Relationship Between Cortisol and Estrogen - Part 1

By Maggie McCarey

 Last Saturday, I watched Les Miserables. I enjoyed the movie, felt the characters’ pain, grieved their deaths, but I wasn't a wet mess of tears at the satisfying shmultzy end of the movie.  Just a few days earlier, I was so emotional, I blubbered over a Carnival Cruise Triumph news report. At that time, my left ankle had begun to swell and fill with inflammation, a sure sign that my body was on the verge of a “lipedema break out.”  But why? I had not been sleeping well and I was experiencing a lot of intense emotions. I needed to find out fast.

 
For some time, two question marks have been bobbing up and down in my brain:  cortisol and estrogen.  I know that cortisol is triggered by stress, one of the major causes of our lipedema inflammation.  And, anyone who has ever had pre-menstrual “blues” knows that overflowing emotion—stress-- is estrogen driven.  But do cortisol and  estrogen work together?  Are they related to each other?  These questions are the subjects of my research and now this blog.  Were cortisol and stress causing me to be a blubbering diva?

Cortisol, Stress, and Inflammation


Under stressful conditions, cortisol provides the body with glucose by tapping into protein stores via gluconeogenesis in the liver. This energy can help an individual fight or flee a stressor. However, elevated cortisol over the long term consistently produces glucose, leading to increased blood sugar levels. Cortisol functions to reduce inflammation in the body, which is good, but over time, these efforts to reduce inflammation also suppress the immune system. Chronic inflammation, caused by lifestyle factors such as poor diet and stress, helps to keep cortisol levels soaring, wreaking havoc on the immune system in the process. (www.todaysdietitian.com/newarchives/111609p38.shtml)

Translated:  Your adrenal glands are the conveyor belt in the famous I Love Lucy chocolate factory skit, but, rather than chocolates, your factory functions to produce what you need to keep you healthy through both urgent, but momentary, and chronic life-sapping external events. One of its favorite defenses is cortisol, which is produced via cholestrol in the adrenal glands located above your kidneys.  As your body goes through anything from a missed appointment to the death of a loved ones, it calls for cortisol (literally little protein bars stored in the liver).  Obviously, the more chronic your life, the more cortisol you have unleashed until, like Lucy and Ethel shoving chocolates in their mouth, under their hats, and down their fronts, as the conveyor belt speeds faster and faster. Eventually, your adrenal glands burn out but not without a fight. 

Watch Lucy at the Chocolate Factory:  

Our bodies try to store the extra cortisol first. How?

One way to store the extra cortisol is via visceral fat storage. Cortisol can mobilize triglycerides from storage and relocate them to visceral fat cells (those under the muscle, deep in the abdomen). Cortisol also aids adipocytes’ development into mature fat cells. The biochemical process at the cellular level has to do with enzyme control (11-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase), which converts cortisone to cortisol in the adipose tissue. More of these enzymes in the visceral fat cells may mean greater amounts of cortisol produced at the tissue level, adding insult to injury (since the adrenals are already pumping out cortisol). (www.todaysdietitian.com/newarchives/111609p38.shtml)

Researchers have discovered that cortisol eventually overloads the adrenal glands which work so hard for so long, they eventually produce less active cortisol, and  thus leave the body vulnerable to other hormones like over abundance of estrogen, whose excess is stored forever in the liver.

YIKES, SO WHAT IS ESTROGEN?

What is estrogen? It is primarily a combination of three chemical messengers who travel by body fluid to affect all stages of reproduction, sexual behavior, and female characteristics in both men and women.

Estrogen is an entire class of related hormones that includes estriol, estradiol, and estrone. Estriol is made from the placenta. It’s produced during pregnancy. Estradiol is the primary sex hormone of childbearing women. It is formed from developing ovarian follicles. Estradiol is responsible for female characteristics and sexual functioning. Also, estradiol is important to women's bone health. Estradiol contributes to most gynecologic problems, including endometriosis and fibroids and even female cancers. Estrone is widespread throughout the body. It is the only estrogen present after menopause. (http://women.webmd.com/guide/normal-testosterone-and-estrogen-levels-in-women).

