Day 6 - Skin And The Spice Of Life

Subtle changes are occuring.  I feel an ease of movement, I walk around the house with less breathlessness and effort.  Two more daily regimes to tell you about.  I've spiced up my life.  Curcumin is a spice revered in India for centuries, Ayurvedic medicine calls it the king of spices. Studies are being conducted for its effect for treating cancer and arthritis.  It's a powerful anti-inflammatory, and since one of the underlying causes of COPD is inflammation, I take a 1/4 teaspoon of the spice in hot water 4 times a day.  I drink the concoction around the time I do my Buteyko practice.  I'm doing 4 sets of the breathing exercises, with 3 maximum pauses now of 20, 25, and 30 seconds.  Next week I'll increase the pauses to 25, 30, and 35.  Slowly but surely my Control Pause will rise. 

http://www.flex-protex-suppply.com/curcumin.html

  

I've also been pampering my skin.  Skin is the only organ we can see and touch. If the skin looks and feels healthy, there's a good chance your insides are that way too. Skin is our largest eliminative organ and it works overtime during a fast. Before my morning shower I dry brush.  It's the best way to clean your skin and give it a healthy rosy glow.  Use a natural fiber brush with a long handle and brush from the bottom of your feet and hands and everything in between  

The brushing exfoliates and detoxifies your skin and it feels blushingly fantastic.

http://www.naturopathicfoundations.ca/pdf/nf_dry_skin_brushing.pdf

Day 5 - Happy Brain And Healing

48 hours into my juice fast.  I feel the body relaxing a bit due to my Buteyko practice and the holiday I've given my much over worked organism from eating, digesting, and eliminating.  

Mucous is still evident in my lungs and is expelled randomly.  Mucous in my nasal passages has cleared up a lot, and I'm hoping this will spread to my lungs. Breathlessness is still my constant companion.  The absence of this companion is what I seek.  

We spend 75% of our lives in an upright position.  The slant board is another thing I do to assist my body's healing. Inversion therapy intuitively made a lot of sense to me.  Everyone feels the effects of gravity, the pull is always downward, a river flows down, the force is relentless.  Inverting the body to an upside down position counteracts that force.  A billions bats can't be wrong.  

Most people with COPD would find it too difficult to hang upside down, the slant board works beautifully.  I got a 2 X 12  seven foot piece of board and covered it with a yoga mat.  I put one end on a chair and the other on the floor.  I lay on the board on my back head downward and relax.  More than half of my body is now above my brain and heart.  The body experiences relief from the daily patterns of compression, pull to the organs, muscle, blood flow, and oxygen distribution throughout the body.  The brain is nourished.   The quickening force of every organ of the body comes from the brain.  So keep your brain happy and well fed - it's good news for the entire body. 

http://www.sunandmoonstudio.com/articles/headstand.html       

Day 4 - Ode To The Glory Of Grapes

The history of grapes is as old as the history of mankind. Grapes grew wild for hundreds of thousands of years and were first cultivated by the Mesopotamians in 6,000 BC. Wine making was the primary use for grapes, The Greeks even had a god of the vine - Dionysus.

Since grapes have such a noble history, and because I love wine, I chose grape juice as my principle drink during the fast.  There's also some sensible reasoning behind this decision.  Johanna Brandt wrote a book entitled The Grape Cure, where she documents her cancer cure by a diet of only grapes and grape juice.  So, if there is any cancer lurking in my body, perhaps my fast will eradicate it.  Asthma and heart disease also benefit from grapes, and since I have both of these conditions too let's rock 'n roll.  

Today, March 4, 2009 is the first day of my juice fast.  It will end 28 days hence on April 1.   As I begin, my thinking is a bit foggy, my breathing slightly improved, and I am full of inspiration and optimism.   My cough is hardly noticeable.  Early today I merely cleared my throat, and a long stringy bit of sticky mucous came up from my bronchial tubes.  The cleansing has begun, one step on the path 28 days long.  I can't wait to see where it end. 

Day 3 - For Whom The Bells Toll

We in the west have been conditioned to sleep more than we actually require.  The amount of sleep needed is different for everyone, but if sleep is deep and restful less is required.  Due to hyperventilation, my sleep is not refreshing.  I do not rise feeling energized, in fact when I wake I have very little energy.  This is due in part to lack of oxygen, but length of sleep time is included in the equation. 

 

Part of my experiment is to play with my sleep habits. 

