Pain, Pain, Go Away!

Are your eclipse glasses fake? The total solar eclipse over North America is almost here, and Indianapolis is in the "path of totality," meaning the moon will completely block the sun here. A lot of people have gotten special glasses to safely look at the eclipse. But the American Astronomical Society says , "counterfeit and fake eclipse glasses are polluting the marketplace." Some of the counterfeit glasses appear to be safe, the society says, but others are fakes that are no more effective than sunglasses. One of the counterfeits they describe matches the glasses someone gave me. I don't know where she got them, and she's not someone I'd trust to perform adequate due diligence. I just got over an eye injury and I don't need another one--I'll try the pinhole method instead to see crescents during the eclipse if it's not too cloudy. Picture from  Pexels .  Heart Centered Probiotic I started getting scary heart palpitations several years ago...

Regular readers might remember my bouts with respiratory illnesses: bronchitis that hung on for months, colds that wouldn't go away, sinus infections so frequent that I had sinoplasty many years ago (it didn't stop my sinus infections), and even a week in the hospital with a sinus infection when I was a kid. The sickest I ever felt was when I had the flu at age 17. As someone (maybe Dr. Eades) recently described, I remember where I was and what I was doing when it came on.  Last week when I felt a cold coming on, I figured I'd be sick for several days. I was tired and starting to get congestion and a sore throat. But it went away 12 hours later and didn't come back.  Photo from Unsplash . Maybe it was short COVID. Kidding aside, the only difference is that I've been taking Ideal Immunity , a probiotic made by Biotiquest. (I'm not an affiliate.) Some of the members at Dr. Davis's Inner Circle have been getting incredible results with Sugar Shift lowering thei...

Sitting in another doctor's office this week, I wondered if I was on my way to a 17-year bout with diarrhea, like John Nicholson in The Meat Fix . I wondered if this doctor would have any fresh insights. I wondered why Community Health sent me to a clinic 30 miles away when I live in a city full of doctors. This doctor saw that the lab never ran the lab test for ova and parasites as they were supposed to, so she opened the order for the test. After an examination and taking my symptoms, she suggested seeing a gastronenterologist. I countered with a request for a prescription for a gut zoomer test. She looked it up and was skeptical of it and admitted she wouldn't know know to read the results, but she did write out a prescription for it. No way was I going to get scoped and run the risk of ending up like Wolverine , who went in healthy for a colonoscopy and nearly died after getting perforated and needing an intestinal transplant.  Later that day, my stomach felt like it was bu...

Hazards have been lurking where I never expected them. A chipped fuse on a pressure cooker last week, and last night, navy bean soup and probiotics.  The new fuse on my pressure cooker held out despite my apprehensions: it looked a little different from the old one and maybe it was cheap junk that would blow out and let hot soup spray me while I washed the dishes. But the fuse held and I had a wonderful dinner of navy bean soup. Later, though, I was thirsty and my potassium was low.  Then the trouble started at 4:00 this morning. I woke up hot and jittery with diarrhea and spent a rough day at work. I've also been having what feels like  sleep paralysis , but while I'm wide awake. The problem has to be bacteria--beans are full of prebiotics that bacteria love to eat. Dr. Davis said based on some similar reactions to SIBO yogurt, I'm probably having a die-off reaction from BNR17, one of the ingredients in SIBO yogurt and in the Synbiotic 365 I started taking a few months a...

 March found me back in quarantine, as it did last year. This time, it wasn't a bad cold, but a three-week case of diarrhea. Pepto Bismol, Candibactin BR, black seeds (nigella), NAC, thyroid medication and probiotics did nothing; a jar of kimchi made it a lot worse. So I went to urgent care, where the doctor prescribed a stool test for C. difficile and other nasties that will make you extremely ill. C. diff is so toxic that my employer advised me to stay home until results were in. Of course, I didn't want to infect others, so I quarantined myself...again. I'm even working on my computer in the sunshine as I did last year. I forgot that it's hard to see the screen.   Photo from pixabay.com All the test results were negative, so I'm still trying to figure out why I have diarrhea. Hypotheses include too much B vitamins and too much gut bacteria. It all started shortly after beginning a new probiotic and re-starting thyroid medication (25 mg). As I mentioned, I took ...

