10/15/07
An indirect question was raised by a MoreLife Yahoo poster wondering whether I, Paul or other readers rarely, if ever, notice effects from supplements, as he had found to be the case for himself. My answer, as I composed it, quickly became long and descriptive, something I thought more appropriate to Kitty Reflects. (The questioning post itself)
Even before I came to know Paul Wakfer, I had often compared myself (and still continue periodically to do so) to the person I think is likely my most biologically similar relative - my mother, though she died in 1990 of metastatic breast cancer at the age of 68, having been diagnosed a couple of months before her 67th birthday (as I remember the details of this last). When I look in the mirror I see a strong facial resemblance (sometime in the future I will locate one or more photos and provide them for comparison by others). And there are some tendencies I have that I know she had also - osteoarthritis being the major one; she had significant discomfort in both her hands and her neck beginning in her 50s, the latter keeping her from restful sleep at times. (Her father had arthritis at least in his hands, but continued to play the piano daily, nearly until he died in his late 80s, despite the initial discomfort, in order to keep finger and hand mobility from more degeneration.) I can look at my hands and see joint enlargement in the medial joints of the 1st and 2nd fingers in the right hand and less so in the left. Most of the time I feel no discomfort and have no limitation of movement. I take several supplement items that are aimed at minimizing or preventing arthritic changes; when I reduced some of them about a year ago, I had more discomfort and swelling, so my dosages were resumed at where they are now. I recently noticed with all the scrubbing of the dock and decks here at the cottage that I began to experience transitory paresthesia (tingling) in my right hand. After stopping this activity (Paul did the last of it), taking a Fast Joint Relief and an extra Nexrutine each day for ~5 days, and using my left hand for applying the waterproof coating after several days of not doing any of this type work, the discomfort went away. I still get minor episodes in my right fingers when I do a lot of twisting of my wrist such as with stirring and repeat opening or closing of twist lids (this last when making up 12 days worth of supplements); changing to my left hand for the major movement stops the sensation. Occasionally after a lot of hand mulching, paresthesia sometimes in either my left or right hand awakens me at night - frequently, I also realize then that I've been lying on that side with my underneath arm and hand curled up tightly. After changing position and a quick shake, I fall back to sleep.
I remember my mother joking when in her early 50s that she had such an efficient metabolism that she gained weight by just looking at food; this tendency to easily gain weight became even stronger when she was over 50. I realized in my 30s that I had this tendency also and added to the joke with comment that aromas provided me with caloric value. I tried to keep a balance between preparing meals for a husband and son who enjoyed meat and potatoes with what I thought (from my then readings) was good nutritionally. Although I baked or bought goodies, I did not do so not nearly as frequently as I know my mother was doing at that time or had done when I was a child, although she always served green vegetables and/or salad. My high weight of 142 in late 1999 only began to come down when I joined Paul in mid-2000 and regularly ate the way he did/does. (Our dietary practices) If I had continued as my mother did, I would likely never have lost those extra 30+ pounds (I now average 110) and maybe even have gained more, despite all my dieting and exercise efforts in an attempt never to become her size (~170lb at the worst with my height of 5' 5.5").
Although my mother always liked to dance - and told me how her father wouldn't permit her to take dancing lessons as a child - she did not do nearly enough of it to count as regular exercise. When she and my Dad went to club dances when I was present, they would definitely dance to many pieces - I don't know though whether she would have liked to have done more when they were out. I do remember her dancing around the house many times, and sometimes my parents would do so together to some music - I recall with a smile their exaggerated tangos. To my knowledge, though, she never took any exercise classes of any type nor did she do any purposeful exercise at all - general housework, walks when sightseeing or dancing at a club dinner were about all she did in the last 10 years of her life. (Her favorite pastime was painting, but that hardly counts as physical exercise.) Because her activity level was almost sedentary for at least those 10 years, but her eating amount was for someone much more active, she was at least 40 pounds heavier when diagnosed with breast cancer than she was when I married my first husband, Ed, in 1969. My use of exercise is and has been far greater than any my mother did. I sometimes wonder about the accuracy of the degenerative disc disease diagnosis I was given in late 1969 after being virtually immobilized with radiating sciatic pain following a few lesser incidents. (I was a labor and delivery room nurse and frequently moved heavily sedated patients by myself.) The episodes of sciatica in the past 4 years have been extremely few and all light in severity; my morning exercises based on those given to me by chiropractor Kathleen O'Hara (Bloor-Avenue Chiropractics in Toronto) in conjunction with her treatments (none since May 2005 when we moved to rural Ontario) are done regularly. I also use good lifting technique and do not attempt to move large heavy weight objects by myself. A radiology reading of my low back x-rays taken in 1969, and some of the same area now, would be needed to determine actual physical changes. How much my diet and exercise contributes to my much leaner body and that along with my special exercises do to prevent recurrence of sciatica, in contrast to the supplements and chemicals I use, is not practical to determine. Since I'm most interested in the positive effect on me, I just continue to do all of these.
