Tag Archives: Chronic diseases

Post #54 – How to Optimize Your Immune System? – Part IV – by Destressing

25 Saturday Jun 2016

Posted by in Biomarkers for Stress, Living to 120, Optimal Health, Reversing Chronic Diseases, Stress, TM, Uncategorized

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Post #54 – How to Optimize Your Immune System? –  Part IV – by Destressing

In Post #51, I discussed some basic terminology of the immune systems, how immune system works, and what kinds of issues happen when it does not work.

Things that are in our control to enhance our immunity and also so the immune system does not go haywire are the ones that you have heard about gazillions of time by now and are probably tired of hearing about: Nutrition, Exercise and Lifestyle.

In Posts #52 and #53, we discussed how to boost your immune system with nutrition and exercise.   In this final post of this series, let’s focus on the last item Lifestyle. Specifically, we will explore what role stress plays in diminishing our immune system and what we can do about it.

Pathways between Stress and the Immune System

We have all heard or intuitively know that when you are stressed you are more susceptible to illness because your immune system is not fully functioning.  But how does that really happen?

A meta-analysis report by Suzanne Segerstrom and Gregory Miller pulls together results from 300 different studies and does a beautiful job of explaining our understanding of this biological connection between mental stress and components of our immune system. The following explanation is based on their paper.

There are three different ways stress in the mind “get inside the body” to affect the immune response:

First, sympathetic fibers descend from the brain into both primary (bone marrow and thymus) and secondary (spleen and lymph nodes) lymphoid tissues. These fibers can release a wide variety of substances that influence immune responses by binding to receptors on white blood cells.

Second, the hypothalamus, pituitary, adrenal, sympathetic, medullary, ovarian glands respond to stress and secrete the adrenal hormones epinephrine, norepinephrine, and cortisol; the pituitary hormones prolactin and growth hormone; and the brain peptides melatonin, β-endorphin, and enkephalin. These substances bind to specific receptors on white blood cells and have diverse regulatory effects on their distribution and function.

Third, people’s efforts to manage the demands of stressful experience sometimes lead them to engage in behaviors—such as alcohol use or changes in sleeping patterns—that also could modify immune system processes. Thus, behavior represents a potentially important pathway linking stress with the immune system.

Is Stress always bad?

The results of various studies have demonstrated that stressors with the fight-or-flight situations faced by humans’ evolutionary ancestors elicited potentially beneficial changes in the immune system. The more a stressor deviated from those parameters by becoming more chronic, however, the more components of the immune system were affected in a potentially detrimental way.

So, in other words, the way our ancestors’ bodies reacted to an encounter with a saber-tooth tiger was good for our immune system.  Stress-related disease emerges, predominantly, out of the fact that we so often activate a physiological system that has evolved for responding to acute physical emergencies.  So, the effect on our immune systems is very negative when we turn it on for months on end, worrying about mortgages, relationships, and promotions.

Deep Rest for reversing impact of stress on our immune systems

Deepak Chopra, MD and David Simon, MD in their book Grow YoungDeepak Chopra Grow Youngerer, Live Longer: Ten Steps to Reverse Aging, beautifully describe the two antidotes to stress: Restful Awareness and Restful Sleep.

Restful Awareness is a natural mind/body response, as natural as the stress response. The most direct way to experience restful awareness is through meditation. During meditation, breathing slows, blood pressure decreases and stress hormones level off.

In this state while all the metabolic processes slow down, brain stays fully alert and awake. In his book Transcendence: Healing and Transformation Through Transcendental Meditation, Transcendence BookNorman Rosenthal, MD describes in great details this fourth state of consciousness many others call Restful Awareness.  He also lays out in great deal the research that backs up beneficial effects of Transcendental Meditation.

There are of course other types of meditations and techniques through which you can manage stress. A lot of work has been done and ongoing in the Mindful-based Stress Reduction techniques.  These studies describe how performing mindful meditation and living in mindful way reduce conditioned fight-flight response and allows one to make more conscious choices. Such conscious or mindful living thus overrides the biological processes that damage our immune system.

Restful Sleep is equally important in managing stress for optimal immune function. Restful Sleep of minimum six to eight hours is necessary. More recent studies have called out 7.5 hours of daily restful sleep as the optimal.

