Pain, Pain, Go Away!

How do you recognize a bad situation when it's like the air you breathe? Literally is the air you breathe? A couple of really bad days, years apart, finally clued me in that cooking fumes were giving me sinus headaches, which led to neck pain. So I ordered a range hood and stopped cooking onions in the meantime. Sinus problems and neck pain--absent. To the best of my recollection, no house I ever lived in (until last week) had a properly working range hood, or any range hood. My previous house had a small, east-facing window next to the stove that might have helped. But when I lived in a dorm, I don't think I ever had a cold, and the only sinus pain I remember from that time was during a bad allergy season. I put in a range hood last weekend. It's ductless--it doesn't vent to the outside, but filters the air through charcoal filters and recirculates it back into the kitchen. For its maiden meal, I sautéed peppers, onions and zucchini. I could smell the peppers cooking,...

Sometimes it takes a lousy day to make you figure out what's wrong. And today was a lousy day. First, it took an half an hour to get through the line at the understaffed Kroger. When I came home, the house still smelled like onions from canning chili the day before, and my headache and sore neck started getting worse. I ate some leftover chili and roused myself to go shop for a new washer, since mine is leaking from the bottom, as the plumber I called for a clogged drain discovered. An appliance repairman on YouTube said washers are badly built nowadays; I bought a brand unlikely to break down for a good seven years or so. It set me back three times what I paid in the 90s for a Kenmore that lasted at least 20 years. There was no use shopping for a used one here in Indianapolis: people here use appliances until they're worn out. By mid-afternoon, I was back home and took some Mucinex for my sinus pain...and realized I'd felt OK while I was out shopping. It was like Christmas...

"You might want to read The China Study ." Good lord, there's someone still recommending that book after it was debunked by an English major and picked apart by Michael Eades and Chris Masterjohn ? Recommended by someone who works in a dentist's office, no less--where they're supposed to tell you to avoid carbage? Yet the dental hygienist did today. Maybe she was worried about business slowing down. Maybe she hadn't heard that at least two of its main critics got a mouthful of cavities on vegan or vegetarian diets. I didn't have any cavities, sensitive gums or other issues that a little more flossing wouldn't fix, and told her that I quit getting cavities after I started a low-carb diet. I added that since I'm from a family full of diabetes, that's another reason to be on a low-carb diet. "Well, if your diet isn't working for you, read The China Study. " I wasn't about to argue with a vegan holding a pick in my mouth. ...

That's what I gather from my sniffling, sneezing coworkers. Accuweather.com says dust and dander levels are high now. Huh. I suffered so long and so badly with allergies that it's strange to feel fine while others are going around with sinuses packed tighter than a 200-pound woman in size eight pants. Since I started a wheat-free diet, I've been mostly free of allergies. (My hay fever last year might have been brought on by drinking almond milk laced with carrageenan, a thickener and inflammatory. If your sinuses are inflamed, it won't take much mucus to fill them up.) I also don't use any dairy besides butter; it can cause congestion. To paraphrase an old saying, nothing tastes as good as a clear head feels.

Long-time readers may recall my sinus infection that just wouldn't die. Over six months, I took antibiotics, long naps, a decongestant that gave me an allergic reaction so bad I stopped to wonder if I'd wake up the next morning . It finally ended when I came up with SWAMP and took megadoses of vitamin D, Mucinex and salt. It's February and once again, I've been fighting off a cold for a few weeks. While SWAMP consists of taking 50,000 IU of vitamin D for two days, I've had to take 40,000 IU for the past several days to keep my cough from getting worse. I'm not the only one who's taken large doses like this long term. Jeff T. Bowles, a layman, wrote and self-published a book called THE MIRACULOUS RESULTS OF EXTREMELY HIGH DOSES OF THE SUNSHINE HORMONE VITAMIN D3 MY EXPERIMENT WITH HUGE DOSES OF D3 FROM 25,000 to 50,000 to 100,000 IU A Day OVER A 1 YEAR PERIOD (caps in original) about his research and experiences. Bowles is a little crazy, and his problems...

I've been on a reading jag about evolution: The Greatest Show on Earth  by Richard Dawkins and Why Evolution is True  by Jerry A. Coyne. I also threw in Dawkins' 1991 Christmas Lectures titled "Growing up in the Universe."   (Link goes to online videos.) A few things worth knowing (among many others): Evolution hasn't made our bodies perfect. The earliest life was bacteria, and all life forms have changed by tiny increments ever since. There was no going back to the drawing board and starting a new, more logical design. For instance, our maxillary sinuses draining at the top is a trait we inherited from ancestors who walked on all fours (their sinuses drain at the front).(1) Both books have an entire chapter on parts that have evolved badly. Good fuel helps a lot, but it won't fix a bad design. Natural selection can occur rapidly. We're all familiar with bacteria evolving resistance to antibiotics. But natural (or artificial) selection has been observ...

