Bacteriotherapy

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."

My Dream Doctor

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.

Probiotics

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

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.

New Paleo Website

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.

Oil Pulling

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

...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.

Another Link Fest

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?

Time to Catch Up (a Bit)

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.

Liver

After spending two weeks playing, practicing, rehearsing, and playing some more, I am finally able to sit down at the computer and write a post. I have done some knitting and I'll bring you up to date on that later. (I have some gorgeous yarn to show you.) I haven't written about my diet in a very long time, so I thought I'd start back with that topic. Dr. Eades has had several very good postings recently on his blog and I'd like to draw your attention to a couple of them. If you are new to my blog, I am a low-carber and have been for almost five years now.

One of the things I like about the Drs. Eades is that they are willing to change their views or update their recommendations as new research comes to light (if the research is good research). They use their blogs to comment on these new findings and sometimes the best stuff is in their comments to the comments from readers. They will have to do a revision of their books someday. They do have a new book in the works that was supposed to come out this January, but release has been delayed until the fall. The burning question that seems to be on everyone's mind is, what do you do if you try low-carb eating to lose weight and you reach a stall, a plateau, and just can't get things going again. Or you go off the diet, gain weight, and want to get back on the diet to lose that weight, but find that things are not so easy the second time around. Then there are those of us who have reached a certain age and find that the pounds just pile on despite all our best efforts.

Dr. Eades points out that one cause for the stall, the difficulties losing weight, and the middle-aged weight gain is a tired or stressed liver.

The liver is the primary organ involved in metabolism. In order to lose weight successfully, you need to have a liver that is running on all cylinders.

Dr. Eades gives several reasons why the liver may not be functioning up to par, including old age, but also including the fact that alcohol, medications, caffeine, and excess insulin in the blood caused by excess sugar in the diet (remember all carbs are sugar) need to be processed by the liver. It has been found that being overweight can cause the same liver dysfunction that drinking too much alcohol does.

People who consume too much alcohol over too long a time period develop first a fatty infiltration of their liver cells, then inflammation that progresses to fibrosis, then ultimately, if the drinking doesn’t stop, to cirrhosis and possibly even liver cancer. This same exact progression takes place in the livers of many people who are overweight and/or insulin resistant.

If you have too much insulin circulating in your blood because your liver can't process it all, you will have trouble losing weight.

Insulin stays in the circulation because it is put there by the pancreas and because it isn’t metabolized in the liver. A liver that isn’t functioning up to snuff won’t break down insulin as rapidly as it should. Consequently, higher levels of insulin mean more difficulty in losing weight. Plus, since the liver is the major organ involved in the entire metabolic process, it works a whole lot better to stabilize everything when it is unhindered by having to detoxify a lot of unnecessary stuff. Which is why you need to baby your liver when you restart your low-carb diet.

He recommends laying off the coffee (and I would include any drink with caffeine in it) and alcohol until you get your system going again.

Another great post was about eating low-carb in Mexico. It can be done. In fact, I think it can be done anywhere there is good food and attention is paid to the preparation of that food.

Speaking of liver, my sister and I were talking about how we both like to have liver now and then, but our families won't touch the stuff. We were wondering if it is because we were forced to eat it when we were young and now it feels like "comfort food" to us. I just had some calves' liver yesterday and I am so full of energy today. That happens every time I have liver. But my sister and I both agree that it has to be cooked right—very lightly. I like to sauté mine over a low heat in butter and coconut oil with just a little seasoning. It's really good that way. I accompanied last night's liver with some wonderful cream of celeriac soup. I can give you that recipe, because I made it up myself. A hand-held blender is a great tool to have, but if you don't have one, you can use a food processor. It's messier but does the job.

butter
coconut oil
1 celeriac, peeled and cut into 1-inch chunks
3 stalks celery, chopped coarsely
1 carrot, chopped coarsely
2 small or 1 medium onion
1 1/2 cups water
1 can coconut milk
sea salt

Melt the butter and coconut oil in a soup pot. Add the celeriac, celery, carrot, and onions and "sweat" (put the lid on the pot) for about 15 minutes. Add 1 cup of water and bring to a boil. Simmer the vegetables for 20 minutes or so, until the celeriac is soft. Turn down the heat and add the coconut milk. Purée the soup with a hand-held blender right in the pot. Add the other 1/2 cup of water (or more) if the soup is too thick. Add some salt and bring back to a simmer.