Restful sleep means that your drift off easily once you turn off the light and sleep soundly through the night. If you have to get up to go to the bathroom during the night, you are able to easily get back to sleep. You will know you have restful sleep if upon awakening you feel energetic, alert and vibrant.  If you feel tired and unenthusiastic when you wake up in the morning, you have not had a night of restful sleep.

To get the best sleep usually requires that you develop a regular routine transitioning from activity to sleep. Chopra and Simon describe very good routines that allow you to transition from the daily activity to deep sleep.

Bottom Line

To optimize immune systems, stress management can play a critical role. In the 30 years since work in the field of psychoneuroimmunology began, studies have convincingly established that stressful experiences alter features of the immune response as well as make one vulnerable to adverse medical outcomes.

Practicing Restful Awareness through Transcendental Meditation, Mindful Meditation, Mindful living or other technique are critical to minimizing stress. The benefits of these techniques are now well established.

Daily Restful Sleep is also required to manage stress.  Practicing daily routines to help transition from daily activity to restful sleep is the best method to achieving daily restful sleep.

What are your thoughts on this subject?

Would love to hear from you and learn from you.

Please click on Comment to leave your comments or question so others can benefit from your input.

 

Post #46 – What is Arthritis and what can you do about it?

16 Monday Nov 2015

Posted by in Aging, Bikram Yoga, Optimal Exercise, Optimal Health, Reversing Chronic Diseases, Vitality

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I often hear my contemporaries talk about pain in the knees, hands, shoulder, back. When I ask them what is going on, a common response is: “It is just arthritis.”  When I probe further about what kind of arthritis or what are they doing about it, I may get answers like:

  • No idea, have not talked to a doctor yet
  • Just have to live with it, I guess
  • Managing with pain meds
  • I could have surgery, but it is not that bad yet.

So, I thought I will go ahead and share what I have experienced and learned over the years on this topic

My ambition to run a marathon thwarted

Almost twenty years ago, I met Stu Mittleman, an ultra-distance running champion. He won the 1,000 Mile World Championship and set a new world record by running the distance (1 609.344 kilometers) in 11 days, 2 hours, 6 min. 6 sec. (Yes, that is right one thousand mile!). After winning that race, he got himself admitted to a graduate school to figure out how he did what he did.

With that knowledge and experience, he started teaching mere mortals how to run marathons.  When I met, I was so inspired, I signed up.

So, with his coaching program, I started building up my endurance. I ran my first 5K. And, then, my knees started hurting. He had no ideas on how to fix my knees.  So, I quit running.

Knees got worse over the next few years. I went to a Sports Medicine guy. He took a quick look at the X-ray of my knees and said, “Looks like arthritis. Do some physical therapy. When they are not good enough to do what you want to do, we can always go in and clean them up.”

So, what the heck is this Arthritis?

There are two excellent, very accessible resources for arthritis:  Arthritis Foundation and NIH National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases.  Per the Arthritis Foundation website:

Arthritis is very common but is not well understood. Actually, “arthritis” is not a single disease; it is an informal way of referring to joint pain or joint disease. There are more than 100 different types of arthritis and related conditions. People of all ages, sexes and races can and do have arthritis, and it is the leading cause of disability in America. More than 50 million adults and 300,000 children have some type of arthritis. It is most common among women and occurs more frequently as people get older.

Common arthritis joint symptoms include swelling, pain, stiffness and decreased range of motion. Symptoms may come and go. They can be mild, moderate or severe. They may stay about the same for years, but may progress or get worse over time. Severe arthritis can result in chronic pain, inability to do daily activities and make it difficult to walk or climb stairs. Arthritis can cause permanent joint changes. These changes may be visible, such as knobby finger joints, but often the damage can only be seen on X-ray. Some types of arthritis also affect the heart, eyes, lungs, kidneys and skin as well as the joints.

There can be many underlying causes for swelling, inflammation, stiffness and pain in the joints. For example, Rheumatoid Arthritis, Lupus, Infectious Arthritis and Osteoarthritis can all cause these symptoms, but they are all very different diseases. It is very important to figure out with the help of a doctor what you are dealing with.

