Cancer and diet

Posted by abraham.williams@gmail.com on in disease, heath

Last year, my mother had a tumor in her abdomen due to Ovarian cancer. She had had Uterine cancer about 10 years before. There was no mention of this re-emergence when I visited her with my daughters at the time. She planned to have a good visit with her granddaughters and would have surgery after we left. I got a call after her surgery once my girls and I were back in San Francisco. There were a number of complications with the surgery, but she recovered. She decided to forgo the chemotherapy because of the side effects (a protocol was recommended that is now abandoned). After speaking with a couple of doctors, she decided to take a natural path.

I would have like to have known about the cancer, but it was a fantastic visit looking back. So my mother’s plan worked well for me and my girls. And, while I was worried about her not doing any chemotherapy in combination with the removal of the tumor, I totally supported her decision.

We visited her again this summer and it seemed she was very tired. She had spent a year eating right. She was skipping sugar and refined grains, eating home grown vegetables and walking daily. I expected she was on the right path. Although, she was constipated and I could see she was getting more and more fatigued about the time we left.

Two weeks after my girls and I left, I get a phone call that my mother almost died. The cancer had come back again. She was down to 6 pints of blood. The cancer had prevented the creation of new blood and this explains why she was so fatigued. After a number of emergency room visits and a serious chemo session, she is doing much better. I found that not only does she have another tumor that is inoperable but she had cancer fluid throughout her abdomen that was causing pressure on her bowels and organs. I’m glad to report that the chemo had a visible effect on the tumor and the cancer fluid. Her abdominal swelling has reduced greatly. She is scheduled to 6 to 8 more chemo sessions.

This experience is an eye-opener in more ways than one. This type of cancer is very aggressive. Taking Poly MVA, staying alkaline, eating the right foods and exercising in the way she was DID NOT STOP her cancer. If it slowed it down, I cannot say. I am a believer in eating right and exercising to prevent cancer and, in terms of prevention, I will not abandon this. However, if I should have a similar choice to make in the future, I will be careful not to mix preventative measures with ones more suited for battle.

I am very thankful for the chemotherapy and am looking forward to seeing more visible evidence that it’s working for my mother.

Honoring my Mothers

Posted by abraham.williams@gmail.com on in General

While Mother’s Day may seem like an ordinary holiday or some effort by card companies to increase sales, it comes at a poignant time for me.

I have multiple mothers in my life: Grandmothers, great aunts, aunts, friends, my wife, her mother and my own stepmother and birth mother. There are a great many things about them which reminds me of their uniqueness and specialness which has had an impact on me throughout my life.

As a young boy, the complete, gentle and loving acceptance of my birth mother is something that has stayed with me. The strength of my stepmother as she took me as a wild teenage boy has also stayed with me. I remember my Aunt, a wonderful woman who has since passed, took me as a young boy and sought to fill the role of grandmother since both my grandmothers had passed either before I was born or just after. My great aunt also took me in and sought to fill the place her sister was supposed to fill. My wife, with her constant focus on the goodness that should surround our children, brings that same gentleness and care to me and our home.

In each of these mothers, it was the caring they brought. It was and is their gentle presence surrounding me and their own children. It is a good thing, a very good thing.

All this care, this softness tempers me for the better. I believe I am better for all this good influence on me. I’m more gentle than I would otherwise be. I’ve been lucky to have those gentle mothers in my life reminding me of the good nurturing I was fortunate to know.

On Mother’s Day, I’m thankful to all the mothers who’ve come to me in their way. I love them all.

Constant Alertness and Extensor Muscles and Fatigue and Pain

Posted by abraham.williams@gmail.com on in Health 4 Comments

As I was being Rolfed today, I heard something that I had never heard before. The limbic system, or the part of our brain that is the most reptilian (fight or flight) is linked the extensor muscles. When a person becomes alert, the extensors straighten the body and neck and lift the head. Imagine a deer eating grass in a meadow and it hears a startling sound. It lifts it’s head. It’s alert. After the starting sound passes and there’s no sign of danger, the deer will relax and begin to eat the grass again.

