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Health Boundaries Bite
The beginning
I'm not sure why it happened the way it did, but when I was
about five or six years old my mother took me to a Circus
which was setting up tents in Stevens Point, Wisconsin,
where we were living with my grandparents while my father
was in Japan. This was not long after the Second World War.
It was dusty and hot as we watched the elephants carrying
the stout center posts with their trunks, setting them into
place with the help of men on the ground, and finally hoisting
them upright.
As we were walking around the circus grounds that were
coming into shape we passed a young woman in a brief outfit
who was sitting on the edge of the work but within the central
circus area. I remember her as forlorn yet somehow
commanding in her red sequined swimsuit-like costume. Her
dark hair was pulled back from her forehead and temples but
found its release at the back to lay in languid, necklace like
curls adorning her shoulders.
Just as we passed her my mother said that she had wanted to
join the circus and be a trapeze artist.
I remember finding the thought confusing even though it
seemed to make clear that the sitting woman was a trapeze
artist. There was all this dust, and yes there were elephants,
but grandma and grandpa's brick house with its thick grass
lawn and frame of flower beds, the hollyhocks and peonies, I
could not see how the tents and dust, even with the elephants
and red sequins, could be preferable.
I don't remember anything else, though I think we got an ice
cream cone or something to eat, maybe it was the opposite of
ice cream and was a hot dog, until we were sitting in the
bleachers watching the circus acts, it was then that I got my
first attack of allergies. By the time the show was over my
eyes were red and itched beyond anything I had ever
experienced and my whole face was swollen.
When we got home Grandpa said it was ragweed and that I
would probably grow out of it by the time I got married. That
was his standard saying. For instance if I got a cut he would
say, "Don't worry it will heal by the time you get married."
Over the decades of my life, during which time I never
married, I have often thought of when I had my first allergy
attack and I can't help but think that it was stressful that my
mother was unhappy with what I found so comforting and
that she would trade what I felt was secure for something that
seemed exactly the opposite.
I was little at the time, so I didn't think then and there about
the implications, rather the images contrasted in my mind. I
have mainly thought in images for most of my life.
Worst Allergies Coincide with Stress
In retrospect most of the very worst allergy seasons I have
experienced have been accompanied by stressful situations.
For instance I had horrendous allergies when I moved to
Santa Fe and was preparing to teach 6th grade (I had not
trained to be a teacher, rather I had studied philosophy and
English.) The allergies I had after I moved to London were
even worse. I could barely see they were so bad and I
blamed the honeysuckle which I pulled out with my bare
hands, which immediately made the itching worse.
Nutrition is Astonishing
It was about a decade later that I was back in Santa Fe and
had a book about nutrition by Linda Clark. I hadn't read
about vitamins and minerals before, though I had read
Culpepper on herbs over and over again when I found it
among my roommate's books when we lived on Berger Street.
I was astonished to read that different physical problems
were associated with not having enough of certain vitamins. I
wondered if that could possibly be true. I thought that if it
was true, then if I made a list of the physical problems I had,
and wrote down the foods that contained the vitamins linked
to those problems I could buy all the foods, eat them, and see
if there was a change for the better.
I did exactly that. The first thing I noticed was how long it
took to eat all the right foods. Two grapefruits, for instance,
nuts, an orange, I forget what else was on my list. But it took
forever to clear the list each day. There was always
something I was supposed to be eating.
I don't remember feeling particularly different, but come
allergy season -- nothing, no itching, no sneezing, no swelling
face.
So, what do you think? Did I decide that I would always eat
these healthy things? No, I decided that I'd grown out of my
allergies just as Grandpa had always said.
After I Drew the Wrong Conclusion
Because it took so much time to eat all the things from the
book, I stopped doing that and lost track of my list. I even
forgot pretty much that I had put all that effort into seeing if
food made any difference, because you see, I'd discounted
the food altogether as having had an impact.
Come allergy season I was sneezing and itching. I had to
conclude I hadn't grown out of my allergies. But, I didn't look
for my list of foods, and so I continued to have allergies for
some years.
