Last Day

It's the end of three weeks. I can go back to three meals a day tomorrow if I want to. What are the results? I have lost weight - about 20 lbs over the 7 weeks since I went off wheat. I look better, I think I look younger. Those are nice things. And the Parkinson's? Still there.

I did not really expect recovery, but what can be expected is greater stamina, energy, health, vigor, those kind of things. Am I energetic? Well, today I shopped for groceries, worked in the garden, organized the shed, made a marker drawing, fixed dinner for others (I had a smoothie which I also had to make) and got my ipad email working again. The last was particularly grueling - ha!

Was it all accomplished effortlessly? No. By dinner time I was dragging my feet around. After my blueberry smoothie and a pleasant chat with my family, I felt better.

I hope I'll not swing back into my old ways. I do intend to continue eating whole foods, and less of the "bad" foods. Fortunately I have the Suppers group now to give support in the fight against food addictions and bad habits. I will post a photo of myself to compare with the photo taken in February in Santa Fe.

 Pictures don't lie. So any difference?

                                                    

Cleaning Up and Trimming Down

What I put in my mouth has become a major focus this year since I started attending the Suppers lunches. Suppers is a group for those who want to eat more healthily. You can learn a lot, about good nutrition from Dor, the leader/founder and the other attendees, and how to cook because you may either attend and prepare the food at the lunch or stay after for cleanup.

The first big change I made was going wheat-free. Reading the book “Wheatbelly” put me solidly in the anti-wheat brigade, at least for a trial period. I wasn’t keen on the idea when Dor proposed it because I had experimented with other similar diets, but one chapter into “Wheatbelly” and I was sold.

After four weeks gluten-free, and prompted by another Dor initiative, I started a three week cleanse guided by the book, “Clean.” I am now 11 days in. The goal is to clean out my body of toxins that have accumulated in the tissues, blood, and digestive tract. The main rules are to eat a solid food lunch of selected foods, and a smoothie, raw soup or juice meal for breakfast and dinner. An added benefit is weight loss if you have extra pounds, which I of course do.

I am feeling well, have lost a few pounds, but is it of benefit for Parkinson’s Disease? Let me finish the cleanse and then see. Maybe there will be some impact. If I do actually remove a significant level of toxins, will there be a reduction in my symptoms?

Parkinson's Summit

I attended the Parkinson’s Recovery Summit in Santa Fe last week with my PD friend Janet and came home with a range of impressions. Focusing on those of the summit itself and not the distractions of that fair city, I found that the ideas about healing that I have been hearing from the alternative health community for quite awhile were reinforced. Here is what I heard:

Chinese Traditional Medicine – good. Two sessions focused on Qi gong, the ancient Chinese energy exercise, that harnesses life energy from the earth and from the heavens to utilize in healing the body. There were lots of mentions of chi, grounding, meridians, acupuncture and other traditional eastern ideas by presenters all around.

Power of the mind in healing – effective. Visualization is a powerful tool for changing the body’s level of health. You can heal yourself with meditation or visualizations focusing on the sickness and seeing the healing process taking place.

Joy – essential. Stress and trauma may be a big part of the cause of Parkinson’s. If we can turn around our patterns of anxiety, perfectionism, stop criticizing and judging ourselves or others, and feel appreciation and gratitude for all of the positive elements of our lives, that will go a long way to healing our symptoms.

Today I was thinking about the idea of stress as the cause of PD. Obvious to me, that by itself cannot create all the symptoms of PD. I think a combination of factors is at fault, a series of foul-ups in the body system that when combined with stress and a Parkinson personality manifests with symptoms labeled as Parkinson’s Disease.

I feel a transformation in myself now that I have time to focus on myself and being and functioning a little differently from the old me. An inner transformation needs to take place I think and that is essential in the recovery process. 

In general, the conference was uplifting. Most of all because there were people speaking at the summit who recovered from Parkinson’s Disease. That by itself was the most inspiring element of the summit.

