At a fancy dinner, across the table, another guest talked about “women of a certain age.” I looked him straight into the eye and said: “I am not a woman of a certain age. I am 68.” There were a few gasps at the table.
Age seems to be a problem. But not if you have been a very sick baby that should not have survived 6 months when she came down with the double whammy of measles and diphtheria (they put her into a corner to die, and told the mother not to bother) – at the end of World War II in Europe when there were no antitoxins, no antibiotics, and no food. Or should have died of pneumonia every winter of her childhood. Or should have died of tuberculosis at age fifteen (or thereabouts). Or should have died in childbirth because the doctors deemed her too week to give birth of a baby of her own. Or should have died in her forties when the doctors thought she was too old for another baby. Not to mention two heartbreaking divorces, and all the foolish and dangerous things she went through in her youth: Hitchhiking alone from Brussels to Paris, drinking underage at parties – and more foolish & dangerous things I better don’t relate here.
Not sure what kept me alive during all those perils. Love of life, probably. And sheer luck.
But so it comes that I am not afraid of getting older – only curious, and proud.
I see my life as a Chinese scroll: Every day the scroll unrolls a bit more, and – surprise! surprise! – showing more and more of my improbable, disorderly, wonderful life: A gorgeous picture! Still a bit unfolding at the edges every single day. And how lucky I am to still be here, and see it unfolding, understanding more of myself, understanding better the forces that worked on me and nudged me and pushed me forward!
Oh, and that baby there, left to die in a corner of the pediatric ward? I imagine a kindhearted nurse who must have touched me and fed me and cuddled me secretly to keep me alive. And then, two weeks later, they called up my mother: Would she, please, finally pick up that healthy baby that was eating the food of all the other babies on the ward? Read More
Blog: On Health. On Writing. On Life. On Everything.
Care Of Unsightly Fingernails
December 19, 2011
A physician can tell much when she looks at your nails – if she was trained well. The nails can show fungus and other specific nail diseases. But many internal diseases show also at your fingers and nails – and other than the tongue, which in Traditional Chinese Medicine is used to diagnose diseases, the fingers are usually not hidden, and I don’t have to ask a patient to show me his tongue.
By the way, Sebastian Kneipp used to gauge the health of a person by ear diagnosis – also freely to be inspected. One anecdote goes that he gave Pope Leo XIII another nine years, when the Pope already was at the ripe age of eighty-eight. Sure enough, the Pope died at ninety-seven – and had a chance to implement some of his social-minded reforms. Leo XIII was one of the most progressive of popes.
Of course, fingers, tongue, ears – there’s no hocus-pocus involved: Any part of your body is affected by the same age, the same experiences, the same nutrition and, usually, by the same disease. No wonder then that an experienced observer can tell much from them.
Some of the diseases I recognize by nails: Liver disease, iron deficiency, chronic autoimmune inflammation, arthritis, psoriasis, gout, a bad infection or severe stress that happened months ago, circulatory diseases, Kawasaki disease, a sluggish or overactive thyroid, certain heavy metal poisonings, skin diseases (even sometimes a melanoma under the nail – so-called subungual melanoma), vitamin B12 and C deficiencies, lung and heart disease, impaired kidney function, folate deficiency, malnutrition (protein deficiency), nail injuries, use of certain antibiotics, and so on.
Having said this it is obvious that we doctors don’t encourage artificial nails and nail polish – it takes an important diagnostic tool away from us! This list also alarms you that changes in your nails should be examined by your doctor. But sometimes one has only “ugly” nails, with now apparent reason – perhaps brought simply on by the aging process or dirty work. Here is a nice simple method to make your nail beautiful again:
• Keep fingernails short by filing with an emery board, never by cutting (toenails should be cut straight).
• Wash and brush hands and nails with a soft brush and a non-harsh soap. I prefer olive oil soap.
• Apply tea tree oil to the nails thinly; rub it in.
• Apply olive oil with rosemary essential oil (other essential oils like oregano, lavender, myrrh work the same way) to hands and nails.
• If your hands are rough, apply coconut oil (the same organic grade that you use for cooking) regularly. Read More
Sebastian Kneipp Wins – I Lose
November 28, 2011
Traveling earlier this month in Europe, I missed my daily swimming in the pool so much that I filled a bathtub in the hotel with water to the brim and got in. Now, it happened to be Frankfurt/Main in late fall, and the water was cold. How cold? I don’t travel with a thermometer but it was definitely colder than my Californian pool.
But I enjoyed it. I got in to my neck, and stayed for a while. As it turned out, I stayed too long. Although the rest of my body heated up soon after I had toweled myself off, an ice-cold area over my kidneys the size of a football stayed with me – literally for days.
Uh-oh! I had overdone it! And Sebastian Kneipp had told me so. He used to warn that one should not exaggerate cold exposure. And as difficult it is to give exact numbers for the time frame of “too much” – if one stays cold in the kidney area for days after, as it happened to me, one clearly has gone too far.
Originally, he had cured himself from consumption (tuberculosis) by jumping into the winter-cold Danube River several times a week. When he later tried his method on other people, he quickly realized that not every body was not made for such endurance test: The older people were, and the thinner, the less cold they could handle – and he adjusted his theories to this insight.
In Traditional Chinese Medicine “qi” is the life force, and is generated in the “kidneys”, which is actually what we call the adrenals. In Western Medicine it is known that that the adrenals produce a hormone/neurotransmitter called adrenalin, which is an energizer. If you stimulate the adrenals a bit, it will give you that desired energy jolt; if you over-stimulate the adrenals, you get a downer.
Now, after two weeks of down time, when I didn’t dare to face the cold again, I swam again in the pool today. The temperature was 15 degree Celsius (59 Fahrenheit). I only swam one lap – wasn’t brave enough for more.
One lap might be too short to induce brown fat in my body, but it was exhilarating, and when I got out, my kidneys felt fine! And I restarted in time to strengthen my immune system for the winter. Read More