B Complex Vitamins Make a Difference
The next thing that happened was that I learned I had a
problem with low vitamin B12. Not knowing any better I
bought a MegaB complex from K-Mart. I bought the middle
of the range, neither the very high dose nor the lowest dose.
It was very reasonably priced so I felt free to take a lot of the
tablets, always with a lot of liquid: I took a tablet or two
almost every quarter hour, with tea or Dr. Pepper or water.
The first thing I noticed was that I wasn't as tired as I had
been, so I figured that the MegaBs were working. But then
came allergy season and I was not affected by Chamisa, the
wild sage that grows rampant around here, forming banks of
yellow blossom along streets and making a sea of sulfur
yellow out of every vacant lot.
I could hardly believe it. I decided to test out whether the
Chamisa would affect me: I walked up to a shrub, taller than
me and laden with bright yellow flowers, buried my nose in
the flowers, and inhaled deeply. No sneezing, no itching eyes.
I could smell the flowers without them making me
uncomfortable. It was wonderful!
That's when I remembered that once before my allergies had
gone away. This time, however, I didn't think I'd grown out
of my allergies, I thought that it seemed pretty clear that the
MegaBs had made an extreme difference, extremely amazing.
My Allergies Haven't Come Back
That was a little over ten years ago, and since then as long as
I remember to take MegaBs of some sort for a month or so
before allergy season, and during the season itself, I have not
had allergies. Maybe fifteen sneezes in the whole of the fall
or spring.
On the other hand, when I forget to prepare I cannot quite
bring my allergies under control, once they've started, by
taking a lot of MegaB vitamins. As an aside I don't buy the
strongest MegaBs on offer because I think it's better to take a
lower dose more often, and, with a lot of water.
But, B Complex Hadn't Done What I'd Hoped
Now, the reason I bought the MegaBs was not to get rid of
my allergies, it had not even occurred to me that might
happen. I bought them to increase my B12 level, which I had
been told was too low.
Given the great success I'd had with the B vitamin complex
tablets, I was sure that my B12 level would be dynamite
come the next test I had. But, I was wrong. My B12 level
was unchanged. My serum B12 level had not gone up at all.
Sometime after that a doctor told me I had to have shots in
order to increase my B12 level. When I began to have regular
shots I felt a lot of improvement in the areas governed by
B12. But, having B12 shots alone does not work to keep my
allergies away.
It was a few years before I learned that sublingual
methylcobalamin works as well as shots, and once I learned
that I switched from the shots and have not looked back.
What I Concluded
What I have concluded from this experience of mine is that
allergies are linked with stress, and B vitamins help us cope
with stress.
Would a B Complex Affect Drug Allergies?
I don't know if B vitamins would help me not be allergic to
penicillin, to which I developed an allergy when I had
pneumonia and an appendicitis attack at the same time, a few
times, when I was six or so years old. I had so many
penicillin shots that there was no place left to give me one
and I just hated them. Shortly after that I got huge hives and
they couldn't give me any more shots because of the allergy
I'd developed. Though, if I remember correctly they skirted
the allergy by adding a sulfa drug to the penicillin.
And, that sulfa drug may be the first cause of the good
bacteria in my gastrointestinal system being compromised.
There was something about how that could happen in that
first nutrition book I read, by Linda Clark.
Good vs. Bad Bacteria in our Digestive System
When the good bacteria is compromised bad bacteria can
begin to take over, sort of like weeds in a garden, and once
there is a lot of bad bacteria it affects the lining of our
stomachs in such a way that the lining stops making things we
need in order to get the benefit of vitamins and minerals in
our food.
What that means is that slowly, over the years, we have
lower and lower levels of essential vitamins and minerals in
our bodies, and if we have no knowledge of how this
happens we may think that old age or some disease is
affecting our lives, when in fact we simply need to fertilize
our bodies, the same way we fertilize our gardens.