Osteo-arthritis is the most common type of arthritis. Per NIH website on Osteoarthritis:

Osteoarthritis (AH-stee-oh-ar-THREYE-tis) is the most common type of arthritis and is seen especially among older people. Sometimes it is called degenerative joint disease. Osteoarthritis mostly affects cartilage (KAR-til-uj), the hard but slippery tissue that covers the ends of bones where they meet to form a joint. Healthy cartilage allows bones to glide over one another. It also absorbs energy from the shock of physical movement. In osteoarthritis, the surface layer of cartilage breaks and wears away. This allows bones under the cartilage to rub together, causing pain, swelling, and loss of motion of the joint. Over time, the joint may lose its normal shape. Also, small deposits of bone—called osteophytes or bone spurs—may grow on the edges of the joint. Bits of bone or cartilage can break off and float inside the joint space. This causes more pain and damage.

Figure Showing a Healthy Knee

Knee without damage

Figure Showing Knee with Severe Osteoarthritis

Knee with damage

A doctor friend of mine told me that when doctors don’t know what the disease is, they call it osteoarthritis.  And, that is not far from the truth. If you eliminate, other diseases that might be causing inflammation, e.g., auto-immune diseases, it is osteo-arthritis.  Underlying disease causing damage to cartilage is not known at this point – if it is not one of the other specific diseases.

So, what can you do?

Well treatment can be quite different based on the type of arthritis or the condition that might be causing the joint issues.

However, in case of osteoarthritis, which is often the most common and age related, here are the treatment options, according to NIH:

  • Exercise
  • Weight control
  • Rest and relief from stress on joints
  • Nondrug pain relief techniques and alternative therapies
  • Medications to control pain
  • Surgery

Notice that exercise is on the top of the list. As soon as most people start to feel pain in the joints, guess what do they give up? Yep, exercise.  And, what do they need most to keep ostearthritis in check? Yep, exercise.

And, that is an interesting paradox I have seen played out again and again – including with my own mother.

Back to My Knee

Having learned the theory, I took on three things aggressively:

  1. Strength training to strengthen everything involved in functioning of my knee: quads, calves, hamstrings, and stabilizers muscles and ligaments.
  2. e-cises by Pete Egoscue to realign my knee since my knees were a little pronated and that was probably the reason why running aggravated my knees.
  3. Doing Bikram Yoga to help flush out any bone spurs or lose particles
  4. Started on supplement of Glucosamine Sulfate with Chondroitin and MSM that help rebuild the cartilage. See http://www.lifeextension.com/vitamins-supplements/item03157/glucosamine–chondroitin–msm#panelSupplements.

My goal was to be pain-free when I doing lunges with free weight, squats and single leg jump ropes. And, I am happy to say that I have been able to get there.

In my last X-ray, I still noticed some bone spur and what radiologist called “mild arthritis”.   I would really like to reverse that without any surgery. So, the chase is still on.

Bottomline

  1. If you have any stiffness, swelling, inflammation, or pain in the joints, it is important to get it checked out with the primary physician and if necessary with a Rheumatologist to first figure out what are you dealing with.
  2. If it is osteoarthritis, the following is a good list in order of priority:
    1. Exercise
    2. Weight control
    3. Rest and relief from stress on joints
    4. Nondrug pain relief techniques and alternative therapies
    5. Medications to control pain
    6. Surgery
  3. If it is other than osteoarthritis, use Arthritis Foundation and NIH National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases  to study up and pursue your options.

I would love to hear your perspective on this topic.

What is your experience and knowledge from which I and others could learn?

Post #44 – How to protect from the down-side of strength training?

05 Monday Oct 2015

Posted by in Bikram Yoga, Lean Mass, Optimal Exercise, Optimal Health

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We have all heard about the benefits of strength training or weight training:

  1. It helps keep the fat weight lost off for good
  2. It protects bone health and helps build muscle mass
  3. It makes you stronger and fitter
  4. It helps build better body mechanics improving balance
  5. It plays a key role in disease prevention, e. g. improving insulin sensitivity and HDL cholesterol
  6. It boost your energy level and your mood
  7. It improves your metabolism so your burn more calories even when not working out

With so many benefits, it seems no brainer that strength training must be part of life style of anyone pursuing Optimal Health.  