I like to serve the soup with a drizzle of a good quality olive oil in the middle.

The entire pot of soup will contain about 28g of carbohydrates, but you will get about 3 or 4 servings out of it depending on the size of your celeriac and how thick you like the soup. Considering that one smallish boiled potato (2.5 inch diameter) will have 25g of carbs, this is a good deal. At only 7.3g per cup, celeriac is a good substitute for mashed potatoes.

Hibernation

Happy Winter Solstice! Lately I have been feeling like hibernating. I get plenty of sleep at night but I'm still sleepy during the day and want to take naps. With the sun setting at about 5:00 pm and the rays of the sun low in the sky even at noon, the signals are pretty clear that it's time to slow down. I recently received a newsletter from Yoga Journal, which I subscribe to, giving the advice to resist the urge to hibernate and use vigorous Yoga to stay active in the winter months. While I enjoy Yoga and agree with most of the life-style ideas that go along with the physical practice, I strongly disagree with their vegetarian outlook and now also with this idea that we must resist our urges to rest more in the winter months. It's the way animals respond to the cold and less food being available and was probably the way humans behaved until they learned to control light by creating fire.

In her book, Lights Out, T.S. Wiley claims that hibernation studies have shown that learning and retention are enhanced in animals who are allowed to find respite from life and many studies have shown that sleep deprivation may lead to obesity. Just google "obesity sleep deprivation" for dozens of links to recent journal articles. This would corroborate Wiley's thesis that we are meant to crave carbs and get fat in the summer in preparation for winter, but then sleep it off bringing our bodies back to equilibrium.

Another good book on the subject of sleep is The Head Trip by Jeff Warren. I read this book last spring and meant to blog about it, but never got around to it. It's very thought-provoking. The book is actually about consciousness but for Warren sleep is a form of consciousness and not unconsciousness as we usually think of it. He has whole chapters on the various forms of sleep and semi-sleep situations. He considers it perfectly normal to have wakeful periods during the night and that is what hibernation must have been like for humans. They slept a lot, got up to eat now and then, went back to sleep, dozed, dreamt, and solved problems in their heads. Warren comments that in order to be truly awake, you have to have more natural sleep.

So it's almost 8:30 pm now. Time for me to start winding my day down, dim the lights, get into my jammies, turn the heat in the house down to 60 degrees, take my melatonin, turn off the lights, climb into my organic-cotton-knitted-sheeted bed with the down comforter, and hibernate for at least 9 hours. See ya!

Pears and Pomegranates

I love this time of year for many reasons, of course, but one of the reasons is all the surprises I receive in the mail or by other delivery services. Yesterday, I was totally surprised by two packages. The first was a gift from my bank, one of the new institutions I have opened accounts with recently. I thought the days of giving out toasters with every new account were over, especially in this economy, so I was very pleasantly surprised to receive a box of Harry & David's famous Royal Riviera Pears courtesy of Farmers and Merchants Bank plus a gift card towards a future purchase.

Now pears are not a low-carb fruit. Each one of these beauties delivers 31g of carbs, so when you are trying to keep your daily total between 30 and 60g, just one pear will do it for you. So last night I treated myself to half a pear, and an under ripe one at that (apples and pears are lower in carbs when green or under ripe). Just by chance I had purchased some delicious raw milk Pt. Reyes blue cheese and a bottle of pomegranate wine earlier in the day. I had the makings of a fantastic dessert.

Pomegranates and especially wine made from pomegranates have been found to be very high in anti-oxidants, containing three times more than the same amount of red wine or green tea. I had purchased The Republic of Tea's Pomegranate Green Tea earlier this year when it was available. Apparently, it is a seasonal thing. But my favorite way to consume pomegranates is to buy the fresh fruit and dig out the arils myself. It is a tedious job and the red juice splatters everywhere, but the arils don't keep very long out of the fruit. My son told me that there used to be a pomegranate bush on his way to school and that he and his friends would pick the fruit and eat it like an apple while they walked. I asked didn't the juice go everywhere and turn their hands red? He said yes, but they didn't care.

