I'M A REAL BLOODHOUND (or, As Well As You Want to Be)

I'M A REAL BLOODHOUND (or, As Well As You Want to Be)

Liz Pavek © 2002

I am about to commit a real journalistic blunder. I am going to write about me.

Because...

I chose this topic because it is a classical example of what can go wrong when we leave doctors in charge of our health.

I'm alive today because I finally had the guts to take responsibility for my health. It wasn't any doctor that I know of who pulled me back from the abyss. If anything, the doctors in my life are more responsible for my medical/nutritional miseries than any stupid thing I ever did (besides leave my health in the hands of a professional test-result interpreter/prescription writer/symptom looker-atter who calls what he does "practicing"). It was myself and the reading and research I have done into my symptoms for the last seven or eight years that kept me alive. My greatest tool in this research has been the internet, and to a lesser extent, real books.

The course of my research has shown me several very interesting things, and I'm going to try to write down here the more-or-less chronological course of a chronic illness and a return to good health. Please bear with me, as it will be a long story, and because I know that you are going to see some turning points in this story that you will recognize.

So, as the inimitable Bill Cosby once put it on one of his (vinyl) albums, long ago and far away, "I started out as a child..."

Tracing the step-by-step backwards course of what ailed me, I came to the earliest memory I can recall: A Coke bottle with a nipple pulled over the top of it. Inside was Pet evaporated milk, water, and dark Karo syrup. (First and earliest clue for what is to follow years down the road. A child given an early diet heavily loaded with Sugar has three strikes against them almost before they even get out of the gate.)

I was born during WW II, and we lived in Juneau, Alaska, where fresh milk was unheard of. But the Karo? I have no idea why that was laced in our milk (my sister and I were 15 months apart and treated like twins). My mother considered dark Karo syrup to be the universal remedy. She used it everywhere. She sweetened our milk with it. She put it on pancakes. She even used it, mixed with water, as a cure for bedwetting (placebo effect here. But I can tell you on good authority that it didn't work...).

(Keep in mind that what I am telling you about in these little anecdotes are illustrations of nutritional folly, medical predation, and early predisposition to the subsequent health problems.)

The next earliest memory that I now know through 20/20 hindsight that had a definite effect on my health was our move to Utah in 1949. The move itself was not the problem. The location was. Just as our luck would have it, this was also about the time the Government began their atomic bomb testing in Southern Nevada, and also, just our luck, we were directly downwind. For over ten years we lived in that invisible cloud of fallout, never suspecting that what was happening to us as little kids was going to affect us for the rest of our lives, while the officials kept reassuring Downwind parents that the cloud was nowhere near us and that it was harmless. We dutifully lined up every month in grade school for our Iodine tablets (chocolate flavored). It wasn't until about two years ago I learned that these tablets were not given out at all grade schools across the country where kids lived far from the ocean. But that radiation, in spite of the fact that it was always "within normal range," damaged not only my thyroid, but those of both of my younger sisters and probably the rest of the family as well, to a greater or lesser degree.

The next medical/nutritional fact I recall is this one: PCOS. This means "PolyCystic Ovarian Syndrome." Usually caused by thyroid insufficiency or damage. But one of the symptoms of PCOS is early menarche, or early puberty. I had my first period when I was 9. Another symptom, mentioned in the name of the syndrome, is "cysts." As a young teenager, I remember having numerous cervical and vaginal cysts cauterized, month after month. This finally ceased when I went away to school.

But, all things considered, I was a more-or-less healthy kid in 1950's Utah. I did pretty well, I guess, but I was always on the pudgy side, and craved carbohydrates like a drug addict. I could eat 8 pancakes at a sitting. Bread was my special downfall, and I can remember eating whole loaves of fresh homemade bread, but the chunks were at least slathered with fresh homemade butter (which, if it comes from grass-fed cows, is one of the most nutritious elements of the human diet). How I managed to stay in a size 14 dress for all those years amazes me to this day. If you know anything about insulin resistance, you will recognize these symptoms.

After returning to Alaska as a young mother in 1964, my diet was a little more grown up. After my divorce, life was far from simple, but my diet began to lean heavily toward large, juicy, medium-rare steaks covered with lots of butter (sometimes one steak would feed me for the rest of the week), paid for by my dates, of course. I managed to have two more children while I lived there, one in Juneau and one in Anchorage, and held the worst of the health gremlins at bay for a while longer.

