Shingles... more than just roofing

    Does anyone still not know someone who has had shingles recently? I lost count some time ago of all the shingles cases I have heard of in recent years. I myself had a bad case a couple years back (which I am still fighting) which started off on my forehead (I initially went to the ER thinking I had a spider bite on my hairline!) and then jumped to my vestibulocochlear nerve (say it out loud: vest-ib-you-low-coke-lee-er..... also known as cranial nerve VIII) which supplies your inner ear. Not only did I have pain and burning in my ear but I got beyond horrible vertigo. The ER doc who diagnosed it as shingles initially put me on a 10 day prescription of acyclovir which is the most common anti-viral used for shingles. However, about day 2 coming off the anti-virals I started experiencing horrible vertigo which felt like the floor was pulsing up and down (maybe like an earthquake feels?). It was so bad at times that I had to sit down and I felt nervous driving as the attacks would come on out of nowhere. It was especially bad getting in and out of elevators, and in fact I still experience mild attacks getting off elevators, especially if I am tired or a little run down.
   I went to my primary care provider (the student health clinic at my undergrad university) and they put me back on the acyclovir and referred me to a neurologist. The neurologist I saw basically looked in my ear, said he couldn't see any blisters, and that I should go see an ENT. The ENT ordered all sorts of crazy vertigo tests to rule out tumors and various other causes of vertigo. This was despite it being quite obvious that every time I stopped taking the anti-virals the vertigo attacks immediately came back with full force, indicating clearly that it was due to the shingles. They also tested my hearing, which at the time was still fine, although it has since deteriorated in that ear. After all the crazy, nauseating, and invasive tests he told me that I would need to stay on the anti-virals... seemingly indefinitely since my system obviously couldn't clear the infection.....
    After six months (!!!) of doing 10 days prescriptions of acyclovir, trying to get off them, getting vertigo back, and going back on them I was beginning to feel hopeless. What was worse was that since the shingles were all interior (in my inner ear- the forehead spot never came back) I started to feel like people thought I was faking the horrible spinning and bouncing floor that I was feeling. Luckily during this time my dad's significant other suggested I try taking lysine which is a simple amino acid (one of the building blocks of proteins). In a simple phrase, lysine saved me. After only two weeks of taking 3-4 grams of lysine a day I was able to stop the anti-viral medications without increasing my vertigo and have been able to stay off the acyclovir ever since (although I still take daily lysine and increase my dose when I get flare ups).
    Now for a little background on this disease we call shingles. There are eight known species of human herpes viruses (HHV). Types 1 generally causes what we call "cold sores." Type 2 is mostly responsible for genital herpes. Type 3 is the Varicella-Zoster virus which is responsible for chicken pox, and later shingles. Type 4 is the Epstein-Barr virus behind the "kissing disease" of mononucleosis. Type 5 is known as cytomegalovirus and is mostly found as an infection of newborns. Type 6 and 7 cause forms of infant Roseola and type 8 leads to a type of cancer called Kaposi's sarcoma. What is special about herpes viruses is that although our bodies can clear the outward signs of infection, once you have contracted one of these viruses you never fully are rid of it. Unless your body is able to maintain constant guard the virus can wake back up at any time. Shingles is the re-awakening of the same herpes virus that causes chicken pox which most of us in my age group had as kids. I actually recall that the chicken pox vaccine arrived in my town about two weeks after I recovered from the disease during the first weeks of summer break after 2nd grade. My dad went ahead and got vaccinated because he had never had a full case and the doctors figured it would still be beneficial even though I had fully recovered. This is the trigger point for a whole further conversation on the link between MS and the chicken pox virus... but I think I will save most of that for another day. But do know that there have been multiple large studies which have implicated a link between MS and Varicella-Zoster, although there is not a definitive cause and link has not been proven as MS is a very complicated disease and is sort of a perfect storm kind of combination of triggers.
