Ranting

I have always held firmly to the belief “You are what you eat.� The food we eat is directly related to our general over-all good health. The medicinal properties of foods continues to amaze me as I learn more and more about the complex chemical makeup of plant matter. The fact that the medical profession rarely turns to nature for healing powers but adheres strictly to chemical pharmacology has always been an area of great concern. I also wonder how many are in the profession as physicians for reasons other than concern and care for the greater health of the human race. In my research I have read several statements that not only shocked me but also produced some anger. The general nature of the commentaries being – if old fashion home rememdies really work why hasn't someone put them to clinical trials?I then ask myself, “Haven't they?� For centuries people where subject to little to no health care by means of educated physicians. They relied on home remedies and the care of those who understood the medicinal properties of plants. Physicians of the day often relied on herbal means as cure and treatment for the ails of the ill. Is not centuries of usage of plants by people from all global regions proof that herbal rememdies can and do indeed work as well as or better than synthetics? In my opinion the medical field (while truly being an asset and help to a great many in numerous fields of study) often times comes across as a money making machine with a cold heart. Pharmacutical companies give physicians perks for peddling their brand of 'medicines' and it continues in a cycling circle as one money machine feeds another. There is no point in wasting time discussing the high cost of health care. There is a point in helping people to see they can and should take responsibility for their own health. Do the homework, make the changes in your life and stop waiting for the miracle pill that will solve everything. I am not a fanatic that believes there is a holistic approach to everything. I am a fanatic in that I believe there is a balance between the two. Those people who take control of their own health, determine theraputic regimens that work for themselves and seek medical advice and treatment not as a last means but as a means to being and remaining healthy are the greatest successors. Educating ones self and being active in ones own health and not relying solely on a physician is the first step in living a healthier, happier and more productive life. As research is continually finding everyone's body works differently. What is normal for me may not be normal for you. Age, sex, race, seasonal change, regional orientation, climates, all these factors and many more play a huge role in the areas of 'normality' for individuals. Add to the these the extraneous factors that impact our every day lives and you have millions of people who each need to be treated differently for their health care needs. I have read so many times that stress is not a factor in the health and well being of patients who suffer with peptic ulcers. I have read it so many times I could scream. If stress plays so little role in our health why are there so many books written as guides to lowering stress effects on the body? Why do physicians recommend lifestyle changes that will help to manage stress in making us healthier? Certainly stress is a major factor in our daily health. It is the good stress vs. the bad stress that has to be defined. I myself work best under certain stressful conditions and the end result is top notch. There is something that clicks and my brain turns on. The creative juices flow. The synaps beging synapsing. I become focused and single minded and there is a force to produce that drives me to the very end. Along with the final outcome there is a sense of a job well done, pride in work produced and the good feeling of accomplished exhaustion that is rejuvinating. The bad stress we all know is the lingering kind. Demands of a high profile job. Concerns over our children. Being able to provide for a family. Maintaining a level of living that is above the poverty level. Providing opportunity for our loved ones. All these things along with paying the mortgage, getting kids through college and a million other every day concerns lend themselves to stress. Let's make a distinction here, I am not talking about keeping up appearances or competing with those around you so that you look as if there is success. These are more than stressors. These hint at other flaws and problems that need to be dealt with. Big, houses, fancy cars, people throwing money into the way they live so as those of us looking in believe their life is better than our own. Meanwhile they are buying on credit, strapped for cash, borrowing from one credit card to pay another, until they have dug a hole so deep you can vauguely see China. Those kinds of stressors are self inflicted amd I doubt those people will wake up and actually see the big picture. When the house of cards finally comes tumbling down they will find relief from their there own hell of stress. I admit I am a worry wart but I have learned over the years there are some things I can control and some things I can't control. I try to let go of the things I can't control and live well through those trials and focus my energies on the things I can change. I can't live my children's lives for them. I can't make decisions that impact their lives for them. As hard as it to watch, failure can be a good thing and we have to stand back and let them learn that. We all know failure can be healthy, it is part of what drives us to try again and again hopefully to some day become successful. All I can do is love my children well, support their interests and efforts, teach them to be moral and upstanding and educate them so that they have a means to be successful. Parents are a role model. We are the books our children read. We are the greatest factor of influence on who they are and who they will become. Compounded with a million other daily factors and if that doesn't give you a stomach ulcer .. well, you have a cast iron stomach! Peptic ulcers are serious business. When they are left untreated they can and in many cases do lead to life threatening situations. Take your health into your hands and make educated decisions to heal yourself. If you listen and pay careful attention your body will tell you what is wrong. The key is picking up on the warning signs and actively providing opportunity for healing. Your body has an amazing ability to heal itself! I can't say enough, “Educate yourself, listen to your body, be active in your health and courses of treatment.