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No Words

I’m having lots of Eye of Sauron moments as I learn more about glucose, metabolic disease, and metabolic dysfunction. It’s not pretty, and at times, I’m in tears, thinking about signs of bad health I missed over the years.

Recently, I saw my general practitioner (Dr. Laura). I knew there would be some bloodwork involved.

For the first time in my life, I deliberately fasted, even skipping my regular black coffee that morning so that I could get a true fasting glucose level.

What’s considered normal? The normal range for fasting glucose is from 60 to 100 mg/dL.

For the last few years, I’ve tested on the higher side of normal (between 93 and 99), but as I said, its the “fasting glucose” they are measuring, and I’ve never done bloodwork when fasting.

It’s never been articulated to me that I really should fast before bloodwork. No one has ever said, “When was the last time you ate or drank anything other than water?” Neither a doctor nor the phlebotomist, as they get ready to take my blood sample.

It wasn’t until 2023 that ANY doctor looked at my glucose level and said, “That’s high. You should pay attention to your sugar intake.”

(And that’s when I quit Cheerios, months before getting diagnosed with CLL.)

But of course, our health is in our own hands. It was probably right there in 6 point light gray type on the back of the form. 

So, back to the present. Last week, I was thrilled to see that my fasting glucose was 88! Wow!! I’m fixing my metabolism! I patted myself on the back.

Dr. Laura decided to also do a hemoglobin A1C test, which took a few days longer to show up in my chart. I’ve never had one before. The CDC currently recommends that everyone over 45 should have one, and that anyone who is overweight or showing signs of diabetes should have one, regardless of age.

Well, my results show that I’m just over the top range at 5.8%, which is pre-diabetic.

What’s considered normal? The normal range for hemoglobin A1C is between 4.2% and 5.6%. The diabetic range begins at 6.4%.

So, yeah. That took a few days to digest. I do struggle with this news because I have eliminated ALL processed foods and sugars from my diet for over a year now. Even before that, I rarely drank a soda or any type of alcohol. I would have described my diet as healthy.

I’ve been reading Good Energy by Dr. Casey Means, and I remembered a section on these sorts of metabolic biomarkers.

I found and re-read those pages. She calls for lower averages on almost all of the metabolic markers than the current standards.

Here’s how she starts: “… we have all nodded as doctors quickly glossed over test results, but very few of us have any idea what these numbers mean.”

Boy, howdy!

She defines “fasting” as 8 hours without eating or drinking any calories and sets a range of 70 to 85 mg/dL as the optimal range for fasting glucose.

She also lists 5.0% to 5.4% as the lowest risk range for hemoglobin A1C.

So, beyond sugars and processed foods, the next thing I need to look at is my carb intake. That’s the potatoes, pasta, rice, oats, and other grains that make up so much of our diet.

Good luck to me (and all of us) on Thanksgiving! Gobble gobble!

I also found this episode on one of my favorite podcasts, Diary of a CEO.

The Glucose Goddess, Jessie Inchauspé, has so much to teach us!

She told a quick story about a man who read her book. “There was this one guy, he had diabetes his whole life, he’s in his 50s, on lots of medications, and just thought he would lose a leg, or lose his vision… that’s what happens when you have type 2 for a very long time… and his doctors had never explained to him WHY he had diabetes, they had just told him ‘take this pill’ and ‘take this insulin’… and, he read my book, and he understood why he got diabetes in the first place, and he did the hacks. He was able to reverse his type 2 diabetes in one year. All his doctors were like, “How did you do it?” … you know, doctors don’t often have this information…”

Here are a few positive steps or “hacks” shared in the episode:

  • Eat a savory breakfast. This means eating protein, fats, and NOTHING sweet. (She suggests eggs, meat, tofu, nuts, and dairy, or leftovers from dinner). When you have sweets for breakfast, she warns, you set yourself up for a day of sugar spikes and crashes.
  • Vinegar once a day. 1 tablespoon in a glass of water 10 minutes before your biggest meal. It interacts with your digestive enzymes and keeps you from having a glucose spike. Dilute it with water so it doesn’t hurt tooth enamel.
  • Veggie starters are vegetables eaten at the beginning of a meal. This puts fiber into your intestines before the rest of the meal, slowing the absorption of glucose into your system. Combine with hack 2 for a pre-meal salad.
  • Exercise after eating. Just light activity is fine. Walk the dog. 10 minutes is all it takes. Calf muscles soak up glucose more than any other muscle in the body.

