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
Blog: On Health. On Writing. On Life. On Everything.
In the Midst of Life We Are in Death
June 29, 2010
The unimaginable for all of us is that we will die.
Other people, of course, die. But not us. This is how we deceive ourselves.
Let’s undeceive: It is time that we lift the taboo around death. Death should be with us all the time, in our consciousness - because it is with us, in reality. It can happen any time: An accident, a bad diagnosis. Not to mention the daily little dying in tiniest pieces that we call aging. In the midst of life we are in death – as the old Church hymn sings. Death surely is the reason why we invented religion – because it is so damn hard to think the unthinkable.
Most of all, we want to protect our children from death. So we are building a world free of the dark side. Death is never mentioned. When somebody dies, we keep children away.
Of course, children are not stupid – they know about death, usually by age four: the hamster that lied stiff under the radiator one morning. The news and pictures of war on TV. Even the wilting bunch of flowers in a vase. Nothing will last forever. All beauty will end up on the compost pile.
But not talking about death makes it even harder for children: They have to hide their deepest fears from their parents, not to hurt their feelings (that is how childhood works: children protect their parents. All the time).
When I was five, my father took me to a patient who had freshly died overnight. I remember the day like few others. It was a sunny Sunday morning, but the room with the dead man was kept dark. The widow cried, but she had enough compassion for the little girl to hand me an apple. I stared at the form in the bed. The jaws were tied up with a white napkin as if the man had suffered from toothache. I smelled my apple. Was it bad manners to bite into the apple in the presence of a dead man? I decided it was, and just held my apple. The widow said her husband had been suffering for so long; now his suffering was over. My father took out his stethoscope, examined the body and confirmed he had died.
On the way home, I asked many questions – I was that why? Why? Why? kid.
Did it hurt me? I don’t think so.
Denial hurts children – it deprives them of the means to grow up. Nothing is sadder than an elderly person who panics about the subject. To acknowledge that death awaits each one of us at the end, makes us live our lives more mindful, more compassionate.
Proposal: Everybody should read Sogyal Rinpoche's "The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying") once a year, as a way to face what is so hard to face. As a way to grow up. Alternatively, for an easier read, try: Irvin Yalom's "Staring at the Sun: Overcoming the Terror of Death. " Read More
If I Had an Incurable Disease...
June 28, 2010
At one point, my cat Kachi had a herpes eye infection that didn’t go away; whatever the vet tried – hundreds of dollars of medications (that was when I decided that I never again would put that much money into pet health care) - nothing helped.
When it threatened her good eye, I thought” What would I do in a patient who has an incurable disease?” Of course, the first thing that came to my mind was cleaning up my cat's diet.
Until then, she had been fed with dry food and cans – like so many pets. I stopped the dry food and cooked, pureed and froze her meals: meat, carrots, a handful of oats, fish.
Within a week, her eye started to heal. After three weeks she was fine. Interestingly, the condition returned, as soon as we returned to processed foods.
So this is what I would do if I had an incurable disease:
• Clean up my eating act. No dairy, as starters. Dairy provides double jeopardy in disease: It is highly inflammatory. Some poorly understood diseases – like sarcoid, autoimmune diseases, multiple sclerosis, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, and so on – will benefit from less inflammation. And dairy is a potent concoction of hormones that lets cells grow - which cancer patients should avoid it like the devil.
As always, don’t just avoid bad foods; cram your plate with good ones – and that means: vegetables, vegetables, vegetable. And herbs and fruit, of course. Plant material has all the phyto-nutrients that your body needs for repair. Plus, good oils like olive oil, fish, occasionally meat (but no deli and cured meats), whole grains, legumes.
But there is more:
• Moderate exercise. Don’t go crazy with mindless machines in a gym – just go for a daily walk, putter around in the garden, clean out attic and garage, and generally find things to do that involve movement.
• End every hot shower or bath with a short (seconds only) cold shower (unless you have uncontrolled high blood pressure or an arterial disease). A cold shower improved immune function, and if you have an ill-understood disease – like my cat’s herpes) – you want your immune system in best working order.
• Add medicinal mushrooms, probiotics, fish oil and cod liver oil to your regimen.
• Get a life: Don’t use sickness as an excuse not to pursue your dreams – go for them right now! Enroll in a course you always wanted to do: woodworking, Etruscan history, welding, playing the mandolin, quilting – whatever captures your fancy. Against physicians’ predictions, I have seen patients survive for many years on bad diseases. Because survival has much to do with the purpose in your life.
• Get a spiritual life: Write it down in your journal just like this: I believe in … And see what will come out. It might mot be religious - but it will be powerful because it stands for your deepest convictions. And then follow your path! Make connections with like-minded people. Needless to say: Let go of stifling, abusive, dead-end relationships (but don’t conclude too fast that it is all your spouse’s fault – it might well be yours; work on yourself first!).
Of course, here we have again the Five Health Essentials of European Natural Medicine: Water, movement, food, herbs, order. If I had an incurable disease, I would embrace these Health Essentials, and make the best of my life that it can be.
P.S. In the summer, I would make a daily garden tea. Read More