Saturday, April 12, 2014

Step One

Increase Physical Activity

Results to expect:
Do this to burn sugar and acid ash out of your system, to increase circulation, improve resistance to disease, and decrease your rate of aging. Exercise before bed also improves your sleep value, resulting in deeper sleep with less interruption.

The secret:
Your body senses the amount of sugar in the blood and takes appropriate action by releasing insulin. The cells need insulin in order to use the sugar for fuel.

1. In a normal body, once the fuel demand is met, extra calories are converted to fat. Bad result.

2. In the case of low blood sugar, excess insulin results in rapid burn off of the blood sugar, resulting in feeling hot (from the burn), and then crashing when too much sugar has been removed from the blood at once. This makes you tired, slow, and hungry - for sugar. Bad result.

3. In the case of insulin resistance (which usually means Type II diabetes), the cells refuse the insulin the body offers, and do not therefore burn the sugar. This excess sugar in the blood has several unhappy effects. One, the sugar crystalizes on the outside of red blood cells. This makes the red blood cell less able to carry oxygen. It also makes the cell both big and sharp. This tears up capillaries, which eventually can cause the loss of feet and eyesight. More immediately, since the brain runs on almost pure sugar, the brain remains active, making it difficult to sleep. Even though this active brain is somewhat foggy. Very bad result.

● In the first case, exercise leaves fewer calories to be turned into fat.
● In the second case, the exercise uses the sugar before the body sees the calories as extra and burns them away.
● In the third case, exercise keys the cells to ask for insulin so that they can become active to meet the need created by the exercise.

Assignment:

WWWW (Watermelon works wonderfully well)

So I at least have my basic health back.  The problem was still pH.

I begin to think that almost all health problems come down to pH.  No doctor will tell you that, of course.  Few doctors even think about pH.  They are not nutritionists or dietitians.  MD means 'medical doctor' - they study medicine, and don't study nutrition at all.

When I just couldn't pull myself out of my pain and depression, I decided to really push with the pH and see what happened, just out of pure desperation.  So after looking up my pH charts (again) - there is a great composite here: http://www.angelfire.com/az/sthurston/acid_alkaline_foods_list.html - I decided to fast on watermelon.

I did not expect it to work so well!  Since my primary problem is carbohydrate addiction compounded by learned behavior of eating to relieve both boredom and low energy, having a few bites of watermelon absolutely anytime I want actually works.  For three days I ate almost nothing else, and gradually my pH went up.

So this is my latest TOE (Theory of Everything):

In our carbohydrate-rich American diet, our pH tends to be low (acidic).  What does acid do?  It dissolves things, right?  It dissolves both muscle and bone, pulling the calcium out of them to balance the blood pH.  This process causes pain to both the muscle and the bone.

Your first symptom of developing arthritis could be muscle pain.

Water

And I never followed up on that?  Wow.  Well, I was busy.

Hubby and I did get the stack fixed.  And the drain that we broke while fixing the stack.  Not too bad, actually.

But while I was on the water (and Daughter-allergic-to-home-repair was still in Hawaii), I kept going.

We now have an all-PEX house.  All water coming in through the house is now done in blue (cold) and red(hot) PEX pipe.

It was incredibly easy.  The hardest part was stringing it up through the walls, but hubby dropped a weight on a string down through, and we were able to pull it up.

With the gas pipe done in the spring and the water in the fall, I feel like there may be hope for this house after all.

I also got the 'new' furnace running, and it has been fine all winter.  It's not really big enough for the house.  When the temp is below freezing, I needed to have stove burners running, but we got through all right.

I need to be actually working on the duct system, but hesitate to actually make a supply plenum for it, because I think we need to eventually invest in a new furnace that is actually the right size.