flora should be a medical specialty requiring training, expertise and support from the rest of medicine. That is reasonable, because of the dominant role of gut flora and biofilms in disease and health. Unfortunately, diet is the major regulator of gut flora and there is no money in diet compared to drugs. The good news is that the study of the gut flora is getting increasing attention by molecular biology and that may force changes as the opportunity for marketing analysis of gut flora becomes a reality. Imagine a dip stick that can be read by an iPhone attachment to make dietary recommendations to reduce inflammation -- "I noticed that you slipped in some grain on Thursday."

Wouldn't that be nice? Wouldn't it be nice to have a doctor that understands what the underlying cause of your problem is? Wouldn't it be nice to have a doctor that recommends dietary and/or lifestyle changes first before taking out his/her prescription pad? Wouldn't it be nice to have a doctor that could guide you through the process of changing your gut flora or re-establishing your gut flora after meds so that you don't have to stumble around in the dark, trying this and that and suffering the consequences when you get it wrong or overdo it? Maybe my grandchildren will be lucky enough to have such a doctor.

Blog Update

2010-07-10T08:55:00.001-07:00

If you have been checking my blog over the past week, you may have noticed that I am working on the design. I chose a new template that I like very much but would like to use my own photos as a background. I don't have it just the way I want it yet, so things may continue to change for awhile. I finally got the photo to stop scrolling with the text and not to tile, at least on my big computers anyway. Things still aren't working right on the iPhone. Please bear with me.

I am also working on the post on probiotics and hope to have it up soon. I am still researching it and I keep finding new things to talk about. It's a complex subject.

Probiotics

2010-07-09T12:41:00.000-07:00

As I mentioned in my previous post, Chris Kresser outlines three steps for getting rid of acid reflux, GERD, and many other digestive problems. Step 1 is to "reduce the factors that promote bacterial overgrowth and low stomach acid." This is achieved by a basically low-carb and low fiber diet. The Specific Carbohydrate Diet and its offshoot the GAPS Diet are not really low carb, but they are very helpful for people with digestive problems who need help switching to low-carb. Many people think the changes that the GAPS diet makes to the original SCD are very beneficial, like going easy on dairy in the beginning. I myself started with the SCD six years ago and started tweaking it to a lower carb diet almost from the start. Too much honey! And too much dairy!

After about a year, I found the Eades's Protein Power diet. Their book, The Protein Power Lifeplan is still the first book I recommend to friends and family because again they give very good advice on making the transition from a standard American diet (SAD) to a low-carb diet. Also, between them, the Eades have treated thousands of people and have seen the results of their diet suggestions. They are not just theorists. Along with the Eades, I found and read a lot about the Paleo Diet and incorporated some of their tenets into my nutrition plan. All of this I have blogged about before, so let's move on to Step 2.

Step 2 is to "replace stomach acid, enzymes and nutrients that aid digestion and are necessary for health." This was the stumbling block for me because, as I related in my previous post, I was afraid to try the HCl with Pepsin. Once I did, I had immediate and complete relief of my symptoms of cramping, heart-pounding, and palpitations after a meal. I have also been taking enzymes towards the end of a meal and they seem to help stop the bloating and gas.

So that leaves Step 3, "restore beneficial bacteria and a healthy mucosal lining in the gut." And here again I have had problems. Even though one enlightened doctor I saw recently told me that you can't overdo the probiotics (he was talking in relation to re-populating the gut with good bacteria after taking a round of antibiotics), I have found that I need to be careful. Sometimes when I have used probiotics, my symptoms would get worse and I couldn't tell if it was the probiotic that was causing the trouble or not.

Most everyone, when you say probiotics, thinks yogurt. And yogurt, especially a good Greek-style yogurt or one that is made from raw milk (and of course, we're talking about plain, unflavored yogurt) or better yet one you make yourself and let sit for 24 hours, is an excellent source of lactobacilli. But as I recently discovered, those bacteria live in the small intestines and they do nothing to promote the growth of friendly bacteria in the colon. Other suggestions include fermented foods such as pickles, sauerkraut, kombucha, kefir, even aged cheeses, as well as probiotics in pill form.

Dr. Art Ayres on his blog, Cooling Inflammation, has a wealth of material on the subject of gut flora with some rather enterprising ideas on how to establish friendy bacteria (fecal transplants?) Every time I go to his site, one thing leads to another and I end up spending hours reading his posts and especially the comments. (I'm having trouble getting this post written because I keep getting side-tracked!) His anti-inflammatory diet is low-carb and he includes other things that can reduce inflammation (which he thinks is the basic cause of many diseases) like exercise (cardiovascular and muscle building), dental hygiene, and vagal nerve stimulation (more on this below). In a post on Constipation, Gut Flora and Health, actually down in the comments, he gives this recipe for restoring gut flora:

So, assuming that you have corrected any vit.D deficiency (check serum levels before and after supplements) start with probiotics (you can probably also tolerate live yogurt with full fat), lactulose, pectin (apples, tomatoes, etc.), inulin (leeks, etc.). I would stick to a high fat/low carb diet. That means no vegetable oil (only olive oil, butter, coconut oil), most of your calories from saturated fat in meat/dairy/fish/eggs, and lots of diverse leafy vegetables. Veggies fresh from the garden or farmers market are preferred, because then you won't over wash or cook them to remove too many of the bacteria that you need to reconstitute your gut flora.

You are going to have to be patient with your gut, because you need to accumulate more than a hundred different species of bacteria to have a healthy gut flora that can digest all of the vegetable polysaccharides in a healthy diet.

You probably couldn't tolerate dairy previously, because you eliminated the bacteria that can metabolize lactose. Get used to live yogurt first and then slowly add more milk to increase your gut flora's ability to digest lactose. It takes about two weeks.

I found the reference to pectin and inulin interesting. Those are considered pre-biotics. Dr. Ayres has this to say about inulin:

I neglected to discuss inulin, which is a fructan. Normally, I would resist eating fructose-containing carbs, because fructose is a metabolic problem. Also, sucrose can be used by bacteria as an activated intermediate in the production of fructan polysaccharides for biofilms, e.g. dental plaque.

Inulin is a different category, because it is not hydrolyzed by human enzymes and thus moves on to the lower GI tract, where it is food for gut flora. It would seem that inulin would be a nice accompaniment to pectin for increasing gut flora in the case of constipation. One would expect some traditional remedies and perhaps meal combinations to include, for example leeks and apples.

Again this information is buried in the comments. It would seem that Dr. Ayres has so much information to share, that it just overflows everywhere. So while most probiotics help to populate the small intestine, pectin and inulin are ways to feed the good bacteria in the colon. My friend Yvetta recommended that I eat half an apple every night before going to bed to keep my gut happy. Another quote from Dr. Ayers comments:

Note that most probiotics are only useful in providing a limited number of bacteria that usually grow at the end of the small intestine. Inulin, pectin and lactulose are more effective in promoting the other hundred species that are anaerobes. Most of those will have to be recruited from other environmental sources.

And also:

Just one note. The fermented foods focus just on bacteria that may act as probiotics for the upper part of the digestive tract. That is less than 10% of the gut flora.

To feed the rest of the gut flora that also influence the immune system (even though that resides in lining of the small intestines) apparently other plant polysaccharides are needed. This is another good reason to feed a variety of veggies.

This may be one instance where it is not good to be too low-carb.

In another comments section accompanying his post on how to cure inflammatory diseases, Dr. Ayers talks about (of all things) oil pulling! This is with respect to that vagus nerve stimulation he recommends as part of an anti-inflammatory lifestyle. His post on how the vagus nerve is involved in inflammation and controls gut inflammation has links to other vagus nerve stimulating exercises that I will give here and here. Now both of these maneuvers are pure Buteyko! (See my previous posts here and here.)

See what I mean? One thing just leads to another. Dr. Ayres is a research biologist. He got his PhD in Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology at the U. Colo. Boulder. I really think that the answer to our most vexing nutritional questions will come from microbiology. Humans are too complex and the variables way too many for studies to show positive proof that any one food or one macronutrient will do this or that. So I like to rely on evidence like the Eades have collected, a certain diet with real people that shows positive results, and what the microbiologists are discovering, what is happening on the level of our cells.

More on GERD

2010-07-03T09:34:00.000-07:00

Since I posted on GERD several times, it behooves me to inform you about a wonderful series of blog postings that I discovered recently on the subject of acid reflux and GERD that have some very interesting new insights and helpful, step-by-step solutions to the problem. The name of the blog is The Healthy Skeptic and it is written by Chris Kresser. Chris is not a medical doctor but has studied Chinese medicine and acupuncture, and is currently studying to pass the California licensing exams. Because of his own health problems he has done a lot of research and writes in a clear way to explain what he has found. He recommends all the things that I have been recommending with regards to diet (low-carb) and digestive health. The series on GERD begins here. There are six main entries and two supplemental. The comments are very helpful, too.

Even though I had read all the books and blogs, I was still having stomach problems in May. It was Kresser's posts that got me to finally try the one thing I had been afraid to try, HCl Betaine with Pepsin. It worked like a charm and is still working. Jonathan Wright in his book, Why Stomach Acid is Good For You, stated that the majority of people with GERD have low stomach acid, not too much stomach acid. Without enough acid in the stomach, the lower esophageal sphincter muscle (LES) doesn't stay shut like it should. Taking HCl with meals solves this problem and also helps you to digest the food you are eating. It makes things work like they should. What I discovered in reading Kresser is that it may not be true that as we age we naturally produce less acid. He suggests that it is an overgrowth of the H. pylori bacteria that causes the acid to be reduced. That is how H. pylori can survive in our stomachs, by stopping the production of acid that would kill it and other bacteria.

The role of H. pylori in GERD

I believe that H. pylori infection plays a significant role in the pathogenesis of GERD and other digestive disorders.

H. pylori is the most common chronic bacterial pathogen in humans. Statistics indicate that more than 50% of the world population is infected. Infection rates increase with age. In general, the prevalence of infection raises 1% with every year of life. So we can expect that approximately 80% of 80 year-olds are infected with H. pylori.

Second, we know that H. pylori suppresses stomach acid secretion. In fact, this is how it survives in the hostile acidic environment of the stomach, which would ordinarily kill all bacteria. Treating an asymptomatic H. pylori infection with antibiotics increases stomach acidity and eradicating H. pylori with antibiotics improves nearly all patients suffering from hypochlorhydria.

Although it is commonly assumed that stomach acid production declines with age, recent studies suggest that the secretion of stomach acid doesn’t decrease with age and that the trend is actually to increase, especially in men.

However, this tendency for acid secretion to increase with age is completely nullified by the corresponding increase in H. pylori infection. Since the incidence of H. pylori infection increases with age, it follows that hypochlorhydria also increases with age.

The reason I had been afraid to try supplementing with HCl is because if you have an ulcer, the added acid can make it worse. Also, the few times I had tried it in the past, I had had worse reflux. What I discovered was that I was taking it the wrong way. Kresser suggests taking it at the start of a meal not at the end as it says on the bottle. He also suggests gradually increasing the dosage until you feel a slight burning sensation, and then backing off one pill. That is your dosage. I am up to four pills per meal (1200mg) and still have not reached that limit.

I am finding that I have no more cramps, no more heart-pounding after meals, less congestion, and I even sleep better because a sour stomach is not waking me up. And I feel like I am getting the full nutritional benefits of all the healthy foods I am eating. The third step in alleviating GERD (the first being to reduce the factors that cause bacterial overgrowth and the second being the replacement of aids to digestion) is to replace the bad bacteria in your gut with the good guys. That has been the focus of my health concerns recently and will be the subject of my next post.

More Fun With Macro

2010-05-14T08:29:00.000-07:00

Indian Paintbrush, Castilleja affinis

Bush Sunflower, Encelia californica

Catalina Mariposa Lily, Calochortus catalinae

Purple Sage, Salvia leucophylla

Caterpillar Phacelia, Phacelia cicutaria var. hispida

On Monday, I went hiking at Forrestal Nature Preserve again especially so I could play with my new macro lens. I was surprised to find the preserve even more beautiful than the last time I was there. The sun was shining brightly and it was pleasantly cool. The flowers were even more profuse if that is possible.

By accident, I hiked in my new Vibram Five Fingers. I usually just wear these around the house but I forgot to put my regular hiking shoes in the car when I headed out. I didn't want to take the time to go back and so I thought I would give the VFFs a try. They are supposed to be OK for light hiking and running. It worked fine. They really do make you feel like you are walking barefoot. Going downhill was a bit precarious. I was afraid of slipping, but did fine. The advantage of these shoes is that you can use your toes for traction. The trail up Fossil Hill was hard, though. Too many little sharp rocks. The VFFs got all dusty and dirty, naturally, but you can just throw them in the washer and let them air dry which they did quickly. Now they are good as new!

A New Canyon to Explore

2010-05-13T12:51:00.000-07:00

On Mothers' Day I got a chance to hike in a new canyon in the city of Anaheim called Deer Canyon Park Preserve. It is a 103 acre park set aside for preserving the native plants and wildlife right in the middle of housing development. If you didn't know it was there, you would never find it. I was lucky to have a very reliable guide to show me how to get into it, but I am not sure I will be able to find it again by myself. Suffice it to say it is off the beaten path. Which is good, because that makes it quiet and free of litter and dumping, and best of all, it has been left to grow wild, so the plants are truly what you would find in a canyon of Southern California. It hasn't had to be "restored."

The main path which we took up the canyon is actually an old paved road left over from the rancho days so the hiking was easy. I didn't have my macro lens with me and we didn't have much time, but I was able to snap a few photos as we walked along. Several plants that we thought weren't native turned out to be native and were new to me. I'll give you a sampling here.

The top photo is of a Chaparral Bush Mallow, Malacothamnus fasciculatus. There were several of these bushes in the canyon and they were all blooming profusely.

This plant with the large gray-green leaves is Wild Gourd, Cucurbita foetidissima. Both the mallow and the gourd were plants we thought were introduced, so I only took a passing shot at them. Now I wish I had taken more time to photograph the leaves of the mallow and the flower of the gourd from different angles. The gourd also has the name "Stinky Gourd" because the whole plant has a fetid odor especially when bruised.

Here is a red Sticky Monkey Flower, Mimulus aurantiacus. I have seen the yellow or golden orange one several places, but I have only seen the red one once before and that was in a cultivated garden at La Purisma in Lompoc. It was nice to see several of these plants here.

There was a lot of the usual Arroyo Lupine up and down the canyon, but as we were leaving, my eye caught this one lone plant that was different. I still have not been able to pin down the identification. There is nothing that looks quite like it at CalFlora or in Michael Charters wonderful catalogue. I'll keep looking.

We found two snakes on our hike. Yes, this one is a rattler—a Southern Pacific to be precise. Below is a close-up of his "rattle." I was told that as long as he wasn't coiled up, it was safe to carefully approach him for a photo. I nearly stepped on a rattler once when we were out in the desert. (I really need to look down at the path more often.) It was all coiled up, too, but sleeping in the tracks made by an off-road vehicle in the sand. My husband yelled at me just in time to prevent disaster.

A New Perspective

2010-05-04T11:04:00.001-07:00

My new lens, Canon's EF-S 60mm Macro. It's great! This last picture is of Lupinus longifolius and was taken on our monthly Canyon Walk last Saturday. It wasn't until I looked at the photo on my computer that I noticed the aphids on it—and the fact that they are blue to match the flowers!

More Wildflowers

2010-04-26T08:37:00.000-07:00

I thought I'd put up a few of the other photos of interesting native plants that I have taken on my recent hikes. So many things are in bloom right now that I easily take 100 photos on each hike. The first four were taken on Palos Verdes, either along Burma Rd. in the PV Nature Preserve, or at Forrestal Preserve, both of which are in the Portuguese Bend area. The next three were taken at Oak Canyon in Anaheim.

The top photo is of Narrowleaf Bedstraw, Galium angustifolium. If I had a true macro lens, I might have been able to get a shot like this. Happily, I have one on order which means that when I get it, I will be going out to take 100 more photos! (At least!)