If you search on Amazon.com, you will find hundreds of books on strength and weight training.  These books elaborate on the benefits and various techniques of strength training.  Here are two that use scientific basis in their approach.

Thes slow burn fitness revolution41B2S96EXYL

Is there any downside to the strength training?  What could possibly go wrong?

If you do a quick Google search on this topic, you will find that Injuries is what most people caution about as the downside of weight training.

That makes sense. Major types of injuries during weight training are hairline fractures, pulled muscles and damaged joints.  The causes of these injuries often are:

  • Using Impropriate weights
  • Not using proper form
  • Carelessness
  • Accidents

Making sure that you take precautions to avoid such injuries is very important. Even when you are very careful and conscientious, avoiding wrong form while strength training can require a lot of vigilance. That’s where it is important to learn from a trainer the basics of using weight, machines and even your weight.

However, in my experience, there is something even more subtle and insidious that can potentially creep in and that is easily preventable, if you are vigilant. And, no one seems to talk about this topic.

So, let me tell you my story to illustrate what this insidious issue is and lessons I learned on how to prevent it.

MY STORY

Many years ago, I used to do a simple yoga routine few days a week. I found that over time, my body became quite flexible. I felt energetic.  I did have spring in my feet. However, I found that my strength was continuing to decline. I was even surprised how few pushups I could do at a time. Abdominal fat around my belly was slowly getting worse.  I was becoming what we now call “skinny fat”.

So, I figured, instead of yoga, I would switch to exercise routine that involved working with light weights and body weight. As I started this new strength training routine, I found that I was getting stronger every week. I could do more and more pushups at a time. After several months, I even achieved my stretch goal of doing one hundred pushups in a single rep!

Then after about a year, I went back and tried my yoga routine. I immediately discovered that my flexibility had significantly decreased.  I was quite discouraged that within a year while I had made so much progress in my strength, I had lost the flexibility and even some balance.

At that point in time, I ran into my trainer Saleem, who I still work out with over 13 years later. I told him my dilemma and he showed me how to stretch my muscle after EACH weight training exercise.  So, if I had just done curls, I would stretch my biceps. If I had done squats and I would stretch my quads and so on. Doing these stretches routinely as part of my workouts, I noticed that it helped me retain flexibility in muscles while building strength. Training with him, I would also start my workout always with proper warmups and finish the workout with some cool down stretches.

Then Saleem started to add stretch workout days in between strength training workout days. So, after 4 or 5 sessions of weight training, he might add a stretch workout day. On the Stretch Workout day, we would simply do all stretching exercises – stretching back, hamstrings, quads, front, all big muscles and small muscles. With this new regimen I noticed that I was retaining my flexibility as I was developing strength.

In spite of all these precautions, about four years ago, I hurt my right shoulder from the workouts.  I was able to fix most of it by doing the various stretches etc. However, as I would lift my right arm, I would feel resistance and even pain in my shoulder- may be at a level of 1 to 3 on a scale of 10. That led me to start doing Bikram Yoga, about 3 ½ years ago.  As the shoulder got more and more limber with Bikram Yoga, resistance or pain at a level of 1 out of 10 still remained.  And this resistance/pain would get worse, whenever I did bench presses or some other exercises that put strain on my shoulder.

At that point, I really got curious. I wanted to figure out what exactly would it take for my shoulder to be 100% recovered and normal.

I found various methods of making my shoulders further limber.  Using foam rollers, such as below, was a big help.

Blue Foam RollerRumble Roller

Then I found massage balls (lacrosse balls), shown below. With these massage balls, I would find muscles around neck and shoulders that were tight and then use the ball to relieve pressure and loosen those tight muscles.

massage balls

Finally, I decided to engage a massage therapist to work those muscles.  And, she immediately found tight muscles and worked on those to loosen them up.  And, finally, my right shoulder got to a point of 100% recovered and normal.