Certain things should be left in the aquarium. Readers may recall my ordeal last Saturday with a migraine headache and a trip by ambulance back to my parents' house. Thanks to one of the paramedics jogging my memory, I researched the almond milk I'd started drinking around the time I quit dairy. One of the ingredients was carrageenan, a substance used to induce inflammation, sensitivity to pain and other problems in laboratory animals. Supposedly, the "undegraded" form is safe for human consumption, but undegraded carrageenan has been found to be contaminated with degraded carrageenan, and there are ways that the digestive system could degrade carrageenan itself. For the past few months, I've felt a little bloated, and was starting to have some mild pain in my lower stomach. I thought it might have been the effects of the antibiotics, oral steroids or decongestant (which gave me an allergic reaction) from back in February. I didn't connect it to the sev...

Let me tell you about my ride in an ambulance last night. I woke up at six o'clock from a nap with a mild headache. I ate dinner and took my vitamins, along with a couple of extra magnesium pills. Since magnesium helps my TMJ flare-ups, I thought it might help my headache. Then I went to see my mother. A few hours later, I had a severe headache, sinus pain and nausea. During a brief respite from the pain, I left for home, but less than a mile later, I got out of my car and threw up. A cop, Officer Fisher, pulled up behind me and asked if I was okay. He believed me when he said I hadn't been drinking, but he said I seemed lethargic and he wanted the paramedics to see me. (Later he mentioned that a man he'd recently stopped was having a stroke.) Thinking I had a migraine headache, the paramedics wanted to take me to the hospital. But since I knew that doctors don't know what causes migraine headaches, and I didn't know what effect their medicine would have on m...

As our friends on the East Coast dry off and dig out from under a foot of snow, it's a beautiful 80-degree evening here in Denver, Colorado. Truth to tell, though, I wish it were snowing here too: it would stop my hay fever in its tracks. If you have pain in your upper teeth, in your face, and behind your eyes, a runny nose, and itchy eyes, you may have allergies, too. Some say that this has been one of the worst years for allergy sufferers. I've had allergies most of my life and I've tried a number of different things for relief. Here's what has and has not worked for me: Allergy shots. They worked--but they're inconvenient and expensive. Antihistamines. They work, but they make you drowsy. Avoiding dairy. This doesn't necessarily prevent allergies, but it may keep you from getting even more congested. (Milk, whey and certain brands of cream bother me.) For alternatives, try coconut milk or almond milk, or even another brand of cream. Avoiding wheat. H...

I recently wrote about my SWAMP hypothesis of curing a sinus (or upper respiratory) infection with Mucinex, salt and a large dose of vitamin D. In testing my hypothesis on my own infection, I may have overdosed a little on the vitamin D , so I've been doing some research on vitamin D dosing. In several studies, subjects have been given a one-time dose of 100,000 IU of vitamin D. In one of those studies, the vitamin D levels were tested every few days and graphed. The vitamin D level peaked seven days after the dose, and the measured levels in the subjects didn't even come close to being toxic. (When you look at the graphs, keep in mind that the units are in nmol/L.) The maximum level in any subject was 48.1 ng/mL (ng/mL being the usual unit of measure for vitamin D levels).(1) This is a normal level of vitamin D. In another study, subjects were given a one-time 100,000 IU dose: A single dose in winter of 2.5 mg (100 000 IU) vitamin D has previously been shown to produ...

Do people forget what it feels like to be well? I think so. While I was sick with a sinus infection, I remembered r unning around with my best friend last year , going dancing two or three times a week , and wondered how I ever had the energy to do all that. This morning, I woke up feeling healthy (even though I'm still coughing a little, and still taking Mucinex since I'm really afraid of a relapse). I got up at 6:30 (can't remember the last time I was up that early on a weekend), did some laundry, cleaned out the refrigerator, loaded and unloaded the dishwasher, changed the sheets, took out the trash, bought some groceries and got to work around 10. Concentrating on my work was so much easier than it was when I was sick. (That it was Saturday helped, too.) I still have some symptoms of vitamin D toxicity. No vomiting, but I've had some momentary but severe acid reflux. I'd forgotten how painful that is. Nevertheless, I'm feeling better than I have in months...

Having taken megadoses of vitamin D for the past few weeks (think 10,000 to 50,000 IU per day), I now have some symptoms of vitamin D toxicity: muscle weakness, a little fatigue, and constipation. (I wondered last night why I found it so difficult to shovel a few inches of wet snow.) Overall, I feel pretty good, certainly better than when I was sick with a sinus infection and way better than when I was suffering from side effects and an allergic reaction to Benzonatate. A few people have remarked that I sound better and the pink is back in my cheeks. Without a test, it's not possible to know for certain that these symptoms are caused by too much vitamin D, but I'm going to stop taking it for now. The vitamin is stored in the fat, so it's going to be in my system for awhile, fighting any microbes left in my sinuses. Researcher Michael Holick says in The Vitamin D Solution, Most humans obtain from sun exposure their vitamin D requirements between the hours of 10:00 A.M. an...