I’m off to get a copy of her book to add to my nightstand collection. 📖

Canker Sores

A bit off topic, but related in terms of a healthy microbiome…

I used to get canker sores frequently, and if you’ve ever had one, you know they’re horrible! Your lip swells, you accidentally bite it when trying to eat, it makes talking complicated, and it’s really painful! There’s nothing good about canker sores.

I talked to my dentist about it a while back, and he recommended a certain mouthwash that didn’t help.

I had noticed in the past that if I used Listerine, I’d end up with another one or two sores. It made the problem much worse. I had also tried salt, saltwater rinses, and campho-phenique, which helped a bit but didn’t solve the problem.

Then I started drinking kombucha, and they’ve disappeared. They are just gone. It’s like magic. Lifelong problem solved!

I did tell my dentist in the hopes that he and his staff would tell others. I’ll have to ask at my next cleaning and see if they are.

When I first got diagnosed and met my hematologist, he mentioned that many people with CLL also have a lot of canker sores. I told him how I fixed mine. Not sure what he’s done with that knowledge. I’ll have to follow up.

Anyway, I was talking to my sister yesterday evening and she had a canker… I told her about kombucha, and she said that she would double up on the probiotics. I told her that probiotics in the pill form had never helped me, but kombucha does.

This morning, she texted to say that she’s using kombucha and already feels better. 🌞

P.S. What if the common canker sore was seen and widely recognized as an early sign of poor gut health, and people knew what to do about it? 

What if doctors knew to recommend probiotics and postbiotics (to rebuild a healthy gut) rather than recommending an antiseptic type of mouthwash that actually kills more of the good bacteria?

TedX Tampa Bay

Back when I was doing my deep dive into fasting, I stumbled upon this video. It caught my eye because Tampa is my home, and USF is my alma mater. Go bulls! 🤙

He cites Dr. Otto Warburg, who won the Nobel Prize in 1931 when he discovered that cancer cells create energy differently than healthy cells. Because of their damaged metabolic process, cancer cells require a lot of glucose, don’t use oxygen, and can’t switch over to using ketones (stored fat) for energy like healthy cells can. 

He also notes Dr. Thomas Seyfried of Boston College, who has continued Warburg’s work and is doing his best to shout from the rooftops, “Cancer is a metabolic disease!” … though the average oncologist probably hasn’t heard the news yet.

He goes on to discuss the use of hyperbaric oxygen therapy to damage cancer cells and hasten their demise while not damaging healthy cells.

He ends with a hopeful message and challenge to other researchers: “Can we manage cancer with non-toxic strategies?”

This video was recorded 10 years ago, and sadly, I have seen many people suffer and die from cancer in that time, but I haven’t seen any of them change to a keto diet or use hyperbaric oxygen.

Have you?

Just two months ago, a new paper was published by D’Augustino, along with others. The paper cites Seyfried’s research and proposes a very different approach to cancer therapy:

Targeting the Mitochondrial-Stem Cell Connection in Cancer Treatment: A Hybrid Orthomolecular Protocol

It involves vitamins C and D, zinc, hyperbaric oxygen, a keto diet, and a couple of anti-parasitic drugs.

I fear that this paper will not be taken seriously because it includes ivermectin, a drug that has the power to divide people along political lines.

Most folks don’t know that it is currently used to treat rheumatoid arthritis. And of course, we give it to our pets in the form of heartguard every month. ❤️ 🐩 🐕 🐈‍⬛ 🐈 ❤️

Symptoms

In 2018, we moved from Florida to New York. A lot of things changed, from the water to the weather, the pollen, the food, the amount of sunlight, noise levels, stress levels … everything, really.

