Now My Kidneys Might Be Packing Up
I have just been told by my GP, that the blood tests they took showed my kidneys might be packing up.
But he also said it could be the heat.
So I asked Google AI “Can hot weather affect kidney functions?” and got this answer.
Yes, hot weather can negatively affect kidney function, primarily through dehydration and its impact on blood flow to the kidneys. Dehydration can lead to acute kidney injury (AKI), and studies show that the risk of AKI increases with rising daily temperatures.
That seems to backup what the GP told me.
They are going to repeat the tests.
When I had the blood test, they took the blood out of my right arm and afterwards gave my left arm, my three-monthly B12 injection.
So did the blood test, show low B12?
So I asked Google AI “Can low B12 affect kidney functions?” and got this answer.
Yes, low vitamin B12 can potentially affect kidney function, particularly in individuals with chronic kidney disease (CKD). While B12 deficiency is more commonly associated with neurological and blood-related issues, it can also impact kidney health and vice versa.
That’s better than a kick in the teeth, as C would say!
Can I take this line of thinking further?
I was fifty, when I was found to be coeliac and I had my stroke at 64, because of atrial fibrillation.
So I asked Google AI “Can low B12 affect heart functions?” and got this answer.
Yes, low vitamin B12 can affect heart function. Specifically, it can lead to symptoms like heart palpitations and shortness of breath, and in severe cases, it can contribute to conditions like heart failure. Vitamin B12 deficiency can also increase the risk of circulatory problems and potentially contribute to cardiovascular disease.
I certainly had palpitations and shortness of breath at times before I went on blood thinning drugs.
So did low B12 cause my atrial fibrillation
I asked Google AI “Can low B12 cause atrial fibrillation?” and got this answer.
While a B12 deficiency can indirectly contribute to atrial fibrillation (AFib) risk, it’s not a direct cause. Low B12 can lead to elevated homocysteine levels, which are associated with an increased risk of AFib and stroke. However, B12 deficiency is more directly linked to other cardiovascular issues like anemia and heart failure, which can indirectly increase the risk of AFib.
It would seem that fifty years of low B12 didn’t do my heart much good.
I have to finish with one last question for Google AI
I asked Google AI “Can coeliac disease cause atrial fibrillation?” and got this answer.
Yes, celiac disease can be associated with an increased risk of atrial fibrillation (AF), a type of irregular heartbeat. While the exact mechanisms are still being researched, chronic inflammation and shared risk factors are believed to play a role in this connection.
This paper on the National Institutes of Health is entitled Celiac Disease and Risk of Atrial Fibrillation, where this was the conclusion.
A significant association between celiac disease and risk of atrial fibrillation was reported in this study. There is a 38% increased risk of atrial fibrillation. Additional studies are needed to clarify the mechanistic link between atrial fibrillation and celiac disease. Some of the limitations of this study are that all were observational studies, some were medical registry-based and there was high heterogeneity between studies.
This was news to me, but the paper only dates from 2020.
The Story Of An O-Ring
I have a very unusual skin, as is partly shown by these pictures.
Note.
- There is a scar on the back of my left hand, where I cut it on the glass bathroom door in my bedroom.
- But with skillful gluing at the Royal London hospital and TLC and stern words from the practice nurse at my GP’s it healed perfectly.
- If I give blood samples or have an injection, I don’t need a plaster.
- My left foot is a deeper shade of red to the right. No-one has given me a reason for this.
- My previous now-retired GP, always took his own blood samples, when he needed them and had smiles all over his face. Perhaps, he was proving to himself, that it was happening?
- I wrote about my skin before in My Strange Skin, in 2020.
- One therapist said unusually for someone, who had a left-sided stroke, that my left leg is the stronger.
As my ancestry is part-Jewish and part-Huguenot could it just be that only the strongest genes survived from their poor living conditions my ancestors endured in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries?
My Cardiologist And His Wife, Have Suggested I Use An Emollient In My Bath
I am now adding Oilatum Emollient to my bath water, which I get delivered by Ocado.
It is not cheap, but my feet are now more made for walking.
I put three cap-fulls in a bath and lie in it for about 10-20 minutes.
An O-Ring Failure On Bad Friday
A rubber O-ring sitting in a groove on the plug, should keep the water in the bath, but as this picture shows the O-ring had seen better days.
The picture of the new O-ring shows how it should look on the plug.
