Who Do the Voodoo?

photo by acidpix

A guy with a late onset diabetes story similar to mine emailed a couple of days ago with questions about a few details of my experiment. He used the term “voodoo” to describe some of the non-diet/supplement components of my regimen. I like it. It’s pretty descriptive. It’s one word with some power and mystery-- seems much sexier than “eastern-medicine inspired” or “holistic” or “mind-body techniques”. And it’s perfect as a reference to a subject the great majority has no experience with. As I replied, I realized that I reference my acupuncture, yoga, and meditation periodically in this blog, but rarely with specifics. At present, I try to do 25 minutes of yoga exercise , 15 minutes of breathing and 15 minute of mediation daily. I often skip a day on weekends. I had weekly acupuncture treatments from January, 2011 until November, 2011 when I changed to a bi-weekly schedule. That was a purely monetary decision. Weekly is preferable.

My science news feeds led me to kernels of evidence for each of these health and healing practices. Mixed in with the studies on fish oil, ALA, GABA, zinc, and the rest I found: “Iceman” Wim Hof, who controlled his immune response with tummo meditation;  other studies suggest plain old mindfulness meditation also positively affects the immune system; the science for the benefit of acupuncture is related to its role combatting stress, a primary driver for diabetes and other chronic autoimmune and inflammatory diseases; yoga breath and body exercise are tied not only to physical strength and balance, but to the same kind of non-western energy regulation that acupuncture addresses. At a minimum, yoga aids in the all-important battle against stress. My instincts tell me that yoga is also a direct a biofeedback mechanism for autonomic body functions.

These clues were of particular interest to me. Improving pancreas function and reducing insulin resistance are less-dismissed goals by western medicine than actually fixing the root cause immune attack. A “diet cure” for Type 2’s is actually starting to gain some credibility. But it’s still all voodoo on the “curing autoimmune” front. Any pancreas under attack is completely written off by western medicine. Many avenues of research are trying to figure out how to switch off the attack or make islet transplants viable, but currently, none seem less quality of life compromising than the insulin needle or pump.

The cynical answer to why the voodoo solutions aren’t researched more and publicized is that it’s not patentable. If most research originates from corporate interests, the only voodoo reporting we’ll get is at this kind of personal, anecdotal level.





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Refusing The Needle: A Diabetic’s Natural Journey To Kick-Ass Health by Russell Stamets
ebook available for all devices at https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/145608
and for kindle at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007P6L5C4
tags: type 1, type 2, autoimmune, diabetes, lada, natural, alternative, diet, supplements, acupuncture, meditation, lifestyle

WOLF!

photo by Dennis

 It’s some kind of inertia or afterimage that’s responsible for one of the most vexing problems encountered during lifestyle re-modeling. After however many months or years of work to first identify your required behavior changes, and then make them happen, there’s still a disappointing period of time where you’re the only one who perceives that you‘ve done it.

Everyone attaches a likely intent to the behaviors or behavioral patterns of those they interact with. This perceived intent by others probably closely matches the actual intent of the “behaver”, most of the time. Assume we’re talking about average, socially adequate-functioning people on both sides of this perception line of sight. It took me years to accept the fact that perceived intent counts more than the actual. But it’s true. Perception is all that matters.

I’ve described before my original belief that instincts couldn’t be changed. And about how surprised I’ve been that my ingrained habits, including angry reaction or my skill to find and punch people’s buttons, could be modified. And they have been drastically modified. It was required to lower the stress and stabilize blood sugar. And those around me see the results. But old, tried and true patterns of action-reaction and perceived motivation are hard to discard. The same comment that previously was a snide, passive-aggressive swipe is now earnest. But I’m the boy who cried wolf. I can’t expect people to know that my current health and peace of mind is only possible because all the old unkind intent is gone. Of course, absolutes have to be avoided. I say gone. More accurate would be extremely dampened. In my own mind, I don’t rise to anger often, to any great degree, or without immediately recognizing it. But any deviation from the golden path is an unfortunate reinforcement of the false wolf cry precedent. Still, most of the time now, it’s simply the case that I say something to be honestly helpful, forgetting that the exact same phrase, in the same situation, was once a reason to bristle.





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Refusing The Needle: A Diabetic’s Natural Journey To Kick-Ass Health by Russell Stamets
ebook available for all devices at https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/145608
and for kindle at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007P6L5C4
tags: type 1, type 2, autoimmune, diabetes, lada, natural, alternative, diet, supplements, acupuncture, meditation, lifestyle

Diabetes Tips With Captain Russ - Go Back?

Captain Russ ponders the road ahead.

