Inflammation Flares Part 2

by Maggie McCarey

LIFE CHOICES THAT STOP INFLAMMATORY FLARES

NUMBER ONE

No processed sugar.

Not even.  Nope.  Nada on a regular basis.  Okay, once in a blue moon.

NUMBER TW0

Drink half your weight in ounces of pure water every day

NUMBER THREE

Have a plan and necessary meds or herbs to act quickly.

The good news is that when it first appears like the cavalry, you can’t mistake it for something else.

Learn how to act quickly to reduce inflammation when you experience an inflammatory trigger like a fall or a shock or an insect bite.  Think of all the home remedies and over the counters you know about. My daughter, Catia, swears by a penny taped on a bee sting remedy because it works for her.  Treating my daughter Stef’s no-see-ums poisoned inflamed upper body a few years ago was not so easy and far more urgent.  Most people get a tiny red mark at the site of a bite.  Stef went into full inflammatory flare within an hour. The inflammation spread quickly throughout her left arm, her upper body, even her eyelids. She knew that the inflammation was caused by histamine, a symptom-causing chemical released by her immune system during an allergic reaction and that she needed a strong anti-histamine to subdue her oh so helpful immune system. She took Zyrtec which reduced the swelling, heat, redness, and pain in her arm and the healing process began.  Lipese need a plan.

Herbs in Ointments, Tinctures, Balms and Teas

One of our lipese on a recent forum shared that her legs ached from humidity and too much standing so she massaged arnica cream on them and the pain improved. Why?  Because arnica root is an anti-inflammatory herb. It’s believed that the plant contains derivatives of thymol, which seems to have anti-inflammatory effects. Herbs are often anti-inflammatory.  That’s how they work.  They reduce chronic swelling.

A small list of Anti-inflammatory Herbs

Turmeric, ginger, guggul, neem, boswellin, holy basil, bromelain, aswagandha, blue vervain, butcher’s broom, calendula (marigold), cat's claw, chamomile, fennel, queen of the meadow, skull-cap, buplerium root, dandelion, rutin, and my favorites: Rosemary, Lavender, Lemon Balm, Raspberry Leaf. 

If you ask me, these four herbs should be in every sauce, gluten free cupcake, meat seasoning, and toothpaste ever made.  I have seen rosemary reverse heart and lung issues. I make burns literally disappear with lavender because a burn makes your skin acidic and lavender turns it back to alkaline. I baked rosemary so often on chicken, my grandson once said to me:  How come you always make me eat these sticks on my food?” An herbalist friend told me a week ago: “Every woman on the planet should take raspberry leaf on a permanent basis.” Lemon balm tea can change a horrid, back-cracking monthly into a pain-free event. 

     

All inflammatory diseases are about how we nourish our bodies. The modern world nourishes with chemicals.  Herbs that detox us from chemicals are essential to recovery.  You can cook with herbs, bathe in them, shampoo your hair with them, and drink them in teas.  They come in gels, oils, and balms. You could literally be healing yourself with  herbs that also improve skin tone. And, they are inexpensive.

 NUMBER FOUR 

Drink Tea Daily to Reduce Chronic Inflammation

Green, White, Oolong, Black is the proper order of most to least effective anti-inflammatory tea.

All teas are not the same. White, green, oolong, and black refer to the leaf at time of harvest and the oxidation process of each tea. Pekoe, for example is a white tea because it is harvested with unopened baby buds, slightly sun baked, and lightly oxidized (bruised).  White is the purest of the teas and I believe, based on aging as deterioration, one of the two best to drink. Green tea is exactly what it means.  The tea plant is harvested when the leaves are at their greenest and at the peak of fullness and medicinal strength.  Green tea is generally not oxidized. It is almost always considered the healthiest of teas with Dr. Mercola, a lone dissenting voice, who is concerned with high levels of fluoride present in green tea.