My first foray into the world of predatory medicine was marked by a handsome doctor who thought that he needed to take out my gallbladder. This was accompanied by not one single test or X-ray. Needless to say, his diagnosis was a result of one fact: My chronic heartburn. When I told him about it, he immediately called the hospital and reserved the operating room for that Thursday. I was 21 years old. Not only was his diagnosis deliberately and willfully erroneous, but the surgery did nothing for the real cause of my heartburn: Hiatal hernia/acid reflux. And the only person who even noticed that there was something wrong was a nurse in the hospital who came in to take my history. When I told her why I was there, she said, "Gallbladder? That's for women who are fat, forty, and blonde!" But nothing more was said, and the gallbladder came out as scheduled, taking my appendix with it. As well as I have been able to piece it together, this first surgery was the beginning of my slide into health hell, causing a period of almost 30 years in which I consumed as little fat as possible for the simple reason that I had no gallbladder. Since saturated fatty acids are essential nutrients, it is easy to see here how and why I was so prone to fat-deficiency problems, especially the obvious ones of fertility, hair, and skin problems, depression, and hormone imbalances.

From the heart...

During this period, I also began to experience repeated episodes of Paroxysmal Atrial Tachycardia, two of which required hospitalization in order to convert. To those of you who are new to these words, they mean a spasm of the atrium of the heart in which the heart suddenly begins to beat very fast, around 150-200 bpm. This is like running in place: A lot of action, but getting nowhere. These spasms do not pump much blood.

Around this time, I began taking birth control pills on a regular basis. This was to have consequences down the years that nobody could predict (well, maybe they could have, but they never said a word at the time). Next came chronic anxiety, ulcerative colitis, and a bout with heart medications that scared the ever-loving blue-eyed stuffing out of me.

Have you ever noticed how sick a heart patient appears? Nine times out of ten, it's their medication. One doctor confided to me, "Twice the prescribed dose is toxic. Twice the toxic dose is fatal." So, what's the toxic dose for someone who doesn't need it in the first place? How's that for trusting to the purveyors of pharmaceutical humbuggery?

When one PAT seizure landed me in the hospital for a conversion (back to a normal beat), the doctor trustingly put me on Inderal, Lasix, and a couple of other potions from the cardiologist's bag of magic tricks. After a year or so on the regimen, it was obvious to me that something was very wrong. One day, barely able to drag myself around the house, I asked myself "Why do I feel so sick??" A little voice said, "It's that heart medication. You need to stop taking it, but don't stop all at once. Taper off." (?? Go figure!)

I did taper off, and even before I was completely off the medication, I noticed that I felt much better. Needless to say, I never again told a doctor about anything that I thought might be wrong with my heart. A burned child fears the fire. Only one other time did I mention PAT, and an EKG showed nothing, so my career as a heart patient was brought to a close before any permanent damage could be done. Please take note of the fact that it was not a doctor who recognized the danger here and took me off those deadly drugs. It was myself, my first faltering step into autonomous health care.

...to the hormones

Next, in 1984, came the first inevitable consequence of long-term contraception: A uterus so full of fibroid tumors that the only treatment at that time was removal. (don't forget the damaged thyroid here...) That hysterectomy cost me not only my uterus, but my ovaries and fallopian tubes, and a sudden removal of progesterone from my system. Today, those fibroid organs would be treated with a low-carbohydrate diet, but back then, hysterectomy was the only treatment. (I've noticed in my odyssey through the medical maze that chemicals and cutting are the doctor's preferred "treatments." Ever notice that all they ever do any more is "treat?" They never heal or cure. They just treat, treat and treat.)

Now, with no ovaries, however crippled they were, there was a large upswing in the estrogen:progesterone balance in my body. Without testing my blood to see which way the scales had tilted, my ob/gyn immediately wrote out a prescription for more estrogen, in the form of Premarin, and told me I had to take it "for my bones," and, like the dummy I was, I believed him. Which I dutifully did, in spite of the fact that the hot flashes and debilitating sweats were coming at the rate of 20 or so a day. I was reassured when I spoke of this by the soothing phrase: "Don't worry about it. As soon as your body adjusts, they'll go away!" Nobody even asked me if I'd ever taken birth-control pills, which I'd swallowed daily for about four years before having an intrauterine device implanted. (Makes me wonder these days if I wasn't sick in the head, too...) Twenty years later, I'm still sweating and flushing, and struggling to find the right ratio of progesterone to estrogen (should be at least 10 to 1, according to the experts I have consulted).

Not ONE doctor mentioned progesterone during all those years. Not ONE doctor tested my thyroid. Not ONE took a thorough medical history. NOT ONCE.

