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Entry for February 27, 2008

Well, if I ever believed in the heroes I saw and read about in comic books
when I was a kid, this is the time for emulation. The thing with those heroes
was that they would be in impossible situations and then things would take a
turn for the worse. What made them heroes, was that they survived and
completed whatever it was they had set out to do.

So here I am. Yesterday was a prelude to today and felt "weird". I received an
envelope from the post office's customer relations that I was sure had the
stamps in it to replace the ones the post office would not honor because my
mail was heavier than 13 ounces. Because the mail was my appeal brief I was
scared when I found it back in my mailbox days after the deadline for it to be
at the Appeals Court. I immediately called Del who came and took it to the
Appeals Court for me, but I had to pay him, of course. So that was $30 on top
of the stamps.

My happiness was short lived when the envelope contained not stamps but an
envelope for me to send the dishonored stamps to Post Office Customer
Relations. Because I have told them in at least eight emails that I do not have
the stamps, that I left them on the envelopes (the six copies of my brief hadn't
all fit into one envelope) when I had Del take them to the Appeals Court.

Seeing the envelope for me to send in the stamps I felt as if the post office
either thought I was lying or that I would do something to fake having the
stamps. It just felt so weird, and extremely worrying. I want to use the money
I have left for more candles, since I'm nearly out of the kind I can heat water
on and use for cooking. But if the post office won't make good on the stamps
it wouldn't honor, then I have to use my candle money for stamps. So today,
like Buridan's Ass, I could not make a choice. The ass, so the philosophical
story goes, was set two bales of hay, one on its right and one on its left at
exactly an equal distance from the ass. The donkey was hungry and wanted
the hay, but because the hay was exactly the same distance from it, it could
not move forward to get any hay because it could not make up its mind which
of the equal bales to go to. It starved to death.

Just like that ass I ordered neither stamps nor candles.

But, that turned out to be neither here nor there since today I realize that
yesterday was nothing but a premonition of today. Sort of.

Today I got my denial of my disability in the mail, so no extra money to stave
off foreclosure from that quarter. And, I also got back my motion to the
bankruptcy court, saying my case was closed. I knew it was closed but the
judge had written in his order that even though it was closed I could prosecute
the willful violation of stay. So how was I going to do it, if I couldn't get
anything filed? (The clerk has put a post-it on the returned papers suggesting I
file to reopen my case. But the attached order was a denial of that exact thing
when I'd attempted it earlier.)

It would have been nice not to have to worry about where to get the money to
pay the arrears on my mortgage, which I would have gotten had they not
denied my disability. But, the fact is that I've been pretty keenly aware that
Wells Fargo and their lawyers were probably not going to accept it since last
time I was in foreclosure they kept trying to sell my house when I was going to
have all the money in ten days.

The only way that I was able to keep my home was by filing bankruptcy to get
the extra time. But that ruined my credit for seven years, with the result that I
couldn't refinance this last summer. (They say it's seven years, but really it's
more like two.) Except that after this mortgage meltdown, who knows.

Since the judge must have had a way in mind for me to prosecute, there was
something I was forgetting because I'd successfully prosecuted willful violation
of stay in my 1997 chapter 11.

I called the judge's law clerk, but she didn't answer her line. Then it came to
me, I have to do an "adversary proceeding." So, I called to see how much it is
to file one of those, and it's $250 with no provisions for payment over time.

I get $598 a month from social security, and I'd said I was going to pay $150 a
month on my unpaid balance from filing the Chapter 11 to save my home. I
think the chapter 11 fee is $850. Well worth it, too. A chapter 11 gives you a
lot more time and control, since you can be your own trustee. Though I don't
know how much this was changed when they gutted the bankruptcy laws to
favor creditors.

All of which reminds me of a night in London when the coal miners were
striking and there was no electric for several hours. I and my little son were
living in the derelict building on the corner of Goswell Road and Friend Street
and I was watching The Bionic Woman just before the lights went out. In the
episode that night she had been drugged and could not exercise her powers and
no one believed her. It looked like curtains for her.

For whatever reason I totally identified with her and I got physically sick at the
thought of being trapped like that.

Just like the post office's mail to me was a premonition of the disappointing
mail today, that episode of the Bionic Woman was a foreboding, and that's
really, probably, why I got sick watching it. Because I recognized a part of my
future that was not going to be fun.

I'll post my pleading that was sent back by the bankruptcy court, so that you
can read the short version of what I'm talking about.

Now, I just need to materialize some money. And this has not been a
spectacular month for sales on my web site. Darn it!

I fail to do the newsletters and things that are required to remind people to visit
my site when I'm stressed... and then there aren't any sales. As I say, Darn it!

Entry for December 25, 2007

200 people visited my Fingernail-lines page today and only six looked at my
page explaining about vitamin B12. So I've clearly failed to make clear why if
someone has lines it is vital for them to understand what the lines mean.

Darn it!

Okay, here's why it's so important: vitamin B12 is intimately connected with
our nerves. When our nerves are happy and working properly we have less
pain, our eye sight is sharper, our hearing is clear and we don't have a ringing
in our ears.

Many years ago before they discovered how vitamin B12 works there were
autopsies in which it was discovered that the nerves in the spinal column were
badly deteriorated, almost eaten away. Eventually a correlation was found
between spinal cord damage and insufficient vitamin B12 in the body.

But, despite the fact that knowledge of the relationship between vitamin B12
and our nervous system has been there for decades, doctors tend not to look
for vitamin B12 deficiencies, nor treat them.

