EXPERIMERRIMENT: I have the F-ing Flu, Part 1

So I gots the flu.

How do I know it's the flu, you ask. Well.

Generally my herbal skills are high enough now that I can drop kick a cold in about 72 hours if I know what's going on. Also, everyone in my office has been sick for MONTHS, which pretty much always means a viral infection. I have been using Umcka and neti pot, trying to put off the inevitable for about a month now, and ALSO keeping my eye out for the Pre-Flu-Super-Hunger.

This is a weird symptom but it's pretty consistent for me - that the day before I get sick I feel both SUPER energetic, and SUPER starving. I have never been able to figure out why this is exactly. One thing is that my body is trying to fight it and needs fuel. The other - and this actually tends to be what I think is going on (and I know this is a weird theory) but that the virus is fighting to take hold and wants my body to be in a more acidic state so it can multiply. I know, I know. But I know that I am one of those individuals who does better when I'm nursing an illness by seriously limiting solid food intake. Which is murder, cuz I love to eat.

So, Saturday was a shoot day, and I ate my face off all day without paying much attention to it. By Sunday, I started feeling the heaviness and loss of balance that usually is the precursor to illness, so I started the following:

-Umka, full dropper 6 times a day
-Echinacea, full dropper 5 times a day
-AND thinking that it was a virus, Colloidal Silver, half dropper about 8 times a day.

Most people who have gotten this thing have a heavy nasal component (including my husband, who I managed to infect as well). So far, with this herbal regimen, no nasal component. Mostly just feeling heavy, tired, and my stomach is WAY upset.

Knowing that the thing about the flu is that it tends to rally just when you think it's going away, I added another anti-viral yesterday:

-Astragalus, full dropper, six times a day

So I'm not better. But I don't feel like I'm getting worse. And not getting a sinus infection? PRICELESS. More on the anti-flu experiment tomorrow!

RANT: Smooth Move Tea

Let's talk for a second about Smooth Move tea. It looks harmless enough. It's a tea! It's natural! It must be...gentle.

For those people who think that herbs are just weaker versions of pharmaceuticals without nasty side effects, I bring you Rocket-From-Your-A*s tea. This is not something to be taken lightly, no pun intended. It works, yes, and if your digestion is rock solid as well as Totally Not Moving, then this might be a good idea.

The thing to know is that this stimulates the intestine to move. And it might not stop when you have moved what needed moving. If your stomach is sensitive, this tea makes a suggestion to your bowels that may keep on giving several days later. You started with constipation and ended up with diarrhea. Awesome. And while the inconvenience is one thing, the other is that you will totally f-up your intestinal flora, which is no joke, and will further erode the stability of your digestive tract.

Herbs can be very strong and effective. Just because you didn't have to get it from a pharmacist doesn't mean it can't be potent and harmful. Herbal laxatives can erode intestinal strength and tone just like pharmacological laxatives - and then you will really be in a pickle.

I GOTS ME A TWITTER FEED, YO.

http://twitter.com/#!/spleenondrugs

You will follow me! YOU WILL FOLLOW ME! Why do you want to read a whole paragraph when you could read selected shorts of my wisdom? Is it me or is JUST SO AWESOME TO LIVE IN THE 21st CENTURY? Um. 

PUTTING MY FOOT IN IT!! The Spleen Weighs in On Autism and Vaccines

Okay, so I am an idiot who gets involved in heated discussions on Facebook. Fuck you Mark Zuckerman for most things (Farmville notices, friending fuckers who dumped me, being friended by fuckers I dumped, etc), but kudos to you for that. Our country is largely lacking an arena for public debate between just plain ol' peeps and acquaintances. We don't tend to discuss politics with each other after we graduate from whatever level of scholarship we choose to be in debt for - we default to Things We Own, Pets We Have, Children We Are Trying to Have/School/Toilet Train, etc.

But Andrew Wakefield got dragged back into the spotlight this week again. Seems he's on a bi-yearly decreditation schedule - we have to once again declare that everything he has ever done is pure unadulterated bullshit, expressly done with evil intent. I didn't read anything new in this report, despite the blaring headlines. The research I had done related to a job on the whole autism/vaccine connection was about 8 months ago, and unless I am going senile, none of the stuff I read this week was new. It was all stuff that was out-and-about 8 months ago, including the stuff about the kids diagnoses. Why did it become newsworthy this week? I am assuming a press release was sent out by someone. In fact, the only new word that I read was "fraud".

He's a scientist. He knows about peer review. He's not an idiot. And I am pretty sure he knew his findings were going to be a giant fart in the news cycle of humanity. So I am having a hard time believing that he went out with the pure intent to bend facts with the express purpose of falsifying results. Maybe I am wrong, maybe he is a narcissistic maniac. But I am also wondering why - when this study is a gajillion years old by our 24-hour news cycle standard (13 years!) - and it has gotten so much publicity, public outcry, etc. - WHY did it take THIS LONG to declare this out and out fraud? Weren't people all over his findings like white-on-rice from the get go?