                  THE NEW BUZZ PHRASE:  ESTROGEN DOMINANCE

Dr. Christine Northrup, arguably the world’s leading women’s health advocates, explains estrogen balance and dominance so well, I am just crediting it to her and adding it to this blog.  She explains:

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW

The conventional medical mindset is that menopause is an estrogen deficiency disease resulting from ovarian failure. Women have been led to believe that at the slightest symptoms, they should run out and get estrogen replacement. While estrogen levels will decrease during menopause, the truth is, estrogen levels do not fall appreciably until after a woman’s last period. In fact, far more women suffer from the effects of "estrogen dominance" during the transition—that is, they have too much estrogen relative to progesterone. And some women can suffer from the symptoms of estrogen dominance for 10 to 15 years, beginning as early as age 35.

LISTEN TO YOUR BODY

The symptoms listed below, as well as many others, often arise when estrogen over stimulates both the brain and body. All of these symptoms are exacerbated by stress of all kinds. Many women in their thirties and early forties find that they experience moderate to severe symptoms of estrogen dominance as they approach perimenopause.

                            Decreased sex drive

                            Irregular or otherwise abnormal menstrual periods

                            Bloating (water retention)

                            Breast swelling and tenderness

                            Fibrocystic breasts

                            Headaches (especially premenstrually)

                            Mood swings (most often irritability and depression)

                            Weight and/or fat gain (particularly around the abdomen and hips)

                            Cold hands and feet (a symptom of thyroid dysfunction)

                            Hair loss

                            Thyroid dysfunction

                            Sluggish metabolism

                            Foggy thinking, memory loss

                            Fatigue

                            Trouble sleeping/insomnia

                            PMS

Estrogen dominance has also been linked to allergies, autoimmune disorders, breast cancer, uterine cancer, infertility, ovarian cysts, and increased blood clotting, and is also associated with acceleration of the aging process.

WHAT CAUSES THIS

When a woman’s menstrual cycle is normal, estrogen is the dominant hormone for the first two weeks leading up to ovulation. Estrogen is balanced by progesterone during the last two weeks. As a woman enters peri-menopause and begins to experience an ovulatory cycles (that is, cycles where no ovulation occurs), estrogen can often go unopposed, causing symptoms. Skipping ovulation is, however, only one potential factor in estrogen dominance. In industrialized countries such as the United States, there can be many other causes, including:

                            Excess body fat (greater than 28%)

                            Too much stress, resulting in excess amounts of cortisol, insulin, and norepinephrine, which can lead to adrenal exhaustion and can also adversely affect overall hormonal balance

                            A low-fiber diet with excess refined carbohydrates and deficient in nutrients and high quality fats

                            Impaired immune function

                            Environmental agents 

http://www.drnorthrup.com/womenshealth/healthcenter/topic_details.php?topic_id=118

Next: Surprising Research on Estrogen Dominance. Tests at home to determine if your adrenal glands are too fast or to slow.  How I  tested my hypothesis and stopped my estrogen overload with herbs and watched Les Miserables without tears.

Relationship between cortisol and estrogen, part II
Relationship between cortisol and estrogen, part III

My first Whole 30 - Week 1

By Christina Routon

For the January Lifestyle Challenge I chose to start a paleo diet. I went all in by following a program called Whole 30. You can find out more about this plan at Whole9Life and check out the following websites for recipes:

The Clothes Make the Girl (I'm also using her cookbook, Well Fed)
Nom Nom Paleo

Whole 30 is an elimination plan (no grains, legumes, dairy (except ghee and eggs), sweeteners of any kind) and it also includes other rules such as:

No "paleo" treats
No "paleo-ifying" regular foods - no "paleo bread", etc.

This means my gluten-free pancakes with sugar-free syrup are out, as well as the corn tortillas and grits, peanut butter, and other things I was still eating. Also, all sweeteners, including stevia, Splenda, Truvia, agave - are out. It's been a learning curve, but I'm doing okay. I'm not having the cravings / headaches other people have talked about during the Whole30 timeline as I'd already gone wheat-free / sugar-free.

Here are a few things I've learned this week. The lessons should apply to any type of plan you're doing.