On Bad Friday, the O-ring finally gave up and any water put in the bath, went straight down the drain.
A Fruitless Bad Friday
Internet searches proved fruitless in my search for a shop that was open on Bad Friday.
So I vowed to try again today.
Searching For cp Hart At Waterloo
cp Hart, from whom I bought the original bath, appeared to be open at Waterloo, so after breakfast on Moorgate, I made my way to look for the branch of cp Hart at Waterloo.
Note.
- Why does South London and its trains have to be covered in graffiti?
- Most of it, is not even good graffiti.
- In my view, the Bakerloo Line should not get new trains, until the graffiti has stopped.
- I wandered round Waterloo for about ninety minutes before I found cp Hart, with the help of two police constables.
- And when I finally found cp Hart, they didn’t do spares.
- I tripped over the uneven pavement in the last picture. But as I usually do, I retained my balance and didn’t fall. Is that all the B12 I take for coeliac disease?
My mother always used to say, that you shouldn’t go to South London without a posse.
Eventually, I had a coffee in Costa and took the 76 bus home.
Success At Last!
To get home on a 76 bus, I have to change in De Beauvoir Town and whilst I waited for the 141 bus to take me home, I checked out the local builders merchants.
The owner was his usual self and fitted my plug with a free new O-ring.
I was now able to have a bath.
And watch the snooker.
I can certainly recommend a television in your bathroom.
Note the vertical handrail, that allows me to step easily in and out of the bath.
To Norbiton For A Plate Of Lovely Liver
I seem to need a lot of Vitamin B12.
- I am coeliac, which probably means I don’t absorb enough out of my food.
- Although, when my gallstones were removed, the surgeon had a look and said everything was good.
- When Homerton Hospital found my Uncomplicated Pancolonic Diverticular Disease, that I talked about in I’ve Got Uncomplicated Pancolonic Diverticular Disease, they also said everything else was good.
- In the United States, Vitamin B12 is given to stroke patients to help recovery.
- I’ve had Vitamin B12 injections for nearly thirty years, since they were prescribed by Addenbrooke’s hospital.
Certainly, I find that a Vitamin B12 injection doesn’t seem to have the same effect, it had twenty years ago. So, is my brain saying, I’ll have that, when I have an injection?
When I lived in Suffolk and I felt my Vitamin B12 was low, I’d go down the pub or carluccio’s in Cambridge or Bury and have a plate of liver.
But liver is rare in London restaurants and Carluccio’s don’t serve it any more.
A guy in the reader’s comments in The Times told me of a restaurant called the Trattoria Calabrese, that sold liver in sage butter yesterday. So today, I took a train to Norbiton to get myself some extra Vitamin B12.
These pictures describe my first visit to Norbiton.
The short walk to the restaurant from Norbiton station was very much worth it. I shall go back!
Bristol May Be First English City To Face Monthly Black Bin Collection
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article in The Times.
This is the sub-heading.
More than 4,000 Bristolians are opposing the council’s plan to switch to a four-week cycle, which the city says would save money and be better for the environment
I live in Hackney and we still have two-weekly collections for recyclables and weekly for waste food.
These are my thoughts on Bristol.
As a widower, who lives alone , I don’t put much in my black bin, as I do recycle properly and use my waste food bin and green sack recycling fully.
I’ve also noticed, that a lot more items have been marked that they can go in the green sacks.
I am a coeliac and suffer from a vitamin B12 deficiency for which I get three-monthly injections at the GP. But that is not enough and I have found that one of M& S’s Liver and Bacon Ready Meals adds enough B12 to keep be going at full speed.
The trays of M & S’s Ready Meals are now recyclable and I suspect, they’re not the only packaging, that can now be recycled.
So as more and more packing is recycled, we can surely reduce the black bin frequency.
It would appear, that by making packaging more recyclable, we can make rubbish collection more efficient.
Is Vitamin B12 Pulling Me Through?
About five months ago, I swapped my food shopping from Marks & Spencer in-store to Ocado once a week. This was mainly to cut down on my walking with shopping, but also to make sure, I’d usually got a meal or two in.
In August, I wrote Liver From Ocado and I’ve generally been eating one of these ready meals a week.
Although, Ocado doesn’t always stock them, so I have to go hunting round the various Marks & Spencer stores looking for Liver and Bacon.
Unfortunately, I’m not always successful.