    Anyway, back to shingles... like I was saying it is the re-awakening of the chicken pox virus. Oh the chicken pox... did you have them? If so I bet you remember being miserable with a fever, intense itching, probably instantly start to smell calamine? Do you remember oatmeal baths and cold compresses and countless bowls of chicken soup? It was miserable, but we survived. In fact chicken pox was always considered one of the most benign of childhood diseases. The mortality rate was remarkably low compared to more serious maladies like scarlet fever and mumps. Chicken pox only killed 1 in every 25 million who got the disease. That is far less scary than the flu which kills an average 500,000 people each year (chicken pox at it's heyday killed 100-150 worldwide). Only older people and those with weak immune systems are "recommended" to get the flu vaccine. Yet every child since that summer I turned 10 has been "recommended" to get vaccinated against the chicken pox. A disease which was always considered a right of passage of childhood and killed very few. Interestingly, in it's pitch to the FDA the manufacturer cited parents missing too many days of work as a prime reason why the chicken pox vaccine should be approved.  While I understand this can be a hardship to many families, I also do not agree with the cost-benefit ratio and here's why. As I discussed before, chicken pox was a relatively mild disease which was common for kids to get prior to the development of the vaccine. By having this disease "active" in the community parents, aunts, teachers, neighbors, etc would be exposed every so often when they came in contact with a kid who had an active case of the chicken pox. By routinely exposing ourselves to the disease we were able to keep our immune systems alert to the virus. It was kind of like a cheap and easy booster shot vaccination. In this way as a society adults were able to keep the virus from coming out of hiding and becoming shingles. Only the elderly and those with very weak immune systems would lose this immunity and develop shingles. This is why historically, shingles was a disease of the elderly.
   However, an interesting phenomenon is becoming apparent as we have now moved beyond a decade of when the vaccine was introduced. It is now obvious that without periodic exposure our body's ability to recognize and stay alert against the varicella-zoster virus goes away on average of 8-10 years after exposure. This means that people my age who had chicken pox when we were... say 10... are now developing shingles if they come under situations where their immune system is even slightly compromised. I can't even tell you how many of my peers I have met who have had shingles in the last 4-5 years. It is crazy! And, what's even worse is the cases of chronic shingles which are now becoming far more normal in younger people (counting myself). By introducing a vaccine for a relatively benign disease we have created a far worse situation. I will not be surprised if very soon the shingles vaccine is recommended for everyone every 10 years just like tetanus. It is really the only way (other than stopping the chicken pox vaccine and having some major pox parties to get it back out in the community) that could keep shingles from becoming the new scourge of young adults. It is a rather hard spot we have backed ourselves in to for trying to wipe out a disease which was causing too many missed days of work for parents, even though staying home with a sick kid may have prevented them from getting shingles and missing even more days of work! (**** in case you are wondering where I am getting my information, most of this is directly from a lecture last year in Immunology on vaccines. Our Immunology teacher sits on the National Vaccine Safety Board as their Immunologist and she is beyond brilliant. Even the CDC themselves admit that concerns have been raised about increasing cases of shingles: http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/stats-surv/vasp/default.htm)
    Shingles is nasty. Not only does it burn, sting, itch, cause an ugly and oozing rash, but the nerve pain may last forever even after the rash is gone. Or it can damage the nerve, as is my case with nerve damage= hearing loss. It can flare up any time your guard is down. Personally, I have found that staying on a maintenance dose of lysine of 1500 mg a day is usually enough, but when if I start feeling a cold coming on, or nerve pain, or just know I am stressed or short on sleep, I take as much as 4000 mg in a day. Lysine has the amazing ability to block the replication of herpes viruses. There have been some studies in which lysine literally saved lives of those rare children who are unable to fight the chicken pox virus. I also try to avoid argenine (high in chocolate and nuts among other foods) which is another amino acid which competes for the same receptor as lysine in getting into your system so if you eat too much argenine your are much higher risk of being low in lysine. There has also been a great deal of research looking at lemon balm (Melissa officinalis) which have shown that it can be more effective than acyclovir in treating herpes viral outbreaks. I take an herbal tincture whenever I am concerned about my immune system to help keep the shingles at bay. It is also often applied in creams to treat the rash in outbreaks of any of the herpes viruses. Those are the two most commonly recommended naturopathic treatments for shingles.
    I hope this information is useful to everyone. We are going to continue to see cases of shingles increasing and we all need to be on guard and ready. I want to take this moment to state that I am NOT against vaccination (although I do take issue with some vaccines- like chicken pox- and the general CDC recommended schedule, but that is for another post). Vaccines have been an amazing development in medicine and to be able to claim that we have wiped out smallpox and are oh-so-close to wiping out polio is a major accomplishment and one that modern medicine should rightfully be proud of. I also want to reiterate from my first blog that I am NOT a licensed medical professional yet and am NOT licensed to diagnose or prescribe. If you or anyone you know has chicken pox or shingles please consult with a licensed medical provider.

Let them eat fat! Cavities oh my!

