Now I’ve Got A Gammy Knee!
Over the last couple of days, I’ve had a minor difficulty getting up from a chair. I was just getting a bit of pain in my right knee. I had to see the GP yesterday and she looked at it. I had thought it might be something to do with the stroke, but it was just a touch of arthritis. As I was seeing the physio after the GP, she had something else to do and she gave it some therapy. It’s a lot better this morning.
The gastroenterologist I saw on Friday last week told me that I had some sort of bio-chemical problem and this was resulting in my poor nails. They took some blood to check what it was.
Now before I was diagnosed as a coeliac, I had lots of problems and pain in my left knee. These had started when I was about 25 and one doctor in those days, suggested I had an operation. When we moved to Suffolk in 1975, a new doctor, recommended some exercises and except for the odd stickiness when I got up from the floor, I never had any more problems.
All of these knee problems got a lot better with a gluten-free diet.
So now it’s the other knee!
Ever since I’ve had the stroke, I’ve worried that something is wrong with the bio-chemistry of my body. I’ll laugh like a drain if I’m low on vitamin B12!
But what do I know about medicine! Not a lot! But I do know my body!
In addition to the knee and nails, I’ve also got a certain amount of the runs and I am sleeping a lot and very well. The latter is probably due to the body needing time to recover.
Too Many Allergies
NICE thinks that too many children are labelled with food allergies, according to reports like this.
I might agree, as I think so many people these days have vanity or lifestyle allergies.
I don’t, as I am a coeliac, that was properly diagnosed at Addenbrookes, when I was over fifty. Since avoiding gluten, I’ve had no diarrhoea, no migraines, no joint pain and no chronic dandruff. I’ve also stopped biting my nails.
Probably about 1-in-100 are coeliacs like me, according to researchers at Nottingham University, Coeliac-UK and the NHS.
But I’ve had all sorts of cranks and quacks tell me that such things as homeopathy can cure my allergy. They are talking crap. But they are the same sort of people who imagine and test for all sorts of things in their children. Often, they are so stupid and paranoid that they don’t believe in vaccination and won’t allow their children to play outside.
But why are we getting so many allergy sufferers. With coeliac disease, a lot of the increase has come because, those born before 1960 are now being properly diagnosed. I was found to have a problem from a simple blood test, which showed I had a vitamin B12 deficiency. Remember that children with coeliac disease couldn’t be diagnosed until the early 1960s.
Also there is more awareness of coeliac disease and how it is passed on through the genes.
I’m Feeling A Bit Better
Could this be the weather, which is less oppressive, the B12 shot, which seems to have improved my nails or just generally getting better.
Feeling Permanently Glutened
I’ve been glutened a few times and now I feel like that most of the time. I’m tired all the time, not very positive at times, my nails are very soft and I’ve had a lot of the runs. In some ways I feel a lot like I used to before I was diagnosed as a coeliac. Especially in hot weather, like we’ve had recently.
Could it be that recovering from a stroke uses up a lot of vitamin B12 and this causes the problems? I don’t know! But there are web sites that hint that B12 can aid stroke recovery. But they are sites that try to sell you all sorts of vitamins and supplements you don’t need or want.
I did find this and you can read it how you like.
In an article published by the Oxford University Press on behalf of the British Geriatrics Society, a 2006 study concluded that increasing levels of B12 following a stroke would be appropriate, though there was no conclusive evidence that an increase in the vitamin following a stroke would aid in recovery, specifically in lowering homocysteine levels and decreasing the risk of dementia.
Anyway, I’m having an injection tomorrow and that might make a difference!
My Poor Feet
My feet are very painful at the moment! Is it the stroke, some of the drugs I have taken like Warfarin, a lack of vitamin B12 or just the shoes, I have been wearing?
At least, I’m seeing the GP tomorrow!
Why Am I Sleeping So Much?
Since I glutened myself after coming out of hospital with the stroke, I’ve been sleeping a lot. My stroke doctor thinks I should have problems sleeping, but I don’t. I’m also suffering badly from hay fever, but that is the weather and the pollen. Is this just a normal healing process or am I still feeling the effects of the gluten? Surely, as my body recovers, it will be using up what B12 I have in my body. My nails are soft, which indicates to me I’m low on B12.
Another Paper
This paper has the title of “Effect of B vitamin supplementation on plasma homocysteine levels in celiac disease”. It sounds boring, but I think it says that if you have low B6 and folate levels, then you might be more likely to get a stroke.