Indulging in Joy

  The effect of having drugs that work well has made me less inclined to do the alternative therapies that I have learned about. There is so much that I want to do and am now able to do, that I get embroiled in other kinds of activities.

Christmas time this year has me buying gifts, mostly online, or wrapping homemade ones, sending packages to those who are far away, decorating a tree and decorating all around the house, and the cleaning that precedes it, cooking and baking, and inviting friends and family to spend time with us. I enjoy Christmas, and I am indulging myself in it this year.

I am still exercising at the gym though. Yoga is my mainstay, but I have been exploring other types of classes with an eye to losing weight. When the New Year comes and this distraction is past I hope to get back to my at home routine of Tai Chi Chih, and energy exercises. Maybe even meditation. I need to remember: the drugs are not a cure, and that making a change in my body for healing will need another approach.

Can the “Miracle of Christmas” help my healing? Why not, if it is following my heart? And I keep that advice to follow my heart in mind whenever I feel a twinge of guilt for indulging in joy.

Words from Beyond the Grave

Awhile back I wrote a post about the ancestor altar that I had made with photos of family as far back as my great grandparents. I have one and only one very small photo of my grandfather on my father’s side and his second wife. We are in their backyard outside of Montreal, Canada about 1960. My grandfather stands with one arm bent, the hand aloft holding a cigarette. My mother, brother and I are in the photo as well. My father has taken the picture; recording the first and last time we will see our grandfather. Or practically. We had no relationship with my grandfather who after divorcing from my grandmother when my father was a baby was a nonentity in all our lives. I knew nothing about him; when asked I was not even able to remember his first name. We were not informed when he passed away and received no remembrance in his will.

            But recently I had taken an interest in this line of the family, searching for living descendants in the old country. I learned about his brothers and sisters, and their children, and even ventured theories about this man who I had only heard was a bad man, a drinker. Why had his older brother named his son with my grandfather’s name? Why was my grandfather the only sibling to move to the New World?

            Last week when I asked for a medical intuitive reading, I was surprised when Rich made a connection to my grandfather, but then again, it also made sense. He didn’t give his name, but speaking through Rich he talked about a divorce and disarray in the family. He spoke about how this divorce affected the whole family, and me also, that growing up I maybe did not get as much love as I was supposed to get, but that my father tried. My grandfather said he saw I was making progress on my own. He said some things repeatedly: on the other side he sees the Truth; it is most important to be honest and truthful with ourselves, we get hindered by how we think, we don’t realize how great we are. While often Rich was searching, listening to something unheard by me, and tentative in his communications, there were times he became absolutely certain. His voice changed and it became sure and firm.

            “He makes me feel he was not the best person in the world – not the most inviting person in the world? Does that make sense?”  It did.

              I told my mother about my reading with Rich. I asked my mother what she remembers about my grandfather on that summer day in Canada. “He was quiet, “ she said. She remembered the one time that my grandmother talked about her first husband. My grandmother cried as she described his two-timing and bad behavior, and how she wanted to drown herself and her unborn baby. She had a miserable time. And because she had to work, she had to send her baby back to the old country to be raised by family there.

            Sadly, my grandmother was also not very close or even kind to my father. Maybe she saw the face of her despised first spouse when she looked at my father, or associated him with that unhappy time.

            I am still in a wondering state about this reading with Rich. To believe or not to believe - I am uncertain. I may never be certain about what I can believe about spirits of the dead, but I want to ask:

            “Are you willing to help me now grandfather?”

Mother's Milk and H2O2

 

People I trust encouraged me to meet with a medical intuitive named Richard. I met him hoping that he could give me some insights into my physical condition. For example, I would like to know, are there any other problems in my system that contribute to my Parkinson’s?

