|
[18 Feb 2009|08:06pm] |
|
In case anyone is wondering what my brother is doing, he's in China taking amazing photos.
|
(squeak?)
|
|
[30 Nov 2008|12:26pm] |
|
And last night: no asthma. Slept through an entire night, despite drinking a yummy, milky chai. I win.
|
(squeak?)
|
| no more asthma? |
[29 Nov 2008|12:22am] |
I've been waiting awhile to make this post. I wanted to write it two days after buying this book, but I forced myself to wait because it seemed too crazy and impossible.
It's a long story.
I've had asthma since 1999, when after going away to college I returned to my parents' home in Clinton for Christmas to discover that suddenly I couldn't breathe at home. I remember sitting outside in the freezing cold, wheezing and terrified, waiting for my dad to get back from the pharmacy with my first inhaler. Allergies were something that other people had. Asthma was something that my brother had when he was very little, and then got over.
Since then, it's all gotten worse. I was fine on the AT and in Vermont, but whenever I came out of the woods something would destroy me- smoke, cats, dust, anything. I haven't slept comfortably in years except for when I was out in the woods in a tent away from every allergen known to man. Even then, sometimes I would get asthma.
And recently, it's gotten way worse. Dangerously bad, to the point where I can't get near a molecule of smoke or a hair of cat without losing an entire night's sleep to wheezing or hacking. My life turned into a waiting to get health insurance to sign up for steroids plan, a plan that fell apart in September when I finally got access to our company's insurance- and realized that there was no way I could pay for it.
Plan B. I turned down the health insurance and decided that if it cost that much, I could drop a fraction of that amount into alternative therapies, and if they failed, sign up for the insurance in January. I did a ton of research, became vegan, bought piles of supplements and started taking them religiously, and bought a book on a breathing method that had a ridiculously good track record in the two studies done on it.
Being vegan didn't cure me, but it improved my asthma- a little. But allergic triggers would still leave me reeling, unable to sleep for an entire night, waking up every two to four hours and wheezing and needing to use- and overuse- my inhaler. During September I had the worst asthma I've ever had in my life, and I knew that I was really pushing my luck. I put off getting on steroids because I knew that there's no getting off steroids- you're signing up for life, and those are some serious side-effects. I was going to exhaust every possibility I could before I signed up for a life of that.
I had started a food diary in August, writing down the food I ate and the reactions I had to them. I wrote down what I was avoiding, what nutrients I should be getting, what might curb inflammation, what I needed to do to be vegan and healthy. I did a ton of research. I logged my inhaler use and everything I ate for almost every day since then, and what allergens I was exposed to. I had decided to fight my asthma tooth and nail.
In general, I needed two full doses of albuterol to get through the night- on a good day, without encountering cats or smoke. In general, my asthma was still uncontrolled, after everything I'd done and tried. Some things I found helped a lot- mullein, in particular, but nothing came close to fixing it. Some nights I still had asthma almost all night long.
On Nov. 4 my book on the Buteyko breathing method arrived in the mail, and I immediately started to follow it. That night, I used my normal two doses. The next few days, half of that. The next few days, half of that. The next day, none.
It's 1 a.m. on Nov. 28, and I don't have asthma right now, and I'm not thinking about my breathing, and my chest isn't tight. The way I felt before- every night and every day, especially during rainy weather, cat encounters, smoke encounters, after any physical exertion- is a bad memory. I still get asthmatic- but it's when I do something stupid, like eat two huge bowls of delicious cheesy potatoes after three months avoiding dairy since I know it makes me sick. If I stick with the exercises, I think I can lose my asthma entirely.
Yesterday I spent Thanksgiving at Ben's house, around smokers, and- for the first time in longer than I can remember- I had dinner at my parents' home in Clinton, with their three cats, without needing my inhaler. I woke up once in the night and took a half dose, and another half dose when I woke up in the morning- which is, for me, a miracle. The second dose wasn't even necessary, but sometimes I am lazy and will take a half dose rather than get up and practice Buteyko.
It's not easy- and that's a huge understatement. I actually tried Buteyko two years ago, when my asthma wasn't quite as bad as it became this year- but I gave it up after a few trial sessions because it was way too hard.
It's not too hard. It's worth it. If you have asthma, you should try Buteyko. If you don't want to buy a book, just follow these principles: keep your mouth shut, even at night. Breathe only through your nose. Breathe shallow, and breathe less.
Clinical trial success: reduction of 90% for reliever medication, 50% for steroids in first three months. More info here, google it, or email me.
It's late, or this post would become twice as long and become an angry rant against the drug companies and the fact that we don't fund any research that isn't into a marketable $$$-making product. I'm immensely curious as to whether this method works for other people- (I'm one of the most skeptical people I know, so part of me thinks it's hilarious that this works/doesn't believe it yet, despite what the Internet believes)- so if you try it out, let me know. And pass this info to your friends with asthma.
|
(1 squeak | squeak?)
|
| My Life at Home: A Short Play |
[21 Nov 2008|11:45pm] |
Me: I'm hungry.
(I hear microwave noises in the kitchen.)
Ben: Here. (He is carrying a tiny weasel wrapped in a soft taco shell. The weasel proceeds to eat the taco shell.)
Me: (sadly) My taco is eating my taco.
|
(squeak?)
|
|
[10 Mar 2008|09:14pm] |
Today the last of my killiefish fry kicked it. Curse you, ebay. I think the eggs may have frozen in transit, not many hatched and none made it past two weeks.