This unusual plant is called Rattlepod or Santa Barbara Milvetch, Astragalus trichopodus var. lonchus. It grows mostly along the coast of Southern California. It also has the name Locoweed because animals exhibit bizarre behavior after eating the leaves. The seeds in the pod (one of which is in the photo) rattle around, hence its other name. But the most interesting thing about this plant is that it is one of the favorites of the Palos Verdes Blue Butterfly. The larvae like to eat the seeds inside the pods.

Adding to my collection of phacelias is this Sticky Phacelia, Phacelia viscida, which apparently comes in several different colors. It also grows mostly along the Southern California coast. The yellow flowers in front in the photo are not phacelias. That's Yellow Sweetclover and is not a native and it is very invasive. The yellow flowers in the back are Black Mustard, also not native and very invasive.

I have posted photos of Blue Dicks, Dichelostemma capitatum, before, but I keep trying for the perfect shot of this plant. Usually you just see the flower sticking up through some other plant. There's really not much to the rest of the plant anyway, but in this photo you can see the whole thing. It is also called Wild Hyacinth and comes in white as well as various shades of blue to purple.

This may look like another photo of the bedstraw at the top, but this plant is much larger growing to almost tree-size. It is called Chamise, Adenostoma fasciculatum. Another name for this plant is Greasewood as the plant is very flammable as though it did contain grease. There are several plants in the southwest that are called greasewood for the same reason. Chamiso comes from the Portuguese word chama meaning "a flame." The fasciculatum part of its latin name comes from the fact that the leaves are very needle-like. This is the first of the photos that I took in Oak Canyon.

Another Oak Canyon plant is this Silver Puff, Microseris lindleyi. It can be found all over California and other parts of the West. The buds will open to a yellow flower followed by these silvery seed heads. A very striking plant.

I found this plant along the road leading to the Oak Canyon Nature Center. It took me awhile to figure out what it was. I went back a week later to take more photos, but the plant was gone! A victim of the weed-whackers. Finally, I found it was Snakeroot or Purple Sanicle, Sanicula bipinnatifida. I hope to see another one somewhere someday.

And last but not least, this bit of the fauna of Palos Verdes. I nearly stepped on him! He sat there and let me take several photos before straightening himself out and swiftly slithering into the bushes.

Spring Wildflowers

2010-04-21T16:44:00.000-07:00

I've been on a hiking binge. I started last Friday hiking Oak Canyon with my grandson, then spent the next four days hiking around Palos Verdes in search of wildflowers. I found lots and also found some new places to explore.

Two of those new places are the Portuguese Bend Reserve and Forrestal Reserve, both part of what is now called the Palos Verdes Nature Preserve. Abalone Cove and Lunada Canyon are also part of this preserve.

As with Carbon Canyon which I blogged about a year ago, there was a fire in the Portuguese Bend Reserve last August. The same effect can be seen here that was seen in Carbon Canyon. The hillsides are covered with Black Mustard or Brassica nigre (all those yellow flowers) making a stark contrast with the blackened trees. It was very beautiful on Sunday as I hiked down what is called Burma Rd. which is actually the extension of Crenshaw Blvd.

One plant that was in abundance was this phacelia which we have determined after much study is a Branching Phacelia or Phacelia ramosissima. However, it is not the variety that I have seen in Oak Canyon (var. ramosissima) and I would love to know what it is. And the hillsides were covered with it!

Another plant that is doing very well after the fire is a rare and endangered species of Mariposa Lily, the Catalina Mariposa Lily or Calochortus catalinae. My friend Yvetta told me there were some lilies growing along Burma Rd. but when I hiked down the road on Sunday, I didn't see them. Then she told me that they were in some of my photos only far away on the opposite hillside in the burn area. Perhaps you can see one cloud of white flowers in the blackened area on the far slope in the photo below. So I made a second trip to this reserve with my big telephoto lens. But even though that produced photos that could enable a person to identify the blooms as lilies, I wasn't satisfied. I wanted to get up close and take photos right down the throat of the blooms.

Fortunately, at Forrestal Reserve there are blooms that you can get up close to. By luck I stumbled on about a hundred flowers at the top of what is called Fossil Hill. This was on my fifth day of hiking around. I was able to take about a hundred photos before it started to rain.

Well worth the effort, I think. I also found these striking Indian Paintbrush plants (Castilleja affinis).

Hiking canyons means going downhill a lot and then unfortunately you have to climb back uphill. So now my feet and my shins are sore but I am one happy camper.

"Return" of Good Health

2010-04-20T07:31:00.001-07:00

I was bamboozled! Tricked! Hoodwinked! Deceived! Coerced into taking drugs I didn't want to take and into having procedures I didn't want to have. Not to mention the emotional strain I was put under and the financial losses I incurred. It has happened before. How did I let it happen again?

I have been dealing with "pneumonia" all winter. I was first diagnosed with "walking pneumonia" last December after going to see my doctor for a routine check-up. (All I wanted was to have my vitamin D levels checked and in California you need a doctor's order to do that.) The doctor "heard something she didn't like" in my lungs and sent me off for a chest X-ray. I admit I had a little cough in November which I assumed was my asthma acting up. Then in between the office visit and the X-ray, I went on my vacation to Morro Bay and hiked every day! The cough went away (which is what you would expect if you know your Buteyko). But the X-ray showed an "infiltrate" in the lingular region (left side) and between the radiologist and my doctor's physician's assistant (my doctor was on vacation herself by then), it was decided that I had the walking pneumonia. I was put on a round of antibiotics.

I promptly caught a cold because the antibiotic allowed a virus to take hold. I rarely get colds. When my doctor checked me again, my lungs were clear but a follow-up X-ray showed no change. A CT scan was suggested. I objected. To coerce me into having the CT scan she started talking about "tumors" and how it's best to catch lung cancer in its early stages. Never mind that the infiltrate was on the left and what she heard that she didn't like was on the right. When I asked what the symptoms of cancer would be, she said recurring pneumonias. She is an internist, but pulmonary is her specialty. I figured she knew what she was talking about and eventually, I agreed to the CT scan.

The CT scan showed that my lungs were full of junk (that's my word not the doctor's). There were these little 2mm, 3mm, 8mm "nodules" all over the place, there was a patch of partial atelectasis (where the avioli partially collapse) and other things. The nodules were too small to be cancer, I was told, but they needed to be watched to make sure they didn't grow. No mass, no tumor. My doctor asked about a stuffy nose—no—post-nasal drip—no—lots of throat clearing—no—out of breath?—no again. I didn't dare tell her about oil pulling which I am sure she would not have given any credit for keeping my nose clear. I did try to tell her about Buteyko and when I said he recommended shallow breathing—wrong word—she promptly opened her mouth and took several quick breaths. Like that? No.

I tried not to let my fears get out of control, but that is what they did. After that, every time I went to see my doctor, my asthma would act up. I would wheeze, clear my throat a lot, cough, and generally fill up with phlegm. My blood pressure and pulse would go up as well. I just couldn't seem to calm myself down. I was prescribed an inhaler (I haven't used an inhaler in five years). I tried to explain that I really felt fine and didn't have any trouble at home, only when I came in to the doctor's office. I was told the inhaler would help with the "tightness" in my chest which I didn't feel.

Then at the end of February, I caught another cold. And it was a doozy. Worst cold I have had in years. I thought I was doing a good job of keeping it out of my chest and after two weeks felt I was recovering. That was when I started going on daily two-mile walks to bring up my CP. But another doctor's appointment came along and I literally filled up with mucous as I sat waiting in the examining room. I argued with my doctor over medication. She wanted me to start an antibiotic again. Because of our disagreement, she did also suggest I might be more comfortable with a more holistic doctor. I was thinking the same thing myself, but didn't know where to begin to look for one. I am all for science-based medicine. What I am against is drug-based medicine, or invasive-procedure-based medicine. I am against treating the symptoms and not even looking for a cause.

When I went home I had too much time to think about things. This time, the congestion did not go away as it usually did and then the pain in my chest returned. The pain in my chest has been diagnosed as a muscle pull, pleurisy, or GERD depending on which doctor I asked about it. I have had it before, same spot, when I was treated for GERD. It went away eventually, but took a long time. It was a Friday and my doctor is not in her office on Fridays. Her nurse practitioner suggested I go to an urgent care center which is what I did. The freshly-minted young doctor at the urgent care center put me on another antibiotic since that is what I said my own doctor wanted to do. No X-ray, no blood test to see if I had a raised white blood cell count.

By Sunday morning I was absolutely miserable! But it wasn't my breathing that I was having trouble with, it was my stomach. I also had a very bad case of oral thrush. When I called the urgent care doctor, I was told that this was a side effect of the antibiotic and that if I couldn't tolerate it, they would have to put me in the hospital where I could get the antibiotic by IV. That shut me up. He suggested taking an antihistamine for the stomach problem. I asked my own doctor on Monday morning at what point should I get myself to a hospital and she said, when you can't breathe. I could breathe just fine, it was my stomach that was killing me. Fortunately, I only had to take that antiobiotic for 5 days.

Back to my own doctor on the following Wednesday who prescribed four medications, a different antibiotic, prednisone, a pill for the stomach yeast infection, and lozenges for the oral thrush. I had to make up a chart to know when to take each of these meds. The antibiotic made me spacey and the prednisone made me hyper. I was on the antibiotic for 10 more days and my doctor wanted to extend it even further (5 days extra), but because of a mix-up with her office staff, my pharmacy didn't get the new prescription until after I had already stopped the original dose. I never took the extra dose.

Coming off the prednisone was not easy. I tapered it down as I was told, but my first full day off of it, I crashed. No energy and huge stomach problems, but my lungs were fine. I tried all my own home remedies for the stomach upset: taking probiotics (see Dr. Ayers blog about antibiotics and gut flora), DGL, enzyme tablets with meals, drinking ginger tea, sipping lots of water with sweet lime squeezed in it, and avoiding sugar. All of these helped to some extent, but I would have a few good days and then several bad days and it didn't seem to follow any pattern.

At the next office visit, I tried to ward off the usual reactions by taking a couple of puffs of the "rescue" inhaler an hour before. Didn't help. If anything, it made things worse. Now I was told that if I didn't get things under control, I'd have to go back on the antibiotic. I was prescribed two new meds. I begged her not to give me anything with a steroid in it because I still thought the stomach problem was a candida infection (lots of doctors don't recognize too much yeast in the gut as a problem and candida loves steroids). She gave me a pill for hay fever and allergy symptoms (neither of which I have) and a new inhaler that is usually prescribed for people with COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease). She thought she should warn me that the first medication has been known to cause depression. The second medication causes glaucoma, and both cause stomach upset. Great. But she also recommended a pulmonologist for me to see for a second opinion.

When my stomach still didn't settle down, I started taking these meds because when my stomach was upset I would get congested. I found that at those times I had reverted to chest breathing. Then I called my gastroenterologist for help. He put me on "industrial strength" Zantac. For two whole days, I felt great. Then all the stomach problems started to return.

That brings us to last week when I felt so bad that I had my neighbor drive me to the ER where I spent a grueling day waiting for over 6 hours to be seen by a doctor (my doctor was not in her office even though this was Tuesday and I couldn't get an earlier appointment with the new pulmonologist). I was mostly feeling miserable with my stomach problems but I was afraid that the pneumonia was coming back and if they put me on antibiotics again, my stomach couldn't tolerate it. They took another chest X-ray and said there was no pneumonia and the doctor in the ER came to the conclusion that I had really bad GERD. GERD I was told can cause congestion.

On Wednesday, I saw my gastroenterologist. He thought I had some kind of a viral enteritis. I told him that I would have one or two good days followed by three bad days and he said that's the way it goes. He didn't see any need for more scoping and tried to cheer me up by telling me my lungs were clear and that the blood work done in the ER showed there was no infection.

Then on Thursday I finally got to see the new pulmonologist. As I sat in his examining room, I thought about the fact that he was recommended by my doctor. I noticed that the walls were adorned with all the usual posters from pharmaceutical companies extolling the merits of all those wonderful inhalers. I expected him to tell me more of the same but instead he waltzed in and he tells me my lungs are fine! (A 9.5 out of 10, he said.) He showed me the CT scan on his computer and told me that the "nodules" that the radiologist found all throughout my lungs are nothing more than my own blood vessels seen end-on!!!! I was incredulous!! The atelectasis was gone. The "infiltrate" was "nothing." He said the only thing worth worrying about is a very small area of the right lung that he wants to check in 4-6 months or even a year. He then told me to stay away from doctors.

I have stopped all meds and am going to be looking for a new primary care physician. And I am making a rapid (miraculous even) recovery from the GERD. By the way, the radiologist had the nerve to charge my insurance $2300 for the analysis of my CT scan. The pulmonologist said that's what's wrong with American medicine. So I have my health back, and my life! My brother (the family skeptic) said I should have gotten a second or even third opinion much sooner. It's questionable now whether or not I ever had pneumonia. I never had a fever and all the stomach problems were due to the meds and a lot of worry.

Kurt Harris, one of the doctor/bloggers, on his blog PaNu made a comment that: "The biggest myth in all of medicine is that doing something is always better than doing nothing, with the corollary that there is always some marginal non-negative benefit to every test and procedure. I believe this is profoundly mistaken. The average medical service diagnostic or therapeutic, may actually not only not have a positive net benefit, but may have a net negative one." He calls a lot of testing (such as for lipid profiles, for example) "just fuel for neurosis." Amen.

So now you understand the hiking binge. I have not really been able to assimilate all of this yet. When I have a problem and don't know what to do, I go for a walk (or I write about it). In a way I have had a journey and come back. I have found a new sense of myself and it has prompted me to make a few decisions about my future. I have found that I have wonderful friends and neighbors willing to help me out when I need it. I'd like to say that next time I will trust my own instincts more, but it would seem that the tremendous influence a person in authority can have over me might override that. I hope not.

Houdini is Released

2010-03-27T11:08:00.000-07:00

There have been at least two releases of the Palos Verdes Blue Butterfly this month. On March 6, the butterfly returned to Friendship Park in San Pedro. It was last seen at the park in 1981 and this is the first time there has been a release there. On March 18, there was a release at the Linden H. Chandler Preserve on Palos Verdes which is described in the video above. Once again, the releases were overseen by Jana Johnson and her students from Moorpark College where a captive breeding program has been going on for ten years.

Apparently at the Chandler site, there was one male butterfly whose antics earned him the name, Houdini. According to one observer:

One particular butterfly charmed all. After eclosing at Moorpark, he tried real hard to escape and successfully got out of the first level cage. The staff decided to reward his escape efforts by giving him a name, Houdini, and sending him out for release. Houdini was very active in his plastic cup, but once released all he did was sit on an Encelia flower. But that was OK, because we all got great photos of him. Check out the image of Houdini that I took with my cell phone! --Ann Dalkey

It is hoped that the released butterflies, who will only live 10 days, will mate and lay lots of eggs. The hatched eggs will go through the caterpillar and pupal stages, but the adult butterflies won't be seen until next year, possibly in late February of 2011.

Addendum

Ann Dalkey sent me the following information on the history of the Butterfly Project and gives credit to all the agencies involved.

The Palos Verdes blue butterfly (PVPB) was thought to be extinct until it was discovered in 1994 at the Defense Fuel Supply Point (DFSP), a US military base located in San Pedro. Since that discovery, the wild population has been surveyed yearly and has ranged from 30 to 282 individuals, averaging about 200 during the past 6 years. This is too small of a population to survive on its own, so a consortium of organizations has since worked hard to increase the number of the butterflies. The US military has provide space for raising the host plants (rattle pod and deerweed), culturing the butterfly, and conserving habitat on the base. The Palos Verdes Peninsula Land Conservancy (PVPLC) runs the native plant nursery and maintains and expands PVB habitat. The Urban Wildlands is responsible for the surveying of the wild population and culturing of the captive population, known as the Butterfly Project. Two captive populations exist, one at the military base and the second, established in 2007, at Moorpark College. Under the leadership of Jana Johnson, the captive population has increased significantly, enabling the team to release captive individuals into the wild. The first such release occurred in 2008 at the Defense Fuel Supply Point. Then additional releases at the DFSP and the Linden H. Chandler Preserve took place in 2009. This year, 2010, releases have been conducted at a new place, Friendship Park, and also the Chandler Preserve. PVPLC is working hard to provide additional butterfly habitat throughout the preserves on the PV Peninsula. And, with Jana’s wonderful Butterfly Project, we look forward to seeing more of these cute butterflies throughout the Peninsula.

