Medic's Blog

A year of posts – the purpose of this? time will tell. An ending and a new beginning link to a new blog: http://primumn0nn0cere.wordpress.com/

Well after  a trip to the farmers market an evening of cooking and a glass of wine I actually feel full and satisfied. I tried adding kale and tofu to a dish that I have had before and to my surprise I did actually like kale.  I have had tofu before and liked it. Kale however i have never had it and liked it.  I packed lunch and snack for tomorrow and will try to find something healthy for lunch.  I am about to head off to bed a bit earlier than normal more sleep is better for weight loss. Good night all and happy weight loss!

Young Thai Coconut For those of you out there curious about opening young Thai coconuts, here’

Found a great article written by morgueticiaatoms on the dangers of using anti-contraceptive shots. I am a big believer that some things are better left to nature, for instance, using non-invasive forms of contraceptive protection such as condoms and not tampering with your body’s hormonal functions by using things such as the pill . I understand some women might need these for medical reasons, but some do it out of convenience or reassurance. Nevertheless, tampering with your body needlessly is always a dangerous game to play and only one of my girls uses birth control pills and I’ve been trying to get her off it. It severely messed with her body, causing her to lose her period for 5 months in a row. Consequently, she practically had to induce her period to get her back to schedule. Even to today, I don’t know if her body has fully recovered and gone back to a regular monthly cycle. I feel bad for her! Having read related blogs, I’ve also noticed 4-5 other women on WordPress who have had very adverse effects using anti-contraceptive shots. One, had her period for a month, daily, starting/beginning with no pattern even AFTER she stopped using it and has taken her 2 years to rid the body of such effects. Since I’m playing Bright Shadow at the moment, I can’t type out a full-out entry. Having received permission from the owner of the following entry, I want to post it for all the women out there to think twice and seriously seek medical consultation before using any type of hormonal-altering drug/injection. Toxic shot syndrome WARNING/DISCLAIMER: I am going to vent about MY experiences with the contreptive known as Depo Provera so this is not for men, children, enthusiasts,puritans,or anyone else who is easily grossed out, offended or influenced. I reiterate (for all the good it will do me) that this blog entry is based on MY experiences and mine alone and is NOT a medical commentary, anti or pro, or meant in any way to be anyone’s final deciding factor. I may toss in some things I have read or been told or simply heard but my opinion is based entirely and solely on what occurred during my use of this drug. ‘Nuff said. A little informative just-so-you-know history. I had my first child back in August at age 36. Prior to that, I had been off all hormonal contraception since I experienced a blood clot issue with the pill in 90’s. Other than that (very serious) issue, the pill worked fine for me and was without any major side effects. At my six week post partum exam, the nurse in my ob/gyn’s office broached the subject of birth control with me. I explained my insurance didn’t cover IUD’s. Ok, what about the pill..No go. So she suggests Depo, with the ever positive chirpy “It will make your periods go away.” Well, I have painful periods so this sounded good to me and it was something I could get from the health department or my second insurance. I talked to hubby about it, did some on line research, even talked to someone (my stepmother) who had been on Depo for over ten years and still laments about how they forced her off it onto the pill. Any time I found a potentially nasty side effect, hubby would attempt to soothe me with a reminder of how “that’s just how it was for one person” or “they have to include every single side effect even if it only happened to one person.” Ok, so even though hubby was willing to continue with condoms, I missed the sponteneity and experience of no condom so I pondered on the Depo some more. I had really adored this nurse in my ob’s office, she was always so bright and sweet and good about making me feel less embarrassed about whatever current indignity the pregnancy had brought upon me. She also knew of my long history with depression and anxiety and the fact I was on disability for it and had been unable to be medicated for the duration of the pregnancy. (I was having breakdown towards month 8 and they decided there was less risk to put me back on certain meds than to leave me unmedicated.) So I didn’t think she would steer me wrong knowing my history. I talked to our primary care doctor about a script for Depo and administering it in his office and he was cool with it. November 29, I got my first shot. All the peppy nurse jabbing me could talk about was how great it was that it made your periods go away and how other patients loved it so much. I resisted my doomsayer urges and chose to operate on hubby’s “hope for the best’ attitude. Within a couple of weeks, I knew I had made a horrible mistake. It was as if whatever was in the depo cancelled my meds. I was more depressed than ever in  spite of anti depressant dosage increases. I was more jumpy,in spite of being on Xanax. Suddenly, my lethargy was increased times ten. I felt fat, gross, and like life was an utter waste of time. My former shrink just cheerfully remarked, “It could have gone the other way and helped your depression…But it’s not the zoloft, you just don’t want it to work.” Which is why he’s my former shrink, I was almost suicidal and homicidal and he didn’t care and wouldn’t listen. I didn’t even bother calling the primarcy care doctor, he’s rarely in the office and it took him 4 months to get back hubby’s bloodwork and even then, there was no call, no explanation, just a referral letter to a place we don’t even know takes our insurance on a date we don’t even know if hubby can go on in a town the car isn’t fit to drive to. Useless there. And the worst part was…I had a period for 5 weeks after the first shot, 2 weeks off, another 4 weeks on, one week off, another two on, and now since I didn’t get the second shot it seems to have stopped for the time being.It was relentless, I never knew what was going on with my body on any given day because it would start, stop, almost go away, then come back. I essentially traded feeling really crappy one week a month for feeling mildly crappy 4 weeks a month. On what planet is that a good trade off? I guess I’ve gained weight, my mom says I have, but hubby says he doesn’t see it. I’ve always been heavy so I don’t really look any different to myself and my clothes still fit plus I drink a lot of soda so if the weight is there it could be the depo, the soda, the psych meds, all of combined, I just don’t know. I do know I am suddendly shedding hair more than I ever have in my life. I can’t brush it over the sink or the sink looks like a beauty parlor floor after every member of every 80’s hairband got their hair cut off. The anger is what has been so staggering. The only other time I felt this mad at everything for no apparent reason was during pregnancy. And what does that have in common with depo? HORMONES. My body apparently cannot process excess hormones well. There have been moments of such intense anger during the last 3 months, I was almost afraid of myself, it felt like it was burning me from the inside out. And rarely over anything valid. In my quest to avoid getting pregnant and lose the painful periods, I had essentially allowed myself to be injected with a chemical that made me devoid of who I know myself to be. I cannot think of a single benefit of being on depo. I’d rather have 3 days of excrutiating cramps and a period than 4 weeks of mild cramps and a guess-if-we’re-going-to-need-a-pad-today lottery. And even though it didn’t kill my sex drive physically, it made me feel so utterly gross physically and mentally that I had to force myself to allow the sexy feelings to happen. Shortly before getting on depo I had read how in certain religions and cultures the men are not allowed to see their women during their time of the month as they are considered “dirty”. And while that has nothing to do with my and my marriage, it still aided in the whole Depo tainted thing because I felt dirty every single day of the month. Even when I wasn’t on a period of some sort (light, heavy, spotting) I was living in terror of it just reappearing at any time. I’ve never felt more disgusting in my life. I am very fortunate to have such a loving, accepting husband who happens to find me sexy and beautiful even when the rest of the world would say ewwwww, when even I would say ewwww. I think from about the 3rd week on Depo, I told hubby NO MORE EVER AGAIN. I have read a thousand posts on depo related message boards from women with horror stories as well as women who think depo is better than sliced bread. On one hand, if you have endometriosis and this drug pretty much cures it, then it can’t be an entirely bad medicine. On the other hand, how many women like me were lured in with the selling points (no pregnancy, no period) but not told of the potentially horrendous side effects and how it would alter not just our body, but our mind? I know firsthand that one drug can be a lifesaver for one person and the downfall for thousands (my xanax, for example, keeps me sane and functional but for some the addictiveness is a killer) and I would not want anyone to take it away from me because it is the