I started getting what I now call “6 hour colds” in the spring of 2019. I’d feel a tickle in my throat or cough or sneeze, go take a nap, and then wake up feeling fine. I wouldn’t get sick… not for more than 6 hours anyway. It was weird, but really, I didn’t think about it much. Who‘s going to complain about not getting sick?

I also started to notice that, after a lifetime of asthma, hay fever, and allergies, mine had gone away. In Florida, I could go through a jumbo box of Kleenex in a couple of days. In New York, my husband and son were having allergies, which they rarely had in Florida, and I wasn’t. Hmmm. Must be different pollen...

I mentioned earlier that I do some work for the American Lung Association, and a lot of it involves asthma training. I remember arguing over whether asthma was a chronic condition. I thought it wasn’t because, evidently, I had “outgrown” mine.

In early 2020, well, you know what happened. Covid! My family got it, but I didn’t. Hmm… I must be lucky, or maybe I’m one of those asymptomatic carriers.

In 2021, I went hiking with my kids at Letchworth Park, the “Grand Canyon of the East.”  It’s a beautiful place, and you should definitely check it out if you get a chance. We parked at the upper falls and walked down steep stone stairs to the middle falls, maybe a distance of a mile or so, mostly stairways but some flat land, too. I was fine on the way down. Getting back to the car was a real challenge, though, because those stairs were steep!

I was getting winded very easily and had to stop a few times. I had never felt like that before. When we got back up to the car, I let my daughter drive. I was too shaky and lightheaded to do it. I recovered after a bit of rest and was fine.

Later, knowing that I needed to get some exercise and build up my stamina, I joined a gym and started doing zumba and yoga regularly. Those hour-long classes never took me to that place of exhaustion I felt at Letchworth.

There were other odd occurrences, and I don’t know if they were symptoms of CLL or not.

It seemed like my hair was thinning, but then again, I was going through menopause and that’s fairly typical.

I gained weight and had less energy in the evenings, but that sounded like menopause, too.

Sometimes, usually after walking up 2 flights of stairs, I would see blue spots. When it happened, I’d just drink a big glass of water. I had never been in an environment like this before, with the heater on 5+ months of the year and a potbelly stove in constant use. It made sense to chalk it up to simple dehydration.

I smelled different, not in a gross way, but just different, more acidic. It motivated me to exercise more and sweat more. I also started going to a sauna in the cold part of the year, approximately once a month.

My armpits were puffy, which could have been from the weight gain.

In December of 2022, I got a mammogram, which revealed an enlarged lymph node in one armpit. It was monitored with ultrasound a couple of times in 2023 and seemed to be slowly growing.

So we did a biopsy, which revealed cancer markers. Then, a battery of blood tests to confirm the diagnosis.

And here I am…

What is CLL?

My cousin asked me some questions about CLL this weekend, and it took me a while to recall the answers.

I realize that I’ve been focusing on lowering my toxin load and risk factors and healing my metabolic functions (a positive thing for me, my family, and hopefully you, too) instead of focusing on my disease (a negative thing that I can’t change).

Which is actually good from a stress-management perspective. 🧘‍♀️

Chronic lymphocytic leukemia is a cancer of the B cells, which are a type of white blood cell.

“Chronic” indicates that it is a lifelong condition, with no known cure.

“Lymphocytic” means that it involves a particular type of cell called the lymphocyte.

There are two main types of lymphocytes: B cells and T cells. B cells produce antibodies to attack bacteria, viruses, and toxins, while T cells destroy cells that have been taken over by viruses or become cancerous.

CLL is a dysfunction of the B cells.

“Leukemia” is a word for cancer of blood-forming tissues, including bone marrow. The word “leukemia” literally means “white blood” in Greek.

This is how CLL was explained to me by my doctor:

When a healthy person gets sick, the body sends out a variety of white blood cells to fight off the infection.