� This is the place where I have to rid myself of liability and tell you that you should seek medical advice and guidance as a part of normal health and well being. Physicians are not the bad guys. Physicians are, however, a tool in our toolbox that is to be utilized for a successful out come in treating and preventing health issues. If you have a physician who doesn't listen to you, who gawfaws over your ability to acertain and utilize your own knowledge to help yourself GET A NEW PHYSICIAN! I like to think we are the average American family. In some ways maybe we are. In some areas we may fall above or below the term 'average'. We are educated and this includs many areas of self educated. We listen to our bodies and we know when something is out of sync. I met Steve in August of 2003. We met on the internet. (Warning bells just went off in your head ... we are not average ... but in this day and age, I hate to have to bring you into the 21st century, but this is average and very common place.) From day one we became friends, confidants and realized many similarities in ourselves. We overlap a lot. We built out relationship on openness, honesty, openmindedness and a true friendship. We made a pact, a promise, to one another. We will never lie, keep secrets and will always maintain open communication – the very keys to having a healthy relationship. By November we made plans for he and I to meet the weekend before Thanksgiving. It was exciting yet frightening at the same time. Both of us previously had an internet relationship that ended without having met and in many ways without closure and a few bad terms. We both spent the better part of 3 years recovering from failed marriages that ended in divorce. We were both also under the stress of an ex-spouse who could and at times did make life difficult. I have lived in a rural farming community all of my life. I grew up on a farm, married, stayed there, purchased my childhood home, tried to keep a 14 years marriage afloat and raised my children pretty much alone – yes, even tho I was married. After my divorce, I lost my home in an estate settlement and moved to a much smaller home just a couple miles away. I had long taken control of our lives, homeschooling my oldest daughter, went to work for the local school board, took a part-time full-time job as a school bus driver and tried to live life in such a way as to be the stay at home mom my kids needed. It was a struggle day to day. I managed to raise two bright, moral, sensitive, compassionate children who like themselves. We may not have had everything we wanted but our needs were met and we had many of the extras we did want. I was able to provide and remain for the most part a stay at home mom with pretty much unlimited time to devote to my children. Steve lived a very different lifestyle. He is the son of a retired Air Force Lt. Colonel with an educational background in nuclear physics and a stay at home mom, both whom enforced the need of quality education. He had a very strong moral and ethic upbringing, as I did, where success is measured in terms of career and a stable family life. Divorce and loosing custody of his young daughter really took a tole on him emotionally and physically. As chief software architect for an up and coming government contracting firm, the high stress of his job also left itself evident in his physical being. On top of that the ravages of poor eating habits and the general lifestyle of many single dads, and heavy smoking, it is safe to say he was a prime candidate for peptic ulcers and a serious heart condition. I drove 600 miles from rural eastern Georgia to Northern Virginia not too far from Washington, D.C. After nine hours I pulled my Explorer into an empty parking space alongside his Mustang in front of his suburban townhouse. I sat outside in the dark for at least 15 minutes, collecting myself and waiting to see if he noticed my arrival – which should have been evident. I was parked in plain view from his front windows which were bare of any draperies. I stepped out of the truck and with bags in tow, climbed the steps to the front door to meet my destiny. When the door opened there stood my sweet Steve. Handsome in a black suit and remembering by fondness for pink roses, he had a long stemmed beauty for me. It wasn't until I was on my way back home, those long hours of interstate being eaten away under the truck tires, my mind began to make assessments and I became gravely concerned for his overall well being. He was thin – very thin. At 6'1� his thirty inch waist made him terribly thin. When I held him I could feel his ribs easily and there was an unnatural vibration thoughtout his whole body. His hands shook far beyond being nervous and jittery over our first meeting. His skin had a sallowness to it and the dark circles under his eyes indicated severe fatigue. His all around health could not be defined as anything but poor. As my worries sky rocketed, the nurturer in me drove me. I tried not to nag at him about eating and taking care of himself although I do know it was indeed nagging. On my visits I cooked and left his freezer full of good eats. All he had to do after work was reach into the freezer, pull out a dinner, pop it in the microwave and in minutes he had a healthy balanced meal far better for him than