    One of the most dramatic journeys I have gone on nutritionally in the last year has been in regards to fats. Towards the end of high school I went on what I now view as a misguided health craze. I became vegetarian, and then vegan. Instead of healthy and nutritionally dense food I was eating a lot of highly refined carbs and sugar because those were "allowed" in my "healthy" diet. Of course I realize now that there are safe and proper ways to follow a vegetarian and vegan diet, but at the time I was nutritionally naive. One of the things which went the way of the beef during this period was real butter. My mother, bless her sound nutritional approach, always has and still does use real butter in her cooking. However, during my misguided cleanse I decided that butter was the devil (as portrayed still in popular media and much of popular medicine) and substituted a form of vegan margarine which seemed like the healthiest butter alternative option. It was one which was loaded with omega-3's, which I now know are super good, but it was also based on heavily processed long chain vegetable oils. In biochemistry we learned all about the metabolism of fats, but moreover we learned how not all fats, and especially not all saturated fats, are the same. We have had it drilled in to our heads for the last century that "saturated fats" are bad for us, that they cause heart disease, obesity, all these evils of our modern time. Despite the fact that as people have moved away from saturated fats these diseases have skyrocketed we still think that all saturated fats are the same. The truth is that they are very different! There are short-chain fatty acids (SCFA), medium chain fatty acids (MCFA), and long-chain fatty acids (LCFA). The difference is that SCFA are less than 6 carbons in length, MCFA are 6-12 carbons, and LCFA are longer than 12. Each of these categories are metabolized entirely differently by the body. SC and MCFAs are able to pass directly through the intestinal lining, whereas LCFA must be carried across by special carrier molecules. LCFA must also go through all sorts of biochemical changes in the body before they can be used. SC and MCFA can be burned immediately by the body. These shorter fats burn "cleaner" if you want to imagine it that way. How I explained this to my husband was comparing rubbing alcohol or butane that you use in your lighter versus the high octane gasoline that you put in your car. If you light rubbing alcohol or butane on fire it will burn very quickly and with very little smoke whereas the high octane gasoline requires a lot more more energy put into it to combust and has many toxic byproducts (would you want to use this fuel near your face to light your smoke?). Real butter falls into the category of a SCFA (it's fancy name is butyric acid) with only 4 carbons in it's back-bone. This means that your body can use it immediately and give your cells the fuel they need with very little "clogging" of the system with all the by-products. Not only do you get a rapid boost in energy but there is no insulin spike like what you get from eating carbs for that same rapid energy. There is a great article in the Huffington Post discussing this topic in relation to coconut oil. (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-mercola/coconut-oil-benefits_b_821453.html) Coconut oil falls under the medium chain fatty acid category which is "burned" very cleanly and efficiently by the body too. He mentions a funny old fact that in the 1940's farmers in the US tried using coconut oil to fatten their beef cows and it didn't work! The cows' metabolisms increased and they became lean-mean fat burning machines. Coconut oil is absolutely fabulous for cooking as it has a very high smoke point and can be used for frying or for any situation where you would otherwise use some of those long-chain fats like canola or vegetable oil. It is solid at room temperature but melts rapidly once it gets above around 80 degrees so it melts immediately. I have also made clarified butter as an alternative for high heat cooking. Butter, in its raw form, cannot be used for high heat cooking as the solids begin to burn very quickly, but if you make it into butter oil (put in glass measuring cup at 225 oven until the two layers separate and then pour off the butter oil that floats to the top, straining through cheese cloth to get out the remaining floating solids) it has a much higher smoke point and I have used this alone or in combination with coconut oil very successfully to cook and fry a huge variety of foods.

