Pain, Pain, Go Away!

Note to new readers: please note I'm not a health care provider and have no medical training. If you have heart palpitations, I have no idea whether the following will work for you. Over the past several days, I've had a rough time with heart palpitations and feeling physically jittery. I was wondering if I was going to turn into one of those people who can't sit still. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it would be a major lifestyle change. Kidding aside, something wasn't right and I really needed to get back to normal. I tried popping potassium pills like candy. I ate more. I doubled up on my iron dose. I went to yoga and even got on the treadmill at 6 AM yesterday. I tried the nuclear option of eating more carbs to stop peeing away minerals. Most of these things helped, but the problem kept coming back. A comment from Galina made me look up epinephrine, one of the drugs my surgeon used to anesthetize me Friday. First, the assistant at the surge...

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...

Why didn't I think of this before? Yesterday, while munching on a carrot, some of the carrot got stuck in my throat. Realizing that this never happens when I eat vegetables with butter, mayonnaise or salad dressing, I had the bright idea to put a pat of butter in my mouth and let nature take its course. It greased my throat and the carrot went down. As a preventive measure, I find taking a magnesium supplement helps. (I take 200 mg of magnesium glycinate daily.) Magnesium is needed for proper involuntary muscle function: it's a standard cure for constipation, and doctors give it to patients having a heart attack.

Highjack the lead: the follower in a partner dance taking over the leading. Over the past year, I've read more and more about biased research, corrupt nutritional organizations, and doctors whose advice is, well, not very helpful. In my experience, a doctor is useful for knowing about illnesses going around, and which medicines (if any) will cure them. If you have concerns about a protocol you're doing against medical advice, a doctor can monitor you. I've had good and bad experiences with various doctors. I don't think most of them are corrupt, I think many of them--outside of when they're treating trauma and infection--just don't know what they're doing. A few years ago, I had an online conversation with a doctor (an MD, not a doctor of funk) with a subspecialty in diabetes who recommended her American patients eat at least 130g (or so) of carb per day because the American Diabetes Association said so. But of course, she did her research as well: she ...

Some of the most frightening experiences I've ever had were when food got stuck in my throat and I couldn't breathe. I've had the Heimlich Maneuver done to me a few times and have had to go to the hospital once I could breathe, but couldn't get the food to go up or down. The doctors injected me with Valium; when that didn't work on one occasion, they had to mechanically push down the calcium pill that was stuck. (Calcium causes muscle contraction; that may have had something to do with it being stuck so badly.) Since I seem to have found something that has ended my trouble swallowing food, I'm sure you'll understand why I feel like I've found the holy grail. A few years ago, my swallowing problem got to the point that food was getting stuck in my throat a couple of times a week. A gastroenterologist did an endoscopy and found an esophageal ulcer, or hole in the lining of my throat. Food and phlegm were getting stuck there. I also had an acute infection o...