More on Gokhale

2010-03-24T10:15:00.000-07:00

I have received Esther Gokhale's book (8 Steps to a Pain-free Back) and am slowly working my way through it. It's a wonderful book, full of great photos and has much more detail on how to achieve good posture than her website does. Interestingly, I had been coming around to her way of thinking on my own, but her instructions have helped tremendously to make the concepts work.

But trying to turn printed words, even with lots of photos, into three-dimensional movement is difficult. So here is a YouTube video of Esther talking to Google employees and demonstrating some of the key ideas of her method.

And the book is not just for people who are currently suffering from back pain. It's for anyone who wants to optimize their health because how we stand and sit and walk affects our breathing and the workings of all our internal organs. Using Esther's method, you will find you have better circulation (no more early morning leg cramps for me), more energy, and even more confidence. It just makes you look good.

Earth Hour 2010

2010-03-24T10:00:00.000-07:00

Another Earth Hour is coming this weekend. That's when people around the world will turn off their lights for just one hour to call for action on global warming. The program has been sponsored for several years now by the World Wildlife Fund. The date for this year's event is March 27 and the time is 8:30 pm local time. So wherever you are , turn off the lights on Saturday night!

Of course, for me the event has double significance. As an amateur astronomer, I am all for turning off the city lights that make it impossible to see the stars in all their glory. In my own area, things have gotten worse over the years as Los Angeles has expanded the port facilities. As it is, I can no longer see Sagittarius in the summer but when I can no longer see Orion in the winter, I will cry. If you want to leave your lights off for more than an hour, that's fine with me.

So here again is the date and time:

MARCH 27, 8:30 pm local time

TURN OFF YOUR LIGHTS!

Standing Tall

2010-03-14T09:06:00.000-07:00

Baby M. has just started pulling herself up into a standing position. And look how beautifully she does it! Her legs and feet are facing straight forward squarely from her hips; her feet have a natural kidney shape to them; her hips are relaxed with a slight forward tilt. She pulls her back up straight and her head is tilted at just the right angle to stretch out her neck. She easily turns her head to look at me with her eyes perpendicular to the plane of her head.

We all once knew how to stand like that but too much slouching over a book or keyboard (or knitting), or slouching in a chair has many of us tucking our hips under and pushing them forward which puts an excessive S-curve into the back. For me, the hip tucking began with ballet classes. This can also cause us to jut the head forward and then back to level the head which puts an excessive curve in the neck. All of this affects our breathing and circulation to all parts of the body, not to mention giving so many people back pain. Most car seats, plane seats, and easy chairs and sofas reinforce this slouching. And we all spend way too much time sitting!

I was alerted to a new (new to me) method of standing, sitting, lying down, and moving by a post in Mark's Daily Apple, here and here. The idea is that along with a lot of other things paleo, we should also be standing and moving like our ancestors did with more of a J-shape to our spine achieved by an antenverted, relaxed pelvis and a back that stretches up and stands tall. The woman who developed this method is Esther Gokhale. To cure her own back pain, she travelled the world observing native peoples in Africa, India, and Brazil where back pain is virtually unknown in spite of a lot of manual labor. Check out all the wonderful photos on her website and especially in her book, 8-Steps to a Pain-Free Back (take a Look Inside), which I have just ordered from Amazon. Who hasn't admired the posture of those African women who balance huge loads on the tops of their heads?

For me, the benefits of easier diaphragmatic breathing when standing this way ties in beautifully with my study of Buteyko Breathing (1, 2, 3, 4). When I pull my torso up from relaxed hips, I can breathe much more freely and I feel the air is getting down to the bottom of my lungs. Gokhale's description of how we should breath does not quite match Buteyko, but I intend to discuss this with my Buteyko practitioner when I see her again. I'm sure the two can be meshed together and we still need to breathe less. But I really feel that Gokhale's approach is the way to go and I can't wait to get her book and give it a try.

Breath Holding

2010-03-07T10:32:00.000-08:00

"...Death consists of the passing out of the air. It is, therefore, necessary to restrain the breath". Hatha Yoga Pradipika, ancient Hatha Yoga manuscript. Artour Rakhimov

As I was stopped at a red light the other day, an older man came jogging across the street in the crosswalk right in front of me. It was a huge intersection with 8 lanes or more across in both directions. The man was running with his mouth open and what is worse, he was blowing out hard (as if his life depended on it) with each breath. He had a look of agony on his face and I was afraid he wouldn't make it to the curb. I don't know if the blowing-out part was an intentional technique that he was using, but I do know he was hyperventilating pretty badly. Each out breath lost more of his lung's supply of CO2. His muscles were working hard and making more CO2, but unless his resting CP was 20 to 30s, he wasn't making up the balance and he was doing more harm than good. I wanted to honk my horn at him and yell, "Stop! Don't do that!"

At the other extreme, here is a YouTube video of Natalia Molchanova, a champion free-diver, going for 131m in Japan—with a breath-hold of about 3.5 minutes! Watch how she prepares herself before the dive by first taking several very deep breaths, and then just before hitting the water, she blows out quickly and forcefully several times. (Do not try this at home! Even Molchanova wouldn't do this without a spotter in the water with her in case she loses consciousness.)

She is hyperventilating on purpose, tricking her breathing center into thinking there is no need to breathe. She doesn't want her diaphragm to spasm too soon. By holding her breath, CO2 levels will rise again. Free-divers hold their breath after an inhale and are very much aware of the fact that it is CO2 levels that initiates breathing. Also notice what she does at the end of the dive (at about 5:24). She comes up, takes a few breaths and smiles! No panting, no big huge breaths. Her chest barely moves.

She wears a weight around her neck to minimize the amount of movement she has to make so she doesn't have to work to stay under the water. Your muscles make CO2 when you use them and she doesn't want to raise her levels too soon. Free divers can stay under water for 5.5s (or even more probably, I am no expert on the sport) if they don't move. By the way, the divers call this apnea, which is the correct meaning of the word, but it's a far cry from the apnea that tries to kill you in the night.

When you hold after an inhale, you can hold your breath longer and the time is related to your lung capacity and training. Holding after the exhale, as we do in Buteyko, is a measure of your CO2 levels. You do not have to have Molchanova's genes, or chest capacity, in order to increase your CP. Divers also talk about the serenity of their sport and that also is a function of CO2 stores. CO2 is a relaxant of smooth muscles (such as the diaphragm). There is also something called the diving reflex, a holdover from our evolutionary past which can be activated just by holding your breath and putting your face into cold water, as when you splash cold water on your face to relax. (It's interesting to note that seals hold their breath after the exhale.)

One image Rakhimov suggests you use to relax the diaphragm when doing a CP is to feel like you are diving into water. Just for the beauty of it, here is another video of Mulchanova (and her son) diving through the arch at Blue Hole in the Red Sea.

Dim Those Lights

2010-03-06T09:56:00.000-08:00

For those of you who tend to spend late nights at the computer, here is a great free program called f.lux, that will change the lighting on your computer monitor to sync with daylight and nighttime. The idea is to turn off the blue light after sunset. Blue light especially messes with your circadian rhythm making it harder for you to fall asleep. Blue light during the day is good, blue light at night is not.

Thanks to Mark at Mark's Daily Apple for this tip and an interesting post on How Light Affects Your Sleep, something I have blogged about several times (here, here, and here).

But then most nights (the nights that I am not out playing the violin somewhere), I don't even turn the computer or the TV on anymore and I start my getting-to-bed-routine at 9:00 pm. It's impossible to get my bedroom totally dark, so I wear a sleep mask. And I do like waking up to the light. I just peek out from under the mask to gauge the time. No alarm clock.

ADDENDUM

Well I just uninstalled f.lux. While it worked great at reducing the glare, it was always running in the background and making the operating system (XP) work very hard. Maybe I had the settings wrong. And maybe I just have a sick computer. (We knew that.)

Breathing Less

2010-03-01T10:11:00.000-08:00

I just finished my first walk while breathing less. My Buteyko practitioner gave me the go-ahead to incorporate reduced breathing while exercising into my daily Buteyko routine. She did this because my CP is now up to 20s in the morning (your early morning CP is apt to be the lowest of the day) which means I am strong enough to exercise without having my symptoms return. To get your CP up from 20 to 30s, exercise is almost required.

But she still would like me to go slowly and I agree with her. All winter whenever I have tried to get back to my usual exercise routine, I have had a relapse or caught a cold, or something. And when my CP was low, I would easily get out of breath. It has been frustrating. But I am in no hurry to get to yogi-master status as long as I feel I am making progress. So today, after a 5-minute warm-up of just plain walking, I held my breath (after an exhale) for 3 seconds, then breathed normally for 4 or 5 breaths, and then repeated this process. I walked for 2 miles at a moderately brisk pace. I walked with a rhythm and somewhere in the middle of the walk, I felt warmth and could breath more easily. So I switched to a 4s hold. The first few breaths after a hold were bigger, and more rapid so I waited for things to calm down before doing the next hold which usually took 4 or 5 breaths. And my mouth was closed the whole time. The idea is to feel a gentle air hunger that is not stressful.

Up until now I have been doing Single Nostril Breathing while sitting comfortably in a chair, watching a DVD, listening to an audiobook, or reading. You simply block one nostril with your finger and breathe through the other. The very first time I tried it, I overdid it and my nose got sore! So I learned to switch nostrils after about 4 minutes and do the whole routine for no longer than 20 minutes. The goal is to practice reduced breathing for 90 minutes per day total. That is the minimum required in order to see results. You can do this one while driving, too.

The easiest routine I have done is to lay flat on my back, knees bent, and just concentrate on my breathing. Sound like meditation? That's what it is. The goal is to relax my muscles, especially the breathing muscles, so that the diaphragm can do its job. This is how I discovered that my diaphragm was in spasms, my breathing irregular and way too heavy for someone lying on their back. I put one hand on my chest (to make sure it didn't move) and one hand on my upper abdomen (to make sure it did). I soon found that neither was moving and my breath had become extremely light and slow. That's exactly what my practitioner wanted.

Why reduced breathing? Somehow I have gotten into the habit of breathing more than I need to. The breathing center in the brain is sensitive to the amount of CO2 both in our brain and in our blood and mine has gotten set at a lower amount than is normal. If I really breathe too heavily, I will start to wheeze because mucous is collecting in my lungs to stop me from losing more of the precious CO2. If I hold my breath, the level of CO2 rises. So what I am doing with my reduced breathing exercises is to try to reset the level of CO2 that my breathing center will accept as normal. I want it to be higher. So I have to coax it by breathing less for a substantial amount of time every day.

Things that cause over-breathing include stress (the number one problem for most of us), over-eating, talking too much (hey, it pays to be the quiet one), breathing through the mouth and chest breathing, heat, sleeping on the back, lack of exercise, and the mistaken belief that it is good to take big, deep breaths. Things that can reduce breathing include breathing through the nose, breathing from the diaphragm, eating less, keeping cool, dressing less, getting outdoors more, going barefoot (that fits in with being Paleo), and sleeping on the left side or tummy.

I'll keep you posted on my progress.

New Paleo Website

2010-03-01T09:23:00.001-08:00

The Paleo/Low-carb world is expanding rapidly and it is getting hard to keep up with all the new ideas and research findings being put out on the web. Fortunately, a new website, Paleo for Life, has started up that gathers together all the latest information on low-carb and paleo diets. It's a great one-stop place to find what the bloggers have posted recently, tons of links to research topics, as well as books, videos, and other links to help you get started if you are new to Paleo.

Paleo and low-carb have more in common than differences. Those difference center around how much carb to incorporate in your diet, dairy, and the amount of saturated fats you eat. The things they all agree on are:

...only eat foods that can be picked or hunted in nature, avoid foods that cannot be eaten raw, and prefer meat products from animals fed their natural food. In practice, this translates into the following:
Avoid sugar, high fructose corn syrup, and refined seed and vegetable oils as these are not available in nature, and only become available after heavy industrial processing.

Avoid grains (particularly wheat), legumes (particularly soy), and starchy tubers (such as potatoes) as these foods cannot be eaten raw.

Prefer grass-fed and grass-finished beef over grain-fed beef

Prefer pasture-raised poultry over conventionally raised poultry

Natural saturated fat is generally considered neutral but superior to refined vegetable oils.

I think we all agree that we are experimentalists, too. We are willing to try new things if there seems to be a logical or scientific basis, if it seems to be the more natural way for humans to live, and if there are no side effects. And a lot of us go beyond what we eat (or don't eat if you are into intermittent fasting, otherwise known as IF) to include things like exercise, getting plenty of sunshine (or supplementing with vitamin D), going barefoot as much as possible (see my next post), eschewing soap and shampoo, etc., in our Paleo lifestyle. It's only a matter of time before the rest of the world catches up with us.

How's Your CP?

2010-02-25T11:17:00.000-08:00

The control pause or CP is the cornerstone of the Buteyko breathing method. Buteyko determined that just by measuring your CP and pulse, you could tell the state of your health. He created a table of Health Zones based on his analysis of hundreds of people both sick (some severely so) and healthy. What the CP is measuring is the amount of CO2 in your lungs because it is this level that drives your need to breathe. The more CO2 you have, the longer your CP.

To perform a CP, you simply take a normal breath in, a normal breath out, close your mouth and pinch your nose. At the first sign of discomfort, maybe a twinge from your diaphragm or a swallowing motion telling you to breathe, you let go. If you have held your breath just the right length of time, you should be able to continue with normal breathing. If you gulp for air, or have several heavy breaths before being able to calm your breathing down again, you have held it too long. There should be no stress when doing this measurement.

If your CP is 40s or above, you are in excellent health! 40s is the norm recognized by doctors everywhere (12 breaths/minute, 41 mmHg CO2 in the aveoli, 70 beats/minute pulse and you have an automatic pause in your breathing which I will explain shortly). In the 20 to 30s range, where most modern people fall, you might not be taking any medications, but you probably do have problems with things like arthritis, IBD, pre-diabetes, and so on. In the 10 to 20s range, disease is present but stable. For asthma sufferers, that means that any trigger can set off an attack. You are most likely on medications for your symptoms. There is no automatic pause. As soon as you finish one breath, you start another. Finally, at 10s or below, you are seriously ill. You breathe 26 times/minute and your pulse may be above 90 beats/minute. Below 5s, you are terminally ill.

Now Buteyko was talking about your breathing when at rest, not when exercising or moving about. Normal breathing should be light, slow, and almost imperceptible. A normal breath has a relatively quick inhale, maybe 2s, a slower, relaxing exhale, maybe 3s, and is followed by an automatic pause before the next inhale begins. This is a sweet moment when the body is truly at rest and it should happen with every breath. But when we are sick, we sometimes force our exhale so as to be able to quickly take in a new breath. There is no pause and our breathing is tense and heavy. We become chest breathers. This is hyperventilation. But paradoxically, the faster you breathe, the less oxygen gets into your cells and organs. If you are sitting or laying down, you should not be breathing 26 breaths/minute! Your heart should not be beating at 90 beats/minute.

Don't feel too bad if your CP is low. Mine dropped to 15s this winter when I was battling pneumonia and colds at the same time. The good news is you can bring it up to healthier levels and it was Buteyko's work that showed that just by doing this, you could improve your health. And by Buteyko's norms, you could bring your CP as high as 60s and even enter a state of super-health (like the yogi masters) with a CP up to 2 minutes or more.