The wine came from Armenia and it turned out to be a good dessert wine. It was very reminiscent of blackberries and cherries although not very sweet. It is 20% alcohol, and 10 to 15 fruit are needed to make a gallon of wine. Something different.

The other surprise was a package from my cousin who shares my genealogy passion. She inherited boxes of stuff from our great aunt who also was very interested in our family history. Until now my cousin has not had time to go through the boxes, but a recent move has forced her to take a peek. What she sent me was a photograph of my father taken at the time of his high school graduation. My father died ten years ago and I had never seen this photo before. Now I can clearly see the resemblance between my father and my younger brother and my son. They all even sport the same hairstyle! It brought tears to my eyes and warmth to my heart. What a treasure!

Count Carbs Not Calories

Tuesday is Farmers' Market day for me and is the highlight of my week. I go early so that if I have a Music Teachers' Association meeting or something that day, I can get my shopping done and still make the meeting at 10:00. I know I am very fortunate not only to have such a large Farmers' Market nearby, one of the best in L.A., but also for the fact that I live in California where buying local means getting some of the best produce in the country all year round.

The photo above shows some of last week's cache. I like to try new things like the Armenian cucumbers and the greens next to them. (Don't ask me what kind they are, I don't know. But they were delicious sautéed with butter and elephant garlic.) The yellow balls are cucumbers, too, lemon cucumbers. They have a slightly different taste, but the difference is very subtle. A whole basket of these cucumbers cost $1.50. The orange cauliflower I have had before and use it in the summertime to make a raw cauliflower cold soup like the one shown on the left made from a head of purple cauliflower. (That's pine nuts and purple basil on top drizzled with extra virgin olive oil.) The carrots are actually red and the whole bunch, plus a few more not in the photo, also cost $1.50. The pile of greens in the back is arugula which cost $1.00. The watermelon cost $3.00. On the lower right are some currants and black mission figs, my one splurge for the week. I paid $4.00 for the pint.

All of the fruit and vegetables in the photo are low-carb choices except for the carrots and figs, but the carrots aren't too bad and even the figs aren't too bad if you only eat one or two. Unfortunately, the fruits most people think of when they agree that they should eat more fruits and vegetables are apples, oranges, pears, and bananas. These are high-carb fruits and should only be eaten sparingly, if you really want to cut down your carbs. A little book that can be very useful for helping you to count your carbs is The Protein Power LifePlan Gram Counter by the Drs. Eades. I keep mine handy in the kitchen at all times.

Speaking of the good doctors, in the latest post by Dr. Michael Eades on his Protein Power blog, he uses the strongest language yet regarding the value of keeping your blood sugar in control to prevent not only diabetes but cardiovascular diseases as well. I strongly advise all my readers (all 20 of you) to check out this post including the excellent comments below it. If you need to lose weight, if Type II diabetes is a problem, if you have a family history of heart disease, or if you just want to be the healthiest you that you can be, READ this post and the related articles. Read the Eades's books. Eat low-carb, high-fat meals and forget about cholesterol.

Dietary Doublespeak

I haven't written about my diet in a long time even though it was one of the reasons for my starting this blog. But there are so many good blogs on low-carb diets out there now, which explain things so much better than I could, that I stopped putting my two cents in. But rest assured, I am still following the diet and after four years, I can say that not only has it helped me tremendously, it has become routine. It's only when I get invited out to eat or travel that I remember that most of the world doesn't eat the way I do and doesn't understand why either.