only thing that has ever worked. So for this reason, I will not say Depo is without its merits. For me, it was toxic. I read one post where a woman claimed all depo haters were just women who’d had a bad experience and were angry. With the suicidal urges it provoked in me and knowing this could have been prevented, yeah, I’m pretty angry, but I am angry at the plethora of health care providers who all knew my extensive history and the side effects of this drug and did not warn me. I have found a hundred different things on line warning that this drug is bad choice for anyone with a long history of depression and yet it was given to me with the ease of candy, in spite of two nurses and three doctors knowing my full history.It almost feels like they were playing a lottery and just hoping it would “go the other way” and help my problems. The fact that I lost 3 months of my baby’s life because I was feeling crappy, suicidally depressed, etc, pisses me off. I can never get that time back, ever. All these people had to do-just one of them- was say, “There’s a chance this could make your depression worse, are you sure you want to take it?” Just that much and I would have known better. It’s the fact that I was clueless and that whatever concern I shared (even with hubby) was downplayed and responded to as if I were being histrionic and dramatic. In 2000, I was on an MAOI anti depressant. It came with side effects and a strict restriction of foods but it worked for me and I was willing to risk it for that. After inadvertantly eating cheese, I wound up in the hospital for a week, no one knowing if I would live or die. I did not sue anyone, did not desire to sue anyone because I went in with eyes wide open, had been told of the potential risks, and had accepted the responsibility. I cursed only my own stupidity in not making sure food given to me by others didn’t contain one of foods that caused the interaction. mY FAULT. I’ve been told this is my fault for not doing more research. How could I have when I looked things up on line, addressed the issues with professionals, and was brushed off? It’s not like I didn’t care and didn’t try, but I trusted these people to tell me if I was making a bad choice based on medical knowlege they had and I didn’t. Another thing I did not like, at all, about Depo, was the ambiguity. With no regular period, it left you paranoid each and every day that you were pregnant in spite of the birth control. We are trained as girls to watch for that “missing” period, but if you never have one or always have one, what then? I still seethe over all the posts when someone listed that as a con. “If you have a period, you’re not pregnant.” “No birth control is 100%,take a urine test.” This is the confusion I mean. It’s confusing enough to be told if you miss a period you could be pregnant but you could still be pregnant if you have a period. Depo thrown into the mix just turns it into a skull crushing headache. BTW,what most women are not told, including me, is that it often takes up to a year of depo injections before you are totally rid of your period. (If then.) I was told by the second month it’d be gone. WRONG. Maybe I could have read the warning insert if my insurance hadn’t substituted a generic drug and left it out. I still think the doctors had a responsibility to warn me. And the worst thing about it is…once you get that shot, you can’t have it removed. You can not get another one, but you are still left with an indeterminate amount of time in which to deal with the aftermath. This is not temporary or simple. I suppose if it works for you as it is supposed to the letter it becomes the dream drug but I wish those women would have a little empathy to those of us it didn’t work out well for. I’m not cussing them for having a good experience with it, I don’t understand why some of these pro-depo posters have so much venom toward the women depo has screwed up. I am willing to see both sides here and concede a complete ban on Depo would not be the answer since it seems to help many. But the doctors need to better educate and warn women and make sure they are made aware of the potential risks and side effects. (Some doctors still won’t acknowlege the loss of bone density due to long term depo use, when even the manufacturer came out and admitted to it.) I swear some of these doctors can see no further than “this woman doesn’t need another kid,let’s get her on whatever birth control method we can even if it hurts her”. There is one thing I will no falter on that concerns depo:IT SHOULD NOT EVER BE ADMNINISTERED TO A WOMAN WHO HAS JUST OR RECENTLY  GIVEN BIRTH. The entire process of pregnancy, labor, and childbirth takes such a toll on our bodies that it can be up to a year before nature’s intentions are back to prebaby normal. The last thing any harried new mom needs to be worrying about are being able to stay awake or get up with her baby or why is she so angry all the time,is it the depo or post baby horomone irregularities. I think it should be standard practice (if not a law) that depo cannot be prescribed to any woman who is not at, minimum, six months post childbirth, if not a year after. Because I honestly have no idea how much of this is normal and being amplified by depo or if it is just the depo. I know this is not who I was pre depo, not even in the three months of getting up with the baby two or three times a night did I feel this lousy. None of these issues started until after the depo, which makes me believe it is all depo related, and probably worsened because it was adminstered to me when my hormones were all still askew from baby. You can read me the riot act on that one, but I stand by it. Let doctors get individual waivers from women who want the depo anyway, but as a  general rule, especially in women who have never used depo before, it should not given until things have normalized. How else will you know if what you are experiencing is a side effect from the chemical hormones or what is just normal hormones returning. I wish I still had the link but I don’t. I was reading for days this UK site about the experiences women had had with depo and it was mind boggling how many of them spoke of revulsion when approached by their husbands for sex and yet pre-depo they’d been very interested. I wonder if women realize that depo provera is essentially what is used as chemical castration for male sex offenders. It kills your sex drive because it’s intended to do that in men, it makes sense it could happen to women,too. How great is a drug that alters you to the point of no longer enjoying what you used to like immensely?  How fair is it to couples who break up over the issues caused by depo? I think perhaps the saddest post was a pro-depo where the woman said she no longer wanted sex at all, ever, but it was okay because she no longer had periods. My periods are miserable but I will gladly take them as opposed to losing part of what makes me a vital living woman. Forget the naughty stuff, what about expressing love to your partner? How is a loss of a period remotely comparable to losing that? Just the loss of sheer closeness and emotional connection would make my life hollow. I suppose I can’t speak for women virtually crippled by the pain of horrendous periods and endo, but is it wrong of me to want to think there has to be a better solution than sacrificing your sexuality and relationship? Or in my case, there has GOT to be a better way than taking a drug that makes me feel like crap and wish I were dead. I have more to live for than I ever had before, so these feelings are insane. Maybe I can’t walk into a courtroom ala Perry Mason with stacks of incriminating evidence saying it is 100% the fault of depo…but I-and my husband-know that almost none of this stuff was going on pre-depo and two plus two equals four. Maybe my normal chemistry and postbaby askew chemicals caused the depo to react this way. I just know I did react this way and it was so not worth it. The doctors saying to give it more time are insane because it’s not their bodies being affected or their lives being ruined. Just because it didn’t happen this way for a million other women doesn’t make my experience less valid. If you are having problems with the depo, do not let anyone make you feel insane. It has its problems and affects everyone differently. Find a new contraceptive and wait for the depo to exit your system. Don’t be bullied into taking more unless you really want to and believe it will help. There’s nothing wrong with just saying no. We should all be forewarned, properly educated, and be allowed to make an informed choice and not be pressured by nurses, doctors, boyfriends, husbands, etc.It’s our bodies, our minds, our lives. I look at my baby and think if the worst that can happen being off depo is I have another one of her, well, yay, because as stressful as the mom gig is at times, it is also an unmitigated joy and not as bad as what depo provera put me, my mind, my body, and my family through. Besides which, it apparently fails just as easily as every other method of birth control so we’re deluding ourselves thinking anything short of sterilization or abstinence is fail proof. Makes you wonder why we bother at all when it’s all really just a roll of the dice. 99.9% effective seems like good odds unless you’re in the failure zone. Frankly, unless it is 100%,I don’t think I will ever take another hormonal birth control again. Just not worth it. I miss who I used to be pre-depo and all I can do now is wait it out and see if I ever get back to normal. I envy the women it worked for. Soooo not worth it for me. Source: http://moodymetalzombie.wordpress.com/2010/03/09/toxic-shot-syndrome/

