Care

I was just reading a book on building small businesses. Interestingly the author made observations that I felt resonated in a lot of more spiritually directed literature.

He posited that meaning is a function of caring. That is, if you care, then you will find meaning. This seemed almost exactly what that book Zena and the Art of Motorcyle Maintenance was addressing with the concept of Quality. And what Zen talks about with acting choice fully. And perhaps too what Christians mean with the concept of Faith.

The notion is that by Caring deeply about the way that you act, you generate/find meaning in the world.

Someone recently challenged me on my healing. Well, a lot of things, relaly, were challenged. Lets just say I was being an asshole. Not a suprise to those who know me, but I digress.

Someone recently challenged me on my healing. My immediate response was, of course, fuck you. This is despite 4 years of undergratudate education, a juris doctorate and a voracious appetite for literature; the best i could come up with was Fuck You.

But after that angry bit, I did what I always do and sat with the hard part. My appraoch is generally that the hard part might be right, it might be wrong, but if its hard to hear, its probably worth investigating.

So thats it really...Has my illness become a crutch now? Am I using it to justify certain behaviors? Am I really healing, psycologically, as fast as I can, or am I more in love with the scars than moving on? In short- do I want to be whole, or fragmented, even if whole is less than I want.

Its complicated. One observation she made was that I fight my own healing regimine. Doing this by not putting myself in a place to get what I deem I need in terms of sleep, relaxation, meditation, supplementation and diet.

It is, in fact, largely in my control, yet I am often caught unawares by the necessities of my needs. As if by denying that they are there, then I deny having been ill, or still being ill. It is, after a time of inquiry, quite selfish really. No, wait, maybe not so much selfish as careless. In some ways I guess I still see myself as a victim. And a victim is not someone who cares about his environment. And without care, you are lost of meaning. And without meaming, there is no purpose and then you are really lost.

Being ill disrupts all that. A lot of the meaning we once had is dashed. Basic life presumptions are just humilated over and over and over. Each time they cautiously build up again to a point of pride, down into the ditch they are kicked.

You lose hope, which is excusable and even healthy, but later you give up on Faith. On meaning. on purpose. You see yourself a little piece of flotsam in the massive currents of an ocean that is too large to comprehend.

I am not ashamed of this. You see people reach this place all the time. We call them elderly. When we finally accept that despite all of our cautions, despite all of our plans, our achievements, our memories, our caring, we are going to die- we panic. We reject the things that meant something to us. We stop caring for ourselves. We are lost.

Being ill was pre-mature enlightenment in that sense. But there is a sickness common on that path. A preference for being painless. A preference for a certain state instead of THIS state. After a while you get disgusted with THIS state, and I was disgusted with who I actually was. I sometimes hated the weakness and the illness. This caused me to ignore it and in extnesion- me. that sucks. I may be kinda flawed, but its me.

What we, what I need to do, is take the advice Nessim Teleb once offered: shave on your way to the gallows. I didn't get it at first, but I do now. If you are looking for meaning in life, that is, if life has to play out the way your limited little pea brain expects it to, you will be gravely disspointed. But take care in life, pursue quality, be Faithful, and you (er, I) will find meaning. Make meaning? Whatever.

Ok, I am presing publish instead of reviewing this drivel. I hope it makes sense-ish-ness to you.

Moral Fitness

Thats what it titled at any rate. The Board of Bar overseers, however, consider THIS material to my qualifications to practice law:

"Have you ever been diagnosed or treated for a medically recognized mental illness, disease or disorder that would currently interfere with your ability to practice law?"

er...no?

Seriously, what do I answer and what, the fuck, does this have to do with my moral fitness? I decided that it doesn't. And fuck them for asking me.

Dyspraxia

Another day another diagnosis. How many has it been? I lost track a long time ago...
Depression,
Manic Depression
Diabetes,
Hypoglycemia
Leaky Gut
Candidaisis
Stress disorders,
Bi Polarism
Personality disorder
Schozoid personality
Paranoia
histapenia
Schizophrenia
Over Methylation
Wilson's Disease
Copper poisoning
lead poisoning
Panic Attacks related to self image problems
Low zinc,
Mercury poinsoning
Cushing's syndrome
you get the idea. I dont really care anymore, but this one is interesting

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyspraxia#General_difficulties.