    The reason I really made this switch and got so into fats actually had nothing to do with metabolism but rather cavities! My little man got his first teeth at 4 months, by 8 months he had all four lower incisors and all four top incisors. The bottom teeth are fine, but the top teeth.... from the moment they came in they started to degrade. He got very rapidly progressing cavities despite brushing those pearlies every day and being incredibly strict with his sugar intake. He doesn't get juice (except diluted on very special occasions), absolutely no soda, no high sugar foods, he doesn't go to bed with a bottle (he is still nursing for naps and bedtime), and until recently he very seldom used a bottle at all. The first dentist I took him to told me that his cavities were because he was still nursing and that I needed to wean him, but referred us to a pediatric specialist since he was so young. I took serious insult! I was highly unprepared at the time but it sat so uneasy with me that I went home and did a ton of research. It just didn't make sense- if breast milk caused cavities then why do mammals have teeth?! No other mammal has the dental hygiene ability we do (when did you last see a bear brushing it's teeth) but yet wild animals don't get cavities or dental decay like we do. I thankfully found that most modern research does actually support this view (the dentist I saw was obviously of the "old school") and studies have shown that breastmilk can even prevent bacteria from binding to the enamel. The pediatric specialists I saw reassured me that it was not due to breastfeeding but did not have a whole lot of options to treat. The options were to watch and wait, knock him out with general anesthesia (because he was too young to do awake work) and cap the teeth, or extract them. We opted to watch and wait and I started reading everything I possibly could about early childhood caries ("caries" is the fancy professional term for cavities) My research eventually led me (thanks also to a wonderful colleague's tip) to Dr. Weston Price. Dr. Price was an American dentist back in the 1930's who saw the skyrocketing rate of cavities as well as a crowded upper jaw in the populations he was working at and he started really questioning what was behind this. He hypothesized that it might be connected to the modern diet which he defined as consisting in large part of refined sugar, refined white flour, and canned vegetables and fruits. He then did something which I am absolutely in awe of. He traveled the world several times over and sought out every indigenous village which had no contact with modern foods. He went to Australia, Indonesia, Alaska, Africa, and even found isolated populations in Europe such as tiny Swiss villages tucked into the mountains and remote Scottish Isles who had existed on the same foods and traditions for many centuries. He looked at literally millions of teeth. Time after time he showed that these unmodernized cultures consistently had rates of cavities and upper jaw deformities below 1%. He also took samples of all the traditional foods and analyzed them. He then looked at the same populations who had been in contact with modern foods (like the village down the road that had gotten a railroad) and saw that within one generation of a population adopting a modern diet that the rate of cavities and jaw deformities skyrocketed, sometimes as high as 50%! This means that half the teeth in that given village had signs of decay and crowding. The native populations, which often did not practice any sort of modern dental hygiene (i.e. no flossing or toothbrushes) had not only gorgeous non-decayed teeth, but their jaws were large enough to accommodate all their teeth (including the wisdom teeth!). When he analyzed what they were eating, which ranged from a diet based primarily on the ocean (like the Alaskan natives) to one based largely on grains and dairy (Swiss Alps- think Heidi so full of vigor!) he realized that they had one thing in common and these were fats and the fat soluble vitamins. He realized that these fat soluble vitamins conferred some major protection to future generations against cavities and other physical degeneration (he also noted radically low rates of cancer and arthritis in the traditional populations). He noted that in all these cultures newly married couples (or during courting) were fed diets very high in these vitamins in order to provide good nourishment to the unborn child that they would hope to conceive. When parents adopted a modern diet (even if they themselves had perfect teeth) the children born after this change consistently showed remarkable signs of degeneration, specifically high rates of tooth decay and crowding of the upper jaw. Oh how I wish I had read this before I got pregnant! My whole first trimester I was so challenged with nausea that I virtually lived on simple carbs, a trend which unfortunately followed my whole pregnancy. Had I known the consequences I would have tried so much harder to get better nutrition even with the morning sickness. He realized that these modern foods were incredibly devoid of nutrients and specifically these fat soluble vitamins. He took this information back to America and wrote an amazing book titled Nutrition and Physical Degeneration which is a great, albeit lengthy, read and was written so that even non-professionals can understand it. He also started recommending increasing healthy fats, and specifically pasture butter and butter oil as well as fish oil, to his patients in America (particularly children) to slow the rate of dental decay and had amazing results (well documented in his book with the before and after dental x-rays). Depending on the starting level of decay it was sometimes possible for the decay to be completely reversed and he had many cases where cavities filled back in with healthy enamel. In more severe cases the damage was not able to reverse but was at least slowed or stopped in it's progression and the dentin (the yellow stuff under the enamel) was much less penetrable to bacteria. Long story short (as I realize this blog post is becoming a novel) we started giving Jay butter oil and cod liver oil (yummy strawberry flavored that he loves!) as well as using exclusively pasture butter and mostly grass fed beef in our every day cooking. His two lateral top incisors (the ones between the front two and the canines) were in pretty rough shape by the time we started this and unfortunately there wasn't much to save but the central incisors have virtually stopped the decay! The cavities are ever so slowly filling in but have definitely not gotten worse. I am hoping that with continued supplementation and better diet he will be able to keep these teeth until they fall out naturally. So far the rest of his teeth are looking okay with the exception of a little discoloration on one molar. I also got a copy of the cookbook put out the by the Price and Pottinger Institute (who have continued Dr. Price's good work) called Nourishing Traditions and it is chock full of not only amazing recipes but each page contains tons of research on the main ingredient in the recipe and why it is so good for us. I highly recommend this cook book to anyone wanting to learn more about wholesome and traditional foods that are not only delicious but incredibly nutritious. There are huge chapter introductions too discussing fats, grains, etc and how traditional cultures have utilized these foods. Okay, I think that's plenty of information for a single blog post. Thanks for following this! Marie Antoinette got it wrong: don't let them eat cake, let them eat fat!

