Say you’re an engineer. You see the world through the eyes of an engineer: you like theories but you live by results, tangible results. When results do not support a theory there’s a fascinating puzzle to solve and you can get obsessed by it.
The puzzle doesn’t have to do with gears or bridges to get you going, I know of an engineer that solved the puzzle of his own Diabetes I. He wrote his solution down in a book and became a doctor to help others.
say cheese-spikes-bloodsugar-too-but-not-as-much, dr. Bernstein!
To be honest: he initially became a doctor because doctors can order certain tests that engineers cannot. Becoming a doctor was a smart solution, one typically chosen by an engineer. Thinking out of the box, getting things done.
To me dr.Bernstein is an inspiration. He took control of his own illness. Thought along with his physicians. Proposed theories, did experiments and solved the puzzle. With Diabetes I -making no insuline of any importance- he manages his daily life so he does not need insuline besides the base line dosis that keeps him from keeling over. He does not need any insuline to cover his food intake. Now that’s clever. He solved the puzzle and lives to enjoy that every day of his life.
He’s also honest about the mental implications of having found a solution. The pangs of everyday.
Whenever he passes a bakery with all its delicious smells and sights his body and mind react. They want cake! This hurts. He can’t have cake. His health is too precious to him to risk it. No cheating. But still, this hurts. On a core level because carbohydrates are the treats of life and we are programmed to covet them. But no, he’ll be sensible and grown up and do the right thing. Still hurts a bit though.
That’s ok. Things will hurt. There will be yearning and things you cannot have and plans that fall through and disappointments. We can cry a little. And then we sigh a little. And then we move on. To the things we do have and can enjoy. I find it very uplifting to know that dr. Bernstein’s solution is something he works on every day, also when he’s blue or sad or grumpy. Those are the times it really matters. Dr. Bernstein is honest about how he copes during those times and that is inspirational. Because he’s honest about being human.
Now then. I’m an engineer. I now have this black box called a body and recently I’ve been putting other things than usual in it an results are stunning. Albeit not 100% repeatable and not covered by theories very well.
I have some parts of the puzzle. Stakes are high. Part of the problem is that my mind is clouded by the supplements I take. Excitotoxins and heavy metals are floating in my brain. Sugar too. Messing up my thought processes and also messing up my self image. Tricky.
Today I am here as your engineer to present (to me) some sort of plan to handle this:
- I’ve gone back in time and once again have only one hour of coherent mental activity per day.
- this hour need to be accompagnied by physical activity because only this will help eliminate the excitotoxins from my system
- since the rest of the day knows brainfog more or less a checklist must be in place to remember to do/eat the right things at the right times (yeah, checklist!)
- low doses of supplements that will exit the body within a day means I should not have to worry about long term damage (liver! it hurts a little) and that this is not a regression in health. Symptoms should reside in a few days if I stop and the true base line of my illness will present. The one from March 2013 and its progress from then on.
- all other knowledge about my body is still correct and should be used (stomach works in marble sized morsels so eat small portions. This will aid the liver too.)
- two excellent tips from two dear knitter friends:
“Allow yourself to fret for 20 minutes. Then put aside your worries for another day.”
“You say you can feel in your gut if something is good for you. If you have doubts, they too will be felt in your gut.”
Now follows my daily checklist for this period in time:
- eat one egg yoke, drink tea, have vit.D
- ease into the day for a bit. End this period with some npc.
- have your second breakfast (chicken soup) with supplements (m-B12, m-folate, lithium, multi-gland, vit D, vit C, zinc). Soup contains some foliage for brushing down the bowels.
- do something vertical for about an hour (sewing, write a lettre, vacuum, put something away, laundry, weaving, cooking, take picture, block FO, something from the to-do list) and prepare project for resting (which knitting project of hand sewing?). This hour uses up the blood sugar and helps eliminating excitotoxins
- wash face, brush teeth.
- rest (one hour). Cover yourself with a blanket, you’ll get cold as your energy goes into your duodenum. Watch a movie, knit something simple.
- the rest of the day is free for doing fun things and resting on the couch. Have a look outside once and awhile. Eat soup. Drink tea. Drink water with lemon juice. Feel free to be brainfogged. Allow and aid your body to take out the waste. Eat some carrots to provide extra roughage.
- go to the toilet whenever you think about it
- this will take a couple of months. Forget about work during this time. Don’t fret.
NB. I’ve making butter cakes lately: a glutenfree, sugarfree version of the famous Dutch Boterkoek. (It’s not really sugarfree, I put in one fig because I felt like it)
I use 250 grams of excellent full fat butter (I use Demeter, a non-homoginized organic butter); 250 grams of rice flour; some salt; quite a bit of pepper; a lot of chopped ginger (one or two fingers worth); lemon peeled skin of half a lemon and one chopped fig.
mix it all in a round baking form. No need to line the form with grease or wax paper. Put in the oven for 20 minutes at 180 degrees celcius. Let it cool, put it in the fridge. Delicious the next day!
Dear engineer,
remember the basics: the stomach only takes food one marble at the time. Blood sugar rises ridiculously, even with small bits of food, and this cake has both starches and fig sugar in it. So temper your intake of this delicious cake. Whenever you have had some and feel a physical yearn for another piece, you have taken too much. Do something else for 20 minutes to let the blood sugar levels calm down. Best thing to do is physical activity to get rid of the sugar without having to use insuline. Insuline is a poison. But a better poison than (blood) sugar.
best whishes,
your better half.
ok. Here’s Eddie Izzard on youtube with Cake or Death and a design by Defiant Damsel over on Etsy:
MarvelLogic 