Note: I've made some edits regarding the safety of taking vitamin D. Please read this post for further details on taking a large dose of vitamin D. SWAMP (sinuses with a mucus problem) is my hypothesis of treating sinus infections and other upper respiratory infections without antibiotics: to get rid of the bug infestation, you need to drain the swamp and activate some natural predators. You also need to restore the habitat's salinity. Who this is for: People with no access to medical care People who prefer over-the-counter medicines People who can't tolerate antibiotics, steroids and other medications Eccentrics who like to self-experiment If you have a serious respiratory illness, you can still do this, but please see a doctor as well--the sooner, the better.  My next door neighbor died of the flu; people die every day of pneumonia. If you need to save money, keep in mind that a serious case of pneumonia can put you in the hospital for several days. A sinus i...

Imagine that your sinuses are a stream. When all is well, the water (or mucus) flows along. There are some bugs here and there, but not too many. If the stream becomes blocked, the water backs up, sits still, and the bugs multiply. The stream becomes a swamp. Current thinking is to annihilate the bugs with antibiotics. My idea is to drain the swamp and activate some natural predators. As I understand it, inflammation causes your sinuses to become blocked. The mucus builds up, making a habitat for bacteria overgrowth. Thus infected, white blood cells enter the mucus, making it thick and less able to be moved along. A substance that's both an anti-inflammatory and immune cell activator is vitamin D. My thinking is that it should enable the body's immune cells to kill most of the bugs and un-inflame the sinus passages to allow mucus to flow. There's clinical and observational evidence that vitamin D is helpful in preventing and fighting respiratory infections. I've ...

I'm 90% better from my sinus infection...and have been so for a week. A nine-hour nap followed by a good night's sleep helped last weekend; so has Mucinex. But last Monday, the day the antibiotics were out of my system, the glands in my neck were swollen. That's when I decided to use a trick from a year and a half ago when I had a cold: a megadose of vitamin D. There's some compelling evidence that vitamin D helps prevent colds and flu. In one study, After 3 years, a total of 34 patients reported cold and influenza symptoms, eight in the vitamin D3 group vs. 26 in the placebo group (P<0·002). When we examined the seasonality of the symptoms, we found that the placebo group had cold/influenza symptoms mostly in the winter. The vitamin D group had symptoms throughout the year while on 20 μg/d [800 IU per day], whereas only one subject had a cold/influenza while on 50 μg/d [2,000 IU per day].(1)  For what it's worth, John Cannell M.D. of the Vitamin D Council...

The Problem: Sharp, intermittent pain in my upper left wisdom tooth and a persistent cough. A dental examination showed no problem with the tooth. The x-ray showed that the wisdom tooth had longer roots than  the other molars.  The diagram below may help you. Good luck!

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...

Yesterday I was at a restaurant when I ran into one of my dance partners and promised to see him at the dance that night. Three hours later, I was lying in bed, sick, too tired to move, the furnace turned up to 75 degrees, regretting my promise. Even after two rounds of antibiotics, my sinus infection never really left. At my mother's urging, I saw the doctor today. In idle conversation, my doctor described modular robots during our visit: tiny robots that regroup on their own if they're broken apart. Sounds like an apt metaphor for this sinus infection that has held on for two months through two rounds of antibiotics. The next step: amox-clav, an antibiotic with penicillin (amox) and an extra ingredient (clav) to knock down the infection's resistance to penicillin. As I've said before, proper diet is great for promoting good health, and I believe cutting out the megadoses of zinc has helped me. But if it's true that a lot of paleo people died of trauma and ...

If this were a short story, it would be full of foreshadowing. But like a good mystery, it's hard to connect the dots until the end. If you can't, don't worry--I'll tie it together at the end. I follow a mostly lacto-paleo diet and live pretty cleanly. But I've had a sinus infection for a month, and it's survived one and a half rounds of antibiotics.  I normally eat liver once a week, but haven't had the stomach for it lately. (Even when I'm well, I'm not a liver lover.) A few months ago, I started buying those big, dark chocolate bars--the 70% cocoa ones--and eating one per weekend. (I know what I said last night about hating sweets . It seems to be fruity sweets that I hate; maybe they remind me of medicine.) I started dreading my breakfast smoothie of butter, hot water, pumpkin pie spice and vitamins, even though I like the taste. I sometimes skipped it on the weekend. The vitamins included large doses of zinc and magnesium, a middling dos...

There's a lot I like about my employer, but its contributions to America's declining health ought to be scuttled. An email arrived at work calling for dessert and holiday treat recipes for the company magazine's December issue. I replied that I'd like to submit instructions for an appetizer tray sans sugary treats. "There are folks who need to limit their sugar intake, as well as those of us who'd rather avoid the stomach aches, blood sugar crashes and holiday weight gain." The marketing director liked the idea and wants to get approval for it. Today, a recipe for pate; tomorrow, how to properly roast a turkey. Someday, mince meat pie might involve meat again. Why not submit a recipe for a low-carb dessert instead of pushing for savory appetizers? Maybe my sinus infection has changed my taste for the better. Between the sweet Umcka tablets for congestion, the elderberry syrup, and honey for my throat, I'd almost rather put up with my symptoms than g...