So imagine humans who work in high-demanding jobs and have young children and commute to work. Or, imagine people who have two high-demanding jobs, or one that keeps them for long hours. People in these kinds of situations are on constant alert. They are on alert at work, on the way to and from work and at home. Time for rest is not considered until it’s time for bed.

It is in this high-stress kind of situation that the extensor muscles will fire. If the alert is constant, the firing will be constant. This firing will fatigue the body and cause low grade inflammation. This is the link between stress and back pain or neck pain or any kind of pain that comes from extensor muscles.

If you see a deer in the winter, you will see a hard deer. It will look haggard and tough. Winter is a hard time for deer. Winter is a time for being on alert for the search of food and constant muscle firing with the shivers. A winter deer is a stressed deer. When summer comes around and the food is plentiful, the deer is more relaxed and looks more supple. When a wind blows and ruffles the leaves, the deer becomes alert for a moment until the wind passes and then relaxes.

People in high-stress situations need for the wind to stop blowing so their body can relax.

Why are we responsible for the packaging manufacturers choose?

Posted by abraham.williams@gmail.com on in recycle

Doesn’t our recycling system seem bizarre? Consumers buy things from manufacturers and then it’s the consumer’s responsibility for the product and it’s packaging from that moment after. There’s actually a social pressure on the consumer to handle the product and packaging in an environmental way, to recycle it. Then, local governments are pressured, through good intentions, to have recycling programs to reduce waste. This is generally how I see things working with our recycling system.

Think about the expectations here. Manufacturers produce most of the single-use land fill destined products and packaging. But, the people who buy these products are expected to be the ones to recycle. Isn’t that strange? Shouldn’t the problem be fixed at the source? Any other solution focusing on individual effects isn’t scalable. Is it more effective to remove the machine gun from the hands of a shooter than it is to dodge bullets? Wouldn’t it work better if the manufacturers had an economic/ecological sense of this waste they are responsible for and designed for reuse? Or, wouldn’t it be better if manufacturers were forced to be ecological? Wouldn’t it be better this way?

As a consumer, I see I’ve got a few choices with the current setup.

  • Not buying things: hard to do, but people are trying this.
  • Only choose products with a design for multiple-use.
  • Another is I can focus on stripping products and packages apart for recycling.
  • Combining those three above is a fourth option and what I do now.
  • I could not care and just let it pile up; however, I see the effects of manufacturer’s already making those choices. I don’t like it. It’s ugly and hazardous.
  • I could try to influence legislation so that it’s illegal to operate in a way that’s single-use. That would be hard, but sometimes the best answers are hard. I do want this.

Is there a better answer?

I imagine a response to this being “Let business run free. Don’t stop a free market. It will regulate itself.” I bet it will regulate itself…over time. Everything is regulated over time. However, while I’m alive and while my children are and their children are, I want to focus on the joys in life and not recycling. Overall, my answer to that is a question. Should you let a business have practices that are detrimental? We don’t allow lead in toys for example. It’s detrimental. Maybe someone might say trash is not detrimental. I’d argue that it is. Think about how much city governments have to pay for garbage and landfill space. We pay for that in our taxes. My conclusion here is that I draw a connection between single-use landfill destined products and a destruction of beauty (who thinks landfill creates beauty?) and a reduction of my income. I pay more taxes because of single-use products. I think everyone else who pays taxes has the same effect in place whether they know it or not. I spend time thinking about an unnecessary problem which has become necessary to think about instead of having more reflective time with my family, work, etc. I could choose to not care, but this single-use crap is making work for me and costing me money. Let’s kick it in the pants so we focus on cool stuff like creating a nation of innovators for the betterment of mankind (creating opportunities for our children to succeed…education damn it!) and colonizing the moon…something interesting and that benefits people.