When I first heard his story he described an ability to “see” a person’s health conditions, for example, glowing red blood vessels in a woman with high blood pressure. As well as being a medical intuitive, Richard found as he started to work with people, that he was connecting to the spirits of dead family and loved ones. They speak to him and can advise and help the living person. It has become his primary work. His business cards reads: Spirit Medium/Medical Intuitive.

We met, just the two of us, and I tape recorded the session. I told him I was interested in a health reading, but I did not tell him anything about my health history.

 Gradually, with great concentration, his eyes moving back and forth, but not looking directly at me, he described my condition. He accurately stated that I was a teacher and that I had been interrupted in my career for health reasons. He described a disconnection or lack of communication between my nerve connections throughout my body and in my brain. 

After describing what sounded to me to be the symptoms and sources of PD he said that he also saw an environment or “atmosphere” in my body that was ripe for the formation of tumors or cysts or stones. There was sludge, bad bacteria, and accumulated waste building up inside me. He eventually pinpointed its location as being primarily in my liver and gallbladder.

He ended by telling me what my body was missing and giving me instructions for adding supplements to my diet. My reserves were depleted, he said. I was particularly in need of B vitamins and iodine. Along with adding those to my diet, he recommended acidophilus, colostrum and food grade hydrogen peroxide. These were to nourish and oxygenate my cells. I had never heard of H2O2 as an internal remedy. I read about it online and was amazed by its value for many conditions. Colostrum also, is new to me as a supplement that anyone can take. It's derived from the first milking after a cow gives birth. I thought Colostrum was available only from human mothers for their newborn babies.

I am getting ready to begin a daily morning routine taking these cleansing, and nourishing dietary aids.  It may not be delicious, and it may be tedious, but it may be helpful. I hope it will be helpful, in a big way. I asked Richard about the foods and supplements I eat. Is eating them the main thing I need to do in order to improve my health including my nervous system? He said, “It always is.”

I did not ask for his service as a spirit medium. However, a spirit, he said, did speak to him, and that spirit was my grandfather - my father’s father.

I’ll write about that in my next post.

                

           

The Parkinson Personality

      

 I have always been someone who questions myself why I do things, say things, feel things, and why things happen as they do in my life. I also spend a lot of time wondering why people react to me in the ways they do, especially when it is feels uncomfortable or negative.

            This may be, as Janice Walton-Hadlock suggests, because the “fight or flight” response is permanently turned on, or as the Chinese and energy healers might say, triple warmer is working overtime inside of me. Janice says that it is always this way for the PDer. In other words, perhaps I am in an anxious state when I am asking these questions. She suggests it is part of a Parkinson personality, a personality type that is pervasive in our population.

            My brain does buzz with a steady stream of thoughts; sometimes worries, but my interest in the personal are not all a bad thing. Recently, I dug up Riso and Hudson’s books on personality types because I remembered reading and enjoying one of their books 25 years ago. Now, as then, I want to understand myself better.

            The book to start with is Discovering Your Personality Type, which contains a questionnaire with 144 questions. It tells you how to assess yourself to learn which is your personality type and what is your “wing.”  Each of the nine types has two possible wings, so it is possible to fine-tune the result to one of 27 types.

            I remember finding Riso and Hudson’s descriptions of types in healthy, average and unhealthy modes to be illuminating for myself and in understanding my family. I also liked the potential for growth, which they call integration, or decline, which they call disintegration. The personality types are arranged on the ancient enneagram symbol and by following its pattern of movement one can learn something of your possible goal in life.              

            The second book I have is Personality Types, which contains in depth analyses of the types.

            After taking the questionnaire it was revealed that I am a number 5 with a 4 wing. Now if that corresponds with a Parkinson’s Personality I wouldn’t be surprised. But a HEALTHY 5 with a 4 wing or a 5 who is moving towards an 8… that would be different. 

           How does one get healthy? That’s what this blog is about. Learning about all aspects of your own personality is certainly helpful in becoming healthy.

            I'm wondering. Am I getting there?