I used to wake and immediately begin coughing.  I'd barely have one eye open and the coughing would begin.  The coughing was exhausting which would further effect my energy level.  A brilliant Buteyko practitioner I was working with instructed me to sleep less, and break up my sleep pattern with Buteyko breathing. He deduced that the cough was a result of too much hyperventilating at night. He also told me to never sleep until my stomach was empty.  So, you see how my late night Henry Vlll eating and drinking came into play.  I would always go to bed while digesting food.  The practitioner had me eat no later than 6 PM and go to bed at midnight, set my alarm for 3 AM and do a short session of Buteyko Breathing, go back to bed and rise at 6 AM.  After only one night my cough was gone.

When trying to slow the progression of this disease, and to restore a sense of bodily well-being use every arrow in your quiver; diet, exercise, Buteyko practice, and regulate sleep patterns.  So the bells toll for me at 3 and 6 AM.  

Famous India Guru Muktananda used to say, "Eat less, sleep less, talk less."  All of this advice is good, I would add "love more."  

So I am on a juice fast and I will economize sleep too, and I'll love my body even though it's functioning poorly.  Better functioning poorly than not at all.  I'm grateful for this period of healing and rejuvenation.  

Day 2 - Another Glass Of Wine, Please

I started my two day transition to a total liquid diet.  Self examination and my history reveals that I am totally addicted to food and wine.  I have a predilection towards the Henry Vlll lifestyle, as I am very much the carnal beast.   I don't eat and drink from morning until night, but gluttony does take over during the evening hours.  I love mornings and I am lightly satisfied with coffee and a small nutritious offering.  Lunch is light too.  But ah, night, that's where my Henry takes center stage.  

I have a hot bath, then get into my of cozy pajamas, flannel in the winter, cotton in warmer weather.  Open a nice chilled bottle of Chardonnay and prepare the evening meal, which usually consists of red meat, leave the fat on please, or chicken, and some steamed or roasted vegetables.

So a juice fasts strips you of all your eating and drinking habits, and you are left with a stark day of sipping juices.  No cooking, no eating, no spirits.  Sixty percent of ones bodily energy is spent on digesting and eliminating food, so the energy level increases, so too do thoughts of food.

With the elimination of course food, the body rests, heals and purifies.  In longer fasts, the purification is cell deep.  The purification is known as autolysis or self-consumption.  In The Eating Gorilla Comes In Peace, it's stated, "The stress of fasting favours healthy or growing cells.  Defective cells do not function well under the stress; they die shortly and are eliminated.  Their usable nutrients are recycled to regenerate other cells, while their wastes are eliminated.  Thus, the body literally "eats" its own wastes and diseased or dying cells, and it fully eliminates whatever it cannot consume.

Autolysis is a spontaneous and innately wise, or life supporting,, as the healing of a wound.  For this reason one can fast for long periods without impairing one's health but rather enhancing it, and without damaging healthy cells but rather rejuvenating them and building new ones."  

So the first day of my transition will consist of an apple with cream for lunch, and some brown rice and green tea for dinner.  Air is the primary food, so I will continue with 4 sessions of my Buteyko practice and build up as to 5, and 6 during the course of my fast.   Noon of this day and I am optimistic as to the outcome.  I look forward to walking freely and checking out the glory of springtime.   There is a beautiful one line poem about spring, "I want to do to you what springtime does to the cherry trees." 

I want to feel vital and full of sap. 

  

Day 1 - The Rat In The Lab

I feel a bit like the proverbial laboratory rat.  I'm conducting an experiment on myself, so I am at once the mad scientist, and the rat.  I have COPD - Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease. The disease is relentlessly progressive, not curable and beats the body into submission and death. The current meteoric rise of the disease is startling as Baby Boomers age and begin to feel the results from decades of smoking cigarettes.  

Back in the 50's almost everyone smoked.  Ash trays, some of them very creative depositories, were everywhere; doctor's offices, sporting arenas, elevators, coffee shops, bars, cars and especially homes. Black and white photos abound of James Dean, cigarette defiantly dangling from his lips, oozing the epitome of cool.  Last week I saw Revolutionary Road, the story is set in the 50's and throughout the movie Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet sip double olive martinis and gloriously chain smoke. 

Basically people with COPD can't breathe.  As the disease progresses the simplest of tasks causes breathlessness, even taking a bath or tying your shoes. Breathlessness is a strange bodily phenomenon.  It's very uncomfortable.  Initially it's not painful, but it is a definite form of suffering.  The breathlessness is chronic hyperventilation.  A medical fact known as the Bohr effect states that when more air is breathed than is required, tissue cells are starved of oxygen. The result of this over breathing is a lack of oxygen in the brain, all other major organs and glands and every one of the body's trillions of cells.  