Fit for Death

In Valdez, Alaska, where I eventually settled down for 18 years, I decided to get serious about my weight, which had begun to creep up. For me at the time, 130 pounds was svelte: a size 10 on the bottom, a 14 on top. Gradually, my weight began to creep up until I reached 215 pounds. Numerous diets were tried, some with more success than others. The worst one by far was the God-awful "Fit For Life," which emphasized fruits and some vegetables. Unknown to me at the time, the worst thing I could have done was to embark on a diet that featured nothing but fruit. I made smoothies, removed every speck of fat of any kind from my food, and expected to see myself bloom and blossom until I looked as fit and fine as the Doctors Diamond who wrote the book. What I GOT instead was some the most terrifying hypoglycemic episodes of my life. I could feel myself becoming attenuated, "transparent." (hard to describe the sensation of slow death). Fortunately I managed to stop myself before I did permanent damage. I had stripped the fat from my diet, and ate only an occasional piece of fish or skinned poultry. I ate lots of raw foods, all plants, of course. No pat of butter (or even margarine, for that matter) passed my lips for years. My hair started to fall out. From a thick head of naturally curly dark red hair, my crown went to a thin, stringy mess that looked like a cheap wig, and cutting it short did nothing to disguise it.

My skin turned dry, and wrinkles and liverspots began to appear. Psoriasis reared its ugly head. I had no endurance, was plagued with insomnia, and began to have memory problems. This only made me more diligent with my herbs and potions (which never seemed to help, incidentally...).

Sunshine and Sadness

This situation continued until we moved out of Alaska for the last time in 1988. The first stop was Utah, which for me was like heaven, for I was finally exposed to normal amounts of daily sunlight, and I was able to make it to several seminars on health, herbs, and decoctions. I studied herbology and learned a lot about how different herbs affect the body for better or for worse. In St. George, I ate little, and I was walking about 5 miles a day, faithfully. But I still weighed 185 pounds, and noticed the needle on the scales creeping up relentlessly no matter what I did, but I was solidly muscled and very fit, so I didn't worry too much. I just ate my soy-and-sugar-laced diet, and kept walking, although I did have a few confusing symptoms, such as flashing lights that seemed to be "light migraines," and palpitations. During this time, of course, the night sweats and hot flashes continued to increase. (Light migraines are a symptom of insufficient progesterone.)

After four years in sunny St. George, we moved to cloudy Minnesota in 1992. Things really went downhill after this move. I didn't want to be here in the first place, and the sudden loss of the winter sunshine sent me into SAD, or Seasonal Affective Disorder.

The first year or two in Minnesota were very hard on me, not the least problem being a deep depression. This was followed by the diagnosis of a cancerous milk duct in my right breast in winter of 1993. Numerous tests and several major surgeries were performed, and I spent the entire next year at the mercy of the medical industry.

What's REALLY Wrong With Me?

At about this same time, I knew I was in deep dietary trouble. I was addicted to carbohydrates of every kind. I couldn't stop eating, especially if it was bread or pasta. I was fat, fat, fat. I was sick. I couldn't remember my name. I couldn't think about anything for more than a second or two. I couldn't read even half a page of anything without having to actually put the book down. I was restless. I couldn't stay awake after 2 pm, but I couldn't get to sleep until around 2 am, and then I tossed around and listened to my heart thunder in my chest. There was no doubt in my mind that if it went on much longer, I was going to die. I knew that a heart attack or a stroke was the next step, especially since my blood pressure was an astronomical 220/110. A glance through a book catalog revealed a book that really caught my interest. It was by an endocrinologist, and I couldn't stop looking at the blurb. I ordered it, even though I was pretty sure that it was going to be another one of those diet books like "Fit For Life" that was going to give me a bum steer towards disaster. But I had reached a point where I figured that if it was no good, I'd only be out the discount price of the book. And if it was good, what did I have to lose but a few pounds?

The book was called "The Metabolic Trap," by Calvin Ezrin, M.D. It was such an eye-opener that I was flabbergasted. There were all my symptoms, in black and white! Reading the book was like reading my own history. With the knowledge I gained from Dr. Ezrin, I began my diet, and to my utter delight, the pounds fell off so readily that I fully expected to see them lying on the ground behind me.

Unfortunately, the fat content of the diet was so low that strange symptoms began: dry, falling hair (I lost most of the hair on the front of my head in this period), parched skin, itching eyes, and depression, among other things. Eventually, after about 55 pounds of loss, I leveled off. But what I discovered was that although I was skinny, I still carried a lot of fat. Much of the weight I'd lost had been lean body mass. (When this happens, you don't have enough muscle to burn glycogen efficiently, and the excess gets stored as fat)

But I was off and running. My next few books also regarded the low-carbohydrate diet, and although they all approached it from different directions, the premise was always the same: A diet high in refined carbohydrates like Sugar and flour will stimulate excessive insulin and eventually produce excessive body fat storage and lead to diet-induced diseases like diabetes, high blood pressure, obesity, and heart disease, and a diet shorn of saturated fatty acids will produce a whole different syndrome of disorders. Combined, the two faulty diets can cause an astonishing array of problems.