the fifty cent burritoes and Chinese or pizza take-out of his past. Before then, I am sure the only meals he had that resembled anything nutritious were the times he was too tired to cook and he and his daughter dined at one of the many better than fast food restaurants in the area. I was grateful for the nights he would have dinner with his parents or he dropped by and his mother fed him. He always has shown a concern for his daughter's health and dietary needs. He made sure there were always fresh fruits, vegetables, yogurts and vitamins as a part of her daily meals but for himself he was very neglectful. Often his rational was either it was cheap or it wasn't worth the time and effort to cook for one. This was foreign to me. I can see not wanting to dine alone. I can see being tired and instead of a meal snacking or having take-out occassionally but living off of cheap prepackaged foods was mind boggling. I have always cooked, growing my own herbs and vegetables, fruits available from each season on the trees right near our home, baking bread and desserts from scratch as taught to me by my mother and grandmother from early childhood. My grandmother would let my younger sister and I sit on the counter and watch her while she prepared meals. I feel the love and effort she put into every dish is what gave us both the love of cooking and providing good things for own families. We spent Christmas and New Year's in Virginia. Never in 37 years had I been away from my own family during the holidays. This not only told my mother this was a serious relationship but it also was a chance for me to take care of him. He is the kind of man who feels he is letting everyone down if he isn't taking care of them in some way but it was time for him to let someone take care of him for a change. My oldest daughter and I spent a lot of time in the kitchen, often involving the younger two girls. We cooked daily and by the time we departed there was a noticeable change in him and his freezer. His skin has lost its palor, the dark circles under his eyes were retreating and the tremor in his body was gone. He actually looked to have put on weight in those two weeks. By mid-January we had decided we couldn't live well apart. My girls and I closed up our little home in rural Georgia and hauled ourselves and what we could carry to Virginia. It is what I dubbed “The Country Mouse Goes To Town.� Amidst scrubbing, painting, rearranging and making a new home for all of us, I found cooking for 5 for was as easy as cooking for 1 or 3. I always cooked plenty -homestyle country cooking of the southern variety. I served the table with fresh vegetables, lean meats, fresh breads daily. By April Steve not only looked healthier but he felt healthier -except for the times I noticed him holding or rubbing absently at his lower chest. One thing concerned me more and more. The stress of his job left him mentally and physically far more fatigued than he let on. When I asked he was always truthful. He told me of the tightness in his chest and the pain in his lower chest. The condition had been present for the better of a year past. This was serious but he always seemed to wave it off as something he had dealt with and would deal with presently the same. Ignoring it. As my concerns grew I could see his concerns were growing. He finally took an initial albeit baby step by starting a daily stress formula vitamin. For me this was not enough and I was loading his plate at meals times with double portions. I knew when he finally pushed back from the table he would have consumed at least more than one portion of foods that were good for him. As he has never been one to indulge in sweets I knew his consumption of vegetables, fruits, whole grain breads and lean meats was giving his body tools on which to repair and build on his general well being. The one day a week that he worked at home I made sure he had a full lunch which was fresh salads, fruits, and healthy homemade deli-style sandwiches. He has never complained. He eats what I prepare and only once did not like something I served – rice and tomatoes. I then hinted around and asked if I sent something simple with him to work, would he eat it. He agreed he would try. I began sending fresh jumbo sized muffins and bagels with him to have in the late mornings with his coffee. This way I knew he had something in his stomach that was good for him instead of black coffee, water and an occassional Romein soup. I had begun in February paying much closer attention to things he told me -little to no appetite, nausea, heartburn, chest tightness, pain, fatigue, high stress, smoking, high coffee intake, gas, irregular bowel habits, previous weightloss, all signs to me of a peptic ulcer. I cut back on the meats I served and tried to get more fresh vegetables and fruits into his diet. Some evenings I prepared a vegetarian meal for supper. Anything I could think of that would help relieve the pain and discomfort he was choosing to live with and not deal with in a sound way. By April I was constantly asking him to try something over the counter – Tagamet, Pepsid, something, anything. I had also considered buying it myself and insisting that he take it. I did not. I knew that he had to take an interest for himself in helping himself for any changes to occur. The old saying you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink rings true in so many ways. Finally, the end of April brought with it his own declaration he was going to try an over the counter medication. He had conversations with his work mates about their health issues – those that could reflect his own and came to the conclussion he should try something. One Sunday evening on the way home from returning his daughter after weekend visitation he stopped in at a nearby pharmacy and looked on the shelves and made a choice for himself. That evening he took one Pepsid AC. The relief of his discomfort was dramatic. However, this is not a cure for his problem, only a