What are the things that can increase your CP? Exercise, for one. In fact, exercise alone is all you need according to Buteyko. Our ancestors got more exercise than we do, and they naturally had lower breathing rates as this table shows. But if you are seriously ill, or even not so seriously ill, exercising may cause problems. One needs to be cautious so as not to make a condition worse. That's where various breathing techniques come into play. If you don't exercise, then you do need to practice reduced breathing. Other things you can do are to sleep on the left side (or tummy), keep your bedroom cool at night, (your breathing gets heavier when you are too warm), and eat less. (Many Buteyko practitioners recommend vegetarian food choices, but Buteyko himself was a meat eater. I am certainly not giving up my low-carb life-style!) And of course, always breathe through the nose.

In the next post, I'll share with you some of the things I have been doing to reduce my breathing.

I have taken most of the information in this posting from Dr. Artour Rakhimov's website and books on the Buteyko Method. Rakhimov is a PhD doctor not a medical doctor, but he did study with Buteyko's widow and being Russian himself, is able to translate Buteyko's papers and other studies done by his students into English for us. He is also the only one who takes Buteyko beyond being a cure just for asthma and breathing related problems. Buteyko himself treated people with heart disease as well as asthma. But Rakhimov does go to the extremes of the method, becoming almost ascetic in his recommendations (sleeping on the floor, cold showers, etc.). I don't recommend his DIY contraption, but I do highly recommend exploring his site if you want to know all the finer details of Buteyko's amazing research findings.

Buteyko

2010-02-21T09:45:00.000-08:00

I have been spending my days recently re-learning to breathe. I thought I knew how, but apparently not. My recent bout of pneumonia compelled me to go back to my Buteyko breathing exercises to deal with the wheezing and cough that I had. My doctor was scaring me with words like tumor and tuberculosis, and was sending me off for X-rays and CT scans. (No tumor. No TB.) I had to take matters into my own hands.

I first heard about Buteyko five years ago when I just happened to be wandering the isles of my local Borders and a book jumped off the shelf and said, "Read me!" (Does that ever happen to you? It happens to me all the time.) The book was Breathing Free by Theresa Hale. The cover blurb promised that this "5-Day Program" would heal asthma, emphysema, bronchitis and other respiratory ailments. Quite a promise! I don't usually believe such wild assertions but I had bronchitis at the time, so I thought it was worth a read.

The method really interested me but I was on my own as far as trying it out. When I did some internet research I found that there one or two websites devoted to the method and virtually no practitioners in this country. Even books other than the Hale book were hard to come by. The method was accepted by the medical establishment in Russia and becoming accepted more and more in England, Australia, and New Zealand after several clinical trials proved that it works, but not here. Happily, when I searched the web for information in January, I found that times have changed and there are many sites and practitioners in the US now. There is even one in Pasadena, whom I promptly called to set up an appointment.

I found that I have become a chest breather and I think that one of the reasons is because I misinterpreted the directions in Hale's book to breathe shallowly. Other Buteyko books use the same word, but what they mean is taking small breaths not great big gulps or big breaths. What they don't mean is to breathe only moving the chest and not the diaphragm. Reduced breathing might be a better term. So I have been practicing erect posture and relaxing my tummy to allow my diaphragm to do its job and gently pull my lungs down with each inhale, and totally relax on each exhale. It's so subtle but the effects are enormous!

Meanwhile I discovered You-Tube. It's amazing what you can find there! And what I found were videos of Buteyko practitioners explaining the method and giving groups of people instructions on the exercises. There is even an interview with Buteyko himself (in Russian, but an English transcription is available). The explanatory videos you can find are by Brian Firth who has an amazing story to tell about his own asthma, Paul O'Connell who has a 17-part introductory seminar starting here, Patrick McKeown (love his Irish accent), and finally Artour Rakhimov. Rakhimov's book, which can be bought online, Normal Breathing: the key to vital health, is the most comprehensive and scientific of the books available in English. The best website for all things Buteyko, including lists of practitioners in many different countries, is here.

But Buteyko isn't only for asthma and other breathing related disorders. That's what so exciting about this idea. Since when we overbreathe we actually deprive our cells of oxygen instead of increasing the supply, our organs cannot function at their best. Our immune system gets overwhelmed and cannot make needed repairs. Our heart works harder, digestion goes slower, muscles get sore, cancers grow. We get panic attacks, hypertension, insomnia, depression, Alzheimer's, hormonal problems (think thyroid and pancreas), and others. Buteyko estimated that there are 150 to 200 health problems that are connected with abnormal breathing, the health problems that are fairly common for modern people. But the Buteyko method is important for everyone who is interested in optimum health.

Because of the subtlety of the method and the seriousness of the diseases it treats, every Buteyko website or author will tell you that you need to learn the technique from someone who is specially trained in it. I would agree with that. It's well worth it to seek out personal instruction and guidance.

The thought has occurred to me that not only should we be eating like our ancestors did, exercising like our ancestors did, and getting plenty of sunshine like our ancestors did, we should be breathing like our ancestors did. I'll talk more about the principles of the method and why I say we should breath like our ancestors in the next post. Oh yes, and I would say that the "5-Day" promise really means five sessions learning the principles and weeks of practice!

The Sun and Auroras

2010-02-20T09:25:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Dr. Eades and Twitter, I found out about a really neat iPhone app this morning. It's called 3D Sun and was written by an astrophysicist in collaboration with NASA scientists. It brings realtime satellite videos of the sun to your iPhone. Your phone will even notify you when a significant event is happening. If you don't have an iPhone, you can still see the same images on the web at the STEREO (Solar-Terrestrial Relations Observatory) website. (The sun looks green because the satellites are taking images in the extreme ultraviolet range.)

Watching the sun and perhaps catching a solar flare while it is happening would be exciting enough, but the app also offers links to other great stuff including images of the auroras as well as movies of previous flares. One fascinating movie shows a comet getting eaten up by the sun.

Apparently we are having some pretty spectacular auroras right now. The sun's activity, manifested in many ways including sunspots, is picking up again after being at its cyclical minimum. Auroras are caused by the geomagnetic storms that this solar activity originates in the atmosphere of our own Earth due to the solar wind. (You can see a movie of a comet's tail waving in the solar wind here.)

The northern (or southern) lights, as auroras are sometimes called, are caused by the excitation of electrons in the upper atmosphere. The colors come from the kind of atom or molecule that gets an electron or has an electron drop to a lower energy state. Oxygen atoms emit a green or brownish-red photon depending on the amount of energy absorbed. Nitrogen atoms emit a blue photon if they gain an electron and red if they are returning to the ground state after being in an excited state. The auroras form shapes because the electrons move along the magnetic field lines. (This is an extreme over-simplification.) When the disturbances are great, the lights can be seen as far south as the southern US and more temperate parts of Europe. For more information on auroras and how they are formed click here. For more on shapes, click here.

I have never seen the aurora. Someday I hope to. I think it would be well worth braving the freezing temps to view something as spectacular as this photo taken by Marketa Stanczykova in Iceland just a few days ago on February 16.

Reddish Birds

2010-02-10T09:52:00.000-08:00

This is the fellow that started it all. Because I wanted to get a good close-up photo of him, I bought a new big lens for my camera, which led to my buying a new camera, one worthy of such a magnificent lens, which led to my buying a new tripod, one strong enough to support such a big lens, which led to my spending a week in December in Morro Bay to get some use out of the new big lens and put it and me through their paces.

Last week before the rains started again, I went down to Bolsa Chica just to see what I could see. The light was not the greatest for photography, but the Reddish Egret did show up again and performed his magic dances for me. Another birder came by and said I needed a video camera to do him justice, but I liked the challenge of trying to capture the essence of his display motions with a still picture. Was I successful?

As I was shooting copious photos of the egret, another somewhat rare (for L.A.) bird appeared in the water behind me and I swiftly zoomed the camera and tripod around to capture this female Red-breasted Merganser.

The tripod was bought in three pieces from three different companies. The legs are carbon fiber for lightness, the head is a ball head which allows easy motion in any direction, and the pièce de resistance is a Wimberly head attached to the ball head which is perfect for big lenses and bird photography. I got the Sidekick model especially for its light weight. Altogether, the new tripod is slightly less heavy than my old one. But carrying the camera, the lens, and the tripod around is a challenge for me. That's why photographers love Bolsa Chica, you don't have to hike very far or climb up and down steep cliffs to get to the birds and when you do find them, you can get pretty close without disturbing them. As I was leaving at sunset, a man was just arriving with a larger lens than mine. He attached it with his camera to his tripod and slung the whole thing over his shoulder and off he went. Sigh... I need a Sherpa.

Green Season

2010-02-03T09:54:00.000-08:00

A friend of mine says that here in Southern California there are only two seasons, green and brown. If that's the case, then we are definitely entering our green season as evidenced by our latest Canyon Walk in Lunada Canyon. It has been several months since I was able to accompany the others on our monthly walk and I was delighted to find the canyon recovering so well from the goats, the blight, and the very dry fall. All we needed was a little rain.

The signs of early spring included the "pussies" coming out on the Arroyo Willows, Salix lasiolepis, that grow in the bottom of the upper canyon where it is wettest.

This is a California Sagebrush, Artemisia californica, that had been decimated by the goats. It's making a nice comeback although goats are not very neat pruners. This plant has the most wonderful smell. If you gently brush the leaves and then sniff your fingers, you'll be rewarded with a truly unique California frangrance.

Here is our brave little Bladderpod, Isomera arborea, plant. There are many Bladderpods in the canyon, but this is the one that was most devastated by the blight. To find it blooming so early in the year was a welcome surprise. The beetles seemed to be delighted as well.

I was also very excited to find the lupines coming back. There were several Arroyo Lupines, Lupinus succulentus, just getting started in the area that had been mowed, but my favorite is the Longleaf Bush Lupine, Lupinus longifolius, that is half buried in some sage plants. It had lots of new growth and several budd stalks coming up. You can see one of them on the right side of the photo.

I'm looking forward to the burst of blooms we will find on our next couple of walks.

After the Storm

2010-02-01T08:54:00.000-08:00

I paid another visit to Abalone Cove last week when we were having some nice late afternoon negative tides. What a change has taken place there since last October! I think they must have imported truck-loads of rocks to maintain the beach and protect the cliffs from further erosion. Either that or the storms we had washed away all the sand exposing the rocks. I know that Palos Verdes Dr. South had to be closed for awhile due to mudslides the week before when the rains were so heavy. Whatever the reason for the rocks, it made getting to the best of the tidepools more difficult even with a tide as low as -1.6. But the weather was gorgeous and the hills were green again. It was a beautiful day!

My prize for the day was my first nudibranch. I think it is a Monterey Dorid, Archidoris montereyensis. Nudibranches can be very colorful, iridescent even, which is actually a warning to other creatures that they are poisonous. They are carnivorous and sometimes feed on jellyfish and sea anemones retaining the "sting" of these animals which repels their predators. I wasn't sure what this was when I first saw it, but it moved when I nudged it gently. The left end is the head. It was all tucked up because it was out of water and trying to wedge itself into the crack in the rock where it was moist.

I found two Giant Keyhole Limpets, Megathura crenulata, very close to each other. One was mottled gray and the other was totally black. The soft body of this impressive animal envelopes the shell.

I realized that in my previous posts about tidepooling, I had never shown a picture of the Aggregating Anenome even though there are hundreds of them at every pool I have been to. They are easy to take for granted (and to step on if you are not careful!) Most of the time, I see them all closed up and covered with bits of rocks and shells to retain their moisture until the tide rolls in again. They like to clump together and can make interesting patterns on the rocks.

Although they live side by side, clonemates from different groups are enemies. Warrior anemones with knoblike swellings packed with large stinging cells border each group. If a warrior comes in contact with an enemy warrior, they exchange a barrage of poison darts, causing injury to both. The warriors withdraw, leaving behind a “demilitarized zone.”

Happily, the interesting and beautiful stepping-stone rock ledges were still there. I have taken many pictures of these rocks in different lighting and still find them fascinating.

Fanfare Fountain

2010-01-10T16:46:00.000-08:00

My son and family were here for the weekend and last night we went down to the harbor for dinner. Afterwards we just happened to catch the fountain Fanfare at San Pedro Gateway finishing a display. We quickly parked the car and went over to see what was going on. We were in luck because the 7 pm shows were about to start with the fountain's water jets, which are choreographed to go with a variety of musical styles, dancing to a new song every 10 minutes.

My grandson had a great time "conducting" the music.

And to think that I almost didn't bring my camera with me! Seeing as how the fountain opened July 25, 2008, and this was the first I had heard of it, I think I need to get out more.

Amazing Monarchs

2010-01-01T19:40:00.000-08:00

My hairdresser is a great guy. He comes to all my concerts and critiques my hair but never the music. The music is always good, he says. He was the one who put the idea of going back to Morro Bay into my head. A few months ago he was planning a trip there as it is one place he has never been and as I talked about all the neat things to see and do, I got an urge to go back myself. But he was the one who told me about the Monarch Preserve at Pismo Beach.

There are resting places for over-wintering Monarch butterflies all along the coast of California. These Monarchs have migrated here from places west of the Rockies, while Monarchs from east of the Rockies overwinter in Mexico. (Here's a map for the fall migration and another for the spring.) They like to cluster in the tall trees particularly the eucalyptus even though that is not a native to California. They will cluster in pine and cypress trees as well. The Monarchs that overwinter live about 6 months, while later generations of the spring and summer will only last 2 to 6 weeks.

I checked out Monarch preserves on the web and found a few others that would be along my route and one right at Morro Bay in Morro Bay State Park. So my first stop heading north was at the Elwood Butterfly Grove just north of Santa Barbara. It turned out to be a lovely place for a short hike and lunch, but except for a few butterflies flitting about way up there, I didn't find any clusters. I later learned that there is one particular tree that they like at Elwood, and there was no sign pointing out which one it was, and no knowledgeable docent to help me find it. I don't think at that point that I knew what to look for anyway.

I tried again at Morro Bay State Park where I was told the butterflies like to cluster around campgrounds number 136 to 140. There is a lovely grove of eucalyptus and other tall trees at that end of the campground and I did finally find two small clusters of butterflies near the trash cans!

My last chance to find the type of clusters I had envisioned was to stop at Pismo Beach on my way home. At last I was rewarded. Not only were there thousands of butterflies hanging from the trees, but as the sun warmed up the air, they started to open up, flit about, and even mate. The count, however, is down from previous years. As of December 31st, they have only 11,400 when in previous years they have had as many as 100,000 and more. I asked one of the docents how they count them and it turns out it is a fairly accurate number. They capture a whole cluster in a net and go through and count the butterflies in the net one by one (and even tag them!) then multiply the total number of butterflies by how many other clusters they see.

Here is a male butterfly. You can tell by the narrow black veins on his hindwing and the black "scent gland" on the hindwing. It is unknown what this gland is used for in a Monarch.

This is the female. Her veins are broader. Below are two butterflies starting to mate. When he finds a female that he likes, the male will chase her down to the ground where they will toss and turn until he has her firmly attached to himself. You have to be careful where you walk in a Monarch grove!

He then flies up into the trees with the female hanging from him upside down. It is in the trees that the final act actually takes place. The female's job then is to go off and find some milkweed on which to lay her eggs.

Host plants in the milkweed family are essential to the developing larva; without it, they would not survive. However, there are many species of milkweed, and monarchs can eat most of them. They also eat a plant that is not called milkweed, but is in the same family: Cynanchum laeve, or sand vine.

Among the reasons given for the low counts in recent years are the ongoing drought conditions in the west and the loss of milkweed habitat. The Pismo Beach website has a very informative Q&A page that covers most of the basics of the life of these butterflies.

Here is a pair just starting to take off for the trees. Now for the clusters!

Can you count them?

