Pain, Pain, Go Away!

Tonight I created the perfect muffin. This is not the gluten-free baked goods of the 90s that tasted like cardboard. From the top of the muffin to the bottom, it's moist and delicious. It's a variation on Mark Sisson's pumpkin muffin recipe, which is a variation of a Bruce Fife recipe. The red kuri squash was a bit cheaper at the store than pie pumpkins. It has a mild flavor (despite being called "onion squash" in the UK, apparently after its shape). To cook it, stab it through to the center around the top a few times with a meat fork or sharp knife and bake it on a cookie sheet or pie dish at 350F (175C or gas mark 4) for an hour. Allow it to cool, then cut it in half, scoop out the seeds, scoop the flesh into a pan, and mash with a potato masher. (You could use a food processor if you don't mind the cleanup.) Red kuri squash. Image by  Marzena P.  from  Pixabay   Perfect Muffins 12 servings. 1/2 cooked red kuri (hokkaido) squash, cooked and

I know I've been saying this for three months...but I think I am finally over my bronchitis. Three cheers for adrenal supplements! I kept using 35mg per day of hydrocortisone cream, until one day last week when I became puffy and gained a couple of pounds. That's a sign you're overdoing the hydrocortisone. I backed off, then started taking adrenal cortex extract that finally arrived. I waited until Saturday to take it because I wanted to be home in case I didn't feel well on it. Saturday morning I woke up with a persistent headache, but today, I felt 42 again . I installed a new car stereo, planted some ferns, cleaned up the yard, fixed the fences--and I'm a little sore because it's been awhile since I worked so hard. Much credit to the book Stop the Thyroid Madness, Updated Revised Edition, for its chapters on treating your adrenals.

I think I finally understand why I've had bronchitis off and on for months, why I had scary heart palpitations for years up until a few days ago, and why I couldn't fast or do well on keto/Atkins induction. The reason is adrenal fatigue. Some call it a made-up illness (there's no insurance code for it), but here are the results of my lab test for adrenal hormones: Green is optimal; my cortisol levels are mostly suboptimal. DHEA is in the tank. My adrenals are clearly at the low end. As Dr. William Jefferies put it, "Patients with mild adrenal deficiency describe wanting to do things but feeling too exhausted to undertake them..." The latter is exactly how I've felt for quite a while.  Cortisol, one of the adrenal hormones, helps you deal with inflammation and stress; it also helps regulate blood sugar, metabolism and immune responses. When my dog Molly died in 2017 and I started breaking out in hives at night, it was probably a lack of cortisol. Wh

Kamala Harris discusses her stance on red meat and the US Dietary Guidelines. While she says she "love[s] cheeseburgers from time to time," she says she would change the Dietary Guidelines to reduce red meat specifically and introduce "incentives" to educate Americans about the environmental effects of what they eat. Kamala should have said she needed to study the issue more. In reality, the perennial grasses that cattle eat prevent runoff and help keep carbon in the ground. Some farmers like Allan Savory say that properly done grazing restores desert and reduces or eliminates the need for fertilizer. Cattle and other livestock can grow on land that's unsuitable for growing crops. And land lush with plants is cooler than desert--even my little suburban lot in Colorado, where the front yard was planted with flowers and bushes instead of lawn, felt a degree or two cooler than surrounding yards planted with water-sucking grass.  If you're not ea

Popping the Umcka Cold Care pills has made me feel a lot better. I'm still coughing, but no longer wondering if I should see someone. And what if I did see a doctor? According to official websites like the Mayo Clinic, WebMD, and MedlinePlus.gov, you should "wash your hands," "use a humidifier," "wear a face mask," and "stop smoking" if you have bronchitis--which it says is "rarely" caused by infection. Are they writing this for people in Somalia? I already wash my hands and I've never smoked in my life. Use a humidifier? I live in Indiana, where it's so wet that we need de humidifiers. "Wear a face mask"? Why not put some leaches on, too? I work in an office in the US, not a construction site or the middle of a forest fire. Of course, the ubiquitous advice is "see your doctor." Which you'll need to do if you try to cure your bronchitis with hand washing and a face mask. "Stop smoking"

I've always been a night owl. Look at my posts and you can see a pattern of them being written late at night. Yet lately it's been more pronounced. Saturday mornings, I can barely function. Today is Labor Day, and it's kind of like a Saturday. After sitting around watching Overboard and  Fluffy , playing with the dog and wondering if I should seek medical help, it was like someone wound me up at 8 PM. I mowed the lawn, finished the ironing and made low-carb cookies. I feel like I could go  "diggin' ditches through an isthmus, and rough ridin' down to Cuba like 'What's up bitches!'"   I'd love to feel like this during the day so I could get more done and then sleep at night. That, and not feel like I need medical help for the first 12 hours of the day. I'm going to take an adrenal function test next weekend and hope that sheds some light on my problems. Maybe part of my problem is that I still have bronchitis I caught July 4. However

Ah, the Fourth of July. The summer weather, the fat, juicy burgers, the fireworks, the last day I didn't have a cold for over a month. I woke up feeling good, got a lot done, but by evening I didn't even feel like standing on the corner to see fireworks. I called in sick the following Monday and Tuesday. On August 4--one month later, I took a turn for the worse and saw a doctor, who wrote a prescription for antibiotics and cough syrup. I called in sick for the next three days. Then I went to work--still coughing, coworkers telling me it would be OK to go home--and picked up my natural desiccated thyroid (NDT). I started taking it that Saturday--and soon my cold started getting better. As the week went on and I needed to up my dose of NDT, the cough started coming back to the point that I thought about going back to the doctor. But I upped the dose--and again, the cough mostly went away. I was thinking I'd need Sheriff Grimes on the case to kill the cold that wouldn't