There are three main reasons for this: 1. the range used to identify a deficiency
varies greatly and the low normal is so low that many people who could be
saved from nerve deterioration are not because their B12 is not low enough to
register alarm or even notice by their physician; 2. there are misconceptions
about vitamin B12, for instance one doctor told me that I could not be B12
deficient because I was not a vegetarian... she completely ignored that my
mother had pernicious anemia, an advanced form of vitamin B12 deficiency,
(vitamin B12 deficiency tends to run in families with people of certain
nationalities being more prone to it than others - for instance people of a
Scandinavian origin - this does not mean that people of other ethnic
backgrounds do not have to worry, it simply means that on the whole more
Europeans will have the deficiency); 3. there are drugs to treat many of the
symptoms of vitamin B12 deficiency and doctors seem to have a predilection
for prescribing expensive drugs.

To me, it is an extreme shame that doctors gravitate toward expensive drugs
rather than a relatively cheap vitamin when one of the things that depletes
vitamin B12 is stress and anxiety.

What I mean is that if someone is sick because they are worried about money
and finances, and they go to the doctor and are prescribed an expensive drug,
then the prescription will be stressful and will cause some harm simply because
of the stress and increased anxiety about money.

I know that one doctor I was seeing prescribed Serafem, a Prozac look alike
marketed to women for PMS. I'm way past PMS age, but still was prescribed
this drug, and, when I was reluctant to take an antidepressant because of my
experience a decade earlier when after a few months on an antidepressant I
had gained a lot of weight and lost a lot of hair -- which in itself is depressing --
so, the doctor told me that the side affect of this antidepressant was weight
loss.

She failed to say that it could also cause incontinence and that it was
contraindicated for people with certain blood disorders. B12 deficiency is, in
many cases, a blood disorder because it can cause blood cells to get
abnormally large.

For a few weeks the antidepressant was heaven. I was ecstatically happy.
Which, being a bit extreme, probably should have been a warning sign. Then,
all of a sudden, there was incontinence and I was scared. I went back to the
doctor with the pamphlet from the prescription which said this could happen
and that Serafem shouldn't be prescribed if there were "hematological"
conditions. When I handed her the pamphlet, she glanced at it, threw it in the
trash and turned it around: Did I want to have depression? It was my choice!

I am staggered even today to think that anyone would think that an
antidepressant that causes weight gain, hair loss, and/or incontinence is going to
be anything other than a cause of depression in the long run.

In fact, when someone is low on vitamin B12 there is a high likelihood that
they will be depressed. Depression is one, actual symptom of low B12.

I fear that I've still not made the correct point, which is that vitamin B12 is
something that features in the way our bodies work. It could be compared to
the oil in a car... if the oil runs out, then the engine can be ruined for good.

Vitamin B12 is something that's a small part, but vital. It works on a level in
our bodies that affects our balance, our mood, our sense of touch, or pain
level, all of our nerves, whether they are our optic or auditory nerves, or the
tiny nerves in our feet that tell us we have been injured and need to take steps
not to get an infection or disease from the injury.

Maybe this would make it clear: doctors look at things from the perspective of
there being thousands of different disorders, they try to match us and our
symptoms to particular disorder; my view and the view which I hope you
adopt is that there are a few things in our bodies that have a big impact. Similar
to the systems in a house: the electricity, the plumbing, the roofing. These are
big time items. If the electricity goes out, we want to replace the fuse or reset
it, we don't go from lamp to lamp looking for the problem.

B12 is like electricity. If we begin to have numbness (a bit of an outage) or if
we begin to have tingling and then painful tingling (a bit like a shock) then we
need to do something. We can go to a doctor and run up a bill which will run
down our internal B12 supplies if we are in a position of having to worry about
money, or we can take a serious look at our fingernails and see if they show
any indications that we are low on B12.

If our fingernails show ridges or lack of moons, then we have a duty to our
health to look at a comprehensive list of symptoms of low B12 and if some of
those fit, then we have a duty to buy Methylcobalamin and take it for two
months, recording our symptoms day by day so that we can see what it has or
has not done for us.

That is a duty we have to ourselves, and failing that duty we can lose feeling in
our feet, we can lose our memories, we can lose our health in myriad ways.

I want to be clear, if you have symptoms of low B12, if you have depression,
then you have a duty to yourself to buy Methylcobalamin and take it and see if
it resolves your problems for you.

And, while I would love for you to buy it via my site, I want you to know that
I am writing this because it is so important and I want people to know this.
You can buy methylcobalamin at your health food store, but you must get the
methylcobalamin form because of how complicated B12 is. For that reason it
would be most efficient for you to buy it from my site. That way you will get
the right kind. But, if you are afraid I am only writing this for profit, then the
important thing is for you to not worry and buy it where your fear level will be
least stressful for you.

Entry for January 8, 2008

There was a noise that worried me, just a short while ago. (I ate my beans
while they were hot, before writing this). I went to the door, opened it, which
I seldom do without demanding to know who it is, and shouted into the
darkness, "What are you doing?" And the lights went on in my master
bathroom, so did bathroom fans and the refrigerator and who knows what else.

"Turning your power back on," came the reply from the darkness outside.

"Don't you dare. I don't want it. Turn it back off," I shouted emphatically.

"You don't want it?" some amazement in the reply.

"NO! I'm not paying for it, and I don't want it!"

I looked into the master bedroom which is at the front, and the glare of the
several long-life fluorescent lights in the master bath, and I thought how garish
it is, in comparison to my candles and LED lights.