Tidepools at Montana de Oro

2009-12-31T10:09:00.000-08:00

The very high surf and tides of the morning were coupled with very low, slightly negative tides in the afternoon during my recent trip to the Morro Bay area. How lucky can you get? So on the second day of hiking at Montana de Oro State Park, I climbed down the steps into Corallina Cove to check out the tidepools. It was weird looking back towards the cliffs from the beach because all of it had been underwater in the morning.

Walking out on these rocks was not easy. The rocks formed ridges and on top were wet seaweed, aggregating anemones, and tar, all of which were very slippery. The marine animals tended to embed themselves in the ridges, too, making photographs difficult.

True to its name, the cove had an abundance of coralline algae. There was also an abundance of black turban snails. In fact, there was a general abundance of sea life. Everywhere you looked, there was something.

All of my old friends from Abalone Cove were there including the aforementioned aggregating anemones, ochre sea stars, and sea urchins. At first, I thought there were no urchins but when I took a closer look at my photos, I saw them hiding deep in the crevices of the rocks. Perhaps they were hiding from the sea otters which now range along the California coast from San Francisco to Santa Barbara County. This large anemone is a giant green anemone (Anthopleura xanthogrammica) that lives in the cooler waters of Central and Northern California. It does not have the radial lines on the center disk that the starburst anemone does.

I did find one bat star all by itself close to the shoreline. There were probably others, hiding.

For most of the afternoon, I was by myself although several small groups of people came and went while I was there. Many birds joined me as well and they came quite close to me. (Except for the photo of the Oystercatcher which is a smaller bird, none of these photos has been cropped.) They seemed to know that I couldn't move very fast on those rocks and they were hungry. They probably had been waiting for low tide all day and I was just an inconvenience. Above is one of several Snowy Egrets that came to feed.

This one Great Egret I had found in the morning clinging for dear life to a rock when the surf was crashing all around it. Later it was up on the mesa searching for something to eat in the grass. And finally, here it was down on the rocks at low tide. This is probably the real reason it hung around the shore.

A few other birds showed up that we do not often see in Southern California. One was this Glaucous-winged Gull and another was the Black Oystercatcher below. Here's a fascinating photograph of the Western, Thayer's, and Glaucous-winged Gulls clearly showing the differences between them. In fact, this site has an amazing number of photos showing gulls in their various phases (it takes the larger gulls four years to mature and every year they look different making identification very difficult).

The Oystercatchers were very noisy, making screeching sounds as they flew. That fluorescent red-orange bill and eye is unmistakable.

Our local Abalone Cove will be having negative tides through February. Bad Mom, Good Mom has an excellent post giving the dates and times. Here are the Los Angeles tide tables for all of 2010.

Montana de Oro State Park

2009-12-30T11:37:00.000-08:00

Time for some pretty pictures. Two weeks ago I was walking the Bluff Trail at Montana de Oro State Park. It was an absolutely glorious day! Even the locals that I met on the trail were remarking about how beautiful it was, mostly because of the very high surf. And to think that this was one of the parks that our governor wanted to close! Luckily, they found it would cost more to close it than to keep it open. I might mention that the cost for my day at the park was $0. Not even a parking fee.

I had been to the Morro Bay area many times but not since my husband died. I wanted to treat myself for my birthday, and I wanted to test out and learn to use all the new camera equipment I have bought. So I settled on Morro Bay. (It's warmer than the Sierras in December!) As many times as we had been to Morro Bay, however, we had never taken the time to visit Montana de Oro which is just south of the bay. These photos were taken on my first visit to the park. I lucked out! I don't know if I will ever see it like this again.

I have to say that the entire California coastline is gorgeous, but the stunning rocky shores don't really start until you get north of Lompoc and the Nipomo Dunes. I left the people in the top photo to give you an idea of the scale. It turns out that this couple are professional photographers and they were taking video footage of the waves. That sign to the left of them says, "Danger Keep Back," because all along the bluff, the land was falling into the ocean. I thought they were nuts!

And the surf was spectacular! I couldn't take enough pictures (ask my family).

I found some of the same rock formations that I have seen at Abalone Cove. It's interesting that the rocks break off in squares and then get edged with other colors. I wish I knew more about the geology of the coastline.

There was just one cove after another with the rocky cliffs like fingers reaching out into the ocean. The sea foam was so great that in the narrow cove below, the foam looked like whipped cream.

Just one more...

Cheadle Complete

2009-12-29T11:31:00.000-08:00

I finished and wore Cheadle on Christmas Day. When I posted on it in November, I said that the sewing up would be easy. Was I ever wrong! The pattern never mentions this, but the bands of the braided section have to be sewn together or else the sweater stretches down and you get holes—big holes. And it's not easy sewing because of the way the bands loop together. I just sort of played it by ear leaving the sleeves open because they appear to be that way in the photo in the magazine. I checked the Rowan website and nobody has mentioned this as far as I could tell and the bands don't look like they were sewn together in the photo, so how did they solve the problem?

The Cocoon yarn is lucious and a dream to work with. Even sewing with it was easy. I was afraid that tucking in all the tails at the end would create a big bulky mess, but it worked out OK. And all my worries about not getting guage were unfounded. The sweater is plenty big enough for me.

To my horror I ran out of yarn at the very end. I was about 8 rows short on the ribbing on the sleeves. I toyed with the idea of making the ribbing shorter on both sides than the pattern calls for, and I had to use scraps to do that. (More tails to tuck in.) I didn't like the result, so I ordered another ball of yarn from Sakonnet Purls (aka LetsKnit.com) where I had bought the yarn originally. I put a note on the order asking if they had any of Lot whatever-it-was left, I would appreciate them sending that. I was prepared to get yarn that was a slightly different color from another lot, but, bless them!! They sent me what I needed. It's great doing business with a small company.

Oil Pulling

2009-12-28T08:29:00.000-08:00

I mentioned oil pulling at the end of my last post and feel it needs an explanation. I am always willing to try new things healthwise if they don't cost much and have no side effects. And I find that many of my fellow musicians are likewise more open to alternative medicine practices than others. The name oil pulling intrigued me and also the claim that it could help arthritis so I searched the web and found that Bruce Fife had just written a book on the subject called, Oil Pulling Therapy. I have read several of Fife's books on coconut oil, palm oil, and a good compendium of detox therapies and knew him to be a reliable source of information, not that I agree with everything he says. After all, he is a vegetarian.

Let me preface any further remarks with the fact that a low-carb diet a la Eades, Protein Power Life Plan with a dash of Paleo (no grains or dairy except butter) from Loren Cordain are the basis of any other attempts to improve my health. Low-carb is a given as far as I am concerned and anything else is extra.

So what is oil pulling? Sounds wacky, but it is actually an ancient Ayurvedic practice going back over 2000 years. You simply put 2 to 3 teaspoons of oil in your mouth (I use coconut oil, natch), swish it around for 20 minutes, then spit it out (not down the drain but into a plastic bag for disposal). Rinse your mouth out and that's it. What could be easier? The oil will mix with your saliva and the resulting solution will be milky white. If it gets to be too much, just spit some of it out and keep going or spit it all out and take a new teaspoon or so of oil. Swishing for the full 20 minutes is important.

So what's it doing? There are other websites and people promoting oil pulling with various explanations of how this can help to relieve all kinds of symptoms, but I like Fife's.

The oil acts like a cleanser. When you put it in your mouth and work it around your teeth and gums it “pulls” out bacteria and other debris. It acts much like the oil you put in your car engine. The oil picks up dirt and grime. When you drain the oil, it pulls out the dirt and grime with it, leaving the engine relatively clean. Consequently, the engine runs smoother and lasts longer. Likewise, when we expel harmful substances from our bodies our health is improved and we run smoother and last longer.

He explains that the reason the oil has this "pulling" effect is because the fatty membranes of the tiny organisms, bacteria and viruses, are attracted to it (oil to oil). Our mouths are full of bacteria all the time and some of it gets deeply imbedded in our teeth and gums. These are "sucked out of their hiding places and held firmly in the solution." Even antibiotics may not get at these hidden bacterias in the tubules of your teeth.

How does it help something like arthritis? "Mouth bacteria, once they get into the bloodstream, tend to collect and cause infection in the weakest areas of the body. Certain bacteria apparently have an affinity for the joints. Joints that have already been weakened by disease or trauma are primary locations for secondary infections... Mouth bacteria readily attack these locations."

The most obvious result of oil pulling which almost everyone who tries it relates is that their teeth get noticeably whiter and their breath smells fresher. Tongue and gums turn a healthy pink and incipient periodontal disease is stopped in its tracks. Many also report a tightening of loose teeth. Loose fillings can fall out, but Fife says this is a blessing in disguise because the filling probably needed to be replaced anyway. Another almost universal effect is clearing of the nose and sinuses—good news for asthma sufferers. The nose-only breathing that Buteyko recommends is a lot easier to do if your nose is clear!

I have experienced all these effects (except for losing a filling) and have even been enjoying freedom from my severe arthritis symptoms. Only time will tell if this is a premanent change or just one of those times when my arthritis isn't flaring.

I do have walking pneumonia right now which I have no idea where I got or exactly when. But I am pretty sure it started before I started the oil pulling. I have had no symptoms except for a slight cough and shortness of breath when climbing uphill. The cough I thought was do to my asthma starting up again although that should have been a warning since the only time I have a problem with asthma now is when there is an infection somewhere like bronchitis. I even went on a great vacation to Morro Bay and spent two days hiking in Montana de Oro State Park (another post) giving new meaning to the term "walking pneumonia" and felt better at the end of the week! The walking and the salt sea air seemed to do me good. Did the oil pulling keep the infection from getting worse? I think so although I was swishing only once a day in the morning. If I had known I was sick, I might have done it twice or even three times a day. I do know that the oil pulling has kept the thrush due to the antibiotic I am taking under control.

If you search the web, you can find demonstrations on how to do this technique and many sites with first-hand experiences. Your effects may be different than mine because as I stated earlier I have been a low-carber for several years. Carbs increase the bacteria in your digestive system and even the good bacteria enters the digestive system through the mouth. Not only can oil pulling help with oral hygiene, asthma, sinus problems, and arthritis but some people have found it helps with diabetes, digestion, headaches, skin problems, and sleep and energy issues. Sounds amazing doesn't it?

Asthma, Apnea, GERD, and Wheat

2009-12-27T11:22:00.000-08:00

...almost every medical and mental health condition seems to be linked in one way or another.

It’s refreshing to hear a doctor of modern American medicine who has the imagination to think outside of the box say what practitioners of alternative medicine have always postulated. I have just finished reading Sleep Interrupted by Steven Y. Park, M.D. I heard about his theory of a cause of GERD from reading the comments section of one of Dr. Mike Eades’s posts.

But his theory goes way beyond just GERD. It encompasses snoring and sleep apnea, panic attacks, heart conditions, depression, hormone problems, migraines, tinnitus, and even mononucleosis. There used to be a television show called Connections with James Burke. In this and other science documentaries that he did he would connect various seemingly disparate items and tie them all together in a spellbinding story. I loved that show and I hope that by the end of this post I will have made clear to you how the four things in my title connect and you may be surprised that the connection is not what you think.

Basically, Park deduced that one possible cause of all the disorders I mentioned is lack of sleep or interrupted sleep. OK so far, but he goes further to state that the sleep problem is due to narrowed airways caused by things like enlarged tonsils, flimsy nostrils, and tongue collapse. And he acknowledges the work of Weston Price who discovered significant jaw structure narrowing in people who ate a western type diet. The jaw narrowing creates crowded teeth and may be the reason almost none of us has room for our wisdom teeth any more. But more about Price later.

Park’s GERD theory is that when we relax in a deep sleep, our tongue may sink back in our throat enough to block the airway completely causing a vacuum that sucks up the acid from our stomachs. He also mentions a condition called LPRD (laryngopharyngeal reflux disease) which is mostly silent causing throat clearing, post-nasal drip, hoarseness, cough, etc. This happens when the acid reaches the throat. For those of us with the type of insomnia that causes early morning awakening (3 or 4 AM), his explanation is that at that time of the night, we are in REM sleep and not such a deep sleep as earlier, and the obstruction of our breathing naturally wakes us up. Sometimes we awaken so briefly, we are not aware of it. Other times, we wake completely and have trouble getting back to sleep. Do you dream anymore? If not, this may be an indication that you are not getting enough REM sleep.

Dr. Park’s remedies include sleeping on the left side instead of the back, dietary changes, relaxation techniques, following your circadian rhythm and many others we have heard before. Alas, he also offers expensive tests, devices, and of course surgery.

Although I started reading Park’s book because I wanted to find out more about his theory of GERD, I ended up being more fascinated by the connection I found to Buteyko breathing techniques which I have had to go back to recently due to contracting walking pneumonia. The pneumonia infection set off my asthma which caused me to return to my breathing exercises and to re-read Dr. Paul J Ameisen’s book Every Breath You Take finding new connections and ideas there.

Buteyko was a Russian doctor who discovered that a major cause of asthma and other breathing related disorders was over-breathing or hyperventilation. This chronic hyperventilation is not enough to cause panic attacks, although it can, but it does cause the body to defend itself by closing down the airways with inflammation and mucous discharge. Why such a defense? Buteyko believes that our bodies actually need more CO2 not more oxygen, that life formed when the Earth’s atmosphere had much more CO2 in it than it does now. Through evolutionary changes that took place as the atmosphere lost its CO2, our bodies adapted by retaining CO2 in the avioli of the lungs. When we over-breathe, the balance is upset and our body reacts to slow down our breathing to retain the CO2 by blocking the airways. Furthermore, through the Verigo-Bohr Effect lowered CO2 levels can cause the oxygen in our blood to get more “sticky” and actually deprive the cells of oxygen!

Oxygen enters the lungs, goes into the blood and is trapped by the haemoglobin molecule. How easily it is released, to feed the body cells, depends on the levels of carbon dioxide.

I haven’t been able to corroborate Buteyko’s thesis about the need for more CO2, but if he is right, this has implications for a number of diseases and many of them the same ones that Dr. Park mentions—asthma, emphysema, allergic rhinitis, sleep apnea, hypertension, angina, anxiety, and eczema.

One reason for this over-breathing that Ameisen doesn’t mention are the narrowed passageways that Dr. Park does describe, specifically narrow jaws that are the result of our parents and grandparents consumption of refined wheat, sugar, and processed foods. Who can forget the before and after pictures that Price shows in his classic book Nutrition and Physical Degeneration showing native peoples with wide mouths and straight teeth (and no periodontal disease) when they consumed their traditional diets, compared with the children of those natives who were born after the introduction of western foods. Narrowed jaws, besides other problems, forces us to let our tongue sit too far back in the mouth thereby partially obstructing our throats. My theory is that this causes us to feel oxygen-deprived and as a result to over-breath to compensate.

And that’s also my connection to wheat. I picked wheat out of all the other foods that cause Price’s description of physical degeneration because, to me, it seems to be the worst offender. If you select wheat on Dr. William Davis’s blog, you will find that he has nothing good to say about wheat.

Another dentist who has written about this subject is Raymond Silkman, D.D.S. Silkman offers one easy remedy for those of us who suffer from this problem and it again involves the tongue. Silkman states that the proper placement of the tongue is up and forward with the tip of the tongue just behind the front teeth. A narrow jaw specifically a narrow upper palate and crowded teeth will prevent the tongue from resting in its proper location. I tested myself for the tongue blockage that Park described and found that while lying on my back and with my tongue up and forward, I could breathe more easily. When I let my tongue go back to its normal position for me, which is about half-way back, my throat was blocked partially. If I relaxed my tongue completely, then my throat was blocked completely.

The most important orthodontic appliance that you all have and carry with you twenty-four hours a day is your tongue. People who breathe through their nose also normally have a tongue that postures up into the maxilla. When the tongue sits right up behind the front teeth, it is maintaining the shape of the maxilla every time you swallow. Every time the proper tongue swallow motion takes place it spreads up against maxilla, activating it and contributing to that little cranial motion, that cranial pumping that we discussed earlier. Individuals who breathe through their mouths have a lower tongue posture and the maxilla does not receive the stimulation from the tongue that it should.