This tracks pretty closley with a lot of experiences. Not an answer, but something to keep an eye on:

Assessment and diagnosis

Speech and language

Developmental verbal dyspraxia is a type of ideational dyspraxia, causing linguistic or phonological impairment [two interesting notes, one, my inability to understand people. I have a very hard time understanding spoken words. I need at least to see the lips move and body language helps. i can hardly understand anyone on the phone. This is why I try to avoid it Cannot understand lyrics in songs at ll unless I read them; two word salad as described by hebephric Sz. When I was severely sick, I uttered almost complete gibberish]. TKey problems include:

Fine motor control

Difficulties with fine motor co-ordination lead to problems with handwriting, which may be due to either ideational or ideo-motor difficulties. Problems associated with this area may include:

• Learning basic movement patterns. [hands rated disabled and severely disabled on the MMPI]
  
• Developing a desired writing speed.
• The acquisition of graphemes – e.g. the letters of the Latin alphabet, as well as numbers.
• Establishing the correct pencil grip [still use a fist- cannot hold it in fingers]
  
• Hand aching while writing

Whole body movement, coordination, and body image

Issues with gross motor coordination mean that major developmental targets including walking, running, climbing and jumping are affected. One area of difficulty involves associative movement, where a passive part of the body moves or twitches in response to a movement in an active part. For example, the support arm and hand twitching as the dominant arm and hand move, or hands turning inwards or outwards to correspond with movements of the feet. Problems associated with this area may include:

• Poor timing. [a lot fo great jokes here...fill in your own].
  
• Poor balance (sometimes even falling over in mid-step). Tripping over one's own feet is also not uncommon.
• Difficulty combining movements into a controlled sequence.
• Difficulty remembering the next movement in a sequence.
• Problems with spatial awareness, or proprioception. [severe problems when really sick. staggering as if drunk]
  
• Some people with dyspraxia have trouble picking up and holding onto simple objects due to poor muscle tone.
• This disorder can cause an individual to be clumsy to the point of knocking things over and bumping into people accidentally.
• Dyspraxics may also have trouble determining the distance between them and other objects.^{[citation needed] [when it gets bad, everything is 2 dimensional].}
  
• 
  

General difficulties

Dyspraxic people may have Sensory Integration Dysfunction, a condition that creates abnormal oversensitivity or undersensitivity to physical stimuli, such as touch, light, and sound^{[citation needed]}. This may manifest itself as an inability to tolerate certain textures such as sandpaper or certain fabrics, or even being touched by another individual (in the case of touch oversensitivity) or may require the consistent use of sunglasses outdoors since sunlight may be intense enough to cause discomfort to a dyspraxic (in the case of light oversensitivity). An aversion to loud music and naturally loud environments (such as clubs and bars) is typical behavior of a dyspraxic individual who suffers from auditory oversensitivity, while only being comfortable in unusually warm or cold environments is typical of a dyspraxic with temperature oversensitivity. This typically occurs if the dyspraxia is comorbid to an autistic spectrum disorder (PDD) such as autistic disorder or Asperger syndrome^{[citation needed]}.

Dyspraxic people sometimes have difficulty moderating the amount of sensory information that their body is constantly sending them, so as a result these people are prone to panic attacks^{[citation needed]}. Having other autistic traits (which is common with dyspraxia and related conditions^{[citation needed]}) may also contribute to sensory-induced panic attacks.

Moderate to extreme difficulty doing physical tasks is experienced by dyspraxics, and fatigue is common because so much extra energy is expended while trying to execute physical movements correctly.^[5] Some (but not all) dyspraxics suffer from hypotonia, which in this case is chronically low muscle tone caused by dyspraxia^{[citation needed]}. People with this condition have very low muscle strength and endurance (even in comparison with other dyspraxics) and even the simplest physical activities may quickly cause soreness and fatigue, depending on the severity of the hypotonia. Hypotonia may worsen a dyspraxic's already poor balance to the point where it is necessary to constantly lean on sturdy objects for support^{[citation needed]}.

Dyspraxics may wish to live alongside others, although they often find it difficult. They can be messy and cluttered with a tendency to outburst including aggression, 'good and bad days' (mood swings) and difficulty in understanding the meaning of everyday interactions within a household^[6] Because of this, they sometimes end up arguing with people they care deeply about and regretting it when the mood swing is over.