The diagnosis of breast cancer for my mother didn't surprise me as much as it would have if she had been taking good care of her health or I had been ignorant of the relationship being seen even in the late 80s between obesity and cancer. She was definitely overweight when she was diagnosed with breast cancer, which could have been done several months earlier if she had insisted immediately that her breast didn't feel right despite the negative mammogram result. (She never blamed anyone but herself for this since she never told anyone until mentioning it to her cardiologist during a regular visit - she had an occasional arrhythmia, resulting from rheumatic fever as a child, for which she had for many years sought medical advice. Upon exam the cardiologist immediately phoned an associate oncologist and down the road of treatment went my mother... but too late to prevent bone metastasis.) The fact that my mother hadn't even thought to mention her uneasiness to my father, me, or one of my 2 sisters was not too surprising either. She most often just accepted what someone in a position of authority said or wrote; I think that her unquestioning belief in her religion was another aspect of this authoritarian acceptance. In contrast, I have been a questioner all my life, but I admit not consistently. (There was the experience in high school when I didn't question the guidance counselor's response to my expressed interest in physics: that this wasn't a field for women. I just accepted this, never even told my father, and just decided that nursing was then my best choice of what were acceptable fields for women.) So with my mother having died of metastatic breast cancer, I take lots of items with potential for preventing it - I'm not about to stop to find out if I develop any symptoms. Various cancer screening blood tests are also part of our regular monitoring.
My mother also had bouts of depression, some of which could easily have been situational related to my father being away as a Navy pilot much of the time during the first 15 years of their marriage. (They didn't even have a real in-person courtship - their first date on 12/6/1941 and then 2.5 years of correspondence, a telegrammed proposal and a wedding ceremony 2500 miles from her home and family.) However I think her religiosity and low self-esteem, as well as lack of exercise and less than optimum nutritional intake were also major contributors to her increasingly unhappy mood in her late 50s and into her 60s. She complained a lot about Florida after she and my father moved there when he sold his business in NJ and decided to start another career in real estate north of Tampa. (He was not a person to retire to the golf course; he wanted to be productive.) But she tended to complain a lot, especially as she got older. She did however find a way in the last ~5 years to demonstrate much of what she kept hidden, an outlet that let her be the self I think a major part of her wanted to be - she was a clown in a charitable group. (I was very pleased when she wrote about her plans to join the group and later when she described the character she created for herself, which tellingly included tears in her facial makeup.).... I credit my far better mental outlook than my mother's (or my own prior to 2000) to my partnership with Paul, my improved nutrition/exercise, my increased readings in psychology and philosophy and my own incorporation of all of these into my basic optimistic sense of life. And in more recent years I have learned how to be much more open and communicative with myself and others, especially Paul who is my partner in all things. In all the years since my initial diagnosis of bipolar disorder in 1991, despite the episodes of mania, I have never considered it a major factor in my life. I never joined any support group - not wanting nor finding any need to be supported by those with a similar diagnosis. Mania is a tendency I have if I do not get sufficient restful sleep and then allow myself to become highly stressed, whether by negative or positive situations. I take a small dose of lithium carbonate and make use of night time promoters of relaxation as well as try to consistently end the day on a positive note. This has kept me from a repeat of the last manic episode that occurred in Sept-Oct 2003.
So when I consider my memories, photos, letters, videos and audio tapes of my mother in comparison and contrast with myself, I conclude that I am in much better health, physically and emotionally, than she was at my age. I have been consciously doing, for the past almost 8 years, everything I (and Paul) know to prevent the breast cancer from which she died, and everything else too that results in degeneration and/or death. (And I and Paul have cryonics contracts if all else fails.) I have enjoyment and fulfillment that I am certain that my mother did not experience, based on the expressed unhappiness and dissatisfaction that she frequently conveyed. I am far more pleased with my life than ever in the past and look forward to many, many more years of experiences with Paul and hopefully with others who do now or come to value the same things in life as we do.
In short, to respond to whether I rarely detect any changes as a result of supplements - for the most part I don't look at my supplement taking, or my diet or exercise or sleep or mental outlook or relationships in the manner of simply immediate effects. I continue to do the above comparison, generally in the background every week, as I use all the life quantity and quality enhancing methods described on MoreLife.org for the continuing purpose of living far longer than did my mother, in order to optimize my lifetime happiness - and enjoy each day as it comes.
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