Plan ahead - This is crucial. I can't just run out and grab something to eat for lunch or toss something together for dinner. There has to be a plan in place and food has to be ready ahead of time.

Keep it simple - Don't try to make meals that consume too much time in the kitchen. It's been a week and I already feel as if I'm in kitchen jail. I do try to cook ahead as Melissa recommends in her book, Well Fed, but I end up cooking for about two days ahead instead of the week. One of my rules for recipes - must include items found in my local grocery store. The only item I bought at a health-food store was Coconut Aminos.

Get family participation - My husband is doing this with me as a show of support. It's always nice to have support and participation. Our son still lives with us, but he's been buying his own food.

It doesn't have to be expensive - Yes, I know a lot of paleo and primal sites want you to buy grass-fed beef and free-range chicken and organic vegetables. I can't afford those at this point in time. I buy what I can, even if it's not perfect. I do check the dirty dozen list to see if the vegetables / fruit should be bought organic, though, and if I can I buy them organic or do without. I started buying ingredients and testing recipes during the weeks leading to Christmas, just to test them out. So far, I've only exceeded my weekly grocery budget twice in about three weeks, and then by $20.

I'm not weighing until the end of January, but I do have my weight and measurements from the end of December to compare. However, I'm not doing this for weight loss. As many of you know, with lipedema we're not really trying to "lose weight". We're trying to fight inflammation. Some of what I'm doing may result in weight loss, but I'm not expecting my legs to change overnight. I'm not expecting to drop a significant amount of weight. My reason for following this plan in January and continuing with the paleo / primal diet is to reduce inflammation I already have and prevent any more from occurring.

Starting today, January 7, I'm adding exercise back into my routine as well.

How are you doing on your January challenge?

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.

Acceptance and Freedom

By Christina Routon

Lose Weight Now! Lose Weight Fast! Lose Weight in Minutes a Day!

It's that time of year again, when the infomercials are in full force and most of us are setting resolutions to lose weight and exercise. Before you buy the next gadget you see on TV, look around your house for a second. Look at the Gazelle or the treadmill you bought. Instead of exercise equipment, it's new function is most likely a clothes hanger. I bet you're still paying the monthly fee for the auto-shipment of vitamins that came with whatever doodad you bought last year, aren't you?

We've all bought products that sound so outrageous (Shake Weight? Butt Toning Sneakers?) just hoping they will be our answer, the absolutely last product we'll ever buy ever again, and we'll have the beautiful, firm, shapely legs and body we've always wanted. But mostly the legs. Please, God, let this doodad give me great legs!

Yes, I've prayed that prayer too, and I've bought several products, diet plans, cookbooks. I've lost weight, but as those of us with lipedema know, we end up with the same legs with little to no changes. It's upsetting, aggravating, frustrating. It make me angry. This leads to giving up, putting the weight back on, then in  January we start all over again. This product will work! I know it will! And we're going around in circles once again.

When I learned I had lipedema this past summer, it was hard. It crushed me. It crushed my hope. Before, I had hope. I hoped in the doodads, in the cookbooks, in the gurus. I was trusting in the things of earth and had been shot down. But now, six months down the road, I have something better than hope for beautiful legs and hot body.

I have freedom.

I know the doodad, gizmo, gadget, whatever won't help my legs. I won't end up with shapely dancer's legs in 8 weeks or 12 weeks just by using whatever. I know this because if two years of going to the gym, taking Zumba classes, squats with the Oly bar, leg presses and walking lunges didn't do it, along with clean* eating and calorie tracking (1500 calories, 100 grams protein, low carb) didn't do it, how on earth is this new doodad going to do it?

Back then, when I was doing all of the above, I didn't know I had lipedema. Now I do. Now I know, and I've accepted that no amount of diet / weight loss / exercise / gizmo is going to affect the lipedema fat.

Again, no amount of diet / weight loss / exercise / new gizmo is going to affect the lipedema fat.

I have railed against that statement. I argued, I denied, I refused to believe it. It had to be wrong. I fought against it because it went against everything I thought I knew and everything I'd come to believe. If I was "good enough", if I didn't cheat on the diet, if I followed that exercise plan or this exercise plan, if I drank that shake or took that shot or bought the latest gizmo THEN I would be okay.