I would want someone to walk through exactly what is wrong with the study with me. Show me all the bendings of the rules. I am not going to take the media's word for this. Why? Because they do not give a shit whether it's true or not, it's a great story.

Also, having read about the consistent bending of not only study results when it comes to the testing of pharmaceuticals, but also the bending the studies themselves to assure the results that the interested party wants - we all need to get over the idea of definitive results, perhaps the same way that we need to get over our obsession with The Cure (more on that later).

I am agnostic over Andrew Wakefield, his studies and whether or not he's a Giant Dick who wants kids to die of whooping cough.

Frankly, I believe the parents who said they saw their child change after being vaccinated.

Because I believe that most people are pretty smart about the tiny packages of humanity whose every moment they are involved in up til age 6. I think if they say they saw a marked difference in behavior following an illness that followed vaccination, then they are probably right that the vaccination had something to do it. This is anecdotal evidence, not scientific. But it doesn't make it any less valuable to me. What change does that demand in public policy? I have no idea. But I will stand with the individuals who say they have reached a common sense conclusion about their own child.

PROVE IT!!, or Why The Truth Is Entirely Up For Grabs So You Might As Well Try Acupuncture In The New Year.

Ah, the New Year. We're all going to be better, smarter, healthier in this next 12 month period, no?

Well, the Spleen hopes so. And she's going to end with a little spleen to go out on.

Often when I am helping people by giving them some sort of holistic health advice, I am witnessing this deep struggle within them, and if it could be accurately articulated, I think it would go something like this:

"IF I TAKE THIS HERB AND IT HELPS ME THEN THAT MEANS EVERYTHING I HAVE EVER BEEN TAUGHT IS WRONG. IF I TAKE THIS HERB AND IT HELPS ME, IT MEANS MY DOCTOR IS AN ASSHOLE, AND I LIKE MY DOCTOR AND I DON'T WANT HIM TO BE AN ASSHOLE. IF I TAKE THIS HERB AND IT HELPS ME, THEN I'M A FUCKING HIPPIE AND I HATE HIPPIES. IF I TAKE THIS HERB AND IT HELPS ME, THERE IS NO GOD AS I UNDERSTAND IT."

And to that, I say - slow the fuck down you paranoid freak.

Western Allopathic medicine is a modality of health care. So is Traditional Chinese Medicine. So are the uses of Western/Eastern European herbs. These are all just different ways of taking care of yourself. Your body, your choice.

What we have been taught is that there is One True Medicine, and it has been proved to work by science, and since science is never wrong, then it would be pointless to try anything else, right?

Jonah Leher's piece in the New Yorker, "The Truth Wears Off" ends his excellent discussion of the tendency of scientific study results to become less decisive the more the study is repeated with this excellent quote: "

"The decline effect is troubling because it reminds us how difficult it is to prove anything. We like to pretend that our experiments define the truth for us. But that’s often not the case. Just because an idea is true doesn’t mean it can be proved. And just because an idea can be proved doesn’t mean it’s true. When the experiments are done, we still have to choose what to believe. "

 

I assume that most of the people who read this blog have some interest in alternative healing, and that most have dabbled in it. I am the first to admit that going the holistic route has its drawbacks - the results are more permanent than with symptom-suppressing drugs, but the road is often longer, and involves more discomfort. It's not for everyone.

 

But don't turn your back on alternative medicine in the name of sound science because the science you think is there often isn't. And if that is true (which it is) then your health is back in your own hands, and you are fully empowered to choose what you think is best for you. Your body, your choice, no truth.

CASTOR OIL! Why and how it totally rocks my world.

I can't remember if I have already written about castor oil. But fuck it, I'll write about it again. It's that good!!

I first discovered castor oil when (for complicated-and-too-boring-to-recount-reasons) I ended up turning septic after an OD of hepatatoxic medicine in my 20's. I turned yellow-ish. It was AWESOME. And let me tell you something about liver toxicity - it makes you into a total moron. I couldn't dial a phone right for months. Somehow I managed to get some information on castor oil compresses from my distracted health food bookstore reading. And I started using the sh*t out of that stuff right away.

It's often suggested as a useful tool during a liver cleanse, used as a compress on undyed flannel wool with heat. But there is so, so much more.

-ANTI-CYSTIC. It can be used externally on cystic acne and on external cysts. Just put it on, add some heat if you like, it should start to shrink it right away. Do it for a few days or a week depending on the size of the cyst.
-FACIAL MASK. Mixed with a drop of rosemary or lavender, or powdered french clay, it makes a great facial treatment.
-FACIAL SCRUB. Castor oil with a 1/2 teaspoon of sea salt or sugar will perk dull skin right up.
-OIL WASH: Put about a teaspoon and a half on your fingertips and massage it in. Your skin will love you. Just wipe it off with a kleenex or paper towel and use an alcohol-free toner to follow. Great for aging skin.
-PROMOTES EYELASH GROWTH AND HEALTH. Apply it to your lashes with a dry mascara brush before bedtime.
-JOINT LUBRICATION. Massage it into creaky, cracking joints. This doesn't help all the time, but sometimes it works amazingly, and hey, cheaper than an MRI.
-FIX YOUR BUTT! Mixed with neem oil, it can help heal an anal fissure. Yup, I went there.
-HANGOVER MELLOWER. Last but not least, a castor oil compress after a hard night out can alleviate the worst hangover symptoms in about a half hour. Use it on a wool flannel compress underneath some saran wrap (to protect your clothing), add a heating pad and take a lie down for about 20 minutes. After you get up, drink lots of water and you should feel a lot better soon.