MORAL OF MY STORY

So, what is the moral of this story? Here is the insidious process that I discovered:

  • Weight training induces tightness in muscles since strength training by design involves contracting of muscles
  • It requires active work to dissipate tightness in the muscles by stretching, foam rolling and/or massaging
  • If not properly loosened, during the following workouts your form may change subconsciously to compensate for the tight muscles, which may in-turn cause some other functional issues
  • Over time these compounding issues, like the layers of an onion, may give rise to issues whose root cause may be buried deep and not be readily visible.
  • Truly fixing such issues requires series of actions to fix one issue at a time, like peeling the onions, until you get to the root cause.Otherwise all fixes will be temporary.

BOTTOMLINE

If you are engaged in strength training, it is important to be hyper-aware of the tightness in muscles.

Incorporate yoga, stretching, foam rolling and massaging into your routines to immediately dissipate any tightness.  

Chronic musco-skeletal issues can be cured by working on muscles as peeling the layers of an onion. However, it may require a lot of patience.

What do you think of this topic?

Have you had similar experiences?

What has been your approach to stay limber while developing strength?

I would love to hear from you.  Please leave comments and questions to share your knowledge and wisdom.

Post #36 – What is most important for Optimal Health – Body, Mind or Spirit?

15 Sunday Mar 2015

Posted by in Functional Medicine, Life-Span, Living to 120, meditation, Mental Health, Optimal Health, Reversing Chronic Diseases, Stress

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Let me first define each of these three terms. Starting point could be our handy-dandy Merriam Webster dictionary.

Body, it says, is “A person’s or animal’s whole physical self.” So, that is straightforward – Arms, legs, heart, head, arteries, liver, hands, toes, and so on, make up the Body.

Mind, again according to the dictionary, is “the part of a person that thinks, reasons, feels, and remembers.”

Spirit per the dictionary is the force within a person that is believed to give the body life, energy, and power.

So, which one is most important for optimal health?

Or, in other words, if I were to focus on living the longest possible and the healthiest possible which one should I focus on first?

Writing this blog post, at this point I got stuck. I did not know where to go with this topic.   I took a long break and when I returned to my writing I found website for The Bravewell Collaborative, which has been doing pioneering work in Integrative Medicine as a catalyst of change in healthcare.

When I read the article The Connection Between Mind and Body on their site, I felt it perfectly captured my sentiments and thoughts on this topic, albeit from a much more authoritative source. So, here I share this article verbatim. Bold highlights are mine. There is, of course, a lot of additional good stuff on the The Bravewell Collaborative website.

Modern scientific research supports this age-old tenet of medical wisdom [of mind-body connection]. It began in the 1920s, when Harvard scientist Walter Cannon, MD, identified the fight-or-flight response through which the body secretes hormones called catecholamines, such as epinephrine and nonepinephrine. When they enter the blood stream, these hormones produce changes in the body—i.e. a quickened heart or increased breathing rate—that put the person in a better physical state to escape or confront danger.

In the following decade, Hungarian-born scientist Hans Selye, MD, pioneered the field of stress research by describing how the wear-and-tear of constant stress could affect us biologically. Since then, scores of scientific breakthroughs have illuminated the mind-body connection in health.

Experimental psychologist Neal Miller, PhD, discovered that we can be trained to control certain physical responses, such as blood pressure, that were previously considered to be involuntary. This discovery gave birth to biofeedback, which has now been found to be effective in the treatment of anxiety, attention deficit disorder, headache, hypertension, and urinary incontinence.

Harvard cardiologist Herbert Benson, MD, identified the flip side of the stress response, which he called the “relaxation response.” Benson demonstrated that meditation, yoga, and other relaxation techniques can bring about physiological changes including a lower heart rate, lower breathing rate, and decreased muscle tension along with positive changes in brain waves. Mind-body techniques that elicit this relaxation response have been successful in treating many stress-related disorders.

Research by psychologist Robert Ader, PhD, at the University of Rochester provided a link between the brain, behavior and immune function, and founded the new field of psychoneuroimmunology, which researches ways to increase immune function through the use of the mind.

Based on a Buddhist meditation practice, Jon Kabat-Zinn, PhD, at the University of Massachusetts, developed Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), a mediation technique that has successfully reduced physical and psychological symptoms in many medical conditions, including pain syndromes.