No, I do not want to be collared by the utility company again. I am free this
way. I know that I have to plan for the cold, and I can, and do, do that.

Before with PNM holding the leash to the spiked collar around my neck, they
could come on the spur of the moment to shut off my heat and lights and
leave me without phone or any preparation and no way to contact anyone for
help, or if there were an emergency.

I certainly hope no one paid PNM on my behalf (to use the word of which the
emailing South Africans seem so fond.)

The point I want to make is that to turn off someone's water or heat or lights
when they have a disability or are old or are sick, is inhuman and a denial of
basic human rights. I do not appreciate someone having the ability to threaten
my life and beyond that to actually put it at risk and endanger me.

I would much rather have little, than to have what appears a lot but is actually
nothing but a cage keeping me under the thumb of the key holder, and
keeping me indebted for all of my available money.

I do not accept being the slave of those with the keys to light, heat, water. I
would rather live in my tent over my bed, with candles for heat, and know
that I will take care of myself, than to trust those who are not trustworthy and
who took my heat and light when I was not prepared and when I asked them
for two days to transfer the money.

They refused me two days. To do that was clearly an act of punishment.
They wanted to punish me for being poor and not having the money in my
bank account for them on a moment's demand. If they had wanted the
money, they would have given me the two days to get it. But they didn't, they
wanted to subject me to what they thought would make me cringe with fear.

And I was afraid when it was dark and I lost my balance and hurt my wrist.
But then, after nearly a week of that, by the time the Easter holiday was over,
I had survived, and it felt good to survive. To take care of myself.

I am not going back.

If more people did this, the utility companies would behave differently.

The reason I hope no one paid them, is that would only encourage them in
their bad behavior. It is really important to begin to recognize that certain
behavior is life threatening and it's not okay, not for a better bottom line, not
for profit. Simply NOT okay.

Entry for January 7, 2008

I can't use my computer so far today because my solar batteries are ruined
so they don't hold much charge, and so far there's snow not sunshine. But, this
is good because I've been wanting to address the similarities between out
nervous systems and batteries.

I would not have seen this similarity if my batteries had not been ruined, so in
a way there is a blessing to be found in this otherwise costly problem.

Here is the picture: I had four batteries, each 183 amp hours. That's a lot of
storage capacity. Way more than I need to use my computer every day, have a
small 15 amp DayLight flourescent light on, and maybe an hour or two of
telly, as well as the phone. That covers my needs.

But when winter was coming on and I began to think about how to heat, I took
critical notice of how I had never used so much as ten percent of the stored
energy in my batteries, so I decided I could use maybe 15% of their capacity
to heat some Crock Pots for warmth. And, I began to do that.

I was well within the safe limit according to my battery monitor when my
inverter began to beep. That's not good, and I wasn't expecting it. I ran to
make sure I'd read the battery monitor correctly, and I had, it showed that I
was still within safe limits.

But the fact was that I was not.

Now, this is similar to our nerves in several ways. First of all, we are
constantly told to push ourselves, "No pain, no gain." I saw a pbs telly program
on people pushing themselves to be in a marathon and actually fracturing their
bones and being told they were doing a good thing, and they themselves feeling
as if enduring the pain and making this ultimate effort was a good thing.

That is a misleading kind of program, of which there are many. Why would it
be good to hurt one's body? How long does it take to heal? and does it heal
completely? Look at Evel Kneivel... he died quite young having sustained a lot
of injuries. Do we look at him and say to ourselves, "Gosh, that's the way I
want to live my life. That was a wise choice he made." No, we don't. But in
smaller ways we sign on to the myth that pain is good for our bodies and
minds.

Pain is a warning sign. It's like a STOP sign. Disobey at your own risk, and
that of others.

Do you see the relationship? With my batteries I bought a battery monitor so
that I would have a warning that would prevent me from using too much of the
power in my batteries, and thereby ruining them. But the monitor didn't work
and now my batteries are ruined and don't hold enough of a charge to run my
60 watt computer for a whole day.

When we are not told of the dangers of running our bodies too hard, and
wearing them out, we can and often do exactly that.

Where vitamin B12 fits in, is that it is like a recharge to our nerves. It keeps
them from getting burned out. But we have to remember to take it, and we
have to know why it's important to take it.

Someone objected yesterday to my constant mention of B12. She said it was
like being told by television ads not to smoke, that it made you want to smoke
all the more.

I can see that, too. But the thing is that it is so serious and people are so
unaware of how easily they can do damage to their bodies that will, in the end,
keep them from being able to do the things they love, or keep them from doing
them without pain.

We think of our bodies as constantly rechargeable. We don't think of them not
taking a charge anymore because we over used them. But that is what
happens. My batteries were good for seven to ten years, except not they don't
take a charge that will get me through one whole day... and there's no reserve
for a snowy day like today.

When we use up our bodies, when we work late for our employer, or see one
more account, or make one more dish for dinner, all of those things that at the
end of the day are really a challenge to complete, are things which use up
energy that is not totally renewable.

It is only renewable if we don't drain our reserves past a certain point. With
batteries the best thing to do is not to use more then 25% of the stored energy,
certainly not half.

So, in a day when we have 24 hours, if we work for 8 that is using 33% of our
stored energy. If we then go out with friends or sit in front of the telly and
relax, we begin replenishing our energy store.

But more likely than not what we really do is work longer than 8 hours and
from work fight our way home in traffic and at home begin the tasks that keep
home tidy. So, slowly but surely we are running our Crock Pots, so to speak,
on energy we only think we have.