Fertilizing, so to Speak
Compost for gardens is much better than bagged fertilizer; so
too, eating the vegetables and fruits we need to be healthy is
better than taking vitamins. However, a problem arises when
our deficiency in a vitamin is so great that the amount of time
it would take to eat enough of a particular food to replenish
what we are missing in a particular vitamin is so gigantic that
it's unworkable. Our schedules don't allow it.
Overall what seems to be the case is that younger people are
not as deficient as older people, so they don't need to take as
many vitamins, or as much of any one vitamin in order to
restore their health, if they've had problems that are
associated with being low in a particular vitamin.
How Much of a Vitamin Do You Need?
The key to how much of a vitamin you need to get your
health back on track, at least if it is a B vitamin, seems to be
how much stress you have to cope with, or failing to cope,
how much stress you are overwhelmed by.
However, this is not to say that it is the same for you and
your twin, or you and the love of your life. The only way to
find out is to keep notes so that you can see what happens to
you when you take a vitamin in some specific amount over
some period of time.
It's important to remember that vitamins work much
differently than drugs. When we take drugs we expect and
often get rather rapid results. This is exactly the opposite of
the results we get with vitamins. This is because vitamins
work with our bodies so they need to go into the tissue and
become a part of it the way that they were before our bodies
became depleted through hard work and worry, or even while
enjoying extremely good times. (I think we often fail to
realize that being excited with happiness can be a stress on
our nerves, sort of like "some sugar is good, too much sugar
can create problems.")
As an example of how long it can take a vitamin to work,
when I first began having vitamin B12 replacement shots, I
was having a shot a month. It took three months for me to
begin to have really noticeable differences in how I felt.
(A B12 shot is about equal to using one Methylcobalamin
lozenge a day for a month.)
Another example is when I switched from using Advil, or
more often store brand Ibuprofen, to control pain to using
Serrapeptase. There were three uncomfortable days, but then
my body was actually healing, not just having the pain
suppressed while the problems it was experiencing were
unaffected or even got worse.
Still another example is using vitamin C to control or
eliminate tooth ache from an impact situation. I had the most
horrible tooth ache, with my face swollen from the infection.
I couldn't afford to go to a dentist and didn't know what I
was going to do.
By luck I tried taking quite a lot of vitamin C, more than 24
grams a day -- I'm tall and heavy, so while that amount
worked for me, it may be way too much for someone else --
and on the second day the pain as nearly gone, the day
following that the pain was entirely gone.
If you should decide to try vitamin C to help get rid of an
infection or to control an infection, be sure to take it with a
lot of water. I took mine at the rate of 6 grams with a huge
mug of tea every four hours.
This is the B Vitamin Complex I use now --
I'm not sure why it happened the way it did, but when I was
about five or six years old my mother took me to a Circus
which was setting up tents in Stevens Point, Wisconsin,
where we were living with my grandparents while my father
was in Japan. This was not long after the Second World War.
It was dusty and hot as we watched the elephants carrying
the stout center posts with their trunks, setting them into
place with the help of men on the ground, and finally hoisting
them upright.
As we were walking around the circus grounds that were
coming into shape we passed a young woman in a brief outfit
who was sitting on the edge of the work but within the central
circus area. I remember her as forlorn yet somehow
commanding in her red sequined swimsuit-like costume. Her
dark hair was pulled back from her forehead and temples but
found its release at the back to lay in languid, necklace like
curls adorning her shoulders.
Just as we passed her my mother said that she had wanted to
join the circus and be a trapeze artist.
I remember finding the thought confusing even though it
seemed to make clear that the sitting woman was a trapeze
artist. There was all this dust, and yes there were elephants,
but grandma and grandpa's brick house with its thick grass
lawn and frame of flower beds, the hollyhocks and peonies, I
could not see how the tents and dust, even with the elephants
and red sequins, could be preferable.
I don't remember anything else, though I think we got an ice
cream cone or something to eat, maybe it was the opposite of
ice cream and was a hot dog, until we were sitting in the
bleachers watching the circus acts, it was then that I got my
first attack of allergies. By the time the show was over my
eyes were red and itched beyond anything I had ever
experienced and my whole face was swollen.
