Years ago, I found myself in a hotel at the Dead Sea in Israel. The hotel also catered to patients, because it has been shown that sunlight and saltwater improves such conditions as eczema and psoriasis.
The hotel had an excellent buffet with all kinds of healthy vegetables and gorgeous fruit. For me most striking observation was that the patient group flocked around cheese, cakes, cookies, pizza, lasagna, spaghetti with meatballs, and bacon, whereas the other travelers delved into the abundance of fresh foods. In addition, the patient group was visibly more overweight than the others. I had a hard time not pointing out to every patient the damage they were doing to their bodies just as they were seeking the healing waters of the Dead Sea.
You go online for eczema remedies, and you find a thousand products screaming “Here! Buy me!”
This is my simple advice:
1. Get rid of anything you might be allergic to. – Some researchers deny that allergies play a role – I don’t agree with them; but let’s not call it allergies then, but food intolerances. Because in many cases, food intolerance plays a role in psoriasis and eczema – and the Standard American Diet (SAD) is especially at fault. The offending foods? The list I gathered from my patients is long, and dairy for sure tops it. Citrus fruit, wheat (and, by association, barley, rye, oats), soy, nuts have been most often the culprits in my patients. Coffee (including caffeinated) seems to trigger eczema too.
2. Use coconut oil on the affected, itchy, thickened skin. Coconut oil is anti-bacterial, soothes the itch and helps the poor skin to heal.
3. If you can afford, vacation at the ocean. Moderate sunlight and saltwater do miracles for posriasis and eczema.
4. If you want to go the extra mile, get a good probiotic (bacteria that are helpful for bowel health – but not frpm yogurt, take capsules) to heal your gut, and take fish oil capsules against inflammation.
Often this works also for rheumatoid arthritis and other auto-immune diseases, too. An additional biggie in psoriasis is alcohol – avoid it.
Some other ideas why people now get eczema are that babies are brought up in a too clean environment, and that emotional issues play a role. The first we can’t do anything about once you are grown-up. The emotional issue – well, we all still struggle to grow up, don’t we? Can’t hurt to work on that. Read More
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National Celiac Disease Awareness Day September 13th
September 21, 2010
National Celiac Disease Awareness Day September 13th
Because we were traveling that day in Persepolis/Iran, I missed the date that reminded us of the most under-diagnosed disease there is: Gluten intolerance.
Sprue, celiac sprue, celiac disease, gluten intolerance – they are all different names for the same disease – the one that turns your daily bread into poison.
Inventing agriculture some five to ten thousand years ago was a huge step forward for mankind: Less people - especially children - starved, more survived – and more people had the leisure to turn to cultural endeavors (observing the stars, building cities, learning poetry). Agriculture is at the heart of our civilization.
Of course, there was a price to pay: Some children could not tolerate the new foodstuffs on the table – milk and bread – and died. But most did very well. The population grew.
Nature whispers to hunters and gatherers in the voice of the wind, the rustling of leaves, the babbling of brooks – everywhere spirits and gods seems to reside in holy nature places.
Once farming has been invented, there’s really need only for a single God – the one who lets the wheat grow and fattens the cows so that they give milk: Give us our daily bread was the prayer ever since then. Leaving Nature behind and turning to monotheism also meant to exploit Earth and go for effectivity in all our endeavors: It made us great – and destroyed our old mother-ship Earth.
Except that the gluten (the sticky protein in wheat that makes dough so doughy) can cause myriad diseases: diabetes, arthritis, cancer, depression, autoimmune disease, skin diseases, neurological problems, vitamin B12 deficiency, and so on, and so on. (I am working on a comprehensive list of gluten-related diseases – will come soon).
And gluten is not only found in wheat – it also is in rye, barley and – as a slightly different but related protein – in oats.
You know the story from the Bible about the Golden Calf? Well, in Persepolis I got an idea why the Golden Calf was such a threat Abraham’s God: It was a fall-back into the era of many gods, polytheism. Worse: it went directly to where the money was: to the cow. The One God had to be angry if they could circumvent him. Look at the picture of one of those double-cow capitals of Persepolis – on the “medical questions?” page here).
But back to gluten: About one in a hundred (or a little less – depending on your ethnic background) cannot digest gluten well. If you are reddish or blond, blue-eyed and fair-skinned, you have higher likelihood to be intolerant to gluten – but I have certainly seen the disease in dark-haired people; even in Africans and Asians.
There is not cure for celiac disease – the only recourse is to leave out all gluten in your diet. Some people have a hard time to let go of bread, cookies, cake and pasta. But once you realize that you can eat rice, beans, lentils, garbanzos as much as you want, you suddenly are not only disease-free but you certainly live healthier because all our junk food is based on wheat (and fat).
You might have guessed it: If you are already depriving yourself of all fun in life, you can as well drop milk and dairy products – as they are the other big culprit at the root of many inflammatory processes in your body. Read More
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The Man I Most Admire
June 30, 2010
Today is the perfect summer day outside: Warm but not too hot. With brilliant light, the roses in their second flush. So I want to go out into the garden, and give you just a tiny thought for the day.
In my life, I have met interesting people of all kinds of walks. Can't say I tend to worship heroes - but here is one:
Many years ago I had a patient, a friendly middle-aged (aside: I am always astonished what Americans call “middle-aged”; where I come from, “middle-aged” is from thirty to fifty…) small man, a light-colored black man, working as a janitor. As it turned out, with some Native American blood thrown in.
The Native American blood must have made him prone to diabetes – he certainly was not overweight. But he was eager to accommodate to some lifestyle changes. When I said “No cake, no cookies,” he shuffled on his chair, and asked “Not even for birthdays?” We negotiated birthdays exceptions.
But for several visits, his sugars did not come down. I finally decided to get a bit deeper into the cookie business, mindful of the former hospital patient who had agreed to a “one cookie per day” policy, and whose sugars were so abject that we could not send her home. When I inquired about that one cookie, she nodded to the drawer of her nightstand, giving me permission to see for myself. I found a “cookie” the size of a dinner plate. Only one, though: She had stuck to our agreement…
With that in mind, I sat my nice little man down and asked him how many birthdays there were in his life. Turned out he had about ten children and who knows how many grand-children - it boiled down to at least a birthday a week!
You wonder why he is the man I most admire? He got all his children through college – including the one son who was wheelchair-bound from an accident. This nice, unassuming man had, against all odds, kept his family together and made a success out of his life.
Who is your hero? Read More