Only caveats are: don't drink it; don't put it in an open wound; it's super sticky and it stains, so be careful about with your finery around it. OH, and if you are on some kind of Chinese herb regimen, I would lay off the compresses - it can really goose a cleansing process into a cleansing crisis. You're welcome.

PAIN IN THE ASS! Ulcerative Colitis for beginners - for N.

So there was a request for me to talk about UC. Yes people, the Spleen knows everything about the UC system. Not. But she does know a lot about Ulcerative Colitis.

First of all, for those who don't know much about Ulcerative Colitis, it's considered an auto-immune disorder with a similar inflammatory pattern to certain kinds of arthritis. One definition says that the immune system attacks the colon - my own experience of it feels more like the colon become suddenly inflammed - as if someone had tried to sand it with a large grade sandpaper. And then you tried to push poop through it. Nuf said.

The result of the inflamed colon tends to be bloody diarrhea, severe cramping, and just generally a lot of running to the bathroom. GOOD TIMES.

I was diagnosed with UC when I was 11, but haven't been on any meds for it since I was about 20. At 20 I started smoking and, weirdly enough, that seems to control UC outbreaks. I didn't have a peep from mine until the spring after I quit cigarettes. That spring I had a nasty flare up. But oddly - and I think this is important to note - mostly sans blood. Granted, I was eating a mostly liquid diet, but the pattern of cramping and tearing ass to the bathroom was generally the same. It lasted about 2 months, and then resolved itself somewhat spontaneously. Since then - and its been about 12 years since then - I've had two major flare ups which I have treated with diet, acupuncture and herbs.

Ultimately, I recognize that UC is an energetic disorder with physical symptoms. This is highly inconvenient because it means that you need to keep a really clean house with your mental health. You need to manage your stress, and you need to dive deep and get a handle on whatever bad habits you have that allow external factors to manifest as internal conflict. You have to get to know yourself and get really, really honest. It doesn't mean that your inability to manage your stress gives you UC and so IT'S ALL YOUR FAULT. It just means that the load of bullshit you can manage healthily is perhaps smaller than other folks - and really, this is ultimately an advantage.

I hear they have great drugs out there that suppress the symptoms - but that they lose effectiveness over time. Frankly, I'm not interested in medicating this particular problem. I don't want to trade the ability to eat french fries for losing my colon when I'm in my fifties or sixties.

The non medicalized road to UC health is arduous and demands that you really stay committed to the plan. Consistency is the key.

Diet is SUPER IMPORTANT. It tends to be SUPER JOYLESS during flare ups.
Here's what I do:

-Absolutely no fried foods. NO. FRIED. FOODS. AT ALL. Meaning tortilla chips or any other junk food that is fried.
-No junk food. 
-No caffeine.
-No raw foods.
-No nuts or crunchy beans, like soynuts.
-Well cooked vegetables or soups. If the flare up is imminent or already happening, you should be eating food that is almost pre-digested.
-Small amounts of well cooked chicken or fish. No red meat.
-Check out Dr. Weil's Anti-inflammatory diet as a guide for the best foods to include.
-I find it's better to eat white rice or overcooked brown rice than any kind of flour products...
-...and anyway, no gluten during flare ups...
-...and no sugar. Maybe a little honey in tea, but that's it.
-High quality yogurt, absolutely has to be organic, and should be plain without sweetener.
-All your foods should be as high quality and clean as possible.
-And this is the kicker: ABSOLUTELY NO ALCOHOL. 

Here are the supplements that I use when there is a flare up or I can feel one coming on.

-Slippery elm. Start with two capsules at every meal, and QUICKLY build to a heaping tablespoon  three times a day mixed with water. In the middle of a flare up, I start taking 8 capsules about 6 times a day which is about the same amount.
-Marshmallow root. Take a tea. Can make some people kind of hyper and sleepless, so start with a teaspoon steeped for 10 minutes.
-The best pro-biotic money can buy. Take 15 minutes after every meal. This is so important I can't even begin to truly communicate how important it is.

The last part to the treatment plan is really, really necessary. Find yourself a good acupuncturist. Be prepared that your symptoms will get a little worse before they get better. But this part - this is key. I would not be able to manage my symptoms without either of my acupuncturists.

Ultimately, I believe anyone can manage their UC and probably be mostly free from it. But it takes a willingness to do whatever is necessary to maintain health. If you are willing to put your health absolutely first in every situation, you should do pretty well. Even if you whine like a baby about what a pain in the ass it is.

Of course you could just go eat worms. Srsly.