The Drs. Eades continue to be my main source of information and this morning's blog entry by Dr. Mike is really good. He has blogged many times about how difficult it is to get people to change their minds about the benefits of low-carb eating and to realize that many "facts" of dietary wisdom—no salt, fiber is good, whole grains are good, eat lots of fruit and vegetables, limit protein and especially red meat—are based on unproven suppositions. People, including researchers and doctors, are almost paranoid about fats in general, and saturated fats in particular, as the study that is the subject of his post demonstrates. I have just about given up reading the standard news reports, news articles, and other health news letters because they always toe the line and repeat the same wrong assumptions over and over. "Everybody knows...." is the tip-off. Or worse, they come to conclusions that would be laughable if they weren't so important to people's health.

This morning's LA Times Health section gave another prime example. In a rather lengthy article about people going on a gluten-free diet even if they have not been diagnosed with celiac disease, (I am on a no-grain diet, so gluten is just not a problem) they list the drawbacks of this way of eating:

For one thing it's difficult to diagnose celiac disease in a person who has been on a strict gluten-free diet for a long time. ... The diet can make the small intestinal inflammation less obvious on biopsy.

Well, duh! The "cure" for celiac is to never eat gluten. So if I don't eat gluten, I will never know if I would have become celiac if I had. (Did you follow that?) Then they go on to say that people avoiding gluten (think grains) need to watch their B vitamins. I always thought that the main and best source of B vitamins is from meat. As for folic acid, which grains and cereals are supplemented with, it is not a natural component of them, read Eades' blog entry on that subject. You can have too much of a good thing. BTW, I try to eat liver once a week.

Another case concerns eating low-carb to lose weight and/or control diabetes. People complain that when they go off the diet, they gain the weight back. So the diet doesn't work. This is another duh! Low-carbing is a life-style. Not something you do for some short period of time to solve health issues and then abandon once your goal has been reached. Here is a recent blog entry by Eades on the comments that have been written in to Amazon regarding his Protein Power book that touches on this subject.

But enough ranting, here are some links to those terrific blogs I was talking about.

I found this blog entry over at Modern Forager very interesting. I have been avoiding, but not completely eliminating nightshades for less than a year now, but whenever I try going back to eating them regularly (tomatoes, eggplant, etc.) I have an arthritis flare-up. Could be just a coincidence, but I am doing just fine without them.

Robb Wolf posted a very interesting article about the Paleo Diet and Multiple Sclerosis. Click on the link to the video of Loren Cordain explaining the Paleo Diet and how it can help those suffering from MS. Actually, it's a seven-part series, so it will take awhile to view it all.

Like the Eades, William Davis over at Heart Scan Blog is a doctor, a cardiologist in fact, who always has something interesting to say. Since I mentioned eating a gluten-free diet above, check out this entry from Dr. Davis.

Mark's Daily Apple has just posted some great breakfast recipes, especially for people on the go.

And finally, MizFit shows how to get your exercise while watching your kids at the park.

Under the Weather

I've been a zombie for the past week—bad cold. I caught it on the last day of my ski trip to Mammoth with Grace and family. It's been so long since I had a cold (the last one was in September of 2006) that all the medications in my medicine cabinet were out of date. I don't even remember what I took when I had the last cold as I was in Arizona at the time. When I finally dragged myself to Walgreen's last week for more supplies, I discovered that my favorite medication has been pulled from the shelves. Somehow I missed the whole pseudephedrine thing. Not knowing what the reason was, I bought the PE substitute. It's the antihistamine that I want anyway. I just don't want to end up with bronchitis.

It's interesting that I caught both colds the same way, I overexerted myself physically, and then got a chill. In Arizona, my son and I went for a long hike up Pass Mountain in the 90 degree heat and then headed for the pool afterwards. We both came down with a cold simultaneously. At Mammoth, I skied all day and headed for the hot tub afterwards. Both times I was not getting my full 8 hours of sleep every night either. And sugar was involved. I pooh-pooed that idea at first. I mean how could one little slip, one little yielding to temptation cause so much trouble? I'd had flour-less chocolate cake two nights in a row. Flour-less, but not sugar-less.

Then I discovered one theory that glucose and vitamin C are similar in structure and too much of one displaces the other in our cells.

It has been known for many decades that sugar depresses the immune system. It was only in the 70s that they found out that vitamin C was needed by white blood cells so that they could phagocytize bacteria and viruses. White blood cells require a fifty times higher concentration, at least inside the cell as outside, so they have to accumulate vitamin C.