I had to accept it. I had data for two years - weight charts, lifting stats, diet record - and at that moment I knew I HAD done everything "right" according to conventional weight loss guidelines. I had done my best, and if my best hadn't helped me lose more than 30 pounds in 2 years, nothing would.

Because I am not a conventional person who can follow conventional weight loss guidelines.

I have lipedema, and conventional weight loss guidelines don't apply to me.

Accepting this reality has led me to greater freedom than I could ever have imagined. I now train to build strength and endurance. I train to keep my joints lubricated, my lymph flowing, my muscles strong. I eat food to fuel my daily life. My goals aren't tied to a scale and I don't care what anyone thinks about my legs, because my legs aren't me.

And I laugh at the infomercials.

*Clean as I knew it then. Now I eat wheat-free / sugar-free to help reduce inflammation.

Inflammation Flares Part 1

by Maggie McCarey

Looking backward, the first lipese woman I remember was a member of my church.  She was very old and quite plump.  She was also expansive, and a NY kinda storyteller.  Every time I visited her she had a new version of the spider bite that changed her life.  Different angles, once even spider as narrator, but the facts of the story never changed.  She was in her mid-40’s.  She woke up one summer dawn with a spider bite on her leg.  From that moment on, she filled up like a balloon, and no matter how little she ate, the weight just never came off.  Now she went by ambulance several times a year to fight off cellulitis from the lymphedema that started in her legs. Sound familiar to any of you?

 

I have a similar story though my trigger was the death of my best friend.  In the months following her death, I gained significant weight while not eating, I got asthma, and developed panic attacks.   Through the last few years, I have heard many such stories, especially around lipedema knee surgeries, death of loved ones, and sometimes even the slightest injury or insect bite.

 

One woman shared with me that she fell off of the lowest step of a stair in a yarn shop.  This woman was a sharp cookie and had been riding the tail of the fat beast for a long time.  She had undergone by-pass, she knew herbs, she tried any and every diet and she was obese, but she never stopped trying.  She had been doing remarkably well as of late until her fall, which did not in anyway hurt her.  Even so, the next morning, the leg she fell on had begun to grow first 1, then 2, then 3inches.  She could watch it grow before her eyes.  Soon her other leg caught up. She went to her primary who did not distinguish inflammation from leg fat.  Unfortunately, the inflammation spigot was turned on and was not likely to turn itself off.

She and I worked for a year to stop what doctors call an inflammatory cascade without success.  Her story and the stories of many of the rest of us lead me to believe that lipedema is an over-active inflammatory response.  That’s why we all have a different story.  I had leg ringlets at puberty, many of your experienced your first flare with your first pregnancy, or a surgery, or birth control pills, an insect bite, a drug, or, if you were lucky, menopause.  Think back to those silent terrifying days when your brain became a monkey house, weight loss became your obsession, and you turned yourself over to the doctor for your first diet.  Our events are different but this symptom we share.  “Weight gains” often follow a hormonal or chemical trigger that you can actually point to.

The following article written by Caroline J. Cederquist, MD is the best and easiest-to-understand explanation of lipedema and inflammation I have read. Try to wade through it because you will be tested on this information the next time your body does an inflammatory reenactment of the Titanic after a nasty fall, when it gets an itsy-bitsy spider bite, or if it decides to punish you for that nice big bowl of spaghetti you ate for dinner. 

Dr. Cederquist writes:

Fatty tissue is made up of adipose cells, which increase in size but not number as more fuel is presented to the body for storage. These cells produce something called cytokines, small, secreted proteins that among other things, produce and regulate immunities and inflammation. And as adipose cells grow larger, they produce more cytokines, leading to more inflammation.

Not only that, but in amongst the fatty adipose cells are other cells called macrophages, which also produce cytokines. There are normally a few macrophages in the fatty tissue of even slim people, but as people become heavier, gradually at first and then at an increasing rate, the proportion of macrophages in fatty tissue increases.

Now, you wouldn't want to be without macrophages-- these are the immune system's first line of defense, patrolling the body for infection and cleaning up after cells as they naturally die off. So you want-- actually, need--a normal number of these little guys distributed throughout your tissues.