Some white blood cells are like army infantrymen — they go where they are told and do what they are told to do in order to fight the invader.

The B cell is like a Navy Seal. It goes in and locates the virus or germ, then rapidly tries a variety of ways to kill it. Once it succeeds in killing the invader, it sends a signal to the bone marrow, saying, “Make a million more cells that can kill the invader this way.” These cells are called activated B cells.

Once the invader is killed off and the virus or germ is conquered, there should be a signal that says a couple of things.

(I believe these are all sent by the B cell, but I’m not 100% sure.)

1. Thanks, bone marrow. You can stop making the activated cells now.

2. Thanks, activated cells. You can die off now. (This is called apoptosis, or “programmed cell death.”)

3. Thanks, immune system. You can relax now.

4. Let’s make some antibodies for future use.

So, in a person with CLL, these signals stop being sent. The activated B cells flood the bloodstream, and they don’t die off.

The very worst, most life-threatening part of having CLL is that those new antibodies are not being made. Thankfully, you still have the old ones that your body made when the B cells worked well.

My doctor told me that his little department of the cancer center lost the most patients during the covid pandemic, because this was a “novel” virus and most of them didn’t have antibodies similar to what was needed to fight the disease.

Another bad thing is that once you have CLL, you are more likely to develop another cancer. (It is closely correlated to skin cancer in men and women, and prostate cancer in men.)

The best thing about CLL is that it progresses very slowly. So you have a lot of time to make changes and figure things out.

Ice Cream, You Scream

My husband and son have to have their ice cream! I don’t join in (lactose issues, and it’s too sugary for my post-diagnosis diet)…

I tried to find a healthy ice cream brand using the Yuka app, but it seems that they just don’t exist.

So, I decided to make it myself, using a little Cuisinart ice cream churn that our nephew gave us a few years ago.

Here’s the recipe:

  • One and a half cups (12 oz) organic heavy cream
  • One and a half cups (12 oz) organic whole milk
  • 2/3 cup maple syrup
  • 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
  • 1/8 teaspoon sea salt

I usually add in some organic dried cherries, strawberries, blueberries, etc. from Trader Joe’s or Aldi. Let them soak in the unchurned mixture for a while in the fridge.

Halfway through the churning process, I sometimes also add a handful of chocolate chips.

Update: Last night, Jimmy said the only thing wrong with this ice cream is that it is too rich. I’m going to experiment with different ratios between the milk and cream to find the best way to do it. I’ll post updates.

Black Plastic Kitchen Utensils

“…new research shows that many types of black plastics contain harmful flame retardants that shouldn’t be coming into contact with food.”

We all had them… just make sure you don’t have them anymore:

https://www.foodnetwork.com/healthyeats/news/throw-away-black-takeout-container-kitchen-utensils

The article also says to just throw them away… don’t recycle. Remove them from the cycle. Thank you!

Comparison Shopping

Was doing some grocery shopping this morning, and I needed kombucha.

Take a look at these three products.

I usually just drink a shot in the evenings… but if I were to drink the entire bottle…

The brand on the left would give me 42% of my recommended daily allowance of sugar.

The middle brand has 24% of the RDA of sugar.

The brand on the right has 6% of the RDA of sugar.

That’s a big difference! It’s definitely worth taking the time to look.

Are You Metabolically Healthy?

Dr. Casey Means uses these five key biomarkers to determine if a person is metabolically healthy. Do you make the cut?

  • An HDL level above 50 for women or above 40 for men. HDL stands for high-density lipoprotein.
  • A fasting glucose level of under 100 milligrams per deciliter.
  • A triglyceride level of less than 150 milligrams per deciliter.
  • Blood pressure under 120/85.
  • A waist circumference of less than 35 inches for women and less than 40 inches for men.

Dr. Means cites research that indicates that approximately 93% of adults are not metabolically healthy, which lays the groundwork for a variety of health problems, including diabetes, heart disease, dementia, and cancer.

Strangely, according to these markers, I’m actually in a healthy range … cancer and all. 🤔