There is something called a phagocytic index, which tells you how rapidly a particular macrophage or lymphocyte can gobble up a virus, bacteria or cancer cell. In the 70s Linus Pauling knew that white blood cells needed a high dose of vitamin C and that is when he came up with his theory that you need high doses of vitamin C to combat the common cold.

Insulin and Its Metabolic Effects
By Ron Rosedale, M.D.
Presented at Designs for Health Institute's BoulderFest August 1999
Seminar

I also tried the hydrogen peroxide in the ear cure. But I was way too late in starting this therapy, so whether it really worked or not, I can't tell. I had already had my cold and slight fever for a week when I tried it, so maybe I was due to start feeling better anyway. The joke is that no matter what you do, or what you take, a cold lasts two weeks.

Anyway, after a week of rest and recuperation, I am feeling much better and am left with a honking cough which I hope will go away soon as it scares people away.

The Slow Life

Grace and I have been having a discussion of sorts about the slow life, something we all wish we had, something many of us strive for, but something few of us attain. The slow life includes slow food, that's where you buy ingredients and make your own meals instead of buying prepared foods and especially fast foods. It includes slow clothing, where you make your own clothes instead of buying ready-made clothing that is often produced in sweat shops around the world. I suggested that we add slow music to the list. That's where you spend hours and days and weeks, months, and years of your life learning to play a musical instrument so that you can make your own music for entertainment. Here are some of my attempts to slow things down for myself.

The low-carb diet that I adhere to is definitely slow food I have to admit. It really helps to stay with the diet if you can do your own cooking. Last week I made a Pot-au-feu that took a whole afternoon to make but was out-of-this-world delicious. It could have taken longer, but I adapted the recipe to my needs which meant leaving out some of the ingredients. I just finished the last of the broth last night; I didn't want to waste one drop! The recipe came from a very slow-food cookbook, Lulu's Provençal Table by Richard Olney. The Lulu of the title is Lucie Tempier Peyraud, the wife of a French vintner, Lucian Peyraud and co-owner of Domaine Tempier, a vineyard and dwelling "nestled in the hillsides outside the neighboring fishing ports of Bandol and Sanary, some ten miles from Toulon and thirty miles from Marseilles."

A Pot-au-feu is basically a stew and includes several different kinds of meats. I made mine with some of my grass-fed beef and marrow bones that I bought last year when my daughter and I purchased a split side of beef from a California rancher. I love the instructions in the recipe that call for "freshly dug carrots." Apparently, Lulu can tell the difference. I did the best I could with carrots freshly bought from the Farmer's Market. Of course I added no potatoes and used no bread on which to spread the marrow. I love to eat marrow with a small spoon right out of the bone. The secret ingredient in the broth is a tangy white wine not red.

Knitting is definitely slow clothing especially, when it takes a whole year to produce a sweater! I have finished the back of Anya, but will have to put it aside for awhile as I will be travelling the next month and as I said in my earlier post on Anya, it is not a take-along project. So I have started something new which is definitely a take-along project, the Helon Dress from Rowan's newest magazine, No. 43 for Spring/Summer. This is an entirely crocheted dress, something I haven't done much of in years.

Crocheting makes me think of my mother who was so fond of it. She was constantly making something for someone right up until the day she died. In fact, she left a tablecloth unfinished for we don't know who. The mystery was never solved, so my sister finished the work and kept it. She says it helped her work through her grief. Interestingly, my sister is left-handed, my mother was not. Since the tablecloth was a work in the round, my sister had to reverse the direction and go the other way. She says she can knit both ways but never learned to crochet with her right hand.

I haven't really gotten off topic with all of this, it just made me think of when my mother, my sister, and I used to make all of our own clothing whether sewed, knitted or crocheted. Both my sister and I have pretty much stopped doing that. We don't have the time, or at least we don't think we have the time. My knitting is a hobby not a necessity. And sadly neither of us has taught our daughters the techniques so the skills will not be passed on.

