Skip to main content

Nose Job Healed after Eleven Short Years

Eleven years after my nose job, my nose has finally healed.

Back in 1999, I had septoplasty to straighten the inside of my nose. My doctor told me it would help me prevent my frequent sinus infections. (It didn't.) For the first time, I could breathe through both sides of my nose at once, but at the cost of constant nosebleeds. The septum (the cartilage inside the center of the nose) didn't heal until a few weeks ago.

Last May--seven months ago--I started taking megadoses of zinc. The nosebleeds mostly stopped. Then a few weeks ago after reading an abstract(1) on iron interfering with zinc absorption, I began taking iron at night and zinc in the morning. (According to the article, the interference applies only to non-food sources of the minerals. Go ahead and have your surf and turf without worry.)

An aside: since taking my iron and zinc at different times, I've been able to cut down on the magnesium. I went from 750 mg to 500 mg per day.

Over the past year, I've taken some other steps to improve my vitamin and mineral absorption: I eat very little grain (it's full of antinutrients), I soak and roast nuts and pumpkin seeds before eating them to neutralize their antinutrients, I stopped taking acid blockers (made possible through a low-carb diet), and I eat a good deal of fat with every meal. I don't drink coffee or tea within a few hours of taking an iron pill. I didn't do all these things to end my nosebleeds--but that's been one of the benefits. (I'm planning a post on all the health improvements I've seen on Christmas day, this blog's one-year anniversary.)

At long last, I've healed. The nosebleeds have all but stopped, even though this has been one of the driest winters I can remember.

What I Should have Done Instead of Septoplasty
  • I should have stopped eating wheat, and really, any other grains. I find wheat very congesting. The congestion gives germs a place to get a foothold and cause an infection.
  • I should have left the engineering field years sooner than I did. How can something that's so unstable be so dull? I work for an old, conservative, stable CPA firm now. Compared to the engineering field, it's like Animal House. I had constant sinus infections in college and for five years afterward bouncing around the job market. (However, I spent the first year out of college working on a loading dock where the air was so dirty my snot was gray. No sinus infections, though.) I left the field ten years ago and haven't had a sinus infection since.

Thinking about Having a Nose Job (Rhinoplasty)?
Unless you're knocking things over with your nose, or you're planning to trade on your good looks, don't. If you think it'll improve your chances of finding a mate, have you seen some of the married uggos out there? If my experience is any indication, plastic surgery is real surgery with real risks, blood, temporary splints sewn into your nose, drainage, vomiting, and a number of days of mouth-breathing and precious vacation days spent recovering. Fix everything else about your looks before thinking about surgery--you might change your mind.

What Not do Do
Don't take Flonase (an inhaled steroid). It doesn't help much, may make you worse, and increases your risk for diabetes.

(1) "Studies on the bioavailability of zinc in humans: effects of heme and nonheme iron on the absorption of zinc" by NW Solomons and RA Jacob. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, April 1981 vol. 34 no. 4 475-482.
Labels:

Comments

Aaron B. said…
How much zinc are you calling a "megadose"? I've been supplementing with zinc too, after learning of all the familiar symptoms that can be caused by too high a copper/zinc ratio, but I've been wondering if I should take more. Thanks.
January 27, 2011
Lori Miller said…
Aaron, I take 115 mg a day. That's in addition to eating meat one or two times a day.

The RDA is 15 mg a day--clearly not enough for me, but that may be enough for others.
January 27, 2011
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Not Only Cheaper, But Easier

A while back, I wrote about saving money on break time coffee and snacks. I haven't done very well putting it into practice. But a post by James Clear today got me thinking about it again: Warren Buffett uses a two-list system to prioritize things. Check it out --and follow the instructions. Using Buffett's two-list system, two of the goals I ended up with were taking care of myself and saving $400 more per month than I already am. As I said, I've been wanting to save money, and the system made me really focus on this. I came up with 11 money-saving ideas, six of which had to do with food. Buying hamburger in bulk. Ranch Foods Direct sells one-pound packages of 80% lean pastured ground beef in bundles of 20 for a lot less than Whole Foods. Sprouts only carries super-lean beef that's grass-fed, and it's more expensive, too.  Not driving to Whole Foods. Whole Foods is out of my way, and saving a weekly trip saves gas. Coffee at home, tea at work. Tea is fr...
24 comments
Read more

We Hate the ADA; Why does the Perfect Health Diet Get a Pass?