“When we are on automatic pilot, trying to get someplace else all the time without being attentive to where we already are, we can leave a wake of disaster behind us in terms of our own health and wellbeing, because we’re not listening to the body. We’re not paying attention to its messages; we’re not even in our bodies much of the time,” explains Kabat-Zinn. “Mindfulness—paying attention on purpose in the present moment nonjudgmentally—immediately restores us to our wholeness, to that right inward measure that’s at the root of both meditation and medicine.”

Guided imagery, which utilizes the power of imagination to heal, has been shown to reduce anxiety and pain in people with a wide range of medical conditions, including asthma, back pain, and headache, and to help patients better tolerate medical procedures and treatments. “Imagery utilizes the natural language of the unconscious mind to help a person connect with the deeper resources available to them at cognitive, affective and somatic levels,” explains Martin L. Rossman, MD.

Innovative research by Dean Ornish, MD, and his colleagues found that a program integrating mind-body techniques such as yoga, meditation, stress management, and group support with diet and exercise reversed coronary artery disease. “What we are finding is that comprehensive lifestyle changes may ‘turn on’ the beneficial parts of the genome and ‘turn off’ the more harmful parts,” says Dr. Ornish.

Today, these breakthroughs in our understanding of the mind-body connection have translated into effective therapies that support a patient’s journey through illnesses and trauma. Virtually every major medical center now has a stress management or mind-body clinic, and practices such as meditation, yoga, and group support are woven into the medical treatment of heart disease, cancer, and other serious illnesses.

James Gordon, Director and Founder, Center for Mind-Body Medicine, has conducted mind-body skills trainings for patients and health care practitioners around the world. Gordon has said, “Mind-body medicine requires that we ground information about the science of mind-body approaches in practical, personal experience; that we appreciate the centrality of meditation to these practices; and that we understand—experientially as well as scientifically—that the health of our minds and the health of our bodies are inextricably connected to the transformation of the spirit.”

So, looks like to me that Body, Mind and Spirit are all EQUALLY important to Optimal Health. These three are inter-connected. And, we need to focus on all three of these in an integrative fashion for Optimal Health.

What do you think?

What is your experience on this topic?

I would love to hear about your thoughts.

Post #8 – So, did I tell you the story about my allergies?

21 Monday Apr 2014

Posted by in Living to 120, Reversing Chronic Diseases, Vigor

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Or, my first lesson that chronic “diseases” can be reversed.

One day in the fall of 1985, at the University of Maryland, I was walking around my office rubbing my itchy eyes to get some relief. My secretary Janice said that my eyes looked bloodshot and suggested that I should go get them checked out with my doctor. When I told her that I did not have a doctor, she promptly made an appointment with her own doctor.

The doctor took a quick look at my eyes and told me that it was “just seasonal allergies.” I had arrived from India eight year earlier and can honestly say that I had never heard of the word “allergies” before coming to the US. So naturally, I asked the doc what seasonal allergies were. He said not to worry too much about it. It is probably Ragweed that I was allergic to. I should just go buy a bottle of non-prescription one milligram Chlorpheniramine, a generic anti-histamine, to take it for a few weeks until the season passed. When I asked him how I would know when to stop taking it, he said to take it for just a few weeks, I would know when season changes and not to worry too much about it since it was not a big deal.

Well, the following year, my allergies were a little worse. I started sniffling in addition to having itchy eyes. So, I started taking 2 milligrams. Even bigger dose the next year and so on. A few years later, my allergies would now kick-in even in spring season with pollen from blooming trees. In DC area, we have a lot of those. By 1995, I was suffering from allergies for about six months in a year, two months of spring season and four months of the fall season. Allergies had gotten so bad that I would feel like a zombie for half of the year, sneezing, sniffling with fever-like symptoms.

In 1993, I started learning how to fly. I could not afford to take drowsy antihistamine while flying. So, the doctor started to give me cocktails – non-drowsy stuff during the day and drowsy meds for the evenings. I was taking equivalent of 12mg antihistamine during the day and another 12 mg at night. Some of these meds had side-effects, like increased heart palpitations. So, I needed to go the doctor regularly to get checked out. My immune system was getting worse. I would get viral infection two three times a year, each episode started to last longer and longer

During all this time I would ask my physician about what was going on with my body and he would say, “Well, it’s the immune system. We don’t know much about the immune system.”