But it turns out that in overweight people, most of the inflammation promoting cytokines in fat are coming not from the adipose cells themselves, but from these macrophages!

The clean-up crew

So what is it that attracts the extra macrophages, with their dangerous cargo of inflammatory cytokines, into the fatty tissue to begin with?

Recall that as people become increasingly overweight, they do not grow more adipose cells; the ones they have simply swell to larger and larger size. Inevitably, some of them become so overburdened that they burst open, leak, or just die. It is the resultant mess of cellular waste that the macrophages come rushing in to clean up, after all, that's their job!

But with that clean-up mission, you get all that excess inflammation that they bring, and you know what that means: more heart disease, more arthritis, more diabetes, more asthma. (http://newsblaze.com/story/20051101224906nnnn.nb/topstory.html)

….MORE LIPEDEMA!!!!!

Now I want to bring all of this information to its simplest denominator…YOU.  Inflammatory cascade should be the most terrifying words on your lipedema vocabulary list at all times because that’s how we gain “inflammatory weight” a.k.a., fat legs, a.k.a., leg pain, a.k.a., fat upper arms, a.k.a. wheel-chair hell, etc.

 If I say bee sting, you say epipen.

 If I say peanut allergy, you say anaphylactic shock treatment.

 If I say choking, you say Heimlich maneuver.

 If I say, accidental fall, you say hunh?

I am pulling in the driveway now: You can be the best dieter on the best diet in the world, you can have liposuction, obesity surgeries, and good medical care,  but if your environment throws you an inflammatory curve ball, you better also have:

1) awareness that an inflammatory flare, your greatest enemy, may be imminent you and that it can undo all of the good work you have been doing for your body in a second;

2) a real understanding of what your body refuses to tolerate—Give It What It Wants.  It Will Not Negotiate 

3) a list of common triggers of an inflammatory flare:

4) an emergency plan that goes something like this: If I say fall out of bed, you say______________; and

5) an alarm going off in your head that puts you in mental recovery mode immediately.

The longer you wait, and depending on the chronic abuse your body is already attempting to subdue-----from every environmental, pharmaceutical, emotional, not-sleeping-enough, working too hard, consuming processed, radiated, glop, job stress, grief, unexpressed rage burning inward lifestyle—the more difficult it becomes to stop an inflammatory cascade. Weeks, months, years, …never. 

Understand when cytokines are released: cytokine production can multiply 1000 fold.  So, while that little argument you had with you boss may have been “ah, no big deal…” the clean up crew, Macrophage 4 U, is doing serious clean up in aisle 12, unleashing  inflammation producing cytokines on top of now-hardening inflammation from the last toxic spill.  (After 3 years of reducing inflammation in my ankles and calves, I have successfully found my way to hard, sclerosis like tissue (old inflammation) at the bottom of all that soft inflammation in my legs.) If that hardened inflammation could talk, I would travel back in time, and rewrite my life story one macrophage clean up event at a time.

SO WHAT’S THE PLAN

Tip #1   Keep your body hydrated. Drink lots of water and lots of green tea.  Treat yourself to Starbucks on the way to work and on the way home.  Trenta size. Or, drink 75 to 100 ounces of pure water a day.

Tip #2  The Mother’s Breathing technique whenever you feel anxious, or argue, or spend too much money, or, or, or.  I will share this technique and other tips in part 2.

What is the nature of the beast?

By Tatjana van der Krabben

“Hello beasty.” One of my favorite lines from Pirates of the Caribbean, from Jack Sparrow when finally looking his worst fear eye in the shape of a giant octopus. Very symbolic, facing your demons. How do I envy him for knowing the nature of the beast. I want to slay my dragon called lipedema. For that you need to know what you’re dealing with. So what is the nature of lipedema?