Some people keep touting the Perfect Health Diet as low-carb, but carb levels that are mostly in the triple digits aren't generally regarded as low-carb; in fact, one of the authors says low-carb diets are unhealthy. A lot of us hate the  American Diabetes Association's advice for diabetics: start with 45g to 60g of carbohydrate per meal and go higher or lower from there. That's 135g to 180g of carb. Perfect Health Diet advice for diabetics: eat 20% to 30% of your diet as carbohydrate. On 2,000 calories, that's 100g to 150g of carb. On 1,700 calories, that's 85 to 128g; on 2,200 calories, that's 112 to 168g. Depending on your carb and calorie intake, carbs would be 85g to 168g per day. That's not a mile off from the ADA's recommendations. Paul Jaminet, one of the authors of the Perfect Health Diet, says, "the basic biology here is that the body's physiology is optimized for a carbohydrate intake of about 30%." He warns against a ...
14 comments
Read more

Moving on to YouTube

Remember when the blogosphere was a wild ride? Doctors, writers and researchers dove into research, picked apart studies and stood up to official advice and conventional wisdom that didn't work. We found each other in the comments and made a community.  Along the way, Dr. T. Colin Campbell's research got exposed as shoddy by an English major, Tom Naughton made us laugh, "safe starch" fads made us scratch our heads, "Diabetes Warrior" Steve Cooksey almost went to jail, CarbSane trolled everyone who was anyone, and CarbSaneR trolled the troll.  Now it's very quiet. Blogs don't come up in Google search results anymore and even if they did, most of the bloggers have stopped writing.  That's why I've moved on to YouTube. Videos do come up in search results and my shorts--which are mostly what I make--get pushed out to hundreds of people or more. My videos are on food and health (biohacking), but also on growing things and fixing things. If you...
2 comments
Read more

Palpitations Gone with Iron

Thanks to my internet friend Larcana, who alerted me to the connection between iron deficiency and palpitations, I doubled down on my iron supplements and, for good measure, washed them down with Emergen-C. It's a cold medicine with a mega-dose of vitamin C, plus B vitamins and minerals. I don't think vitamin C does anything for a cold (a friend bought the stuff and left it at my house the last time she visited), but vitamin C does help iron absorption. After doubling up on iron in the last three days, I feel back to normal. (I'd already been taking quite a bit of magnesium and potassium, so I probably had sufficient levels of those.) How did I get so low on iron? Maybe it was too many Quest bars instead of red meat when I had odd cravings during my dental infection recently. Maybe because it's too hard to find liver at the grocery store and I haven't eaten much of it lately. Maybe the antibiotics damaged my intestines . And apparently, I'm a heavy bleeder . ...
18 comments
Read more

My Long-Term Experience Eating Safe (and Other) Starches

Years ago, before the Perfect Health Diet came out, I followed a program that involved eating quite a bit "safe starch." It was called Body for Life. It involved eating six small servings of carbohydrate along with six small servings of protein, plus two servings of fibrous vegetables per day. (A serving was the size of your fist or the palm of your hand.) There were six workouts a week (three weightlifting, three cardio) and one free day every week where you ate whatever you wanted and didn't exercise. In all fairness, these two programs are different: BFL allows certain grains, legumes and low-fat dairy and discourages fat. It doesn't call for a wheelbarrow full of vegetation. Nevertheless, my experience eating lots of fruit and lots of starch is relevant to the PHD because the amount and type of digestible carbohydrates are similar, and for the first few years, I didn't eat wheat except on free days. At first on BFL, I felt great. Before, I was continually...
17 comments
Read more