Most people on the street don't know what COPD is, but it recently surpassed breast cancer as the number one cause of death in women.  Cancer, AIDS, and diabetes are, if I may use the term, the sexy diseases.  Lots of press, public relations and millions of research dollars.  COPD is the poor cousin living in a run down trailer court.  That will change as the cost of the disease becomes more and more a burden on health care.  So the West grapples with the problem, but has no idea how to solve it, most likely more toxic drugs.  The medications used today primarily take aim at symptom relief and slowing the progressive disability the illness brings

Western medicine treats people with COPD as dying statistics.  Patients are put through batteries of breathing tests, prescribed inhalers, perhaps prednisone, and eventually oxygen.   Doctors know the oxygen is strictly palliative, and once the O2 is added to the treatment, death is lurking.  So present treatment doesn't slow down the progression of the disease or stop it.  In the eyes of western scientists and doctors the disease is incurable, and those that have it are doomed.  

Fortunately for me and everyone else on this planet we have the extraordinary work of a brilliant Russian, Dr. Konstantin Buteyko.

http://www.buteykoclinic.com/buteyko-life.html

When America and Russia were racing to put the first man on the moon, the Americans spent millions researching and developing a pen that would write in space - the Russians used an archaic device that worked perfectly well, a pencil.

This little story reveals a lot about Russian ingenuity.  Russia has had a long and difficult history, it's not easy to survive there, as a result its people are hardworking and practical.  In Russia they don't treat COPD with drugs, nor do they view the disease as incurable.   They train people with COPD to breathe correctly.   They are aware of the powerful and transformational properties of breath.  They teach them the Buteyko Method of breathing.  Legend has it that Dr. Buteyko cured his wife's emphysema. 

In a nutshell Dr. Buteyko discovered that people who hyperventilate have a shortage of Carbon Dioxide in their system.  This lack of CO2 prevents the blood from efficiently transporting oxygen to the tissues.  Once oxygen attaches itself to the hemoglobin in the lungs, it is transported to the tissues where it is needed. When baseline level of CO2 is too low, the oxygen is not fully unloaded resulting in tissue hypoxia, http://eb,wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypoxia_(medical) the consequence is a feeling of breathlessness, which aggravates the condition.  

Dr. Buteyko bestowed upon mankind the great gift of self healing through breath.   http://www.buteyko.com/method/index_buteyko.html

There is much information on the net on Buteyko and the physiological consequences of low CO2, do the Google thing.

So my experiment is this:  To increase my levels of CO2 and thus correcting my O2 starvation. I will accomplish this by practicing the Buteyko Method, some light yoga and a 28 day juice fast.   

It's really a numbers game.  Dr. Buteyko's great medical discovery for planet Earth is what he termed the Control Pause.    It's a simple way to discover the level of CO2 in the body, and thereby your level of health.  Use a watch or clock with a second hand.  Sit straight without crossing your legs and relax.  Breathe normally. On an exhalation pinch your nose closed and stop breathing, hold your breath - count the number of seconds until you feel a slight discomfort, or hunger for air then resume breathing.   There should be no gasping for air, just a resumption of your normal breathing pattern.  The interval of time in seconds from the breath hold to the first gentle inhalation is the Control Pause.   

Healthy individuals with normal breathing patterns should be able to hold their breath after exhalation for 40-60 seconds.  Most contemporary people have a control pause between 20-40s.  This is not to be confused with taking a deep breath in  and seeing how long you can hold it.  It is simply the measure of time in seconds after the exhalation until there is a slight need for air and the inhalation.   So like I said, it's a numbers game.  Today; February 27, 2009, 3:30 PM, my control pause is 15 seconds.  So my CO2 levels are very low, I'm breathless most of the time, walking is a chore, I can't walk too far, small hills are impossible mountain ranges, and I avoid stairs.  If my control pause decreases, my present state will deteriorate.  A control pause of 10 and life becomes quite miserable. At 5 death is imminent. 

The end result of the experiment is to increase the control pause.  My goal is a control pause of 20 seconds by Tuesday, March 31.   This is really, really a numbers game, that's only an increase of 5 seconds to my present control pause. That 5 seconds will make a huge difference in my health and overall feeling of well being.  The world's most proficient Buteyko practitioner, Christopher Drake, told me that if I can obtain a control pause of 25, I'll be a new man living in a more beautiful world.  That's only a 10 second increase in my present pause of 15.  It seems so damn doable and I'm inspired.  

http://cpdrake.googlepages.com/christopher.drake

I decided to publish my experiment online so friends, family, and whomever gives a shit can keep tabs on my progress or lack thereof.  I'll post a diary every day. This public arena will also motivate me to stick to the experiment.  It'll document my case which I think will benefit others suffering with this disease.  If it works I'm writing a book and creating a COPD website, 'cause God knows there are hundreds of millions in my condition that need help.

Thanks for taking the time to read my post, I know you have lots of other things to do.

John