One Year Later

My father will not be a centenarian. May he rest in peace...

***

I spent some time last autumn in the Neurology section, with him. All those elderly people trying to still function, battling it out, and the nurses and doctors assisting them in Purgatory, matter-of-factly... My respect for the medical establishment, imperfect as it may be, has increased even more. They have not saved my father, but they did extend his life by a few months...

***

A neurologist thought I may suffer from a subclinical case of vasculitis. She had me try "Lyrica", which I could not endure. My pain, at its worst, is not worth the side effects and the zoning out. I tried "Gabaran" as well -- much easier on me: I composed many songs on the one and only pill I tried. I am glad to know there are such powerful painkillers out there, but I hope I will never have to use them consistently.

The neurologist also suspected an incipient diabetic neuropathy. Given my high genetic risk of diabetes, over 40%, I figured my following Dr. Peat's recommendations for almost a year must have been quite unfortunate. Luckily for me, her suggestion to help with this one worked wonders: "Milgamma" (B1 as a benfotiamine and B12). It was literally like growing back a bunch of nervous endings... I had come to accept that my right big toe had left the system for some idiosyncratic reason and I was not too worried (I should have been!) Well, I was overwhelmed to feel it return to me! Regeneration after degeneration, so there is hope!

So... I dropped my sugar consumption to almost zero. Peat was definitely wrong for me on this front!

No more weird numbness for me. That is a winner! And no, I don't miss OJ. I see it now, for myself, as the orange specter of diabetes.

Another huge improvement was the disappearance of the CA-125 marker.  I cannot be sure what brought that about. Except giving up sugar, I did not do any other spectacular diet changes.

One small thing I can think of is that I increased garlic consumption. My body was craving it. If it turns out this new garlic habit got rid of some incipient tumor, hey... The stench is a small price to pay. I also brought a bunch of PUFA back into my life in the form of potato chips -- I have to have them at least once or twice a week, dipped in my garlic salsa...

Thyroid function -- I am still at 25 mcg T4, but with my free T4 bumped up into a mid-range of normalcy (it used to hover to the lowest normal and even under that), with a rather high TSH by US standards (2.6). I think this is a pretty reasonable spot, I am sleeping well, I no longer experience those "hit by a truck" moments... Some days are better than others, energy-wise.  My weight is pretty much the same and nobody guesses my age, so I am alright. Actually, I look much better than I feel and people look confused and rather skeptical when they hear about my troubles.

I stopped measuring all the other hormones, I will let my body deal with them. I experimented with supplementation of most and I didn't like it one bit. Maybe I am oversensitive, or maybe I have a low tolerance -- my 23andme results show me as a slow metabolizer for many substances (including coffee, yet another reason for me to not follow Peat), so perhaps I should stay away from any "bio-hacking" that involves hormones. Nobody knows for sure how they work, anyway, so why be a guinea pig, life is too short even without self-experimentation.

In my search for the perfect seaside, I visited Cyprus and loved the taste of their produce... I hated the pollution, though...

I hope you are all doing well and staying healthy and gorgeous.

Positive Anti-Gliadins After Two Years of a Gluten Free Diet & Early Central European *Farmers* mtDNA?

I don't think so! :)

My maternal haplogroup is N1a, very rare for Europe (0.2%). My ancestry is 99.8 European on a standard 23andme estimate, 100 % on a speculative estimate.  One might say I have 50,000 years old mitochondria which were transmitted to me, from mother to daughter from the proverbial European Eve.

Nice! I like to combine that with my O/O Rh- blood type and marvel at my outlandish origins! :)

But scientists also say that, since this is such a rare haplogroup, it helps them determine early migrations. They found it in the ancient LBK pottery culture, among other places, so I keep seeing it associated with the Neolithic farmers who presumably came into Europe and replaced the old Paleolithic hunter-gatherers.

A not uncharacteristic huge leap of my imagination led me to ask:

How come I am gluten sensitive then? Not only mildly sensitive, but after two years of being obsessively gluten-free, my tests still show positive for Anti-Gliadin IgG! So I must be picking up minute quantities of this stuff from cross-contamination and I keep making antibodies!

This makes me think their whole story is wrong, and Dieneke is right when proposing that

"So, it is just as likely that N1a may be indigenous to central Europe and the Neolithic was associated with some of the other 18 sequences that were found in the Linear Pottery sample. Indeed, if N1a turns out to be Paleolithic, then the conclusions of their study will be completely reversed, and the great decrease in frequency of N1a would indicate an almost complete replacement of Paleolithic people by Neolithic farmers."

I think am a true hunter gatherer at heart and cereal eating was never a forte in my lineage -- we merely survived it somehow.

So here I am, being bumped out of the genetic picture by hypothyroidism and autoimmunity, possibly brought about by gluten intolerance. So farmers still kick hunter-gatherer butt and I am an example thereof. Nice job, you morons! :)

Okay, fine, you cereal fed killers! We, noble Scythians who loved our grassfed meat and whatever Mother Earth graciously offered us, shall leave this planet to you! Do your disgusting intensive agriculture and pollute it all you want, we won't be on it anymore to witness the damage!