So to put it together, I was born with a narrow jaw (the dentist gives me a child's toothbrush as a parting gift) with some crossed teeth due to my mom eating wheat (and other processed foods), which causes my tongue to sit too far back in my mouth, which causes me to mouth breathe and over-breathe, which is one source of my asthma, and have total tongue collapse at night which causes me to wake in the early AM and not get as much sleep as I would like and may be the cause of my GERD as well. Remedies: Buteyko breathing, i.e. light, shallow breathing, taping my mouth shut at night to keep it closed thereby forcing me to breath through the nose, sleeping on the left side, consciously moving my tongue up and forward, and oil pulling. Yes, oil-pulling. I’ll have to explain that last connection in another post. This one is long enough.

Happy Thanksgiving!

2009-11-25T12:22:00.000-08:00

Cheadle

2009-11-15T10:34:00.000-08:00

I finished the second Feather and Fan Cardigan for my daughter and have started on a new project for myself—Cheadle from Rowan Magazine No. 46. I was intrigued by the design and wondered how they put it together. I was also tired of working with small needles and skinny yarn. I wanted to worked with something big and chunky for a change.

Cheadle is knit with Rowan's Cocoon yarn. A blend of merino wool and kid mohair, it is soft and warm and does make you feel like burying yourself in it. It is even softer after blocking. But it is a one-ply yarn so you have to be careful not to split it as you knit. The required needles are US sizes 10 and 10.5. But the UK sizes are 6 and 7mm. The US 10.5 does not translate to 7mm. It is smaller (6.5mm). Fortunately, KnitPicks has a size 10.75 which is a true 7mm and I purchased a pair to go with my set of interchangeable needles. I still did not get gauge, though, and worried about the outcome. But most of the projects from Rowan that I have knit so far have ended up being a little too big. Small is their smallest and I must be an Extra Small. So I decided not to use even bigger needles and hope for the best.

You start from the bottom of the front or back in the usual way with a ribbing and stockinette stitch which widens out to include the sleeves. But then comes the fun part. The middle section is knit in three strips which are then braided.

This is what they look like before blocking.

Then the braid is attached to the completed bodice bottom. Stitches are picked up at the top of the braid and you continue up to the neck and shoulders. The sleeve ribbing and cowl-like collar are added last.

This is definitely a block as you go project. Picking up stitches is much easier if you block all the parts first. I blocked the strips straight before braiding them. They still curled a bit anyway but only enough to give it a nice soft look. In this photo, I have just finished picking up stitches along the top.

The whole thing is going very fast. I am about to start the strips for the front (back? I haven't decided which yet. I am waiting to see how the second one comes out. Then I will do the shoulder and neck shaping.) The two halves are sewn together at the shoulders and underarms and that's all the sewing that will be required. Looks complicated but is really pretty easy.

A Trip to the Cove

2009-11-03T13:49:00.000-08:00

My new camera, the Canon 7D which was just released in September, arrived last Friday so I really wanted to go out and take some pictures somewhere. I decided to head down to the tidepools at Abalone Cove. While not super low, the tide was going to be pretty low at 0.32 ft. on Saturday afternoon and I discovered that that is low enough.

It was beautiful and quiet. There were hardly any people at all—a few fishermen way out on the rocks, another couple taking photos like me, and one man painting. Because there was nobody to disturb them, some interesting shorebirds showed up including a Spotted Sandpiper. I haven't seen one of those in a long time, but they are unmistakable because of the way they bob up and down as they walk along. I took pictures of him, but I did not have my super telephoto lens with me so the photos are not great but are good enough for an ID.

As I was hiking back up the cliff, I looked up at the Wayfarers Chapel and noticed that the bell tower was completely encased in scaffolding. I hope it has not been damaged. The famous chapel, built by Lloyd Wright, is right next to the Portuguese Bend landslide area. Indeed, the chaple lost its original Visitors' Center in 1982 due to landslide damage. I couldn't find any mention of current problems on the web, but I did find this interesting piece of information:

In 1954 Wright designed the soaring Hallelujah Tower that goes down two stories into the soil and locks in solidly to anchor the sanctuary to the hillside. At night the tower with its lighted cross is visible for many miles out to sea. Sailors passing through the Catalina Channel call it God's candle. A chime of sixteen bells in the tower proclaims each quarter hour, peals forth at the end of wedding celebrations, and plays for special events and services.

Driving back on Palos Verdes Drive South, I did notice that a small slide had occurred along the road just beneath the structure.

Negative Tides

2009-10-30T10:18:00.000-07:00

Checking the tidepool tables this morning reveals that a series of negative tides is coming up again in the afternoon hours in November and December. Early December will have some really low tides. Unfortunately, they are mostly mid-week and the one on Saturday occurs more than an hour after sunset. You can expect the tide to be out for an hour before to an hour after the times listed here.

11/30/2009 Mon 02:07PM LST -0.7 L
12/01/2009 Tue 02:48PM LST -1.1 L
12/02/2009 Wed 03:31PM LST -1.3 L
12/03/2009 Thu 04:17PM LST -1.4 L
12/04/2009 Fri 05:06PM LST -1.2 L
12/05/2009 Sat 05:57PM LST -0.9 L

November 1st through the 5th, 14th through the 19th, and December 13th through the 19th are also periods of afternoon negative low tides. And it looks like we will be able to ring in the New Year with the lowest tides of all. It was last New Year's that my son and family and I made our first trip to Abalone Cove. Maybe we can make a return trip this year (hint, hint).

Jupiter and Many Moons

2009-10-27T14:12:00.000-07:00

As I was heading out to play quartets last night, I noticed that the Moon and Jupiter were very close together in the sky. I regretted that I had no time to take any photos, the sight was so pretty, and left to go play some Haydn and Mozart. When I got back a little earlier than usual, they were still there, dancing together across the sky. So I went in and got out my camera and my new lens and a tripod.

The field of view of the new lens was almost too small to take in both objects. You can see Jupiter way off on the left in the photo. Another problem was that the Moon is so bright, it overpowers any other nearby stars. In order to get the features of the Moon to show up, I shot at 1/1000s so that the lens would close down a bit. But that meant that Jupiter was now very faint. So I decided to take a shot of Jupiter all by itself at a much longer exposure. I was amazed when I saw the result. I not only got Jupiter, I also got three of the moons of Jupiter, something I could not see with my binoculars because the Moon was so bright!

The four moons were all on a diagonal line with the planet. Europa is the bottom one (lower right), Ganymede is above Jupiter, and Callisto is above that (very faint). Io was so close to the planet (below it) that it got washed out by the light reflecting from the planet. The star way off to the left of the planet is Iota Capricorni.

I love my new lens.

Long Beach Aquarium

2009-10-25T20:29:00.000-07:00

Just a few photos taken this morning at the Long Beach Aquarium.

Leafy Seadragon

Green Nape Lorikeet
Happy Halloween!

Done!

2009-10-16T09:25:00.000-07:00

Just a quick post to say that the first Feather and Fan Cardigan is complete! And a lot of progress has been made on the second one for my daughter. I have finished the sleeves and upper bodice and am now working on the very long rows of the lower bodice in boring stockinette stitch. But not having to think about what I am doing or count anything, gives me time to listen to audio books while I knit. I have listened to Emma by Jane Austin as read by Prunella Scales and am now thoroughly enjoying Sense and Sensibility as read by Juliet Stevenson. Both of these actresses do a marvelous job of changing their voices to represent the different characters. Makes for delightful listening! I signed up for a subscription with Audible.com after recommending audio books to my cousin. Audible lets you sample the voices before you buy which is very important for me. And there are hundreds of books that I would like to listen to which should keep me knitting long enough to get all those unfinished projects done!

A Big Boy Lens

2009-09-27T20:02:00.000-07:00

I decided that what I really wanted to do is take really good photos of birds. But you need a really big telephoto lens to do that. So after a lot of research, I ordered the 400mm Canon DO lens plus the 1.4 Extender. Diffractive optics (DO) lenses are lighter than the L series lenses that Canon makes, but this one still weighs 4.3 pounds. That's better than the 8.5 or 11.8 pounds for their 500mm and 600mm lenses but you do need to use a tripod or at least a monopod with it. It works on my Rebel XSi, but to do it justice I plan to upgrade to the Canon 7D when it becomes available.

The new lens arrived on Friday, so on Saturday I was off to the San Joaquin Marsh and Wildlife Sanctuary Reserve in Irvine, CA for a photo session. The sanctuary is the home of Sea & Sage, the Orange County chapter of the Audubon Society. I hadn't been there for years, but I knew it to be a pretty reliable place to find water birds at this time of year and also for being quite large. I wanted to go someplace where I could pretty much be alone and learn to use my new equipment without attracting attention. And water birds are relatively easy to photograph as opposed to the small and skittish warblers and sparrows. The sanctuary consists of ponds separated by berms so most of the birds are pretty far away. You can't make out any detail without a pair of binoculars or a spotting scope. Many times my husband and I wished that we had a camera lens as good as the spotting scope. This lens comes close.

I was very far away from the Osprey when I took this shot. Click on the photo to see a larger version and check out the expression on his face. He's a fish eater. One look from him would have the fish jumping out of the water in fright.

The Cassin's Kingbird on the right didn't budge while I took several photos of him. I was far enough away that I didn't disturb him. But I still need some practice getting set up quickly and changing settings quickly as I move from place to place. The lens magnifies almost as much as my binoculars (I'm still working on calculating the exact number) but doesn't have the same wide field of view. My one try at capturing some Green Herons in flight was fruitless. I couldn't even find them in the viewfinder.

Up top is a classic shot of a Black-necked Stilt with his reflection in the water. The stilt is such a regular visitor to the sanctuary that they use a similar pose for their logo.

No, this picture isn't upside down. That's a reflection of these Black-crowned Night-Herons in the water. The one in front is a juvenile and the one in the back is an adult. Here they are right-side up, hiding in the reeds, on the right.

I thought the lens might work for taking pictures of the moon as well and was pleasantly surprised with this shot taken last night after I got home. You can compare the detail I got here with this shot taken during the lunar eclipse of Feb. 2008 using my old lens—an amazing difference.

Now I'm dreaming about all the places I can go to take photos. But I will have to get more computer storage space for them. I'm filling up my hard drives!

Another Link Fest

2009-09-24T08:01:00.000-07:00

Time for another link fest. Information on the advantages of a low-carb, high-fat diet has been coming in so fast and furiously that I can hardly keep up. Here are links to the best of the latest.

Dr. Michael Eades continues to astound me with a steady stream of posts, twits, and books which support his low-carb thesis. His explanations are easy to understand without sacrificing thoroughness or the science. He has recently posted two blog entries (Part I and Part II) on the evolution of humans as meat-eaters. The main reason I have switched to low-carb eating myself is the realization that we evolved eating meat and that grains and all the other modern fruits and vegetables, not to mention "frankenfoods," are a recent addition to our diets. Dr. Eades posits that we didn't just evolve eating meat, we evolved because we ate meat. It was the addition of more and more highly-nutrient-dense meat and other protein foods that allowed our brains to grow so much larger than other primates'. But read his posts for the whole explanation.

Dr. Eades and his wife, Dr. Mary Dan Eades, have just come out with a new book, The 6-Week Cure for the Middle-Aged Middle, which I recommend to everyone not just those of us of a certain age or of a certain weight. Even if you have read their previous books, Protein Power and Protein Power Life-Plan, this book will add new insights as to how our bodies store fat and tells you how to get rid of the most dangerous kind of fat for our health, visceral fat, fat that surrounds our internal organs. You can be of relatively normal weight and still have visceral fat. I know that from my own experience. And you can have fatty liver disease without touching a drop of alcohol. And what do you suppose works like a charm to eliminate these harmful fats? Saturated fat!

The battle to get saturated fats and cholesterol recognized as healthy and not harmful continues. Here is a wonderful post from a blogger in Portugal (don't worry it's in English) on the correlation between low cholesterol levels and overall mortality. It's rather technical, full of graphs and citations, but is at times humorous. His conclusion is simply that "high" cholesterol is good!

It is quite fascinating to notice that high t-C [total cholesterol], rather than being a malignant condition that would predict a short life expectancy, is actually associated with higher longevity, and not only with longevity but also with a healthy life, which is what we all want, isn’t it?

Miracle Dark Sky

2009-09-20T11:10:00.000-07:00

It didn't look too promising when we were setting up our scopes last night for an evening of viewing the stars at Ridgecrest School. There were wispy high clouds with fog blowing in from the west. All in all, it has been a miserable summer for stargazing. Every time there has been a new moon, we have had cloudy, foggy, even rain-threatening weather. In desperation last night, four of us set up our scopes despite the odds that we wouldn't even see enough stars to get a proper alignment. One person joked that we ought to rename ourselves the "Optimists' Club."

As the sun set, things seemed to be getting worse rather than better. At one point, we couldn't see each other any more so we all just sat down and waited. More optimism. I was set up and ready to go by 7:10 pm, but didn't even turn the scope on until 7:30. Right away I could tell there were problems with the motor in my tracking device. I use a 12v battery to run the Goto computer and keep the object I am looking at in the field of view as the Earth turns. I hadn't checked it before packing the car and it looked like it was in need of a re-charge. Fortunately, the drive can also operate on 8 ordinary AA batteries, of which I had plenty with me. But to install them meant taking the scope off the tripod and then re-aligning it after screwing it back on, something that is much easier done in daylight than after dark. Plus, the high humidity had everything soaking wet and feeling very clammy.

Suddenly, the sky cleared and everyone set to work. But I had to deal with the batteries and setting up again. By the time I was done, yes, the fog was back. But at about 10:00 pm, the wind died down, the sky cleared once more and even better, the fog stayed below us blocking the city lights. It had turned into one of those magical nights when the seeing is clear and steady, and even in the city you can see things like the Milky Way. Jupiter was spectacular, the best I've ever seen it with its red bands going across and four moons all in a line, two on each side of the planet. It was a jewel. I was able to see M57, the Ring Nebula, actually as a ring and not just a gray haze. And last but not least, M27, the Dumbbell Nebula, which I had never seen before with my little scope, shone through. After all the delays and false starts, the motor was purring like a kitten, my alignment was spot on, and the sky was dark and clear. At 1:00 am, I hated to pack up and leave.

The Heron Family

2009-08-26T11:04:00.000-07:00

On Friday I headed out to Bolsa Chica again and even though the weather was cloudy and breezy, I got some great shots of the birds. In fact, I wasn't the only one out there with a camera. At about 5 pm, at least 5 other people showed up carrying some serious photography equipment including huge lenses that required tripods to hold them up. I chatted with one woman with a professional-grade Canon and a lens that made my big lens look puny. She said she wasn't a pro, photography was just a hobby, but she had entered her photos in some competitions and won prizes with them. I asked her if I could hold her camera to see how heavy it was—much heavier than my Rebel! Don't know if I want to carry something that heavy around. She didn't really know much about birds, but she liked to take photos of the wildlife and with that lens, she probably got some fantastic photos.

Members of the Heron Family were out in full force on Friday. These guys are easy to capture in a photo because they are big and they tend to stand very still while they scan the water for something to eat. The first two photos are of a Great Egret, one of the largest members of the family. Note the yellow bill and all-black legs.

Slightly smaller is the Snowy Egret. This fellow has a black bill with yellow lores and black legs with yellow feet. If he is standing in water, you may have to wait for him to lift his foot to tell which kind he is. This species was hunted almost to extinction 100 years ago because in breeding season, he has the most beautiful "feathery" plumes that were in demand for fashion. In fact, the name egret comes from the term for these plumes, aigrettes.

This stout little fellow is an immature Green Heron. When he becomes an adult, he will have a greenish back and a lovely russet brown chest. A couple of us watched this guy for quite a long time as he searched the mud for food.