Often, their moods do not last too long, but they are very intense. When angered, a dyspraxic may feel beyond furious but soon the mood will be over and he\she may regret things they did when they were angry^{[citation needed]}.

[edit] Overlap with other conditions

Dyspraxics may have other difficulties that are not due to dyspraxia itself but often co-exist with it. They may have characteristics of dyslexia (difficulty with reading and spelling), dyscalculia (difficulty with mathematics), expressive language disorder (difficulty with verbal expression), ADHD (poor attention span), or Asperger syndrome (poor social cognition and a literal understanding of language, making it hard to understand idioms or sarcasm). However, they are unlikely to have problems in all of these areas. The pattern of difficulty varies widely from person to person, and it is important to understand that a major weakness for one dyspraxic can be a strength or gift for another. For example, while some dyspraxics have difficulty with reading and spelling due to an overlap with dyslexia, or numeracy due to an overlap with dyscalculia, others may have brilliant reading and spelling or mathematical abilities. Similarly, some have autistic traits such as lacking an appreciation of irony or social cues, while others thrive on an ironic sense of humour as a bonding tool and a means of coping.^[7]

Frustration and low self-esteem are common to many dyspraxics, whatever their profile of difficulties. ^[8]

Self treating through vegetariansm

I ran into this snippet today on Art De Vany's Blog. He was reviewing an article about US gymnasts turning to a low carbohydrate diet to improve performance.

"The article also fails to note that a high carb diet is almost always the diet of preference for bulemics and those with anorexia. I do not think it is a coincidence; they feed back and amplify one another. It is known that high carbohydrate meals induce a release of serotonin. But, it contains so little protein that there is no substrate to produce more serotonin. Over time, a diet lacking protein and high in carbohydrate may lower serotonin."

I found this interesting to the extent that my experience with Sz was that when I was really sick, one of the first treatments I found for myself was switching to a vegetarian diet. I remember that it calmed my mind somewhat. Art''s comment now makes me wonder if the mechanism being fulfilled was an intentional depletion of seratonin. H'penics run high in the neurotrasmitters Seratonin, norepinehohrine, and dopamine, as a result of over methylation.

If you recall the result of "Disruption of the normal functioning of the serotonin system leads to a number of psychiatric conditions, which include anxiety disorders, depression, improper social behavior, and sexual aberrations. Common medical conditions associated with disruption of the serotonin system include disturbance in the sleep-wake cycle, obesity or eating disorders, and chronic pain. "

Problems occured later when my protien surpluses were completely emptied and my adrenal glands were undernourished. In the end, I felt much better when I returned to eating meat, but initally, it caused a lot of discomfort. The seratonin flooded back in, along with a lot of other hormones.

I wonder if other people have the same experience: vegetarianism as a means to control symptoms.

Odd days

There is a certain odd, but regular phenomena that I suffer from. maybe one of you can relate. Even if you cannot relate, maybe you will be amused.

Sometimes I wake up with a crushing headache. no, not a headache. It doesn't so much hurt as it feels stufed with cotton. It actually does feel a bit bruised.

Some days, eating a small amount of protein will clear this up. Somedays it lingers. Always, I am incredibly thirsty, though when I first drink water, I get really nauseous. All day I will drink huge amounts of water. It feels as though there is something nasty getting churned up. Occasionally, like today, there is a metallic taste in my mouth. Or acidic. hard to describe, but lets just say it would make a lousy condiment. It leaks from my gums, around the teeth. Maybe an iron taste?

I take the MTP promoter. The MT it is promoting is metallothionine.

Metallothioneins (MTs) are ubiquitous low molecular weight proteins and polypeptides of extremely high metal and sulfur content. They are thought to play roles both in the intracellular fixation of the essential trace elements zinc and copper, in controlling the concentrations of the free ions of these elements, in regulating their flow to their cellular destinations, in neutralising the harmful influences of exposure to toxic elements such as cadmium and mercury and in the protection from of a variety of stress conditions (Kägi & Schäffer 1988).

You can see what this was meant to address.

Interesting...there is a great page on its use:

The Health Research Institute - HRI Pharmacy has patented various MT-promotion formulations in order to ensure that they will be widely available at low cost. Because of risks associated with improper use, these formulations will be available by prescription to medical professionals, but not to the general public.