When we got home Grandpa said it was ragweed and that I
would probably grow out of it by the time I got married. That
was his standard saying. For instance if I got a cut he would
say, "Don't worry it will heal by the time you get married."
Over the decades of my life, during which time I never
married, I have often thought of when I had my first allergy
attack and I can't help but think that it was stressful that my
mother was unhappy with what I found so comforting and
that she would trade what I felt was secure for something that
seemed exactly the opposite.
I was little at the time, so I didn't think then and there about
the implications, rather the images contrasted in my mind. I
have mainly thought in images for most of my life.
Worst Allergies Coincide with Stress
In retrospect most of the very worst allergy seasons I have
experienced have been accompanied by stressful situations.
For instance I had horrendous allergies when I moved to
Santa Fe and was preparing to teach 6th grade (I had not
trained to be a teacher, rather I had studied philosophy and
English.) The allergies I had after I moved to London were
even worse. I could barely see they were so bad and I
blamed the honeysuckle which I pulled out with my bare
hands, which immediately made the itching worse.
Nutrition is Astonishing
It was about a decade later that I was back in Santa Fe and
had a book about nutrition by Linda Clark. I hadn't read
about vitamins and minerals before, though I had read
Culpepper on herbs over and over again when I found it
among my roommate's books when we lived on Berger Street.
I was astonished to read that different physical problems
were associated with not having enough of certain vitamins. I
wondered if that could possibly be true. I thought that if it
was true, then if I made a list of the physical problems I had,
and wrote down the foods that contained the vitamins linked
to those problems I could buy all the foods, eat them, and see
if there was a change for the better.
I did exactly that. The first thing I noticed was how long it
took to eat all the right foods. Two grapefruits, for instance,
nuts, an orange, I forget what else was on my list. But it took
forever to clear the list each day. There was always
something I was supposed to be eating.
I don't remember feeling particularly different, but come
allergy season -- nothing, no itching, no sneezing, no swelling
face.
So, what do you think? Did I decide that I would always eat
these healthy things? No, I decided that I'd grown out of my
allergies just as Grandpa had always said.
After I Drew the Wrong Conclusion
Because it took so much time to eat all the things from the
book, I stopped doing that and lost track of my list. I even
forgot pretty much that I had put all that effort into seeing if
food made any difference, because you see, I'd discounted
the food altogether as having had an impact.
Come allergy season I was sneezing and itching. I had to
conclude I hadn't grown out of my allergies. But, I didn't look
for my list of foods, and so I continued to have allergies for
some years.
B Complex Vitamins Make a Difference
The next thing that happened was that I learned I had a
problem with low vitamin B12. Not knowing any better I
bought a MegaB complex from K-Mart. I bought the middle
of the range, neither the very high dose nor the lowest dose.
It was very reasonably priced so I felt free to take a lot of the
tablets, always with a lot of liquid: I took a tablet or two
almost every quarter hour, with tea or Dr. Pepper or water.
The first thing I noticed was that I wasn't as tired as I had
been, so I figured that the MegaBs were working. But then
came allergy season and I was not affected by Chamisa, the
wild sage that grows rampant around here, forming banks of
yellow blossom along streets and making a sea of sulfur
yellow out of every vacant lot.
I could hardly believe it. I decided to test out whether the
Chamisa would affect me: I walked up to a shrub, taller than
me and laden with bright yellow flowers, buried my nose in
the flowers, and inhaled deeply. No sneezing, no itching eyes.
I could smell the flowers without them making me
uncomfortable. It was wonderful!
That's when I remembered that once before my allergies had
gone away. This time, however, I didn't think I'd grown out
of my allergies, I thought that it seemed pretty clear that the
MegaBs had made an extreme difference, extremely amazing.
My Allergies Haven't Come Back
That was a little over ten years ago, and since then as long as
I remember to take MegaBs of some sort for a month or so
before allergy season, and during the season itself, I have not
had allergies. Maybe fifteen sneezes in the whole of the fall
or spring.