Add into the mix that once we begin to wear ourselves down sleeping becomes
difficult, you can begin to see how we can ruin ourselves just about as quickly
as I ruined my batteries by using them when I thought it was okay, but it really
wasn't.

What B12 does, is replace some of what our bodies use when we over use our
bodies. It keeps us from running too low and doing serious damage to our
nerves. It keeps us from shortening the life span we could enjoy.

My computer battery is about to tell me it needs charging, and I have nothing
to give it till there is some sunshine.

So think about this (once I'm able to post it.) Wow, maybe I could potst it if I
hurry. (I wasn't fast enough... had to wait till January 8, 2008.)

Entry for January 14, 2008 -

Your B12 joke was sooo funny. I really laughed. But then I realized that
remembering "B12" to buy it is
so sad because it probably won't
work or help.

I say that because after I tried to
kill myself in 1997 a doctor sent
me a bill that said I had "profound"
B12 anemia, but no one had
mentioned that to me in hospital.

When I asked about "profound B12
anemia" at the clinic where I was
going, they said I should have a B12
shot, so I agreed. But it was $25 and
one of the things that was extremely
stressful at that time was having little
money...

So I thought, well, instead of asking for another shot when it's so expensive,
I'll go to K-Mart and get some B12 vitamin pills. Seemed like a good idea to
me.

I remembered that the B vitamins work as a complex and if you take too
much of one it can make an imbalance that acts as a deficiency of one or
more of the others, so I got a MEGA B. Not the strongest one, but the middle
range one, as I remember it.

I went home and took several of them an hour with a lot of tea. It's always
important to have a lot of liquid with vitamins, aspirin, Advil, prescription
drugs, etc.

Over the next few weeks I went through a couple of bottles, and they were
large bottles.

The two things that happened next were very telling.

1. It was fall here in Santa Fe and the chamisa was in full, brilliant yellow
bloom, EVERYWHERE. So that usually meant sneezing, runny nose, itchy
eyes and throat... sometimes my forehead would swell and I'd look
Mongoloid. But that year, nothing. For the first time I could walk up to a
chamisa shrub, put my nose next to the flowers and smell them... and it was
great. No sneezing, no discomfort. That made me WAY happy.

2. When the clinic wanted me to have another B12 test, I was delighted
because I was sure that if all the B vitamins made my allergies go away, that
my B12 level was going to be all fine and dandy. But... No. Not at all. It was
entirely unchanged.

So that's how I know that the cyanocobalamin in the "B12" one buys from
most stores is not going to work.

The cyanocobalamin in shots works because of how much there is. I know it
works, and that's my guess why it works.

So, you have to remember to get Methylcobalamin. That works. Taking it
works just as well as the B12 shots.

I think the "B12" in stores may work for really young people without much
damage. It worked for a 17 year old girl I worked with. But ordinarily, it is a
disappointment and it can make it seem as if B12 is not as powerful as I,
among others, say it is.

Whew... Sorry this is so long.

I was just heating water and thought about this, and I wondered if I should
write it or if it was too intense.

I hope it's okay. Here is my page with links for Methylcobalamin.

Entry for January 15, 2008

My friend Patrick asked me this morning what I think of Bruno Comby's book,
Maximize Immunity which receives Wayne Green's praise, "This book may
possibly change your life. It might even save your life... particularly if you are
struggling with an immunity-related illness."

I agree with Comby that raw foods are good for us and even remember the
news reporting a correlation between cancer and the degree of darkness our
foods reach in cooking (whether slightly browned or crispy at the edges with a
bit of burning.) The news may in fact have derived from Comby's work.

But my feeling overall is that what "raw" basically means is more likelihood
that microorganisms are alive and well in what we eat.

Because immunity is of such huge importance to all of us, this is a timely topic.
I just feel that talk of immunity without mention of microorganisms leaves a lot
of what is essential unsaid.

In today's supermarkets we have an array of beautiful fruits and vegetables to
choose from, but most of those choices are grown using chemicals rather than
microorganisms for "fertilizer."

I am sad to say that my grandfather, as president of the American Farm Bureau
Federation, decades ago contributed to the problem of spectacularly beautiful
produce that is lackluster in nutrition. Think of it as PhotoShopped food... it
really catches the eye, but deep down it's not real -ly what our bodies need.

In the old days fertilizer was organic. Manure was plowed into fields. Today
chemicals are strewn on fields for quick growth and insect death.

But to be healthy we need enormous numbers of microorganisms in our
digestive tracts... and if the good microorganisms get outnumbered by the bad,
then we can no longer get B12 or magnesium from our food because the bad
microorganisms are keeping our stomachs from producing gastric acid which is
essential in releasing B12 and magnesium from food.

Taking a probiotic helps retore the natural balance. Taking vitamin C helps kill
off the bad microorganisms like h.pylori, and vitamin C also helps free
magnesium and B12 from food.

If at all possible, it's a good idea to grow a bit of your own food and compost
to enrich the soil for your garden. (My polish grandfather who did that lived
decades longer than my "more successful" grandfather....

Those are my thoughts on this.

central column has lifted away.

From my experience as a silversmith in London, I attribute the cracking to
fatigue along stress lines created in the metal during manufacture. As long as the
lamp was at a fairly even and warm temperature there was no movement in the
metal and it remained intact.

But when it got very cold in the living room over several hours, the metal
fractured at the points where one piece of metal moved differently in response
to the cold than an adjacent and attached piece of metal. I'm not sure whether it
was the interior plate of metal or the external hollow column which adjusted
most to the change in temperature, but it's fairly clear that both parts did not
adjust in unison.