Today, I went searching round South London looking for a transformer. Nor a kid’s toy, but a National Grid electrical one with the weight of thirty African elephants.
I didn’t see it, but I did walk quite a bit.
I then realised that the various muscle pains in my legs, that I’ve been having for the last few months had gone.
Was it the Vitamin B12 in the ready meal, as I stopped taking the paracetamol some months ago?
Also on Thursday, I had my three-monthly Vitamin B12 injection, so my body probably had enough of the vitamin.
The older I get, the more I feel that the Vitamin B12 injections have helped my stroke recovery.
A Funny Sunday Morning
I didn’t sleep that well and I got up about 05:45.
But by 06:30, I’d completed and entered the Sunday Times Prize Sudoku, as I always do.
The odds of winning must be exceedingly long, as I complete it every week and have not won anything yet.
I had my bath and flushed the sleep from my eyes in the hot water as I always do and by 10:15, I was sitting in Leon at the Angel having my usual gluten free Full-English breakfast.
I also went round the corner to the Marks and Spencer to buy a few items I needed.
- Bananas – I can never have too many
- British Strawberries – Strawberries are rich in magnesium and coeliacs can be low, so when I see quality strawberries I usually buy.
- Liver and Bacon Ready Meal for One – I have one a week to keep up my B12 levels and Ocado didn’t have any yesterday.
- Packet of Chocolate Cakes – I am slightly addicted.
The strawberries were from Dyson Farming, which I would have thought was the wrong side of the political spectrum for Islington.
My left knee also had a funny turn, which I was looking for the liver. Was it just reminding me that, if it didn’t get its B12, it would play up something rotten or was my brain using my knee to signal that it was low in B12 after the superb work on the sudoku?
Thirteen years ago I had a serious stroke and two or three serious doctors have said I’ve made a remarkable recovery.
From what I can gather on the Internet in the United States, I would have been given B12 injections for my stroke.
But then I am, as I am coeliac and Addenbrooke’s prescribed the injections, when I was diagnosed as coeliac in the 1990s. So is that behind my excellent recovery from stroke or did the Chinese doctors in Hong Kong diagnose my stroke as worse than it was?
Since I swapped to Ocado for my food purchases about two months ago, I have found it easier to buy the Marks and Spencer’s Liver and Bacon. I now eat one every week to top up my B12 and the arthitis, I occasionally get in my joints has reduced.
So I asked Dr. Google if arthritis gets worse after a stroke.
They pointed me to this paper on the National Library of Medicine. They also helpfully gave me this AI-derived answer to my question.
Yes, arthritis can worsen after a stroke:
Osteoarthritis
A common type of arthritis that can worsen after a stroke. This can be due to spasticity that develops after a stroke. Osteoarthritis can also make it harder for stroke patients to recover during rehabilitation.
Rheumatoid arthritis
Patients with RA may experience worse functional outcomes after a stroke due to pain and swelling in their extremities. RA patients may also have an increased risk of ischemic stroke.
Other types of pain that can occur after a stroke include: Headaches, Tingling sensations, Shoulder pain, and Central post-stroke pain.
Pain after a stroke can range from headaches that resolve on their own to chronic, severe joint pain.
Ic like the answer, as it fits my symptoms. Is artificial intelligence going to do some doctors out of a job?
I certainly get the tingling sensations.
I’ve just prescribed myself Liver and Bacon for a late lunch.
I’ll report back later!
Note, that I’m eating in front of the computer with the new keyboard.
Am I Sleeping Better Because Of Ocado?
A couple of months ago, I switched to shopping for food on-line at Ocado, and I am certainly sleeping better.
The only big change in my eating habits, is that I am now having a Marks & Spencer’s Lamb’s Liver and Bacon ready meal once a week.
Is that Vitamin B12 making a difference?
I do wish, that someone would do a proper Italian fegato, like Carluccio’s used to do. It’s virtually unobtainable in London.
After they stopped selling it, I used to have lunch with a friend in a pub in Oxfordshire. But sadly they died a couple of years ago.
If anybody knows of a decent country pub, by a station, that services excellent liver please let me know.
Liver From Ocado
I like to eat liver, as it supplements my B12 injections.
So I was pleased to see that Ocado stock Marks and Spencer’s Liver and Bacon meal-for-one.
Note, that I cooked it in the oven, which is recommended.
I enjoyed it and I will cook it more often, provided Ocado keep delivering it.
The Anonymous Widower 