The various MT-promotion formulations are available only from the HRI Pharmacy. The original prescription written by your physician must be mailed to the HRI Pharmacy directly. It cannot be called or faxed into the pharmacy.

Clinical Testing Procedures

MT-promotion therapy is recommended only for patients with disturbed metal metabolism. Key laboratory tests include serum copper, plasma zinc, and serum ceruloplasmin. In healthy individuals, the Cu/Zn ratio usually ranges between 0.8 and 1.2, and the amount of free copper (unbound by ceruloplasmin) ranges from 5 to 25 mcg/dL. In addition, the presence or absence of symptoms of copper overload and zinc deficiency can also aid diagnosis. Meaningful assays require acid-etched trace-metal-free sample tubes and avoidance of trace mineral supplements for 24 hours before sampling.

Other essential tests required for full evaluation include blood counts, tests of liver and kidney functions, along with an evaluation of thyroid function. Testing plasma ammonia is highly recommended prior to treatment because of the high prevalence of elevated ammonia levels in patients with autism/PDD and related disorders.

Also, a full evaluation of intestinal microflora, including both stool comprehensive parasitology (aerobic bacteria, yeast, and parasites) and urine organic acid test is recommended prior to the initiation of any therapy.

Other tests that may be useful include plasma sulfate and plasma reduced glutathione levels prior to the initiation of therapy.

Treatment for Patients Found to Have Metallothionein Dysfunction

A good trial of the gluten-free, casein-free diet (at least 6 months) is highly recommended. The best source of information about this diet is the book written by Lisa Lewis, Ph.D., Special Diets for Special Kids.

• Step 1
  
  
  1. Gut Clean-up - restore good levels of friendly bacteria and reduce overgrowths of unfriendly organisms such as Clostridia and yeast
     
     
  2. Supporting Nutrients - exact nutrients determined by testing
     
     
  3. Reduction of elevated plasma ammonia (if necessary)
     
     
  4. Aggressive zinc pre-loading
     
     
  5. DMSA alone until very little mercury, lead or tin is excreted in urine (if necessary)

• Step 2 - MT Promotion Protocol
  
  
  1. Phase 1: Zinc Loading: Aggressive supplementation with Zn and augmenting nutrients for 4 to 8 weeks is recommended. Sensitive patients may require gradual build-up of Zn dosage. Plasma zinc levels should be greater than 100 mcg/dL prior to Phase 2 to minimize irritability side effects. Zinc dosages vary with body weight. A helpful rule of thumb for small patients is to provide a daily mg dosage of Zn equal to weight (lbs) plus 15-20 mg. For example, a 40 lb child would receive 55-60 mg/day during Phase 1. In addition, we recommend the following augmenting nutrients be given with the Zn: Pyridoxal-5-Phosphate, Manganese Gluconate, and Vitamins C and E. Also, Taurine may be used for patients with seizure tendencies. We have developed a compounded supplement for Phase 1, which we call the "Metabolic Primer".
     
     
  2. Phase 2: After Phase 1 is completed, GSH, Se, and the 14 amino-acid constituents of MT are introduced gradually, as tolerated. These nutrients are available in a compounded blend called the MTP supplement. Continuation of casein/gluten-free diets, probiotics, the Metabolic Primer, and other ongoing therapies is recommended.

Objectives of MT-Promotion Therapy

Promotion of the MT protein system is expected to provide many benefits to autism-spectrum patients, including:

1. elimination of toxic metals
   
   
2. protection against future toxic exposures
   
   
3. normalization of the G.I. tract
   
   
4. improved behavior control
   
   
5. improved immune function
   
   
6. enhanced development of brain neurons and synaptic connections

The first 5 benefits may be attainable in the first year of treatment, regardless of the patient's age. However, the rate of formation of new synaptic connections declines rapidly with age, and early intervention is critically important for development of speech, cognitive advancement, etc. Great patience is needed in treatment of older children who can be expected to progress at a relatively slow rate. For example, it may require years for a 10 year old to achieve the same cognitive progress achieved by a 2 year old in a few weeks. Behavioral therapies, which shower the brain with impulses and promote neuronal development are especially recommended in conjunction with Metallothionein Promotion therapy.

Amy S. Holmes, M.D.

March 5, 2002

http://www.healing-arts.org/children/mtpromotion.htm#nutrient