I am showing you this because it is an excellent illustration of what happens in
our bodies when there are stresses on us that call for changes and in fact force
changes onto us.

Say, for instance, that something shocking happens, not just the shock of an
accident when you might actually be diagnosed as suffering from shock, but
something like being fired in a downsizing that you feared because you need the
money from your job, or the person you are married to or in love with (or
both) tells you they are having second thoughts, and a chill races through your
body leaving you shivering. Or, it could be that for months or years you have
been making yourself do something that you feel a duty to do, but that is
wearing you out and then you are hit with a shock -- in these cases your body
is going to experience some abrupt, unrelenting changes, to your temperature:
you may start shivering, to your muscle tension: you may become stiff with
anxiety, your heart may begin to race, etc.

Okay, this is the critical moment. Because if you have someone to give you
warm tea and words of comfort, or genuine hugs, then everything may become
synchronized as you recover and no major damage is done.

But say you have been pushing yourself to your limits and you don't have any
resilience left, nor anyone to hug and encourage you, then you may, for the
sake of examples, throw your back out, or get sciatica, or any number of pain
related health issues.

Or, say you have some toxins you've been dealing with from medications, from
your environment, or from "toxic" people you are forced to deal with. In those
cases you may already have stress fractures, as it were. They may be
imperceptible to your doctor, if you've gone in to ask about symptoms, but they
are nonetheless real and given a shocking situation they can become undeniable,
at least to you because of the pain. Your doctor may continue to deny that
anything physical is wrong.

Okay, so here is my question to you: Do you see a similarity between the metal
not being able to stand up to the stress of the severe temperature change and
the leaves not being able to stand up to the stress of the toxins?

If you do, as I do, then you will be able to better understand how your body is
not invincible when it comes to different stresses which it may be subjected to.

The hopeful thing is, however, that possibly compost may allow plants to grow
normally in these toxic pots. I'm experimenting now... but so far there are no
results.

The hopeful thing for our bodies is that it appears that vitamin B12 (in the
Methylcobalamin form) is able to help our bodies adjust without breaking, as it
were. Possibly this is because B12 keeps our nerves healthy, and nerves are
what transfer sensations and messages of change to different parts of our
bodies. For instance, when my feet began to lack sensation due to peripheral
neuropathy caused by low vitamin B12, I could no longer tell when my feet
were cold from being out from under the covers, nor could I tell if someone
tickled them. Now, after a lot of B12 replacement, the nerves in my feet are
beginning to more reliably send messages.

If you see what I am saying, and if you are dealing with stress, then take the
precaution of getting and using Methylcobalamin lozenges.

As always, I end by saying, "I wish I'd known this earlier, and I wish I had
taken Methylcobalamin before my nerves were so severely damaged that it
impacted my life in ways I would not have imagined, as for instance, tetanus."

Entry for January 26, 2008

An astonishing thing I just learned about wool is that under certain conditions it
may make us feel colder. Yes, I know, exactly the opposite of what you and I
expected.

But here's the fact, as I observed it. First, I ordered a beautiful Italian merino
wool turtle neck from Overstock at a fantastically good price, so good I thought
it was worth taking money from my candle budget and applying it to warm
clothing.

The turtle neck arrived and it was beautiful. I had chosen the charcoal grey on
the word of a reviewer who had ordered it and found that it contained some
brown. Also, it was so beautifully made, absolutely lovely to look at the careful

I put one on, and of course it was icy cold since it had been in my cold, cold
closet. But now that my body has warmed it up, my hands are as warm as my
body.

So, what that makes me think is that if we wear wool and it keeps the part of
our body warm that senses temperatures and perhaps regulates how much heat
our bodies make, then we throw off the sensors and cause them to make the
wrong amount of heat.

That is, the sensors feel that our torso is really warm, so they make less heat
and our hands as an extremity of our body get cold because there isn't actually
enough heat being generated.

Which reminds me that long ago in England I saw a program on BBC about
"fatty brown cells" which are at our backs and fronts, in roughly the areas
where we tend to show sweat stains on our clothing when we work out. I
remember the program because it showed that rats with good fatty brown cells
could eat all the junk food they were given, with no healthy food, and not gain
a tad of weight.

On the other hand, rats with fewer or less efficient fatty brown cells -- I forget
how they were designated -- gained massive weight and were soon waddling.

I wanted more, and healthier fatty brown cells, immediately.

Since rats aren't affecting their fatty brown cells by fashion choices, I'm unable
to go any further with that example.

But, overall what I am forced to conclude from my experience with the wool
turtle neck, is that we need to treat our bodies as a whole, in order for our
bodies to feel good as a whole. (Much like our world, our planet.)

If we choose garments which favor one part of our bodies, then other parts are
going to feel deprivation by contrast.

Now, I'm eager to see how this beautiful wool turtle neck is in the spring. I'm
thinking I may be able to wear it with fewer layers once the weather isn't so
harsh.

Back to Allergies. This is the time to begin taking a B vitamin complex to
prepare yourself NOT to have allergies, if you tend to have them.

Before I knew anything about vitamin B12, and I was told I was "profoundly
B12 anemic," I thought I could take vitamin tablets and recover, the same way
one recovers from iron deficiency anemia by taking vitamin tablets.

I bought a MegaB vitamin in the mid range of potency and took a couple an
hour with a lot of tea, water, coffee, or other liquids. I did that for a few bottles
worth over a couple of months, then was given another B12 test. Well, my
B12 level was unchanged, much to my chagrin.