Focus on fat
In 2008 I got formally diagnosed with lipedema by a dermatologist in the Netherlands. I was told to try to lose weight. She could not provide me with dietary advice. My previous low calorie attempts had failed. I googled in Dutch: all the sources said “no known diet” or “diets don’t work”. I started to google in English and eventually found the Rare Adipose Disease (RAD) diet. The purpose was described as to limit inflammation, reduce pain and try to avoid weight gain. RAD diet is currently endorsed on Cure Lipedema blog with arguments such as: “…you’re loading up on foods that are naturally good for you and have the added benefit of reducing inflammation”. And: …”these foods also supply us with essential vitamins and minerals that help boost our immune system.” (http://curelipedema.tumblr.com/tagged/recipes)

Okay, hold on one sec: inflammation? I was always reading and being told I have a fat/lymphatic problem. What does inflammation have to do with things?

Inflammation
What does inflammation look like? The classical signs of inflammation are pain, heat, redness, swelling and loss of function. At the time I was not impressed. I figured pain simply comes with lipedema. The swelling comes from the lymphatic system and that is not doing its job properly because of the lipedema. So I left it. Partially out of disappointment; after finally finding a recommended diet (by dr. K. Herbst & FDRS), it was so rigid I could never see myself following it.

By 2010 media and the internet were exploding with studies linking inflammation to countless conditions. I can quote a lot of big words now from fancy research papers, but Marcelle Pick (OB/GYN OP) explains it in plain English. “It’s fascinating to watch the medical establishment discover inflammation. In the past few years there have been studies suggesting that chronic inflammation lies at the root of heart disease, cancer, osteoporosis, Alzheimer’s, autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis and psoriasis, and many other immune disorders.” (http://www.womentowomen.com/inflammation/default.aspx)

So there was the inflammation thing again. If it was responsible for so much and varied mayhem, why not lipedema? Or at least a contributing factor to lipedema? What’s causing the inflammation? The National Lymphedema Network summarizes it as follows: “Recent research suggests that diets that reduce inflammation might help with lipedema. The thought behind this is that fat produces inflammation in the body; therefore, a way of eating that helps reduce inflammation might help with lipedema.” (http://www.lymphnet.org/lymphedemaFAQs/questions/question_01_07.htm)

Sorry to jump from source to source, but we’re living off scraps here in Lipedema Land. Some more coordinated research would be useful, if you know what I mean. At the Nederlandse Lipoedeemdag (Dutch Lipedema Day) on October 6^th, 2012 a dr. T.D. Wentel stated lipedema is inflammatory. He also linked the fibrosis we often experience in advanced stages to inflammation. Dr. Wentel works with a highly respected expert on lipedema: professor Neumann. Sorry, paper is not out yet. Same conference, completely different angle (Psycho Neuro Immunology and Integrative manual therapy) same conclusion: lipedema is inflammatory.

In the Dr. Vodder Manual Lymph Draining (MLD) in the treatment of Cellulite and other Lipodystrophies it says: “Small vessel fragility, vessel pathologies and inflammation all contribute to the formation of lipoedema.” And: “…the protein build up thickens the ground substance of the tissue and generates chronic inflammatory processes. Chronic inflammation can induce formation of more mature adipocytes and lipid accumulation.” It says that when lipedema progresses, we’re dealing with chronic inflammation and the inflammation is causing weight gain.

Maggie McCarey and Stefanie Gwinn-Vega were way ahead of me. They found S. Nishimura et al (2009): “Recent studies have shown that obesity induces chronic inflammation in adipose tissue, and that cells of the innate immune system, particularly macrophages, are crucially involved in adipose inflammation and systemic metabolic abnormalities.” The fat isn’t just fat. It lives a life of its own. It secretes hormones into the bloodstream among others. While on the table  for liposuction we were talking about research into fat cells and the surgeon mentioned they found that fat even contains stem cells. I’m leaving it at this, this is a blog not a thesis, but for the skeptics and the interested: there’s plenty more to read. 

This leaves us…where?
We are currently being defined by two symptoms, one of them being fat. Thanks a million for the stigma. It is taking attention away of a factor we could fight (to a point): inflammation. I say enough with the fat already. Let’s look at the functioning of our immune system. Same conference, dr. Huijberts, based on preliminary outcomes of a questionnaire and her experience as an endocrinologist, linked a high percentage of lipedema patients to CFS and fibromyalgia-like symptoms, believed to be autoimmune related.