Every book stated what I was beginning to understand on my own--that it wasn't the fat in my diet that could make me fat, but the Sugar and bread, and every web search yielded more and more information for me. About this time, I got my first PC computer, and as soon as I was connected to the internet and learned my way around, I began my search. Websites led me to books, which led me to websites, which led me to more books. In eight years of study and research, there must be a Ph. D. around here somewhere...

The hunt is on...

Over the space of the next eight years, I researched, studied, pursued, wrote, composed, and experimented on myself. This website is a direct result of my desire to share what I found with others who suffer from carbohydrate poisoning, or insulin resistance. By presenting this information, I have hoped to save these individuals years' worth of the kind of painstaking research and study I had to go through to find out what was really wrong with my health.

Throughout the course of that research, some other problems have appeared, and the research on those problems has led to the realization that the majority of women who suffer from resistant overweight (I won't call it obese, because most of us are nowhere near obese. I consider "obese" to mean a condition of overweight in which the excess fat interferes with a normal life: lifting, sitting, bending, walking, etc.) are also suffering from underlying hormone imbalances, ESPECIALLY if they have had hysterectomies and have been treated with synthetic estrogens. The hunt is leading to some interesting findings.

One of the most important is that progesterone is probably the most significant and protective hormone in the body, and a woman who has lost her ovaries is in desperate condition, since she has lost about 90% of her ability to produce the hormone. Men need progesterone, too, and it is usually produced in the testes. As all of us get older, our production of progesterone drops for whatever reason, whether it's because of surgical removal of the glands that secrete it, injury, or simple age.

The next problem is an underactive thyroid gland, which is usually caused by the drop in progesterone production over a period of time, but, as in my own case, can be from physical damage to the gland itself.

But in today's medical atmosphere, estrogen is the Queen Mother of supplements. Only in the last six months or so have the medical predators begun to understand that pouring large amounts of various estrogen-laden preparations into the human body causes numerous preventable diseases, and can even lead to early death. I think the only reason they have kicked the legs out from under this cash cow is some very alarmingly expensive lawsuits.

Soy foods, which Americans appear to love as a replacement for anything with real nutritional value, provide massive doses of estrogen-like molecules that further widen the ratio between progesterone and estrogen. Children on high-soy diets are suffering from numerous major problems, like early puberty in girls, obesity, feminization of boys, and mental and psychological disturbances. One doctor after another has prescribed estrogen supplements in the largest dosages available. Day after day, the food giants are coming up with new and novel ways to get more soy food down the throats of Americans, until we have become a nation of estrogenized medical patients, prone to numerous ailments of mysterious origin, and just waiting to die from the diseases the virtually unopposed estrogens have caused.

Which brings me to today.

Little by little, I adjusted my diet to include more meat, more animal fats, and more whole milk, and made a startling discovery: My body was HEALING ITSELF. Without prescriptions, without surgery, without medical consultation every month, it was taking those nutrients provided in the wholesome foods and repairing itself. I lost my cold hands, feet, and nose as my metabolism picked up. Concentration was a pleasure. My hair began to grow back in, until it is almost back to its normal thickness. My vision improved to the point where my reading glasses are two diopters weaker than they were. My skin is renewed. Where once the flaky powder of dead, dry skin puffed into the air whenever I touched my forearms, the skin was plumping and getting back some of its elasticity.

I cannot emphasize enough the fact that the ONLY thing I changed was my diet. Natural thyroid supplements and progesterone drops are the only supplements I take beyond an occasional anti-oxidant. I have a doctor, but he sees me so seldom that he never recognizes me when I go, which is on the order of once every 3 to 5 years. He looks worse and worse (I think he's a vegan, and I know he's a marathon runner. He looks like he weighs about 125 pounds).

I beg my friends to follow me on this adventure, but can't seem to convince a soul to forget their doctor's phone number and do this themselves. Weaning oneself from the tender mercies of the medical profession can be difficult, I guess, especially if most of the care is paid for by the System.

So there you have it: The Odyssey of a nutritional rebel. If you look around this website, especially on the Nutrition and Book Report pages, you are going to see a pattern. I am deeply cynical about the medical industry, profoundly distrustful of the food and pharmacy giants, and make no bones about either one.

As the motto of "The X Files" puts it so plainly, "The TRUTH is out there." You have the internet. What's stopping you?

Most of the information that appears above regarding diet and hormones is referenced in other places on the REAL NUTRITION page on this website. http://www.opinions3.com/nutrition2.htm Browse there and find out what I found out.

I hope you will find something here that leads you on your own quest for good health. Use the links you find throughout the website to conduct your own research if you think my opinions are not what you want to hear. But whatever you do, don't leave your body lingering in a limbo of metabolic and hormonal imperfection. You can get yourself as well as you want to be with time and diligence. Tweet