On the other hand, when I forget to prepare I cannot quite
bring my allergies under control, once they've started, by
taking a lot of MegaB vitamins. As an aside I don't buy the
strongest MegaBs on offer because I think it's better to take a
lower dose more often, and, with a lot of water.
But, B Complex Hadn't Done What I'd Hoped
Now, the reason I bought the MegaBs was not to get rid of
my allergies, it had not even occurred to me that might
happen. I bought them to increase my B12 level, which I had
been told was too low.
Given the great success I'd had with the B vitamin complex
tablets, I was sure that my B12 level would be dynamite
come the next test I had. But, I was wrong. My B12 level
was unchanged. My serum B12 level had not gone up at all.
Sometime after that a doctor told me I had to have shots in
order to increase my B12 level. When I began to have regular
shots I felt a lot of improvement in the areas governed by
B12. But, having B12 shots alone does not work to keep my
allergies away.
It was a few years before I learned that sublingual
methylcobalamin works as well as shots, and once I learned
that I switched from the shots and have not looked back.
What I Concluded
What I have concluded from this experience of mine is that
allergies are linked with stress, and B vitamins help us cope
with stress.
Would a B Complex Affect Drug Allergies?
I don't know if B vitamins would help me not be allergic to
penicillin, to which I developed an allergy when I had
pneumonia and an appendicitis attack at the same time, a few
times, when I was six or so years old. I had so many
penicillin shots that there was no place left to give me one
and I just hated them. Shortly after that I got huge hives and
they couldn't give me any more shots because of the allergy
I'd developed. Though, if I remember correctly they skirted
the allergy by adding a sulfa drug to the penicillin.
And, that sulfa drug may be the first cause of the good
bacteria in my gastrointestinal system being compromised.
There was something about how that could happen in that
first nutrition book I read, by Linda Clark.
Good vs. Bad Bacteria in our Digestive System
When the good bacteria is compromised bad bacteria can
begin to take over, sort of like weeds in a garden, and once
there is a lot of bad bacteria it affects the lining of our
stomachs in such a way that the lining stops making things we
need in order to get the benefit of vitamins and minerals in
our food.
What that means is that slowly, over the years, we have
lower and lower levels of essential vitamins and minerals in
our bodies, and if we have no knowledge of how this
happens we may think that old age or some disease is
affecting our lives, when in fact we simply need to fertilize
our bodies, the same way we fertilize our gardens.
Fertilizing, so to Speak
Compost for gardens is much better than bagged fertilizer; so
too, eating the vegetables and fruits we need to be healthy is
better than taking vitamins. However, a problem arises when
our deficiency in a vitamin is so great that the amount of time
it would take to eat enough of a particular food to replenish
what we are missing in a particular vitamin is so gigantic that
it's unworkable. Our schedules don't allow it.
Overall what seems to be the case is that younger people are
not as deficient as older people, so they don't need to take as
many vitamins, or as much of any one vitamin in order to
restore their health, if they've had problems that are
associated with being low in a particular vitamin.
How Much of a Vitamin Do You Need?
The key to how much of a vitamin you need to get your
health back on track, at least if it is a B vitamin, seems to be
how much stress you have to cope with, or failing to cope,
how much stress you are overwhelmed by.
However, this is not to say that it is the same for you and
your twin, or you and the love of your life. The only way to
find out is to keep notes so that you can see what happens to
you when you take a vitamin in some specific amount over
some period of time.
It's important to remember that vitamins work much
differently than drugs. When we take drugs we expect and
often get rather rapid results. This is exactly the opposite of
the results we get with vitamins. This is because vitamins
work with our bodies so they need to go into the tissue and
become a part of it the way that they were before our bodies
became depleted through hard work and worry, or even while
enjoying extremely good times. (I think we often fail to
realize that being excited with happiness can be a stress on
our nerves, sort of like "some sugar is good, too much sugar
can create problems.")
As an example of how long it can take a vitamin to work,
when I first began having vitamin B12 replacement shots, I
was having a shot a month. It took three months for me to
begin to have really noticeable differences in how I felt.