But... now I can get a birthday betta! And a couple of kuhli loaches. I love pets that it is physically impossible for me to be allergic to.
Meanwhile, I am still allergic to New Ferret. Anyone want a ferret?
|
(squeak?)
|
| debate |
[08 Mar 2008|01:44pm] |
points for the rescue weezil: MAJOR: does not have home. MINOR: entertains other weezils, litter-trained, does not bite (hard), Ichabod's girlfriend.
points against the rescue weezil: MAJOR: resurgence of my allergies upon arrival of said weezil. MINOR: fact that it is a weezil (all who poop/bite to some extent, being weezils), fact that we already have no shortage of weezils, fact that it is named "Twinkle Bell," fact of annoying squealing when pinned by other weezils in play.
consensus: undecided. if allergies do not subsist, one weezil may be voted off the island.
|
(squeak?)
|
|
[07 Mar 2008|08:39pm] |
|
We have a new weasel. Her name is Twinkle Star. We did not name her...
|
(3 squeaks | squeak?)
|
|
[24 Feb 2008|07:38pm] |
|
After 8 million attempts at different natural remedies, I've finally found something that actually helps my asthma: mullein and sage, in tea form, three times a day. I highly, highly recommend it. My lungs feel totally different, and I suddenly have energy again. All of a sudden, I, like, want to do STUFF again!
|
(squeak?)
|
|
[18 Feb 2008|07:00pm] |
|
I ran out to the hardware store for FIVE MINUTES the other day, and returned to find this; the bathroom covered in a thin layer of the entire contents of a litter box, complete with weasel-placed scapemonkey.
|
(2 squeaks | squeak?)
|
|
[15 Dec 2007|11:09pm] |
If I ever get downhearted, I can go to this site and watch the numbers in favor of Cheney's impeachment go up:
impeach!
|
(squeak?)
|
| i <3 feynman |
[06 May 2007|12:03am] |
|
“One of the most promising hypotheses in all of biology is that everything the animals do or that living creatures do can be understood in terms of what atoms can do, that is, in terms of physical laws, ultimately, and the perpetual attention to this possibility-so far no exception has been demonstrated-has again and again made suggestions as to how the mechanisms actually occur. So that the fact that our knowledge is in fact universal is something that is not completely appreciated, that the position of the theories are so complete that we hunt for exceptions and we find them very hard to find-in the physics at least-and the great expense of all these machines and so on is to find some exception to what is already known. And, otherwise, that is another aspect of the fact that the world is so wonderful in the sense that stars are made of the same atoms as the cows and as ourselves, and as stones.”
|
(squeak?)
|
|
[23 Dec 2005|11:08pm] |
|
I LOVE MY FRIENDS!!! Thanks Alex and Brett, Nixon and Mo, and Evan and Merry for making the past couple days awesome for me, my brother, and his girlfriend.
|
(3 squeaks | squeak?)
|
| status |
[19 Dec 2005|11:18pm] |
I have more money than I thought I had, yay for living in a tent all summer!
I'm not quite as over things as I thought/wished I was.
Ying, Age, and I went into New Haven today and had a good time, although they are still really exhausted from the time change. My family loves her and we're all having a blast.
I am studying Go every night, but I'm still terrible at it. I am beginning to see the incredible complexity of the game, it's sort of disturbing.
Tomorrow we are all doing absolutely nothing since we're all feeling a little wiped out; any Clintonites are welcome to visit.
Wednesday we go to NH to visit Alex and Brett, something I am greatly looking forward to.
I am trying to write a book.
I still don't have a job. I will know for sure that I definitely still don't have a job at the end of this week.
I'm doing much better.
There are about eight million books I want to read, some Trevanian since I want to see what he's written other than Shibumi, and seven million nine hundred ninety nine thousand nine hundred and ninety three philosophy books that I desperately want to have read but which I need to go through the unfortunate process of reading them first, which I know will take far too long since I read them so painfully slowly since I want to actually UNDERSTAND them, which can be a quite painful physical process which I am still somehow greatly looking forward to.
If I were truly destined to be a great author, I would probably not have ended two of the above sentences with "greatly looking forward to". Oh well.
|
(4 squeaks | squeak?)
|
|
[11 Dec 2005|09:09pm] |
|
This will be the time of my life when my tragic past causes me to withdraw into myself and only play go, and then I become a go master and learn martial arts and eventually become a buddhist master and go to live with my Chinese brother in a small village in Yunan where Adrian and I will cure the ill and defend the villagers from invaders.
|
(6 squeaks | squeak?)
|
|
[07 Dec 2005|11:02pm] |
As if anything worse could possibly ever happen to me: they are making Shibumi into a movie, and the main character, my dear old friend Nicholai Hel, is going to be played by Keanu Reeves.
On top of everything else, this is too much. Suicide is the only answer now.
Unless... after all, since I just discovered the book IS a parody, maybe the author is so fucking brilliant that he knows how stoopid Keanu is and it will all make sense and be the best movie ever made! I guess I'd better hang in there to find out.
|
(1 squeak | squeak?)
|
| navigation |
| [ |
viewing |
| |
most recent entries |
] |
| [ |
go |
| |
earlier |
] |
|
|
|
|
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
anubishift's journal