Articles - Health Warnings on Your Fingernails and others by Karen Kline

I have recently had the moons on my index fingernails begin to peep
back into existence. They had disappeared long ago, and as far as I
could tell, had disappeared with the same speed that ridges on my
fingernails had developed.

I remember looking at my fingernails one night several years ago and
wondering, “When did my nails stop being smooth?”

Because I had been worried about ongoing problems, I hadn’t been
paying attention to myself and as stress mounted, manicures were the
last thing on my mind.

Perhaps because it seemed appropriate that hurdle-high ridges had
appeared on my fingernails, matching the mounting hurdles in my life, I
wondered if the ridges could be related to health.

It would take nearly two years for me to learn that the ridges were a
result of low vitamin B12; not a “B12 deficiency” exactly, because at 241,
my serum blood level was in the low normal range and nothing to worry
about, according to my doctor.

But after my feet and hands were frequently tingling and numb, my
memory was a thing of the past, my balance was dependant on light, and
I was depressed - which seemed reasonable under the circumstances – I
went to a new doctor and in the course of answering his questions,
mentioned that my mother had B12 problems.

That was it, he said, adding that I would need B12 shots for the rest of
my life and he’d have his nurse show me how to inject myself.

The neurologist I saw, to follow up, said he believed my problems all
resulted from low B12, but he wanted to be sure, “I want you to keep a
Time Line,” he said, “Write down your symptoms, each shot you have,
and your B12 test levels.”

The neurologist explained that in the old days pernicious anemia was
diagnosed by giving the patient a course of B12 shots, and if health
returned, then the diagnosis was pernicious anemia.

So it was, that in keeping the Time Line I observed not only my memory
improving, my tingling, numbness and depression going away, but also
the ridges on my fingernails smoothing out.

Today, research shows that pernicious anemia with its characteristic lack
of intrinsic factor is rare, while B12 malabsorption illness is on the
increase because of the abundant use of antacids. In fact, there are
estimates that 47% of the general population has hypochlorhydria, the
condition where there is not enough gastric acid to free vitamin B12 from
protein.

It is not because low B12 from all causes is so prevalent, that I have
taken up vitamin B12 education as my mission, but rather because the
nerve damage that results from extended, untreated low B12 can be
permanent.

Nerve damage can be the type of peripheral neuropathy associated with
diabetes; it can be impaired memory and cognitive dysfunction.

I have lost about half of my working memory and processing speed from
the years my low B12 went untreated. So, my web site is not the most
brilliant thing ever, but it does give clear information on vitamin B12 and
how to recognize warning signs of low B12 from your fingernails:
www.health-boundaries-bite.com/Fingernails.html

My father, who once proudly presented me with a twenty pound pack of
the wonder flavoring he found at a Chinese restaurant – MSG – used to
travel with what looked like a tumbled city block of antacid boxes. We are
talking a heavy duty supply.

At the same time, my father was complaining about how his pots and
pans were “sticking.” So, I purchased a really nice non-stick omlete pan
for him, which he promptly fried to a frazzle, asking me to get him a new
one under the life time guarantee.

Since I did not have the nerve to attempt a return of the once lovely pan,
I asked my father if he had that trouble often, pots and pans burning up...
not just sticking.

He said yes, it was getting so that he could barely remember anything.
He said he’d put something on the stove, then totally forget it.

Although I was sure that the culprit was his antacids, I felt equally sure
that if I told him, he wouldn’t hear me. He is pretty devoted to his
antacids, not to say that I come in a distant second.

How was I ever going to alert him to hypochlorhydria, the condition
where insufficient gastric acid leads to the lowering of vitamin B12
reserves in the body?

I had wondered for only a few days, when I decided to write to him about
hydrochloric acid, about how it’s essential to free vitamin B12 from
protein. I explained that while he loves liver and prides himself on eating
liver and onions three or four times a week, that if he’s following that
healthy dinner with a few antacids, one for the antacid affect, one for the
added calcium, that he’s counteracting all the potential benefits of the
liver.

I mailed the letter, and waited.

And waited.

Just when I was pretty sure that he had taken offense, I heard from him.
He said he had read my letter, thought about it, and decided to try some
HCL Betaine tablets that he found at the health food store.

Delighted, I wrote back with high praise, and asked him to tell me if his
memory improved.

He said he would. About a month later he wrote that he was sleeping
better, and he said that more sleep seemed to improve his memory.

Some months later I started my web page, www.health-boundaries-bite.
com/Fingernails.html so that information about B12 would get further
distribution than to my family.

Incidentally, by the time I was telling my dad about hypochlorhydria and
vitamin B12, I already had some permanent nerve damage from having
low B12 for too long a time. I really wished, I mean intensely wished, that
I had known before it was too late, about how our fingernails reflect our
B12 health, so, I decided to pass the information on. I hope you do the
same.

My Polish grandfather, Ambrose, had a wealth of medical wisdom. Up
until very recently, however, I discounted most of it as quaint. I thought
he lived to just days shy of 100 because he ate fresh vegetables from his
garden, untainted by pesticides and chemical fertilizer.