      

Oolong is tea that is picked while the tea is brownish green, placed in the sun for a short time and then oxidized. Darjeeling is perhaps the best-known oolong tea. Oolong and almond tea is one of my favorite teas. Finally, black tea is made from older brown-to-dead leaves and it is most oxidized. English Breakfast is a black tea blend of usually Assam, Ceylon and Kenyan teas. Earl Gray is a black tea with oil of bergamot added.  Rooibos, South African tea, is technically a member of the legume family and extremely high in flavinoids and antioxidants. It is a fabulous anti-inflammatory.  Any tea is better than no tea, but regarding anti-inflammatory properties, white and green are preferred.

     

A caution: If you open up the bag of a tea that is labeled pure, you will find hard wood like dried shards of tea that can be mixed with anything, including weeds along the road.  When the bag sits in hot water, the mixture inside barely swells to half the size of the bag.  It is probably better that you not drink tea at all than to drink this “pure” potpourri of tea and sprayed weeds.  On the other hand, a good organic tea looks like a rolled leaf, and when placed in a tea strainer will swell four times its size.  Its color will be vibrant, its touch moving from soft white to twiggy black.  This is the tea you want to develop a habit of drinking for the rest of your life.

NUMBER FIVE

A good strong cup of brew? Not.

I love my coffee.  I will die drinking coffee like some really old ladies keep smoking.  But I have to be honest. Yes, coffee has the highest level of antioxidants in the universe (for the first 15 minutes after it is brewed), but it has other issues with recognizable words we coffee-lovers don’t want to hear.  Be brave, dear breve misto venti extra light, extra hot, no sugar Starbuck’s gal.  Read on:

           

“The most potent ingredient in it….is caffeine. This compound is -a -known stimulant. Ingesting stimulants, like caffeine, cause an adrenal response in the body. This response increases cortisol which raises blood pressure and heart rate, as well as interferes with other hormone production in the body. People with elevated cortisol levels produce less DHEA, testosterone, estrogen, progesterone and other hormones that give the body balance at both physical and mental levels. Excess cortisol can suppress the immune system as well. “

Cortisol is that hard to lose belly fat. Sigh.  And it hardens our capillaries.  Diddleydang.

            http://renegadehealth.com/blog/2011/01/31/coffee-does-have-antioxidants

NUMBER SIX

 Mother’s Breath

Continually Exercise Your God Gene

When I went through MDL, I had a wonderful therapist who could tell me when my lymphatic system released and drained.  She could not, however, apply any technique to make it happen.  Sometime during the first few sessions, I realized I was gripping the table like a life raft, my teeth clinched and my breath shallow.  As a part of allowing God rather than fear to be present in me, I began to do the Mother’s breath. The moment I started breathing properly, she jumped back and said, “What did you do?  Your lymph system just turned on like a faucet.”

     

This was great confirmation that I was actually changing my body with this ancient breathing technique.  I explained to her that I often breathe a prayer that I learned from the Sufi’s in Alaska.  They believed this to be the perfect God/child of God breathing pattern.  Seven count in.  Pause for one count.  Seven count out.  Pause one count. Seven count in, etc; for several minutes.  With the 7-1-7-1 cycle, I was encouraged to find seven-syllable mantras that I believe.  In Christ all things are made whole, and I am the oneness of God became the two mantras that I choose between.

     

Now in any situation that I attempt to control my external world out of fear, I do the Mother’s Breath. Because people with lipedema often forget how, and, no, it is not caused by a crushing weight on our chests from obesity, we need to be taught to breathe. The Mother’s breath is one that I use for myself and in healing sessions with others.

     

Every MLD session after that, my therapist said, “ Let me try first. Dang. Okay do that breathing thing you do.”  I breathed my mantra and 7 count.  “There goes the faucet,” she would laugh.

     

So often the lipese bear the weight of others who are also ego-damaged and looking for someone to target, or we take things to heart more than others, or we find out early in life being helpful keeps us safe. But after awhile our lives are so stressful that if we then come upon a real life change, or even a common stress, a worried day over a child, or a late credit card payment, bald tires, a missed appointment, etc. The old legs get tight, indicating that we have unconsciously called for help where we hold stress--in our legs.  That feeling of tightness in your legs? Check it out.  If they are suddenly feeling heavy use the Mother’s Breath.  When you do, the lymph system flows, channels open, toxins  release and you are the Oneness of God in the process of being healed.