Barack Obama’s first year performance               Bill Adair (Pulitzer Prize) published the Obama program that included 510 promises. Promises being executed are 240 promises, 86 promises were kept, 26 were compromised, and 62 were blocked by the oppositions.             First, let me present a rundown of the major promises according to the previous categories.             For promises being executed we have the following: Creating 5 million “green jobs” Restraining eavesdropping without authorization Shutting down Guantanamo prison center Stopping the usage of torture Creating CO2 emission market Creating a universal health plan that added 30 million more citizen benefiting of coverage Setting up new financial regulations Repealing the tax cut for the higher incomes Reducing nuclear arms reserves in a verifiable manner Re-enforcing antitrust laws that favor consumers Reducing oil consumption of 35% by 2030 Securing borders by increasing personnel             For promises kept we may mention Sending two supplementary brigades to Afghanistan (30,000 soldiers) Creating a fund to prevent further Real Estates foreclosures Reforming prison terms to clear prison overpopulation             For promises compromised we have Creating a tax credit of $500 for employees Requiring transparency in the process of budgetary credit by Deputies             For promises blocked Extending citizenship to immigrant with no work permit             For promises betrayed Obama failed in his promise to hardening regulations in the Administration on conflict of interests between public carriers and private jobs.  The worst transgressors are members in the International Monatary Fund (IMF), which is a public institution but functioning as if a private enterprise. Note: Every now and then I edit and re-publish articles that passed unnoticed.  Since I first posted this article in January Obama had decided to use his authority as President to improve on Health Care Reforms without the need of Republican support.  Obama policies in the Middle East is still undecided and agravating the situation for his lack of personal involvement.