The patriarch of the family is the Great Blue Heron. He is slightly larger than the Great Egret, sometimes as much as 4 feet tall with a 7 foot wingspan. He is probably the most easily recognized member of the family. I chose this photo of him trying to eat a rather large flat fish because it points out the fact that herons will sometimes try to eat something that is way too big and it gets stuck in their throat. The photographer I was chatting with when I took this photo said she had seen one swallow a snake.

Meet the Reddish Egret. (See the reddish neck?) This fellow doesn't stand still waiting for a fish to come by. He dances, he prances, he struts and flares out his wings as well as his neck feathers to stir up the fish. His glares at the water, daring the fish to come near him. He is a rare bird in California, coming up from Mexico, but not at Bolsa Chica I was told. However, he was a first for me. Number 418 in the ABA area. Now I wished I had one of those huge lenses; he was too far away from me to get a sharp photo. But I really enjoyed watching him!

Last but not least is a photo of a Skimmer. It's not a member of the Heron Family, but I thought it was neat the way he skimmed the water for food, drawing such straight lines in the water as he did so.

Knitting at Last

2009-08-16T09:40:00.000-07:00

The combination of cooler weather, finishing other projects, the new Rowan fall magazine (#46) arriving from Sakonnet Purls, and my daughter's prodding has gotten me knitting again. Yesterday I decided to take an inventory of all the projects that have been sitting incomplete. I was surprised at how many there were! Here's a rundown on what's not been happening in my knitting world.

I have some friends who went to graduate school and finished ABD, meaning "all but the dissertation." Well this project is ABB, all but the buttons. I figure that when it gets cool enough and I want to wear it, I will sit down and sew the remaining buttons on. It also needs a final blocking to uncurl the bottom edge and, of course, the part I hate, I need to weave in all the loose ends. (I once sent my brother-in-law a gift with the ends still dangling by mistake. My sister took care of the problem for me. Thankfully, our mother taught us both well.) So here is the Feather and Fan Cardigan, ABB, started last October.

My daughter likes it so much she asked me to make one for her. (That's where the prodding comes in.) Hers will be a lovely green.

I did decide to use that luscious Knit One, Crochet Too Handpainted Ambrosia yarn to make the Bam Boo Girl-Tank in CEY's Make it Modern. Looks like I started this one in February and this is as far as it got. It's a lovely yarn and I will finish this one to wear next spring.

Another sweater started for my daughter is Anya from Rowan Magazine #40. Anya is gorgeous! Or at least it will be when it is finished. I have the back/front done. I need to do another just like this and then the sleeves. Anya was started sometime before February of 2008, but then I put it aside, and then my daughter got pregnant, and then... I have lots of excuses. It will make a great ski sweater, not for skiing itself but for the aprés ski activities. It is amazingly lightweight even though it is fair isle knitting pattern with beads, etc., because it is made partly with kidsilk haze, a very versatile yarn that Rowan is still featuring in its magazines. But it will be WARM! I asked my daughter if I could wear it when I go skiing, but then I didn't go skiing last winter.

When did I start Helon Dress? I don't remember. It's a crochet project and also comes from a Rowan Mag, # 43 to be exact. Sizing problems were the reason for setting this one aside. But it is pretty and I ought to figure out a way to solve my problem, or just rip it all out and start over. (Blogger insisted on turning this photo when I uploaded it and I can't figure out how to turn it back. If you click on it, you will see it with the right orientation.)

And then there's Glade, also in Rowan Magazine #40. Someday...

California Dreams

2009-08-10T14:40:00.000-07:00

I took Master C. to the Oak Canyon Nature Center last week and was surprised to find it closed. The gates to the parking lot were locked but there is a pedestrian entrance which we took. A sign was posted at the Interpretive Center saying that the center would only be open on Saturdays. My daughter emailed and called to find out what was going on and was told:

Due to budget reductions the Oak Canyon Nature Center is now a passive site. This means it will continue to be open to the public for use including self-guided hikes but the interpretive center will be open only on Saturdays for visitations.

Oak Canyon is a real treasure which I have blogged about before here, here, and here, mostly talking about the native plants. I wrote a special piece from Master C.'s point of view here. But we have enjoyed going there many more times than I have written about and I am very saddened to hear that California's fiscal problems are causing the city of Anaheim to close the Interpretive Center and end the programs that have been so successful.

Besides an office, the center housed an exhibit room full of fun things including live and stuffed animals, books, puzzles and games, and much more to teach children about science, the canyon, and nature. During the winter hundreds of school children have been bussed into the canyon to go on hikes, do projects, and listen to stories. A lucky few got to pet the snakes or an opossum. I took Master C. to a series of classes for 2 to 4-year-olds this spring where we learned about butterflies, lizards, flowers, and the sun. The books will remain and I suppose the stuffed exhibits, but the live animals will be moved to new homes. And there will be no more classes during the week.

I feel so sad about this that I just wanted to post some photos from past trips to the center to show people some of the things that will be lost.

Vitamin D Dilemma

2009-08-09T08:27:00.000-07:00

My dermatologist would have me wear sunscreen every day, slopping it on every two hours, even when I am indoors ("there's light coming from the lightbulbs"). She is a fanatic on the subject. I say, yes, yes, and then do as I please. (I do have a history of being a "difficult patient.") While she is right that I do need to be cautious, my skin is very fair and I have had numerous sunburns in the past, but I have grave reservations about blocking out sunlight to that extent. And I HATE sunscreen. I've tried all kinds and hate them all. I hate putting anything on my skin or in my hair for that matter. When I was young and there was no sunscreen, my mother would make me wear a shirt even when swimming. Yes, she tried.

Low-carbers are also sun-lovers. Vitamin D has become a hot topic and there have been several posts on this subject. It is lately becoming recognized as a very potent force for resisting infection and a deficiency is implicated in a host of other diseases including all kinds of cancers. The BEST way to get your Vitamin D is from sun exposure. They say you can overdose by taking supplements, although it is hard to do, so if you decide to go that route, you need to have your vitamin D levels checked every so often. The 25-hydroxyvitamin D test is the test that is recommended. But you cannot overdose when getting your D from the sun.

Since research into this hormone (technically it's not a vitamin) is very recent, they are still tweaking their advice on how to safely do this. They used to say that you should go out early or late in the day and avoid the hottest parts of the day. That made sense to me. It's what I would think primal man did; only a lunatic goes out in the noonday sun. But now they are saying, and even my dermatologist agrees with this, that it is the UV-A that causes cancer while it is the UV-B that makes vitamin D and causes sunburn. UV-A is stronger in the early and late hours of the day, as well as when it is overcast, because the clouds filter out the UV-B. It seems that the function of UV-A is to prevent us from getting too much vitamin D. It turns off vitamin D production. So now they have switched their recommendation to saying you should go out when the sun is high and expose as much skin as possible to the sun's rays until you get the faintest pink blush. For me, 10 minutes does it.

In his book, Sugar Blues, William Dufty states that if you eliminate sugar from your diet after awhile you will be able to tolerate more sun exposure without burning. I have read a few comments to various blogs where the person said that this was true for them. It hasn't happened for me, yet. I still burn very easily.

Dr. Michael Holick, professor at Boston University, was one of the early researchers into the benefits of vitamin D. I used to own his book, The UV Advantage, but I tossed it out when trying to reduce my "stuff" a few years ago. Now I wish I had kept it. But Dr. Holick is coming out with a new book next spring, The Vitamin D Solution, which I will surely buy. Here is a link to a symposium talk that Dr. Holick gave in 2007 that is very entertaining and very informative. It is rather long and gets technical at the end, but it is well worth the time spent to view it. Another very good source of information is Dr. John Cannell's Vitamin D Council website.

What to do? Well, it's summer. Getting enough sun exposure is fairly easy for me at this time of year. I toast myself 10 minutes on a side at, or close to, high noon, using a timer for precision (I don't see the blush until later, when it's too late). If I am out longer than that, on goes a hat, a light long-sleeved shirt, and (sigh!) sunscreen. BTW: I got a sunscreen from my dermatologist that protects better than most against UV-A radiation as well as UV-B. I have taken supplements in the past and may do so again next winter. And I plan to get my vitamin D levels checked.

Time to Catch Up (a Bit)

2009-08-06T08:07:00.000-07:00

I know I have been neglecting my blog lately. What can I say? I've been working on other projects and none of them are knitting (although I do have something in the works there). But I have not stopped reading and have found tons of things that I thought might be of interest here. Let me quickly post a few links this morning to try and clear the backlog.

In the Low-Carb world, there is a lot of talk about lipids right now. If you want a primer on fats and especially saturated fats, read this Mark's Daily Apple entry, The Definitive Guide to Saturated Fats.

Mark has also recently posted about red palm oil, which is the newest food in my larder. Mine comes West Africa made by Jungle Products. It has a strong taste which I love, especially on chicken and ground meats. but it has also given my calves' liver a wow flavor! Cleaning up can be tricky since it can stain anything made from plastic red, so I rinse out my pan immediately after cooking with hot water.

Other blogs that have recently devoted a lot of space to lipids include Stephan Guyenet's Whole Health Source, Chris Masterjohn's The Daily Lipid, and Peter at Hyperlipid (you can browse through his labels list for all kinds of interesting stuff).

Of course there's always the Drs. Eades. Try Mary Dan's mayonnaise recipe. It's great! I make mine with 3/4 cup of melted coconut oil and 1/4 cup of a light-tasting olive oil. And leave out the Splenda! Dr. Mike has found Twitter and keeps a running commentary there on whatever he has been reading and he is a voracious reader! Here is a recent post of his on lipids, Low Carbohydrate-diets increase LDL: debunking the myth.

It seems that if you are a low-carb eater, your HDL tends to go way up and your triglycerides also go way down. If that happens then the Friedewald Equation which they use to determine your LDL levels comes out too high. Yes that's right, most routine lab tests do not measure LDL directly, it is derived from the values for total cholesterol, HDL, and triglycerides divided by 5. The equation is:

LDL = Total Cholesterol - HDL - Triglycerides/5

So if your HDL goes up, which is supposed to be a good thing, your total cholesterol goes up (bad). Likewise, if your triglycerides go down (good), then when you divide that number by 5 which is constant in the equation, you get a smaller number. End result, the LDL goes way up (very bad) and it was never actually measured! Dr. Eades provides an equation that corrects for this error. He calls it the Iranian Equation and cautions that it only works for total cholesterol over 250 mg/dl. I'll give it here because it is buried in the comments of his post:

For readings in mg/dl (units used in the US) use this equation:

LDL = (total cholesterol/1.19 + triglycerides/1.9 – HDL/1.1) – 38

For readings in mmol/L (units used in Europe and the rest of the world)

LDL =(total cholesterol/1.19 + Triglycerides/0.81 – HDL/1.1) – 0.98

Of course, you can always ask to have your LDL measured directly, a more expensive test. What you really want to know is how much of your LDL is the small, hard, and more easily oxidized kind (bad) or the light, fluffy, and larger kind (good). One person made a very interesting comment to this blog posting which gives food for thought and that is that when your LDL gets really large, some of the smaller HDL gets counted as LDL. No sources are given, but it does point to the fact that measuring our cholesterol may not be as straightforward as we have been led to believe.

And then there is Dr. William Davis's blog, The Heart Scan Blog. When Dr. Davis wrote his book, Track Your Plaque, he was generally in the mainstream as far as saturated fat and diet goes; he considered a vegetarian diet to be very healthy for your heart. It was interesting to watch, through his blog postings, as he made a complete turnaround and now espouses low-carb eating including healthy saturated fats. He credits his reversal to Gary Taubes's book, Good Calories, Bad Calories. So here is a thoughtful doctor who is well-acquainted with the topic of heart disease, who deals with people with heart problems all the time, and who has recently learned to question the prevailing dogma.

His latest post is on Sun, Fish, and Seaweed, which I intended to be the topic of my next post.

Sunrise

2009-08-03T11:46:00.000-07:00

The sky was on fire this morning.

And my plumeria is in bloom early this year. (Yeah, I finally fertilized it at the right time. It also got re-potted last year which it liked very much.)

Canyon Report

2009-07-20T13:28:00.000-07:00

We were not looking forward to our canyon walk on Saturday at Lunada Canyon. June's walk-through had taken us by surprise and filled us with dismay when we found many of the plants, both native and introduced, indiscriminately shredded and hacked down. It took us awhile to figure out that goats had been "hired" to clear the brush. But this month we found new hope for the plants that were ravaged by the goats and for the care that the Palos Verdes Peninsula Land Conservancy (who owns the land) is giving the canyon, although we still feel there is some cause for concern.

After sending in our report last month along with complaints about the treatment of the canyon, a meeting was held with the canyon "keepers" (that's us) and the staff of the PVPLC. We were informed that the goats were utilized to comply with county fire regulations although the staff agreed that they should have warned us about this method of brush control. Our understanding was that the law required brush to be cleared within 100 ft. of any structure (see the L.A. County Fire Department's Brush Clearance rules here), but were told that the fire department was to clear up to 200 ft. and were using GPS to measure this distance.

None of the staff was present to oversee this enterprise and to ensure that the goats stayed within the limit. We have determined that indeed the goats were allowed to roam beyond even 200 ft. because they set up their portable fences along the path and not along a strict 200 ft. boundary line. That this was the case can clearly be seen in the top photo which shows the path from beyond where it crosses the now dry creek that forms the canyon and in the Google Earth photo below which we used to measure the distance from a nearby house to our favorite Coyote Bush. The result was 279 ft. [Correction: After further study of the maps on Google Earth and playing around with the measuring tool, we have come to the conclusion that the Coyote Bush was within the 200 ft. limit at anywhere from 188 ft. to 198 ft.] Also, only one side of the canyon was cleared and not all the way down. If indeed, the law requires 200 feet of clearance, then the whole canyon might as well be stripped bare of any plants.

On the bright side, we found new growth on many of the plants that the goats had fed on last month and were amazed that these hardy natives, Lemonadeberry, California Buckwheat, Bladderpod, and Coyote Bush, were all sprouting green even though we have had no significant rain for months. The goat droppings and other debris which was very slippery on the part of the path that is covered with asphalt had been cleared away. The upper path has been re-instated and the lower path that had eroded away with the passage of the goats had been shored up again.

We also discovered a new native plant that we knew had been planted in the canyon but had never observed until now since it had been covered by the weeds. I had been going crazy trying to learn the difference between the two goldenbushes, Coastal (Isocoma menziesii) and Saw-tooth (Hazardia squarrosa). Being able to see the two plants, if not side by side, at least in the same place at the same time and in the same state, i.e. blooming, really helped. I was getting nowhere with the photos on the web. Let me note the differences that I observed between the two and if you know of others, feel free to comment. I know that both species have many subspecies, but I am not getting into that. I feel lucky to have gotten this far.

These first two photos are of Coast Goldenbush. This particular plant is along the upper path (canyon side, ergo saved from the goats). I have photographed it many times but I never felt the leaves before. This time I did so and found them to be sticky. That is a sign of the Coast Goldenbush which has a resinous secretion especially on the leaves. And while the leaves are toothed, they are soft. I also noticed that the blooms appear at the tip of the branches and come in clusters and that they have a whitish tip before they open up.

The bottom two photographs are from the new plot of goldenbush plants we found at the canyon edge of the cleared area going down the lower path. These are definitely Sawtooth Goldenbushes. The leaves are rough and firm, and the toothed edges are very sharp. The flowers are coming out along the stem where the leaves also begin, not just at the tip, and there is no white but sometimes a reddish color when they open. These bushes were also smaller than the coast.

What did they do?

2009-06-29T08:12:00.001-07:00

We had our monthly canyon walk at Lunada Canyon on Saturday and were shocked to find the canyon in a devastated condition. At first it looked like someone had come in with a weed-whacker and just indiscriminately hacked away at the plants along the path, but on one side of the path only. Last time I saw the canyon, I had remarked that they were having problems with the weeds overtaking the path to the point that the path was obliterated and people were making their own paths up and down the cliff side.