While this was going on, I had also gotten my cholesterol checked. My first blood test, in July 1990, showed my total cholesterol as 275, LDL of 205, HDL 39 and Triglycerides 155. Doctor gave me some pamphlets about lowering cholesterol through change in diet. Following that diet guidance, my cholesterol came down by as much as 52 points; this was still much higher than the then standard of 180 for the total cholesterol and 130 for LDL. My doc told me that I probably had genetic issues and had to get on some cholesterol lowering drug. A couple I tried had serious side effects like itchy skin and rash, so I discontinued those.

In September of 1995, I attended a 10 day program, Life Mastery, my first of Tony Robbins’s three Mastery University programs. At that program, on the first day, as part of creating our health baseline, we got our blood work done. My total cholesterol that day was 265. Seven days into the program, everybody who had excessive cholesterol got tested again. This time my total cholesterol was 183, an 82 points drop in 7 days! I was pleasantly shocked. That is big a change in one week. I had never been able to achieve such results, nor had my doctor ever shared even a possibility that such a change was possible with any change in lifestyle.

Armed with that experience and more knowledge about some methods for cleansing, when I returned I started to aggressively explore the possibility of curing my allergies. In my search, I ran into an organization called Washington University of Integrative Medicine. Starting October 1996, I worked with them to undertake a number of different lifestyle changes and therapies. I changed my eating habits. I quit dairy, meat, alcohol, coffee, and chocolate. They did colonics for me every other week to cleanse my colon, coffee colonics to stimulate my liver, and I would take various supplements to support my liver and immune system.

When the spring of 1997 rolled around, results became very clear. I suffered allergies only for just a few days at the beginning of that spring season and on a few very bad pollen days. In the fall of 1997 also, my experience was similar. Every season that followed, my allergies got better as opposed to getting worse as I had been experiencing since 1985.

A couple of years after my experiment with the alternative methods of curing my allergies, I went back to my physician. I needed to have him sign some papers so that I could use my health savings funds for alternative therapies. I told him my story of how I had cured my allergies. He thumped the table and got visibly angry and yelled, “These things don’t work!” I had always known him as a very mild mannered gentleman. Then I told him the other reason I had pursued this therapy was to manage my cholesterol. Regaining his composure, he said that cholesterol he could measure objectively. He challenged me to get blood work done and then return to see him.

Well, in March 1998, I got the blood work done. Total cholesterol came out to be 192 with LDL at 131. See the chart below of my cholesterol history for the last 25 years. Back paddling a little, he said, “The reason we don’t push lifestyle changes is because 95% people cannot make those changes. Whatever you are doing you should keep doing since it is working for you.” As for the allergies he wrote on my chart, SPONTANEOUS REMISSION. I left doctor’s office shaking my head in disbelief and decided to change doctor.

Cholestrol History

Nineteen years later now, I am totally free of allergies and my immune is system is strong enough that I don’t much get sick from common colds and flus. If I do catch a cold I bounce back in a day or two. Cholesterol is a whole another story. Few years later, the new standard for cholesterol became 150 for total and less than 100 for LDL. In 2007, I finally gave in and started taking Lipitor to bring my cholesterol within that range.

More recently, I have learned some more about impact of nutrition and lifestyle on coronary diseases and as a result made further changes. About a year ago, I discontinued Lipitor and have done three blood works since then, each a little bit better than the one before. The most recent blood work shows total cholesterol of 146 and LDL of 90. Moreover, my HDL is a fairly healthy 46, while triglycerides at 48, the lowest ever in 25 years!

So, that is my story about curing my allergies and managing cholesterol through nutrition. Motivated by this experience, I have accumulated a few other personal stories about preventing or curing certain other issues and have also collected further knowledge that many of the “chronic conditions” I discussed in earlier posts measured through vitality biomarkers are preventable and curable.

And that’s where I get this passion for collecting and disseminating evidence and research based information about preventing and curing chronic conditions through lifestyle changes.

Do you have a similar story?

Have you been able to reverse certain chronic conditions through lifestyle changes?

I would love to hear of such stories, both as a means for gathering inspiration and for collecting accurate experiential knowledge that we can pass along to others.