If you look at alternative health programs, you’ll run into stuff showing the kind of sludge that can build up in peoples bodies from years of poor diet habits. Yuck! Traditional medicine practices the world over recognize energetic channels, meridians or nadis in some form or another. These can, in a similar way, collect years of energetic sludge. Gooey energetic resistance and literal knots in the energy channels. Even big ones we can feel under the skin. This sludge is formed by energetic resistance. Blocks in the flow. Fighting life, ourselves, and whatever shows up. We can recognize this resistance in 2 main ways – mental resistance and emotional resistance, often closely tied together. The mental habits are those stories we tell ourselves and others about what’s wrong and bad. What we’re against, who has wronged us, and so on. While there’s nothing wrong with disagreeing or standing up for what we feel is right, most of our stories are not about what we’re for but rather against. If you just stop and listen when you’re chatting with friends, you might be surprised how often you retell your problems, reinforcing them in your reality. Like when we catch ourselves judging someone we’ve never met. (The media is great for reinforcing that one) Or replaying old stories long since ended. If we stop and consider what we’d like instead, we may be surprised that we have no answer. We have no intention for what we want, just a story of what we hate. We’re inviting what we don’t want, over and over. Even if we know what we want, is that what we’re giving energy? How do the stories make you feel? Good? Or is there a subtext? Regret? Anger? Is it more like eating junk food? This is the emotional resistance – the real energy drivers – the reactivity and habitual response against what is unfolding. Snapping at a loved one before they get 2 words out or assuming that because we dropped something, the whole day will now be bad. Venting on our kids. (no wonder they become teenagers) Our closest relationships can be the most full of habitual responses. Where is the room for communication and intimacy if we’re reactive robots? Curiously some of these habits of mind and emotion can appear “positive”. Like old stories of the past that actually cause us to regret in the present. When they are pushing against what is now, they are resistance. We may feel right to be against something, like an “enemy country” or another religion. But being anti-war is NOT the same as being pro-peace, as Mother Teresa highlighted . The energy is the opposite. The sludge that results from this resistance is stored in various places throughout our system. Even in our lived environment, the “vibes” of a home. But the largest and most obvious places are the primary energy centers, the chakras. Caroline Myss calls the chakras the “data banks” . If we sludge them up, we’ll see life issues in that area. For example, if the root is sludged, we’ll feel ungrounded or insecure. For the 2nd, we may lack passion or have poor social skills. Inversely, there can be dependencies and addictions. For the 3rd, submissiveness or controlling tendencies. And so forth. You can see that it goes both ways, depending on if the energy is just blocked or agitated because it’s blocked. The resistance I’m talking about here is sustained. This requires a continual energy supply to keep up that uses up a remarkable amount of our resources. But we don’t realize it’s happening because we’re so used to fighting internally. All we have to do is be willing to stop, look, listen. If we see something we don’t want in life, do a little energy healing or inquiry to disengage the energy source. What is the feeling value under this resistance? What is under that? The emotions will wash over us in a brief wave and be gone, done, completed. As these emotions are the energy that drives the clingy mind, the mental drivers also go. At first, it may be very uncomfortable to see. Our dark side, the bogeyman. But once seen, it clears easily. The stories may come up again for a while but slowly they will lose the energy they need to continue. At some point, they will be fully seen through and end. You’ll also find an effortless meditation is wonderful. It connects you to peace and who you are, making a lot of this automatic. Over time, we take the load off. And what a relief it can be! Davidya