But even a weed whacker doesn't strip a plant of its greenery, leaving only the stems behind as happened with this Lemonadeberry (Rhus integrifolia). Other natives that had been planted on the right side of the path in the top photo included California Sagebrush (Artemisia californica) and California Fuchsia (Epilobium canum) which would normally bloom in August with bright red trumpet-shaped flowers. The Lemonadeberry will probably survive, it is a very tough plant, but the others will not.

This used to be a stand of Giant Rye Grass (Leymus condensatus). You'll have to take my word for it. It should be seeding now. Gone. But they left the trash.

Saddest of all was the condition of this large Coyote Bush (Baccharis pilularis) which had been turned from the lush green in the photo above (taken in June of 2007) to this:

The Coyote Bush is green all year and also starts blooming in August. It is a favorite of beetles and bees. Other wildlife will be affected. Lizards were running around more than usual. They had no place to hide. It reminded me of when I get my trees trimmed and the birds get all upset.

On the right side of the lower path, plants were in better condition including this Ashyleaf Buckwheat (Eriogonum cinereum) and the California Buckwheat (Eriogonum fasciculatum), both of which were blooming profusely. But the Bladderpod, Sticky Monkeyflower, and my favorite, the Bush Lupine were either gone or almost dead.

We found little brown pellets everywhere and even noted that the pellets started and stopped where the devastation had occurred. In fact, one of us slipped and fell on the pellets laying all over the drive at the entrance to the canyon. We were at a loss to explain all of this.

When I got home, I got a call from my sister and I told her about the walk and the condition of the plants. She lives in Connecticut and said that back there, deer will eat all the leaves of a plant and leave the stems. Then I remembered two things. A couple of years ago, at the cemetery where my DDH is buried, I saw a herd of goats that had been set free on the undeveloped land that was soon going to be put to use. I also remembered a remark one of the nearby residents had made to us as we started our walk at the canyon Saturday morning, "Well, at least it's better than goats in the canyon." I hadn't a clue to what she was referring at the time. But as I scanned my photos at home yesterday, suddenly the light when on and I knew what had happened in the canyon. The PV Land Conservancy must have hired a herd of goats to come in and clear the weeds from the hillsides. They could have used portable fences to keep the goats on one side of the path, leaving the other untouched. I haven't received confirmation yet, but it's the one explanation that fits.

Aargh! Whose idea was that? Goats wreak havoc and make things worse than before. For one thing they leave the roots of all the plants and weeds, so the opportunistic non-natives can come back with a vengeance. And for another, their droppings spread the weeds and add new ones to the mix. Goat feed normally consists of corn, oats, wheat, molasses, and who knows what.

I'll be waiting to hear the official explanation of what happened and why. I'll also be waiting to see what they do next to restore the canyon. Is this the way they started? Hired goats, whacked the weeds to the ground but left the roots? And then planted natives in the hopes they would take over? If I were one of the many volunteers who planted the native plants four or five years ago, I'd be very reluctant to do so again. This whole process may just recycle over and over.

Forest Fire Control

2009-06-22T19:33:00.001-07:00

We did a lot of other things while at the Grand Canyon besides staring into the great abyss and wondering how it could possibly have gotten there. One day we decided to get off the beaten track and drove up a dirt road stopping to take pictures of wildflowers along the way. Soon we noticed that controlled burns were taking place along this road.

There were small fires everywhere but no sign of the workmen who started them and we wondered how they could keep the flames from getting out of hand. Then we noticed that they were burning neat little circles under every tree, essentially eliminating the brush under the trees that might cause the whole tree to burn if there were a large fire.

Finally we came upon this structure called Grandview Lookout. It's a fire tower. We were invited to "come on up" as long as there were only four people in our party. Well, my DIL has a fear of heights and so she declined and I wasn't too sure myself that I wanted to climb up this thing. It had been very windy during our entire stay at the canyon and this day was no exception. But at my son's urging, I decided to go ahead and do it, telling myself to look up, not down. Nick joined us.

We climbed very slowly and carefully. At the top, we went through a trap door into a small square room where every inch of space had been used to store maps and equipment, even the ceiling. Here we met the volunteer who mans the tower eight to ten hours a day for six months of the year, being spelled only once in awhile by his wife. His job is to keep an eye out for forest fires and to let the workmen on the ground know if any of their controlled burns are getting "hot." The small fires that had been started on purpose were burning with a white smoke. Black smoke would indicate that the fire had too much fuel and was burning too fast.

The fire in the photo below, which we could easily see from the tower, had been started by a lightning strike, but was now under control. The black smoke prompted the volunteer to call the ground crew with his radio telephone and warn them. He said that most of the time they reply back that they know all about it and everything is alright.

He then showed us this Osborne Fire Finder which he uses to pinpoint the location of a fire for the ground crew. It occupied the center of the room and took up most of the space.

After admiring the view in all directions (the top of the tower is at 7611 ft.), we thanked the volunteer for the "tour" and climbed back down just as slowly as we went up. The volunteer says he has gotten used to the climb but when there is a lightning storm nearby, he flies down!

More on Condors

2009-06-19T20:57:00.001-07:00

Once upon a time, there were three condors sitting on a ledge. The lower condor is No. 280, a female hatched on May 3, 2002 and released at the Vermilion Cliffs on November 29, 2003. The bird on the upper left is a young bird, perhaps about one year old and is not tagged. You can tell it is young by its black head. To the right of the baby is No. 123, a male and an old and venerable member of the Arizona flock, hatched on May 20, 1995 and released on May 26 1997. They don't know for sure yet, but they suspect condors may live to be 70 years old.

Is this a family gathering? At one point the adults did seem to be showing the young bird how to spread his wings to warm them in the setting sun. Condors also spread their wings like this to straighten out the feathers which may have gotten bent out of shape from the air pressure during the day's flying.

The ledge they are sunning themselves on at the end of the day is down below a very busy viewing spot called Lookout Studio near Bright Angel Lodge at the Grand Canyon. At first, the humans are totally unaware of the gathering below them.

Along came A6, a juvenile perhaps about four or five years old. You can tell this is a juvenile because although the head has some pinkish color to it, it is mottled and not as bright as the adults. (I couldn't find the statistics on A6.)

When A6 lands on the same ledge as the trio, 280 decides to investigate the newcomer and to put him in his place. Condors have a keen sense of hierarchy, adults are dominant over juveniles, and generally, adult males are dominant over adult females. In this photo, you can see 280's bright red crop below her neck which bulges with the food she has eaten. You can also easily see the antennae of her transmitters attached over the number tags on her wings. Someday, it is hoped, the birds will not have to wear these tags and be so closely watched and will all be able to fly free and unencumbered. (They only show the last two digits of her number on the tags to keep them from being too large.)

She lets her wing brush up against A6 as a warning, not as an attack.

They sit and stare at each other for a long time. 280 averts her head to prevent A6 from being able to peck at her.

Finally, A6 gets the message, "This is my ledge. Go find another spot to roost tonight," and takes off for a nearby treetop. Later 123 and the baby join A6 in the trees and 280 is left with the ledge all to herself.

Condors!

2009-06-16T09:46:00.000-07:00

I'm a cruel mother. I actually woke my son up at 5:00 am so we could go out into the 35 degree weather to watch this condor sleep at the edge of a cliff at the Grand Canyon with the hopes that eventually we would see it take off. A man had alerted us to the condor the night before and I wanted to see if it was still there the next morning and watch it fly. We knew it was a condor mainly because of the number tag on its wing. All the adult condors that have been re-introduced to the wild wear these tags along with a radio transmitter.

The story of the California Condor's brush with extinction (down to 22 birds in the wild in 1982) and the truly heroic efforts by biologists and conservationists to capture these birds, and then not only return them to the wild but to encourage them to breed in the wild again is amazing. Sophie Osborn, a former Field Manager for the Arizona Restoration Project, has written a wonderfully inspiring book on the subject, Condors in Canyon Country, which focuses on the birds in Arizona. I hadn't known that the Grand Canyon was a release sight (actually it's the Vermilion Cliffs to the north of the Canyon) and was excited to hear that the condors were flying free over the Canyon again. I had never expected to see one of these rare birds in my lifetime but by the end of our trip, we had observed five of them, including two young birds.

Condors live a slow, relaxed life. They take 6 months to fledge and 5 to 6 years to become adults. Like ravens, they are very intelligent birds and have a lively curiosity. They can see 6 to 8 times better than humans and can magnify things in the center of their vision. But unlike most other birds and because of their slow maturation, the young birds must learn condor ways from their parents. Foraging, etc. is not totally instinctive. This was the problem facing the scientists who wanted to return the birds to the wild. If there were no more birds in the wild who remembered, who would teach the young birds bred in captivity?

This bird, No. 241 (only the 41 is shown on the tag), is a good example. She was hatched on April 13, 2001 at the World Center for Birds of Prey sponsored by the Peregrine Fund, and she was released at the Vermilion Cliffs on May 9, 2002. When she was first released, she was prone to roosting in unsafe locations, not high on a cliff as she is here but down on the talus slope where she was exposed to coyotes during the night. Ms. Osborn and her crew tried to coax the bird to a better location, but she wouldn't move, so volunteers spent the night with her (at a safe distance) to protect her from potential predators. Others were up at the top of the cliffs to keep in radio contact with the volunteers. After a few days, 241 learned to sleep in a safer spot.

While my son and I watched her, we caught the sunrise and saw several other species of birds including Western Bluebirds, a Three-Toed Woodpecker, and a nest of Blue-Gray Gnatcatchers that was very close to the wall at the edge of the cliff. At one point, 241 opened her eyes, looked around and stretched out her enormous wings (wing span is about 9 feet!), and then tucked her head back under a wing and went back to sleep. Later, she again woke up, stretched and decided to catch the sun's rays on her wings to warm them. We thought for sure she would fly now. But no, she sunned the front and then the back of her wings and moved up to a higher perch for more sunning, but did not take off. Still too cold? Condors like other raptors fly on warm thermals coming from the canyon bottom. Condors are known for being able to soar for long periods of time without flapping their wings.

As we danced around trying to keep warm, my son took this photo through my spotting scope. Soon I was so cold, I couldn't hold my binoculars steady and we decided to give up and go in for a hot shower and breakfast. When we came back, she was gone.

A Grand Canyon Walk

2009-06-15T20:50:00.000-07:00

I tried to escape the annual June Gloom here in LA by going to my son's place in Arizona for a couple of weeks but I'm afraid that I took the overcast skies and cool weather with me. But that didn't spoil our trip to the Granddaddy of all canyons—Grand Canyon National Park. The Canyon is so-o-o beautiful and awesome and lots of other adjectives that one picture cannot do it justice and I found myself snapping one photo after another trying to capture some of its splendor. I just sort of randomly picked this photo out of the hundreds of photos that I took while we were there. If you have ever been there, you may recognize this as Bright Angel Trail which starts at Bright Angel Lodge on the South Rim. In the distance is Bright Angel Canyon which is perpendicular to the canyon carved out by the Colorado River.

I had been to the Canyon once before but that was a long time ago when my husband and I were driving cross country to start our new life here in California. We stayed one night only in one of the Bright Angel cabins. It was in March and to our surprise it snowed during the night. The Canyon was breathtaking the next morning. I always wanted to go back and see it again and spend more time soaking it all in. So my DIL and I planned this trip last April when we all got together after Baby M. was born.

We were a little late making reservations and everything was totally booked, but I managed to find two rooms for us at the El Tovar which is where we stayed the first three nights. Then we headed for Williams just to have the pleasure of taking the train back up to the Canyon. As it turns out, the weather was gorgeous that day and I got some of my best photos of the Canyon in the short three hours we had before boarding the train again for the return trip.

It will take several posts to talk about all the things that we did, so I'll just post one more photo for now and leave the rest for later. This photo was taken at sunset on the third day of our stay.

Maintenance Closer to Home

2009-05-31T10:10:00.000-07:00

Where have I been? I've been doing my part to stimulate the economy and keep California's construction workers on the job by taking care of my house. It all started with my annual termite inspection. The guys who did the inspection said that there was so much wood damage that they could no longer tell what was old termite destruction and what was new. They recommended tenting and replacing all the damaged wood. I opted to have all wood replaced and postpone the tenting until next year. After all, if I replaced all or most of the wood, why bother tenting first? And I wanted to have the whole outside of the house painted when they were done. I couldn't afford to do it all. They agreed to wait until next year to see what new damage there might be before tenting and meanwhile they would spot treat any live termite infestations that they found.

We are so fortunate here in California to have two kinds of termites to contend with—the usual subterraneans who get their moisture from the soil, plus dry wood termites who get their moisture directly from the wood. Apparently, they both enjoy our Mediterranean weather as much as we do. My son in Arizona has no problem. It's both too hot and too cold for them there. I have lived in this house for almost 40 years. We had the house tented once in the 80s and have had annual inspections ever since so I knew I had damage from both kinds of termites. It was time to do something about it.

Once they started to work, the carpenters found more damage than they anticipated, but they only found two or three places with active termites in them, thank goodness. The photo above shows the kinds of tube-shaped paths the dry wood termites make while the photos on the left and up top show damage from the subterraneans. (Yucky, I know.) The subs build tubes of mud up from the ground which you can sometimes see. The presence of dry woods is harder to determine. In some cases, a piece of wood looked perfectly sound from the outside, but when they cut it, they found termites at work on the inside. As you can see in the photo, the beasties very cleverly avoid the edges and do most of their damage in the center of the wood. Their presence becomes apparent when you find their detritus falling down on you!

The guys who did the work were excellent. There were five of them and all knew what they were doing and worked together well. They finished the job in less time than was predicted, too. Then it was time for the painters. Stay tuned...

More on Maintenance

2009-05-07T08:31:00.000-07:00

We had another Canyon Walk at Lunada Canyon on Saturday. As I mentioned last month, there seems to be a problem with maintenance in the canyon. We started doing our walks in June 2007 and though I have not been able to go on every walk, I always take my camera along to shoot photos of the plants and the general condition of things. The following photos of this one part of the upper path reveals the problems of maintaining a "natural" setting and the struggle natives must face to survive, never mind propagate.

Taken 6/14/2007

The restoration and new plantings of natives in the canyon took place in 2004 and 2005. According to a 2005 report on the canyon by the PVLC, approximately 660 hours of donated time were given by volunteers, including high school students. The section of the trail in my photographs was worked on by two Eagle Scouts and a Gold Award candidate. 900+ native plants were planted in the canyon as a whole including California Sunflower, Encelia californica; Black and Purple Sage, Salvia mellifera and leucophylla; Coastal Goldenbush, Isocoma menziesii; California Buckwheat, Eriogonum fasciculatum; and California Poppy, Eschscholzia californica along this path. Down in the bottom of the canyon they planted Mugwort, Artemisia douglasiana which can be seen in the above photo.

The report acknowledges that constant maintenance would be required due to the fact that prior to the restoration we had record rainfalls and the weeds were very abundant. Weedeaters, chainsaws, and a riparian-accepted herbicide were used to clear the area before planting and the trails were cleared of weeds again in March and June of 2005. We have seen volunteers working on the lower trail to remove the Sweet Fennel, Foeniculum vulgare, and Black Mustard, Brassica nigra.

Taken 2/23/2008

We "inherited" the canyon in pretty good condition as the top photo shows. The native plants were doing well and holding their own. But after the rains of 2008, weeds started to take over again. Even some of the natives (particularly the Lemonadeberry, Rhus integrifolia) were encroaching on the path. In March of this year the new growth started to obscure the path, and now it has all but disappeared. People are making their own path through the weeds and around the larger plants, but this is not the original path. It is even dangerous in one spot because you can't see the ground and people have gone down the side of the canyon.

Taken 3/14/2009

A lot of backbreaking work will now be required if the canyon is to remain open to the public.

Taken 5/2/2009

But there is good news. Demonstrating that the natives are a very hardy bunch, here is a photo of a Bladderpod, Isomeris arborea, taken in July of 2008, and the same plant as we saw it on Saturday. And there are two new little Bladderpod plants now on the other side of the path.