(A B12 shot is about equal to using one Methylcobalamin
lozenge a day for a month.)
Another example is when I switched from using Advil, or
more often store brand Ibuprofen, to control pain to using
Serrapeptase. There were three uncomfortable days, but then
my body was actually healing, not just having the pain
suppressed while the problems it was experiencing were
unaffected or even got worse.
Still another example is using vitamin C to control or
eliminate tooth ache from an impact situation. I had the most
horrible tooth ache, with my face swollen from the infection.
I couldn't afford to go to a dentist and didn't know what I
was going to do.
By luck I tried taking quite a lot of vitamin C, more than 24
grams a day -- I'm tall and heavy, so while that amount
worked for me, it may be way too much for someone else --
and on the second day the pain as nearly gone, the day
following that the pain was entirely gone.
If you should decide to try vitamin C to help get rid of an
infection or to control an infection, be sure to take it with a
lot of water. I took mine at the rate of 6 grams with a huge
mug of tea every four hours.
This is the B Vitamin Complex I use now --
Jarrow Formulas B-Right - This
B Complex has Methylcobalamin for
its B12, which is relatively rare. B
Complex vitamins most commonly
contain the older form of B12,
Cyanacobalamin.
I take three or four of these a day,
starting well before the beginning of
allergy season so that I prepare my
body to withstand the pollen.
I no longer have to take as many as
I did that first year when I was very
run down.
I don't think it's necessary to buy an
expensive B Complex in order for it
to work. The "MegaB" I bought
cheaply from K-Mart over a decade
ago worked fine.
B Complex has Methylcobalamin for
its B12, which is relatively rare. B
Complex vitamins most commonly
contain the older form of B12,
Cyanacobalamin.
I take three or four of these a day,
starting well before the beginning of
allergy season so that I prepare my
body to withstand the pollen.
I no longer have to take as many as
I did that first year when I was very
run down.
I don't think it's necessary to buy an
expensive B Complex in order for it
to work. The "MegaB" I bought
cheaply from K-Mart over a decade
ago worked fine.
Retail price: $14.95
Our price: $8.12
Our price: $8.12
| .You save $6.83 .45% OFF |
| http://www.health-boundaries-bite.com Your fingernails reflect your health -- Learn some warning signs -- Karen Kline |
3/5/09 -- There has been, as per usual, tremendous stress due
to ongoing foreclosure challenges and an apparent inability to
get due process in the state court where I requested a hearing,
and for about the 6th to 7th time in a row was ignored.
The good news is that I've figured out that I need to take a B
vitamin every 4 hours in order to keep my eyes from itching.
I had thought it was every 6 hours and that the extraordinary
amount of stress was the cause of my continued sneezing.
But no, since I've been taking a B vitamin every 4 hours,
even during the night (with quite a lot of water) I've been
feeling really good (as far as allergies go, as far as the
foreclosure situation I am depressed despite using additional
methylcobalamin.)
to ongoing foreclosure challenges and an apparent inability to
get due process in the state court where I requested a hearing,
and for about the 6th to 7th time in a row was ignored.
The good news is that I've figured out that I need to take a B
vitamin every 4 hours in order to keep my eyes from itching.
I had thought it was every 6 hours and that the extraordinary
amount of stress was the cause of my continued sneezing.
But no, since I've been taking a B vitamin every 4 hours,
even during the night (with quite a lot of water) I've been
feeling really good (as far as allergies go, as far as the
foreclosure situation I am depressed despite using additional
methylcobalamin.)
Allergies
The year I failed to order until March I suffered from
spring allergies because March was too late to start. : (
It helped a great deal once it arrived, but it was unable to
wipe out my allergies completely, the way I wanted. If I
had taken it a month or more prior to the allergy season I
would not have had any allergies, based on my past
experience.
spring allergies because March was too late to start. : (
It helped a great deal once it arrived, but it was unable to
wipe out my allergies completely, the way I wanted. If I
had taken it a month or more prior to the allergy season I
would not have had any allergies, based on my past
experience.