Oh! One final article that is sort of on this topic (it talks about reasons why we crave those carbs) that I recently read: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/Dr.-Wendie-Trubow/carb-cravings_b_2082597.html?utm_hp_ref=healthy-living 

Virgin blogging! Introduction and History

    My first blog! Now my husband will have yet another thing to tell me I'm wasting my time on (totally kidding- he is super supportive of my education process)! Facebook gets a bad rap- it's just a way to give my brain cells a break when I'm on a study rampage, although I could probably do well to check it a little less frequently...... Anyway, back to blogging... when my resident during my first term of clinic suggested starting a health blog I was honestly sarcastic regarding my free time. Full time med school student, mama to a wild boy of almost 2, living on acreage (so many leaves!), married, and trying to run a household, teaching bassoon lessons .... let me catch my breath.... I never believed that I could eek out the time and energy necessary to blog. However, it is almost Thanksgiving break (woohoo a week off!) and then comes winter break (a whole month!) so hopefully I can make it a new habit. I already share so much information via the dreaded FB that I would probably save myself [FB] time sharing things on here. I absolutely welcome feedback and I would love to see this blog become a starting point for many amazing discussions and sharing of information.
    I am currently in my second year of school at the oldest naturopathic school in the country, the National College of Natural Medicine. It has been an amazing journey since I started last fall. My husband, son, and I moved to Portland last summer after living for six beautiful years in Ashland, Oregon. While there I completed a BS in Biology with Biomedical Science as my emphasis as well as a BS in Music (yes, a BS in music DOES exist although I'm pretty sure there's not too many of us out there). I was shooting for conventional med school and was completely wrapped up in modern medicine. During my senior year (5th year super-senior that is!) I began working as a Clinical Research Coordinator in Southern Oregon working on trials of pharmaceutical medications for asthma, COPD, and allergies. While I definitely recognize the need for powerful drugs to combat some of the diseases of our modern age I came to the conclusion that I did not want to learn a system of medicine where these drugs would be my primary form of medicine as they can have some very real and very serious side effects and don't always work. It was also during this time that I got married and pregnant with the little munchkin. We chose to try a home birth and worked with a wonderful midwife in Southern Oregon who also had a naturopath (and fellow mama) practicing at her office at the time. I had the naturopathic epiphany one evening and through some wonderful mama-to-mama advice decided to apply to NCNM.
    I have been so amazed by the supportive community that I have found at NCNM. They have a remote room set up for new mamas to bring their babes (until around age 1) and view/listen to lectures on couches. Since roughly 1/2 of the curriculum is lecture based it makes the childcare requirement much less and also encourages healthy mama/baby bonding which is so essential! Now that my munchkin is older I don't bring him regularly as he has far outgrown the baby room, although during a family crisis the school permitted me to bring him for a limited time (which absolutely saved my sanity). There are about five other mamas in my year and several more in the upper classes. We have all bonded over the struggle with juggling school and family. The other nice thing NCNM does is offer the curriculum as a 4, 5, or even a 6 year program. Most of the moms are on the 5 year track which, although very appealing in times of stress, means another year of debt and rain, two things I would really like to avoid. So, despite the sometimes insane schedule I am determined to make it out in 4 years.
    This blog will include things that I research for school, things that I research for care of the little guy or big guy, and other randomly interesting articles and research that I happen to stumble upon in my studies. I want to make it absolutely clear that I am not yet a doctor, and therefore have no legal ability to diagnose or provide treatment. This blog will be for the sharing of information for which I can always provide reference. It is not meant to be in lieu of regular licensed medical care and I highly encourage everyone to check in regularly with their primary care physician. That said, thanks for reading and I hope it will be worth your time to check in regularly :)