However, shortly after that our Santa Fe Chamisa came into full, yellow, pollen
laden bloom. This tended to be one of my worst seasons every year because I
had such horrible allergies. Once I was trying to write a contract for some
people who wanted to buy a home I'd shown them, and my nose was running
so badly that it was almost impossible to write, I was that busy wiping my nose.

Well, after all the B vitamins I had NO allergies. It seemed impossible that I
would not have them, since I'd had them nearly my entire life. Yet the fact was
I was not sneezing, my eyes weren't itching and neither was my throat.

I decided to put it to the ultimate test: I went up to a Chamisa, bent my head to
the masses of yellow flowers, and drew in a deep whiff of them -- that was a
first. And nothing, no sneezing, no discomfort.

So, I highly recommend that you purchase a B vitamin, with all of the Bs in it,
and begin taking it now. Not as many as I did, that was more than necessary.
But three a day, maybe four. You will get a feel for it, I think.

I have been using the Jarrow with perfect success; I'm going to buy the NSI
next time I order because it worries me that I'll run out and have all the
irritating symptoms again. Plus, it's a great price.

Entry for February 4, 2008

I learned an interesting thing yesterday and another interesting thing today.

Yesterday I learned that when I think about things, and figure something out,
but then forget it and am unable to bring back any of what I thought, that
somehow those things are not forgotten by a part of my mind. I am beginning
to think that part of my mind is what is often referred to as someone's "higher
self."

They memory isn't stored in a paragraphs type way, with outline form, but as a
kind of image or feeling. I found that out yesterday when I saw that my little
votive candles had burned for two days. They are sold saying they will burn
for ten hours if you put them in a proper holder.

I had gotten 288 of them thinking I would use them instead of the tall saint
votives that are $1.17 each at Wal*Mart and burn for around 5 days, maybe
six and sometimes seven. Only trouble is, the tall ones don't give as much heat
when the little flame is lower in the jar. I saw that for weeks and could not see
how to place the pots of water closer to the ever lowering flame.

Then, I thought to get the little votives and put them in the jars from the tall
votives, filled nearly to the top with broken wax from spent candles. I could
see that some little votive candles would probably burn only a short time
because their wax would run down into the cavities between the broken bits of
wax. So, that seemed find and overall I thought it would work and I ordered
the little votives.

While I was waiting for them to arrive I broke up my spent candles and filled
the votive jars with the pieces. A few days later my little votives arrived and I
put one into each of six of my tall holders now filled nearly to the top with
chunks of wax from old candles. And, I lit them.

It was great, they were all burning with their little flames high where they
would be close to the pots of water. I was happy.

But they didn't last three hours. Some did, but few. So I was depressed,
figuratively speaking. I was worried that I had made a bad decision to get these
little candles since they only lasted three hours in most cases, and given how
tiny they are, that didn't seem surprising.

However, when I looked closely at them, I saw that they had holes drilled in
them so that the wicks could be placed in them after they were formed, rather
than while they were in the form, and the holes tended to allow the melted wax
to run out and leave the wick with nothing to burn but itself.

I forgot that the wax was also filling the cavities. I was too busy blaming myself
for making a poor decision that at $34 took most of my available money.

Still, I kept at it, I kept putting new candles into the jars and I began to see that
if I put a chunk of wax on top of the candle, next to the flame, that it melted
that and filled the little hole. I also packed old wax around the little candles
before I lit them.

And that's when they began to last for two days because by then they'd filled
up the spaces in the wax beneath them, which I had forgotten that I had
understood they would need to do that. Only, the thing is, on the second day
they aren't as efficient at heating any more because the flame is too low in the
jar to heat the tin cans that otherwise would radiate the heat. So, I need to
blow out the candles after they've burned for about 24 hours and replace them.

And that brings me to what I learned today. Today I saw that the large candle I
had in the bathroom under my Farberware that is just great at heating had
burned down to a very small size, but it still had hours left to burn. I felt as if
there was nothing to do but let it burn inefficiently because I was going to burn
the wax sometime, anyway.

Then I realized that I could blow it out and place a taller candle there that had
been in my tallest wrought iron holder but had grown too short for it. I could
have a much more efficient candle and all the wax that was burned would be
no more or less than if I left the short candle there. Only the tall candle would
have its flame closer to the pan with the water and would therefore heat the
water more efficiently and give a LOT more heat.

So here's the thing: This is SO much fun. When I had PNM heat and lights
they were always threatening me, and that was NO fun. I used to get so upset
and I would start shaking from frustration that they monthly lost my payments
and blamed it on Wells Fargo's on line Bill Pay program. Wells Fargo, of
course, blamed PNM. And I was left with the threats and no solutions.

Now, it is just so much fun to solve these problems. I love that I have about as
much heat from five little candles under old coffee cans as from an electric oil
filled radiator set on medium. I LOVE it. Big smile here.

"I don't know how to start or end or even what to write here! I guess I
just really need to let you know how much you helped me! I developed a
b12 deficiency and thought I was turning into an absolute loon because at
the time I had never heard of it and didn't understand why I was so sad,
too tired to even SHOWER, went down to 100 pounds, unable to cook
for myself, and generally freaking out along with so many other things!

While looking up symptoms I found out about b12 deficiencies and that
my medication (minocycline) had probably caused it, and started taking
cyanocobalamin because that was what the b12 vitamins in my cabinet
were made from. After a week I somehow managed to feel worse, not to
mention that I had moments where I would just completely lose it. I
figured then that it couldn't be a b12 problem since I was taking it.