We’re not reaching here: inflammation simply is one of the first responses of the immune system to fight infection. Now, I don’t come with a lab coat and 8 years of medical school, so whether it’s truly autoimmune or what, I can’t be sure. What I can conclude is that our immune system is somehow getting its signals crossed; hence we respond with inflammation where others just move on and shed the pounds of holiday cheer.

What about hormones you say? Dr. Pick has a shocking quote for you: “Inflammation caused by hormonal imbalance could be a key reason why women suffer 75% of all autoimmune disease.” Ouch…

Healing in Community

by Maggie McCarey

Terms; Contemporary medicine applies health science, biomedical research, and medical technology to diagnose and treat injury and disease, typically through medication or surgery, but also through therapies as diverse as psychotherapy, external splints & traction, prostheses, biologics, ionizing radiation, etc. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicine)

Herbal medicine (or "herbalism") is the study and use of medicinal properties of plants. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbalism)

HEALING IN COMMUNITY

Many of you have read our book Lipedema: Help, Hope, and Healing and know that in 1992, while I was on sabbatical, my immune system went through an almost irreversible shut down. The medical profession could not find the root cause of this illness: I was tested for MS, Lupus, parasites, allergies, metal poisoning, Lyme’s disease, Lou Gehrig’s disease and so on. Each test came back negative.  I lost sixty pounds in a few months.  Doctors gave up on me and I was left to lay on a porch by day and to sit in a chair by night, unable to sleep more than an hour before jolting awake and in racing gear for the next 23 hours.

Because modern medicine failed me, I was led back to the teachings of my early youth, my grandparents’ penchant to heal their own, and in the present to an Amish healer who first treated me with herbs and then taught me how to use them.  At that time, I began online course work at The Herbal Healer Academy and studied every herb book I could get my hands on.  When I finally healed from what I now know to be an inflammatory cascade brought about by lipedema, I was also left with an interesting gift.  One afternoon, my husband said, “I have a blinding headache.”

I said, “I can fix it,” and for some inexplicable reason, I held my hand over his head until I felt his pain, and I drew it out into my hand.  His headache was gone.

I practiced then on children when I substituted at the local school and on neighbors who sought my help.  One evening after hours, frightened parents brought their son with an infected spider bite to me. I applied a poultice and the redness began to disappear within seconds.  His father had been suffering from a sinus infection for months.  He had recently gone to a specialist who put him on a high-powered antibiotic and pain medication and scheduled him for endoscopic sinus surgery three weeks hence.  Within a few days after the spider bite, the father retuned to my home begging me to relieve his pain before he took his own life.  I brought him to my sink and instructed him on how to use a netti pot.  I filled the pot with warm salt water and a bit of colloidal silver.  He did as I instructed and instantly massive amounts of mucus left him.  Within seconds, his pain was completely gone.

I could get side-tracked describing the numbers of times people have been cured in the most simple of ways like this but the point of the above story is to illustrate the difference between the two healing methods.  I am not interested in debating which method is better.  The world is consumed with competition.  Obviously, accessing both disciplines to achieve optimum health would be an ideal world. Unfortunately, in this imperfect world, that isn’t what happens.  Like placating divorced parents, you are sort of forced to choose between them.

I would like to suggest and emphasize in the writing of this blog that we are all genetically programmed to be healers.  Our bodies are their own healers.  Good doctors will tell you that healthy people die sometimes over the slightest invasion to their bodies while others who should be dead many times over survive one illness after another.  The latter carry the memory of how to heal themselves in their DNA.

Dr. John McKnight, professor emeritus from Northwestern University, is a social scientist and community development expert.  He argues for the community to be the most developmental aspect of society.  He says:  As institutions gain power, communities lose their potency and the consent of community is replaced by the control of systems; the care of community is replaced by the service of systems; the citizens of community are replaced by the clients and consumer of institutional products. (http://www.cpn.org/topics/community/regenerating.html)

           

McKnight says the more we institutionalize our humanity the less we remember how to be human. For example, people once knew how to offer condolences to others when a loved one dies.  Now we leave that uniquely human compassion to counselors train in grief.  We no longer feel adequate to express grief properly.