Jamie Oliver @ TED. Are you eating your liver to death? How many years to live? What are you doing to prevent it from going out of control? “This might be the only generation that children die before their parents.” Contact us today for free wellness evaluation @ uptownlife234@gmail.com

Prescription painkillers like Oxycontin and Vicodin are mostly prescribed for chronic pain of arthritis and cancer and for injuries. They are usually opiate-based, and will have same action as that of heroin or morphine when injected into the bloodstream. They physically have impact on particular receptors in the brain, and when abused, they will chemically transform the way the brain works. Addiction to painkillers is rampant, and intended abuse is increasing yearly as thrill seekers and accidental addicts will make use of these drugs to get high (joyful) on their reasonable euphoric effect. Painkiller addiction is illustrated by severe need for the drug when pain is genuinely a problem. Drugs such as Oxycontin, when abused, can generate intense cravings and addictive efforts to attain more. This results in high crime rates for pharmacy theft and illegal prescriptions. People can identify painkiller addicted person by observing symptoms like confusion, sleepiness and apathy, dizziness, weakness, nausea, slow breathing, pinpoint pupils, seizures. Moreover, hard core abusers may have drug equipments in order to help in shooting or snorting the powder attained by crushing the prescription tablets.

Salsa prefers to stand outside in the attached paddock rather than inside his stall, despite the fre

Salsa prefers to stand outside in the attached paddock rather than inside his stall, despite the fre