Around that time I noticed some odd black things under my nails that I
couldn't wash off and that the moons were gone and my nails were very
rough. I looked it up online and found your page! At first I was somewhat
annoyed because I knew it couldn't be a b12 problem, but then I saw your
writings on methylcobalamin and also how you still suffer to this day
because your doctors didn't take you seriously.

Immediately afterwards I got myself to the Doctor's and made clear what I
thought the problem was, and that I needed to be taken very seriously
because I didn't want any damage to be permanent. Thankfully I have a
wonderful Doctor who was more than helpful, and now I feel a good deal
better!

If it wasn't for your page about fingernails and methylcobalamin, I
wouldn't have gone to the Doctor's (health insurance problems) and would
have just gotten worse. I really can't even begin to describe how thankful I
am to you, I could gush about it for ages! I hope you realize what an
incredible person you are, and how much you've helped others while still
dealing with your own problems.

I wish you the absolute best in life, which you more than deserve! You are
a saint, and I will do everything in my power to point others towards your
website. Thank you again for the billionth time, I do not doubt for one
moment that you have saved me a lot of future pain and problems!"

Name withheld.

Entry for February 10, 2008

I received two interesting emails in the last few hours. One relates to the use of
methylcobalamin to heal diabetic neuropathy in cats, which had mildly
interested me when I ran across a web site about this. (I've put it on my Useful
Websites page.)

However, when the site owner responded to my email I discovered that she
had a LOT of experience with cats and methylcobalamin and I began to
wonder if her observations and accummulated knowledge about thousands of
cats responding to methylcobalamin could be called "research". After all,
research is frequently conducted on animals (often to their detriment, but in
this case for their betterment.)

Laurie, the site owner, reported that cats that could barely walk because of the
neuropathy were healed with the use of methylcobalamin. She reports that
some of the cats received 25mg of methylcobalamin a day.

What is astonishing and WONDERFUL about that is that it is exactly what I
found when I got rid of my peripheral neuropathy when I was having a B12
shot a day, which is about the same as 25 to 30 mg of methylcobalamin a day
taken by lozenge.

Not "exactly" really, because a cat is tiny and I am 6 feet tall and heavy.

If you don't have diabetes or know anyone with it to whom you can extend this
information, think of it this way: everything is a continuum, so, if you have a
bit of tingling or numbness now that is not the end of it. Some numbness can,
over time, progress into something debilitating. (For instance, my peripheral
neuropathy caused me not to feel a small injury to my toe and as a result I got
tetanus.)

I'll put Laurie's email about the "thousands" of cats on my page about
Fingernails and Vitamin B12 Deficiency.

The other email was from my friend Tena and is about an "new" neurological
disease showing up in Minnesota... that is characterized by heaviness in the
legs... which reminded me of the kitties and their neuropathy... and I wondered
if anyone was telling the affected people in Minnesota about vitamin B12 in the
form of methylcobalamin and how it can regenerate nerves.

Entry for February 14, 2008

It's 5:00 a.m. and I have not been able to sleep. I am so upset about the
foreclosure of my home. I think that's why I've been depressed for a few days
and feeling overwhelmed by little things like emails with jokes. Yesterday there
was a letter in the mail from the lawyers for Wells Fargo saying that I have 30
days to raise questions and if I don't then they will start foreclosure. And then it
says that they don't have to wait 30 days to start foreclosure.

What's so drastically upsetting is that it's the same lawyers that I complained to
Wells Fargo about last foreclosure, and Wells Fargo has never, not once
responded.

Basically the lawyers forced me to file bankruptcy because they would not give
me two weeks to sell my rental and have the money to pay my arrears. I had
the money in exactly the time I asked for. So then when I wanted to refinance
because I have so much equity, I couldn't because of the bankruptcy, so they
totally ruined my credit beyond the damage done to it by the privy pit.

And, the lawyers charged me huge, exorbitant amounts of money for their
mean attacks. I have to call them attacks because it wasn't the money they
wanted, because I had said that was going to come in two weeks, and it did.
The next thing they did was refuse to give me pay off figures because I was in
bankruptcy. They were just so mean, calculated mean, not accidental.

So to me, the whole mortgage meltdown reflects the horrendous lack of
morality in the financial and legal ends of real estate. The lawyers were
depraved, how else can I put it? One lied in court, that was the one for
Deutsche Bank, and these lawyers for Wells Fargo were as mean as they could
be. Helped by the corruption of the New Mexico courts.

So that's why I can't sleep and why I keep thinking about death and how
before Maud Henon died she was thinking about the worst things she had seen
in her life, like during the war in Belgium where she was from, she saw a
woman hanging from a church steeple with her baby hanging by its umbilical
cord from her womb. I think Maud said that the woman had been blown up
there. But in any case, it was one of the worst things she'd ever seen in her life.
That's what she said to me about it. And now, while it's not like seeing new life
dead and drifting in the wind where it hangs from a church steeple, there is
something totally horrific about knowing that the rule of law is a laugh,
non-existent replaced by a taunt from the corrupt courts which allow lawyers to
lie and punish the people who have worked hard and done the right thing.

It is shocking and it's no wonder I can't sleep. I've taken loads of extra
methylcobalamin and it isn't enough to combat this huge stress. I still have
shockingly loud tinnitus and I can't sleep and I feel depressed. And I think I
must have had a premonition of the letter and the fact that the same lawyers
are in place to harrass me and hurt me as much as they can... so how can I rest
when I am under attack? And how many Americans are facing this? Sure, they
say there's this and that to help, but I think it's a bit of a lie. Perhaps it's there
for a few, for the favorites of whomever, whereas it should be equally available
to all who need help recovering from the fraud that's been perpetrated.