I still think that things we grow for ourselves are especially healthful, but
there’s something he said so many decades ago that is beginning to
come to flower in my mind.

What grandpa believed, was not just that the vegetables he grew were
good for him and his family (and neighbors, given the abundance of
some of the crops), but that growing them, in itself, was a healthy thing to
do.

He used to say, “Working in the garden is good for Grandpa,” and I
would smile, thinking that what he meant was simply that seeing
ladybugs, butterflies and flowers on the way to harvest made him happy.

And that may be all there was to it, but in December, 2004, when Elissa
Epel’s research was published showing a link between prolonged
psychological stress and damage at cell level in our bodies which
contributes to aging and disease, I thought again about Grandpa, his full
head of white hair, and how people always said he looked young for his
age.

Recently I’ve begun to remember that he also said, “You’ve got to
stretch. If you don’t stretch, you won’t keep your health.”

He never used the word, “yoga,” so I believe that he meant the normal
extension of muscles in simple tasks like raking and reaching for things.
Plus, he used to say, “Stretch out when you go to bed at night, before
you go to sleep.”

Grandpa talked about how the nerves in his spinal column needed
stretching or his mind would seize up, but all I thought was, “What a
lovely man my Grandpa is.”

Today, Grandpa’s point no longer goes right over my head, because
today I’m stiff, and not just physically.

I am well aware that as my memory declined, I did less and less – and
fewer and fewer different things. What I was unaware of, was that unlike
Grandpa, I had a tendency to low vitamin B12, which is why my memory
at age 50 was vastly inferior to Grandpa’s at 80.

If I had been put on B12 replacement therapy a dozen years ago, when I
was fifty, then I might never have discovered, nor needed to, that what
grandpa said about stretching to keep the mind flexible was ultimately
true.

That I finally discovered it at all was a matter of luck, reinforced by the
shared knowledge of a mental health professional.

The luck, was that I saw a program on how exercises that use balance
can reduce the symptoms of dyslexia. So, having bad balance as a result
of extended low B12, I decided to trying stepping up and down from my
deck several times, which wasn’t much, I knew.

But day by day as I did more of the step ups, my balance got better, and
while I wasn’t suddenly bendy, I was getting more limber and agile.

To the step ups, I added an arms-outstretched, stand-in-place
movement, twisting my upper body first left, then right, without bending at
all. (I was in such bad shape I gasped to finish the first ten.)

A week later I added Edgar Cayce’s windmills, where you rotate you
outstretched arms in big circles, first one direction, then the other. And
boy, was that hard. I had no idea my arms were so heavy!

What’s the upshot? Well, I had lunch with Jill, a friend of mine who’s a
therapist, and I jokingly told her about my stretching routine, and how it
seemed to me that maybe Grandpa was right, that my mind was moving
from one thing to another more freely.

She said, “Oh yes, that is exactly right, there have been several good
studies which have shown that physical activity enhances flexibility of the
mind, and ultimately increases memory.”

“But, as little as I’ve been doing?” I asked, ever the disbeliever.

“It doesn’t take much. A few minutes a day can produce significant
improvement,” Jill assured me.

So, there you have it. Grandpa Ambrose knew a thing or two about
keeping body and mind flexible, agile and healthy.

About the author:
Karen Kline
Sharing what I've learned from experience.
http://www.health-boundaries-bite.com

Hi Linda, I just read a really interesting thing in the New York Times...
It was in an article about a new chip that Intel has developed that works
faster using less energy. I was interested because of my computer
problems. I expect I will have to get a new computer, so as not to be
without this support to my brain/thinking while the problem is being fixed.

Anyway, this is the particular bit that really interested me,
The work by Intel overcomes a potentially crippling technical obstacle that
has arisen as a transistor’s tiny switches are made ever smaller: their
tendency to leak current as the insulating material gets thinner. The Intel
advance uses new metallic alloys in the insulation itself and in adjacent
components.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/27/technology/

The reason that's interesting is that one of the main things that B12 does
is contribute to the building of the myalin (not sure of the spelling) sheath
on nerves.

I don't have anything on hand to copy to explain about that.

But, say it was the same, and most likely it is (given how all growth is
relatively alike, etc.) then when you and I have a need for B12 and
respond well to B12 replacement, that means that the replacement is
resheathing, reinsulating our nerves.

that would explain why stress makes us so much worse: the more stress,
the more energy we run through our nerves, and that probably wears out
the sheathing.

So the question would be, do we start out with really thick, impervious
sheaths on our nerves, and do they get worn thin, or, do the sheaths on
our nerves begin to have a different composition when we are low on
B12, with the result that the less effective composition allows more
energy to leak out and at the same time further wear out our sheathing...

That would explain why my tinnitus (auditory nerves) and my eyesight
(optical nerves) get worse when there's stress.

And, that would also explain why it seems as if the additional amino acids
that I've been taking in the Whey seem to have helped my nerves not
deteriorate quite so rapidly as before under stress.

January 27, 2007