reliever of the symptom. It was then in the following week he decided with my pushing to take an active role and try to heal his problem not just deal with the symptoms. What is a Peptic Ulcer? We all know from elementary school and our basic study of the human body that the contents of the stomach is acidic. Our stomach is lined with a mucous coating that protects us from the hydrochloric acid (HCl) the stomach produces to aid in the digestion of the food we eat and to prevent infection. An ulcer is a sore that is produced when the acidity of the stomach is excessive and/or the mucous lining is insufficient to protect the stomach. There are serveral determining factors in the development of a stomach ulcer. Research in the past decade has shown that as much as 80 – 90% of the peptic ulcers in the US is caused by the bacteria known as Helicobactor pylori or known in the shortened term H. pylori. The bacteria is almost always found present in people who suffered from peptic ulcers but it is also present in people who do not develop ulcers. The use of Aspirin and other non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) such as ibuprofen and naproxen is also a factor in those who present an ulceration of the stomach lining. Heavy smokers and excessive drinkers are also at high risk for forming ulcers. Ulcers are also found to be present in stomach cancers. What are the symptoms? There are some people who present no symptoms of a stomach ulcer at all. While others may present one or all symtoms. - Gastric ulcers present general discomfort that subsides when having eaten whereas duodenal ulcers present sharp pain upon eating. - Loss of appetite and in some rare cases increase in appetite. - Nausea - Vomiting - Belching - Bloating - Weightloss - Abdominal pain just below the chest bones. Steve had most of these. Diagnosis In a clinical setting tests are performed to identify the presence of H. pylori and to rule out stomach cancer. The test for H. pylori is done by either a breath test or a blood test. The breath test is performed by giving the patient a substance to drink. In the presence of H. pylori the substance is broken down and produces a gas that is then present in the breath. This is also the same test performed to check for the eradication of the bacteria. Having the patient drink a substance with barium and then xraying the stomach and upper intestine will produce white areas that may show an image of ulcer damage in the tissues. Another way is by gastroscopy. An endoscope, a tube containing fibre optic cable, is threaded through the mouth and into the stomach.The physician can then see the lining of the stomach and extract a sample which is then tested for the presence of H. pylori. This tissue sample is also examined under a microscope to check for the presence of cancer cells. For me, the less invasive a diagnosis can be determined the better. Introducing foreign objects into the body surely is opening the body up to outside infections. Treatment Treatment of an ulcer requires a change in your lifestyle to not only relieve discomfort but to speed up the healing of the ulcer. Recommandations are to avoid foods that irritate and cause discomfort, stop smoking, weight loss of the patient is over weight, stop taking NSAIDs and prescription or over the counter medication, depending on severity, to reduce the acid of the stomach. There are two groups of medications used to lower the acid of the stomach. H2-antagonists which include ranitidine,Zantac, and cimetidine, Tagamet. The second is proton pump inhibitors which are more powerful in reducing the production of the acid in the stomach. Typical brands are Losec and Zoton. In the presence of H. pylori the physician may prescribe one of the above and as many as two antibiotics taken for 10 – 14 days. In most cases ridding the infection of the H. pylori bacteria allows the ulcer to heal and prevents another occurance. In persistance cases with reoccurring ulcers the physician may use the barium and gastroscopy procedures to determine the cause and nature of the ulcers. Peptic ulcers can be complicated to treat. Some people have gone so long as the ulcer is bleeding and in severe cases the ulcer has perforated the stomach. This means a hole is eaten through the stomach. This is severe and requires immediate emergency care. A bleeding ulcer is evidenced in blood in the vomit, either bright red or dark colorations that look similar to coffee grounds indicating old blood. Blood in the stool is dark red in color or black and tarry. Slow bleeding ulcers further complicate healing as the body becomes anemic and enough oxygen is not passed through the cells to help promote tissue regeneration. For myself, this treatment course is less than satisfactory. Where is the active participation in helping the ulcer to close? Certainly there is more to be done that taking a couple pills for 2 weeks. It seems to me there is treatment of symptom and cause but no active plan to heal the wound other than time. Mother nature provides us will many tools in form of plant materials that gives us weapons to prevent and heal our bodies. We must take action and give our bodies the building blocks to restore itself. Good nutrition is essential. We are waiting on the arrival of the juicer and the wheatgrass, brocolli and alfalfa seeds. Any day now they should arrive and within 7 - 9 days we will be experimenting with our first of these juices. Daily Update: May 3 AM: Juice and herbals Noon: Lemon poppyseed muffin and Cabbage salad PM: Homemade Chicken soup and Cornbread, herbals The cold/sinus brought Steve home from work early. He went to bed and slept till nearly 7pm. Early to bed, around 10pm, he slept thru the night with coughing and sweating out a fever. He looks improved this morning. He is home and I am filling him to brimming. The Manuka honey from New Zealand arrived yesterday and I have added 1 tsp to his morning herbal tea. No complaints of stomach or chest discomforts.