Lastly, there's slow music. I get plenty of that. Grace, whose interests vary far and wide, came up with a link to a NY Times article on the subject. I have printed this piece out to give to all my adult students. It's never too late to learn to play an instrument and enjoy the benefits of slow music!

Adrenal Fatigue

Brain fog. That's what I've got today. It's what usually happens to me the morning after a concert only I never had a name for it until now. I feel not just tired physically, but brain tired. I can't make the simplest decision, like what to wear. I lounge in my PJs until noon. I read the newspaper and other people's blogs, and generally waste time until something gets me going again, usually lunch. I shouldn't even be trying to write this because there's no guarantee that it will make any sense. But after reading the book, Adrenal Fatigue by James Wilson, I can better understand what is happening to me when I get in this state and I have learned that since starting my low-carb diet, I am not as fatigued as I used to be. I am much more resilient.

According to Wilson, stress is cumulative. So while some people are laid low after a major event like an illness or emotional upset, others can just suddenly be unable to cope with ordinary things they have been doing all along because of the buildup of stresses. When I started to think about all the stressful things in my life I realized what a long list it is. I really feel that my reflux symptoms came on so suddenly last fall due to stress. When you are really fatigued, your adrenal glands can no longer produce enough hormones to enable you to rise to the occasion and handle the stress. You try to recover by eating sugary foods, or taking a stimulant like caffeine or other drugs, which only make things worse. In extreme cases, you end up with burnout, or a "nervous breakdown."

It wasn't until I read Wilson's book that I found a paradigm that fits my health profile. All you hear about these days is losing weight and avoiding insulin resistance, diabetes, and heart disease. Important health concerns, to be sure, but there's nothing for those of us at the other end of the spectrum, the ones who are underweight, who tend towards arthritis and osteoporosis, who have anxieties and depression, asthma and allergies. There's no recognition that there are some of us who may have weak adrenals to begin with and who have to drive ourselves "much harder than people with healthy adrenal function merely to accomplish life's everyday tasks."

The good news is that all of Wilson's recommendations for restoring health and strengthening the adrenals are things I have been doing anyway these last few years. Top of the list is a low carb diet because people with adrenal fatigue often have bouts of hypoglycemia as well. Next comes getting enough sleep. He recommends getting to bed by 10:30 (too late for me) and then sleeping in until 9:00 am, something I have never been able to do. But I can accomplish the same thing by getting to bed by 9:00 and getting up at 7:30 which is what I was trying to do before rehearsals started up again. And he recommends melatonin as a sleep aid. Exercise is important, too, but not excessive exercise, more like the kind that just gets your body moving and adds a little good stress to your life, like the exercises I blogged about here.

He goes into great length about the balance of potassium and salt which is something I have been trying to understand for a long time. It is the function of aldosterone, produced in the adrenals, to control our body's levels of these two minerals and thereby influence fluid volumes. He claims that by keeping track of your cravings for either salty foods or potassium containing fruits, you will know the state of your adrenals throughout the day. People with salt cravings, have low adrenal function. My potassium and salt levels were certainly out of whack when I had the severe reflux and I was dehydrated. In addition, the acid in our stomachs is HCl. The parietal cells produce the H (think proton as in "proton pump inhibitor"), and the Cl comes from NaCl, sodium chloride or salt. I now have a mug of warm water most but not every morning, with a quarter teaspoon of sea salt in it, a half hour before breakfast.

He also recommends vitamin C. He says if you know you are going to be up late, take extra vitamin C, the kind with bioflavonoids. I did this last week and it really made a difference. Vitamin C also helps with reflux as it is a natural component of gastric juices. By the way, another recommendation for the adrenals which also helps with reflux is licorice (DGL).

But the best advice he offers, in my opinion, is to keep a diary of your symptoms no matter how trivial they may seem. That way you can learn what it is that is really going on with you and find a solution to the problem. By keeping such a diary I was able to learn that many of the weird symptoms I was having last fall were due to dehydration, or adrenal fatigue, or hypoglycemia, etc. It made the illness less scary and gave me the hope that if I find myself in the same situation again someday, I can take counter measures and prevent another trip to the ER.