McKnight gives the most powerful example of how seven Chicago women banned together to save breast-feeding as a human endeavor.  The almost single-handed institutionalizing of bottle-feeding by the medical profession became a reality when Dr. Spock promoted it over breast-feeding in the 1940’s. Doctors convinced mothers that breast-feeding was unhygienic. Mothers were often coerced into taking shots to dry their milk up within hours of delivery. Somehow, the medical community was so powerful in its capacity to minimize humanity’s collective wisdom, it actually convinced us that mothers were jeopardizing their children’s health with their own milk. The Le Leche League was founded in 1955 when one of its seven members could find no one who could teach her to breastfeed her child, one year before breast-feeding in America dipped to its lowest level of 20% in 1956.  Since then, it has taken an international movement to keep breast-feeding a part of being human.

           

In America, there were as many as 98,000 preventable hospital deaths recorded last year. In England, there were 558 cases where doctors recorded that a patient had died in a state of severe dehydration in hospitals; 3 died of starvation; 78 hospital and 39 care home patients were killed by bedsores, 21,696 were recorded as suffering from septicemia when they died, a condition which experts say is most often associated with infected wounds. (www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/9591814/Patients-starve-and-die-of-thirst-on-hospital-wards)

Even so, we are programmed to believe that practicing herbal medicine is far more dangerous than traditional medicine, even fatal. Do not try to confuse us with facts! The American Association of Poison Control Centers' report utilized the data from 60 Poison Control Centers. They handled 2,479,355 human poison exposures of all sorts. Analgesics, all Big Pharma products, accounted for 11.7% of all poisonings, the largest percentage, followed by cosmetics/personal care products at 7.7%, household cleaners at 7.4%, and sedatives/hypnotics/antipsychotics, another Big Pharma group of products, at 5.8%.The category Dietary Supplements/Herbals/Homeopathic/Amino Acids, which starts on page 1138 of the report, indicated a single death, but even that one can be discounted because it's listed as "Unknown Dietary Supplements or Homeopathic Agents". There wasn't a single death from any product in this category

Vitamins, which start on page 1146, provided the same results—not a single death. However, pharmaceuticals were the cause of 497 deaths, out of a total number of 718 from all causes of poisoning deaths. Pharmaceuticals were responsible for … 69.2% of all poisoning deaths in the United States (in 2009) http://www.gaia-health.com/articles401/000412-poison-control-report-herb-vitamin-deaths.shtml

Now, I will eventually get to lipedema and the herbs that work for those of us who have lipedema and why they work, but we must begin with the war between healers and doctors and how that came to be.  We will have to ask ourselves how we got to a place where we line up for shots and drugs with mile-long adverse reaction warnings, and savage surgeries that serve as starvation aids when we cannot properly starve ourselves; and how as members of a community we stopped knowing how to care for ourselves and each other.  Otherwise, we will never find the courage to seek the path less taken, that is, to exercise our ability to lay hands on each other to take away pain or to accept alternative healing for our lipedema. 

           

All of us with lipedema know a lot about pain medication and we know that it doesn’t even begin to touch our pain—and we know that all of it has egregious side effects, including addiction.  Yet, we take it.  Let me leave you today with one small counterpoint to what you may not know to be true about pain relief as a way to help you see how institutionalized beliefs, rather than knowledge, lead us to irrational conclusions regarding our own health.

It is now generally proved that massage is the best pain reliever known to humanity.

"Basically we have found massage to be effective in chronic pain syndromes in arthritis and diabetes; in depressive disorders such as ones that autoimmune disorders -- HIV-associated diseases, too.… We    have looked at the A-to-Z of medical conditions, and we have not found a  single condition massage has not been effective for.”

Can we change towards that healthy news about the power of laying on of hands?

           

When we discuss herbs and alternative healing we are really discussing what it means to remember being human in community with other human beings who both heal and are healed by one other.  How many of you who have found your way to a lipedema forum cannot agree that simply being with others who care about your health has made a greater change for the better than most of your doctor visits.

 

Next blog on herbs:  How hundreds of thousands of herbalists were killed in conjunction with the invention of modern medicine.