It started with a round of healthy exercise back in 2012. I was riding my bike one minute and face-down on the sidewalk the next. My dentist predicted the two teeth that were knocked out of place would need a root canal someday, and early this year, one of them did. It took three rounds of antibiotics to clear the infection. The antibiotics left my already-touchy stomach railing against anything fatty--in other words, my normal diet. A few months later, the stress from a cross-country move where a lot was up in the air for months (my job, the purchase of one house while selling another, getting ready to sell the house, researching where to move), plus taking and then giving up my mother's dog, made 2015 the most stressful year I've ever been through. My nearly hour-long commute and going at ramming speed at work added to the stress. Then I stepped on a nail the night before I was going to pack up my stuff and leave--and I'm bad at packing. I pack up what I think is ever...

If you can sell a bag of potato chips, why can't you sell 1000mg potassium pills? I've finally found an answer to my cravings and heart palpitations, and unfortunately, it's potato chips. It's not that I've jumped on the safe starch bandwagon, it's just that it suits my current needs: I tend to get low on salt and potassium. The chips have a lot of both, making my heart and energy level feel normal. I'm too wound up about moving to be very hungry. Therefore, I can eat half a bag at a time because I'm not eating much else. I've turned into one of those people who's lost weight eating potatoes. My stomach hasn't been normal since those three courses of antibiotics from my root canal. The chips feel good on my stomach if I don't eat too many. Downsides: Acne, gas, a bit of reflux, and probably a lack of certain nutrients.  Potassium isn't one of those nutrients, though. An eight-ounce bag of potato chips has 3727 mg o...

People seem intrigued by quirky, counterintuitive ways of eating. Here's mine: spicy food for an upset stomach. The horse pill sized antibiotics I've been taking for my sinus infection are giving me a stomach ache of equal  proportion. The cookies and brownies my employer set out today for recruits looked tempting, but I know from bitter experience that starchy, sugary food doesn't absorb stomach acid. Back when I was on Body for Life, a few years into the program, my stomach was constantly upset. Probiotics and herbal medicines didn't help: I ended up on prescription acid blockers. Once I stopped eating six servings of carbohydrates a day, the stomach problems evaporated--as long as I followed a few rules. 1. No wheat. 2. No fruit. 3. Limited carbohydrates--around 50g per day (net). A few months ago, I watched a friend of mine eat a breakfast of juice, yogurt and fruit (in other words, a breakfast of sugar), get a stomach ache, eat some more sugar, and get ano...

I was *this close* to being over my sinus infection. I was well enough to spend an afternoon at a fair and go out dancing. The next day, though, when the antibiotics were out of my system, my energy left and my cough came back. Again: good diet does not conquer all; we can't heal ourselves against every bug. Consider how many Native Americans died of diseases when Europeans reached North America. Consider how much faster bacteria and viruses mutate than we do. This is a clever bug I have: it's held on through a course of antibiotics, yet it isn't strong enough to kill its host. Why me? Long ago, a scan showed I have only seven sinuses: they have to do the work of eight. And I've had some unhappiness at work. All my sinus infections have come when I was especially stressed at work or school. What to do? My nurse suggested giving myself a chance to heal using nasal washes. I already tried that. As much as I believe a good diet helps make you healthy, my observation w...

Years ago, a classmate who was taking antibiotics told me she could make $100 by participating in a study on yeast infections. She always got a yeast infection, she said, when taking antibiotics. I told her she might avoid a yeast infection by taking Lactinex (lactobacillus), a probiotic that replenishes the good bacteria that antibiotics kill. She reported later that the Lactinex worked--and that it wasn't worth $100 to get a yeast infecton. A few weeks ago, I had stomach aches and motion sickness while I was taking cleocin (another antibiotic). Normally, I can spin and spin without getting dizzy, let alone seasick. But I was suddenly unable to even read on the bus. Taking probiotics (Udo's Choice Super 5 Lozenge Probiotic) made me feel better. Super 5 contains lactobacillis acidophilus, bifidobacterium bificum, streptococcus thermophillus, l. bulgaricus and l. salivarius. Some of these are in various brands of yogurt, but you'd have to eat a lot of yogurt to get as much f...

Monday, I was back in the dentist's chair to get a permanent filling. I told the dentist about the muscle relaxant (Cyclobenzaprine) that my TMJ doctor prescribed. It had stopped the pain in its tracks. The most helpful things I found for my tooth infection and root canal pain: Hot water bottle for pain. Cyclobenzaprine for muscle spasms and intense pain. Ibuprofin for three or four hours' moderate relief from intense pain. Probiotics (Udo's Choice Super 5 Lozenge Probiotic) for my stomach while I took cleocin (an antibiotic). The cleocin must have killed some of the good bio in my digestive system, which the probiotics helped restore.