In my case the fraud was Sargent selling me a home that was not fit to live in,
and the City of Santa Fe passing it for all inspections. Such a shocking thing,
and from that I have this frustrating and exhausting brain injury from falling
from the hydrogen sulfide and hitting my head on the bricks. I was just beside
myself the other day trying to talk on the phone. It's just hopeless. Shocking
and hopeless. Gandhi was lucky that there was the rule of law in India.

I think that it is very hard to get enough B12 when there is a lot of stress.

Last night I had a nightmare about losing my home and garden, and today
I felt horrible.

I've had a really hard time getting my moons back, they were coming back
really well, and then the lawyers for the foreclosure sent some initial
papers and I was so stressed again.

That's why I say to have more shots ... or get the lozenges so that you can
start building up on that.

I realize that I should handle the stress better, but ... it gets me down. The
moons on my thumbs are so faint I can barely make them out.

So, what I am saying is that if you are under a lot of stress, then it is more
tricky to recover.

I'm not sure what you are saying. Are you saying you think that if you had
not found the B12 information that you too would have tried to kill
yourself? (the way I wrote you that I had)

I for sure no longer feel that way. My memory is much better and I am
able to think of other things to do.

The depression is not the first thing to clear up, because -- I think it has to
do with pathways in our brains, I think that when our B12 is low that we
burn certain pathways in very deeply because we aren't thinking a lot of
different things. The B12 deficiency reduces the number of things we
think. So we think a few things too repetitively.

As we recover and create more pathways, we are less likely to think about
killing ourselves, because of the increased health. But it's not fast because
of how deep the damage goes.

I haven't posted on my Blog for a long long time. I have a hard time
remembering things when there is this much stress.

I think I will post some of our correspondence, without your name, of
course.

And thank you, it was a good day. I worked in my garden. That always
makes me happy. I so want to be able to keep my home and garden.

The thing with the lozenges is that the methylcobalamin goes right into
your body via the membrane under your tongue. So it doesn't matter
if you don't have intrinsic factor.

Methylcobalamin is the form of B12 that our bodies make out of liver,
if we eat liver.

So since it's the same kind of B12 as the end product of our body's
work with the raw ingredients, it goes right to work. Only you still
have to take it for a whole month to equal a shot.

I'm unclear what a vitamin C flush consists of.

I was taking about 30 grams of vitamin C a day for quite a long time.
It controlled a bad infection I had. Now I am taking 8 to 10 grams a
day.

If you have diabetes then a lot of vitamin C can pose a risk of heart
problems, because of some gene. If you don't have the gene then it's
no problem, but if you have diabetes and you don't know about the
gene (and how would the average person know?) then I would be a
little careful about taking a lot of C.

You will begin to feel hugely better and there will be a lot fewer of the
really rough days. But it takes awhile because the B12 has to go back
into deep tissue where it was slowly lost over a long time, probably a
lot longer than you were aware of, because in the beginning the
changes aren't that noticeable.

My moons are peeping back and my eyesight is clearer today, and
there was less numbness in my hands, and I can flex my toes, so I
guess I've finally taken enough lozenges to get me back to where I
was... I forget, maybe a month or so ago...

I'm glad you found my site, too. :)

To buy cyanocobalin at Wal*Mart you need a prescription. It is really
cheap; I haven't purchased it in awhile since I switched to
methylcobalamin lozenges, but when I did buy it, it was something like
$5.98 a bottle, and that's 30 shots. So it's really cheap to give yourself
the shots. Needles ran about 26 cents each, you have to have a new
needle for each shot.

I use the Source Naturals lozenges, 5mg ones, that I have on my site.
Using one 5mg a day for a month equals, at the end of the month, a
shot a week, and then a little bit more.

I use several lozenges a day, and really quite a few when there is a lot
of stress.

It appears that stress uses B12, so if you are experiencing a o lot of
stress, then use more to counteract it.

In terms of how much B12 you can or should have, it's really good to
take notes so you can see how it works for you, and then build on that.

I had very bad peripheral neuropathy which was not improved by a
shot a month or even a shot every two weeks. I was told it was
permanent, and to get used to it.

But then when I had tetanus and was having a shot a day, sometimes
two, the peripheral neuropathy went away.

Now when there is a lot of stress I get twinges, and that tells me that
no matter how much methylcobalamin I've had, I need more.

B12 is supposed to be in all of our tissue, so when we begin to run low
it slowly begins to be depleted from places deep in our bodies where
we need it, so it's slow to replace and that's why watching our
fingernails can be helpful.

You know how slowly your fingernails grow, well, that's also about the
speed at which B12 can be replaced and it isn't all replaced at once, it's
a very slow process.

But while it is slow, it is a sure way to recover from many MANY
different health problems.

Did you look at my page with pictures of my nails over a period of
time? There was so much stress I failed to keep the page up, but it still
gives some idea of how the ridges look as the begin to grow out, and it
shows that the moons come and go. It has so much to do with stress. I
have been trying really hard to stay on top of the stress here, and today
I can just begin to see the moons on my thumbs come back, but they
are not very clear, and there is huge stress. So it's going to be a battle
to take in enough methylcobalamin for my body to use without using
that which has been slowly stored in less stressful times.

Hope this isn't too muddled for you to follow. :)

www.health-boundaries-bite.com/Fingernail-Lines.html

www.health-boundaries-bite.com/new_folder/Methylcobalamin.html