In any case I’m going to get my homocysteine, folate and B6 levels checked. I know the B12 are OK.
Eat Breakfast, Lose Weight
I had my B12 injection on Friday. The nurse took my blood pressure and it was 120/70, which I’m told is good for a man of my age. This chart says that I’m in the right area. But she also said that I looked thin and when she weighed me, I had lost a couple of kilos since August.
Strangely, I am not eating less, but I have changed what I eat. I used to skip breakfast and now I usually eat the same mixture of gluten-free Eat Natural for Breakfast, with yoghurt and two teaspoonfuls of clear honey. I prefer the raisins, almonds, mixed seeds and crispy rice version of Eat Natural.
Eat Natural for Breakfast
Perhaps what they say is right. Eat breakfast and you lose weight. I may be snacking less.
Alzheimer’s Disease and Mobile Phones
I was sent an article about gluten-free food and this unrelated extract stood out.
Mobile phones and Alzheimer’s disease – Recent research suggests that mobile phone radiation may halt the progression of Alzheimer’s in mice but experts take issue with both the research methods and the report’s conclusions.
A summary of the research offers this explanation.
The researchers showed that exposing old Alzheimer’s mice to the electromagnetic waves generated by cell phones erased brain deposits of beta-amyloid, a protein strongly associated with Alzheimer’s disease. Clumps of beta-amyloid form so-called brain plaques that are a hallmark of the disease.
As an engineer, I’m not surprised if this happens. Irradiating things has all sorts of effects. Some are positive and some are downright dangerous.
Now, it has also been shown that low-levels of B12 may lead to Azheimer’s and other brain problems.
It would strike me as an engineer that these two areas of research are perhaps some of first pieces of a jigsaw, that if we can solve it, will lead to ways of possibly delaying the onset of what is a very nasty disease.
I hope so.
Keeping Your Brain Healthy
Look at any list of symptoms for coeliac disease and you’ll find a lot of them are concerned with brain or mental problems.
- Mild Depression
- Feelings of Inadequacy
- Gait Ataxia/Apraxia
- Lightheadness and Fainting
- Migraine or Persistent Headaches
- Mood Swings
- Sleep Disturbance
I used to suffer from most of these except for sleep disturbance.
Once I went on a gluten-free diet all of these symptoms cleared up. Now I know that I am a special case in that I’m a coeliac, but once the B12 levels were back up to normal, all of the symptoms disappeared. Research at Oxford University has indicated that higher B12 levels may help brain health.
It would be interesting to repeat their experiments with coeliacs. When a hospital diagnoses a coeliac, they should immediately undergo the tests before starting a gluten-free diet. And then they should be tested at intervals after starting the diet. My body actually reacted quite quickly in that my dandruff cleared up after about two weeks.
Now I know several people who have MS. One has sent me a link to an article about a new treatment for the disease called The Liberation Treatment. Here are the first couple of paragraphs.
Amid the centuries-old castles of the ancient city of Ferrara is a doctor who has come upon an entirely new idea about how to treat multiple sclerosis, one that may profoundly change the lives of patients.
Dr. Paolo Zamboni, a former vascular surgeon and professor at the University of Ferrara in northern Italy, began asking questions about the debilitating condition a decade ago, when his wife Elena, now 51, was diagnosed with MS.
He found that in some patients, the blood flow to the head was restricted and by improving this using standard surgical procedures, their health improved. Here’s a couple of paragraphs from the article.
One of those patients was Buffalo resident Kevin Lipp. Lipp had MS for over a decade, and as part of the study, discovered he had five blocked veins in his neck. After undergoing the Liberation Treatment 10 months ago, he says he hasn’t had a single new MS attack.
Zamboni emphasizes that the Liberation Treatment does not make people in wheelchairs walk again. Rather, it seems to stop the development of further MS attacks, and in some cases, improves movement and decreases the debilitating fatigue that are the hallmarks of MS.
It may not cure MS, but it is all very interesting.
I tend to look on the body, as an engineer would look on a machine or a car. Machines don’t work well if they don’t have all of the things they need like fuel, electric power, oil, water and all the other necessities.
Is the body any different to my car in that respect?
And now today, it has been reported that those who develop Alzheimer’s are less likely to get cancer.
This would appear to push things in another direction, as research at Nottingham University has shown that coeliacs are less likely to get breast cancer. Diagnosed coeliacs have on the whole healthy brains because they eat well, so this research might show the opposite.
We need to do a lot more research to find all of these links.
The Anonymous Widower 