21Jun 2012 by Marjorie 6 Comments

Conditions to consider if you’ve been mysteriously sub-par for a long time

diagnosis and testing, health reference and research tools
Updated August 14, 2017. Here's a list of conditions I've investigated over the years as I tried to solve my health problems. You've no doubt heard of some of them but might think the symptoms don't apply to you, or might have been given the wrong test or had your test results evaluated with the wrong lab ranges. All but two of the items listed (Lyme disease and mold / biotoxin poisoning) have the benefit of being easy (if not cheap) to test for or at least rule out. You cannot trust your doctor to know the right lab ranges, so if you do have tests taken, make sure you arrange to have copies of the test results sent to you. I can't be the only person who had a…
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13Mar 2012 by Marjorie 8 Comments

My experience with the Perfect Health Diet’s supplement plan

diets
by guest blogger Steph Steph is maharani at Midlife Makeover Year, where she's exploring new approaches to her health, diet, attitude, family life, and shoes, among other things. She is also one of my few commenters to refrain from mentioning w-bcam s-x, for which I will be eternally grateful. -- mr When I went on the Perfect Health Diet plan, I hoped to clean up my eating habits and address some of my thyroid issues through food choices. As it happens, the PHD plan is not just about food; there is actually a pretty aggressive recommended supplement plan. (Aggressive, that is, for me, as I’ve traditionally been a “multi-plus-maybe-some-vitamin-D” person.) Since the supplement plan didn’t involve drastically cutting sugar or giving up the fresh, hot gluten-filled rolls I was habitually…
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31Jan 2012 by Marjorie 28 Comments

Get thee behind me, methyl bromide

symptoms and conditions
For anyone out there wondering to what extent the pesticide methyl bromide builds up in our bodies, I offer my recent bromide-detox experience after I switched to organic chocolate. After seven months on iodine I still can't seem to lower the dose below 100 mg a day without losing its benefits -- mostly increased energy and concentration -- which is getting a little tedious and expensive. In theory you shouldn't need more than 15 mgs or so of it once you've corrected a deficiency. I found a few people on various forums who are experiencing the same thing and who suspect it's because they haven't removed all the bromide sources from their diets. The only one I had left was chocolate, so two weeks ago I switched to a brand…
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18Dec 2011 by Marjorie No Comments

Another unexpected side effect of repletion: expanded horizons

nutritional therapy, side effects
(Originally posted December 2011) I wrote earlier of some unexpected side effects of correcting a deficiency, and here's a new one: you learn a lot about Japanese culture. After I started researching iodine deficiency and decided to experiment with that, I was visited with cravings for sushi and Japanese movies. What with their seafood-laden diet, the Japanese ingest about 50 times more iodine than we do every day. They also have a surprisingly low incidence of a few ailments associated with modern lifestyles -- breast cancer, for one -- which got Western researchers thinking about what big doses of it might do. As to why the sushi craving appeared...maybe my body, after years of deprivation, had forgotten it ever needed iodine, and when reminded of it with a flood of…
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07Sep 2011 by Marjorie No Comments

Diagram of how various deficiencies can egg each other on

interactions, symptoms and conditions
Soon after I discovered that typical guidelines about iodine are outdated and wrong (1), I came across information about vitamin K that made me realize the amounts I had been experimenting with were pathetically small. Also, it is possible that vitamin D supplements affect vitamin K, which for me would explain a lot (2). This is yet another example of how difficult it is to find reliable info about all the nutrients and how they work in the body and interact with each other. Here's a diagram of how I suspect my iodine, vitamin K, vitamin D, zinc, and iron deficiencies have been interacting. 1: You can find a list of iodine references at the bottom of this Breast Cancer Choices' iodine investigation page. 2: From the World's Healthiest Foods…
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18Aug 2011 by Marjorie 12 Comments

Seven fomenters of brain fog

nutritional therapy, symptoms and conditions, treatments
Several factors combined together to cause me years of spaciness and difficulty concentrating. Highlights of this period included giving the wrong last name when called on in class and almost getting my head wedged between two floors of a department store while riding the escalator. Most of the causes were ferreted out after I went gluten-free, and now I can face a big project and a tight deadline without sweating it too much, given enough Pepsi. The problem is that metabolizing an acre's worth of high-fructose corn syrup when you're 25 is one thing; now it's quite another. I'm still looking for the final pieces to this puzzle. The main causes were: 1. and 2. High histamine, caused at least in part by low iodine I discovered this by accident…
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