Quantum Mystic

This subject will take far more than the few paragraphs of any one post. But I have to try; the evidence for the mind side of the mind-body equation keeps materializing in front of me. Early this year, the science of the body was foremost in my research. Back in April, the news feeds I monitor had almost daily articles on diabetes and autoimmune disease related studies. Most aspects of my regimen (supplements, diet, activity, acupuncture) are derived from my interpretation of that stream. For the last 3-4 months, the diabetes relevant science news has thinned out. But as if to stave off any boredom on my part, science related to the non-material side of the system has become visible.

About 3 months ago, my close friend (an RN with eastern medicine training), called me to say she’d put together a class she wanted me to attend. It was free, one evening a week for 6 weeks, and presented by a Swami she’d met who’d recently arrived from India. I’m not much of a class guy, but Michelle is someone whose instincts are so right that you ignore them at your peril. And she was right. Swamiji was spellbinding. The class was titled “Spiritual Healing Through Eternal Wisdom” and had some focus toward the physicians and caregivers at the hospital where the presentations were given. That focus was not irrelevant to me since I’m primary caregiver to myself during this diabetes project. Swami Dharmananda has been teaching the science of yoga for 26 years in India, mostly to Americans, and has great skill leading western minds on a tour of the universe-system that traditional yoga comprises. The bits and pieces I had previously stumbled across had not made it clear that yoga was more than physical exercises. Swamiji described it as a super-science of physics, medicine, and psychology all rolled into one. I have yet to find fault with his assertion that there is absolutely no conflict between the science of yoga and western science. He suggests that every development in either hard or soft science is explainable and “fits” within the yoga system. Any phenomena still unexplained by western science can be explained by yoga and will, Swamiji says, be confirmed by western science too, eventually.

For me, most of this seemed vaguely familiar and certainly not hard to accept. After the first class, I was reminded of something I wrote in 1980 for a university Mythology class. I was pursuing a double-major in Astrophysics and Creative Writing. This project was to write a cosmology or origin myth. My “A Modern Cosmology” is a little dry to wade through; but its attempt to explain the meaning of the universe, in terms completely compatible with both astro and quantum physics, sounds a lot like yoga.

The compounding event that prompted this post is a documentary I saw last night. I had queued A Quantum Activist in Netflix a couple of months ago. I finally watched it. Lo and behold it’s a film about a quantum physicist who, after decades of teaching the standard western, material model, had a series of radical insights. I can’t possibly do justice to his argument here. You should watch it. His name is Amit Goswami.

The fact that quantum physics is all about possibilities led him to look at what happens in our brains. The current generations-long western mantra (that everything derives from the material or physical) doesn't explain all phenomena. The known chemical reactions and neurons firing in the brain still don’t account for instinct or intuition. Evidence of non-locality connections between people, and at the atomic level, are easily explainable if you turn the paradigm upside down. Instead, put the non-material (consciousness) as the basis that all phenomena derive from, instead of the other way around. As I said, no few sentences can begin to take you to this place. If you can’t find the film, A Quantum Activist, here are some you-tube clips of Amit Goswami, Ph.D. that are a good start.



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Refusing The Needle: A Diabetic’s Natural Journey To Kick-Ass Health by Russell Stamets
ebook available for all devices at https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/145608
and for kindle at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007P6L5C4
tags: type 1, type 2, autoimmune, diabetes, lada, natural, alternative, diet, supplements, acupuncture, meditation, lifestyle

Diabetes Tips With Captain Russ - Hold The Course

Captain Russ advises us to hold the course.

Organ Meat?

tasty collard green experiment

That component of the paleo diet may be tough for me; but, on the other hand, I’m eating many things I turned my nose up at before. I’ve watched the you-tube video a friend of mine shared on Facebook a couple of times. It’s hard to stop thinking about it. “TEDxIowaCity - Dr. Terry Wahls - Minding Your Mitochondria” is the best snapshot of the science behind this kind of lean, hunter-gatherer “paleo” diet I’ve seen yet. It’s also a great story. A western doctor who didn’t accept the MS “sentence” she’d received, and found another way. MS, diabetes and a whole collection of chronic diseases are more related than we’ve traditionally thought. Diet shows up repeatedly as the key. The more cynical among us say these diet “cures” are ignored because they’re not patentable.  This one caught my attention because it’s so close to what I’ve figured out for myself. Although I still eat more whole grains than Dr. Wahls recommends, and I’d need to nearly double my intake of vegetables, which is already much higher than my life before. Kale will be a challenge too; but, we just experimented with collard greens last night, cooked up with onion, quinoa, tomatoes, red chili, and some sliced up spicy chicken brats. Outstanding!



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Refusing The Needle: A Diabetic’s Natural Journey To Kick-Ass Health by Russell Stamets
ebook available for all devices at https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/145608
and for kindle at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007P6L5C4
tags: type 1, type 2, autoimmune, diabetes, lada, natural, alternative, diet, supplements, acupuncture, meditation, lifestyle