Starting to really dislike doctors

[jimmylegs]

hi again, excellent - more good info!

can i assume the units for b12 were pg/ml? if so, it would be wise to aim for more like 500 minimum. that's based on recommendations that are out there in the literature, but i have to say that it's relatively tough to find such levels in healthy controls in the literature.

all the same, i aim for 500 myself but in pmol/L - and 500 pmol/L converts to 370 pg/ml, so i'm erring on the high side.

your new cal mag zinc supplement would be good except for the emphasis on calcium in relation to the magnesium (and the zinc for that matter). daily intake ratio shouldn't be any higher than 2 max, and with that pill you're looking at 2.5. if you always take mag with excess calcium then you may see consequences in terms of muscle tension/cramping/tics.

further, if you always take mag at the same time as vit d3, you can expect the d3 to monopolize the magnesium, leaving you short where other important processes such as ATP transport (and ATP = energy) are concerned.

the good news is you can work around it. you can make up for the high cal mag ratio in the pill, and reduce the impact of vit d3 on your daily mag intake, by adding another magnesium input at a different time of day (say evening, since you've likely got the others going in before meals - i am assuming you are spreading the three pills out over the course of the day for optimal absorption).

you can get a high quality magnesium glycinate supplement without breaking the bank. see this one for example:
http://www.vitacost.com/kal-magnesium-g ... 80-tablets
it says 2 pills deliver 400mg of magnesium, you'd only need one, there's 180 per jar, so will last you 6 months which means the added expense would be about $3 per month.

one other thing to consider is the impact that high calcium intake can have on your iron levels. do you have a serum ferritin result on file? i'd keep an eye on that as you get into your 1000mg/d calcium supplement routine. iron status and energy levels go hand in hand.

i'd also be wondering about the calcium-zinc interactions, and zinc absorption from this product. which is why i am always curious about serum levels

that's about it for the supplement analysis - more to come re dietary details

[jimmylegs]

re your question about variables - it all depends how scientific you really need to be vs how you want to feel day to day. i personally can't comment on the pharma side of things because i have never done a course of steroids or taken any of the CRAB meds. really the closest i've come is more of a pharma side effect. for example once i was suspicious about a skin lotion and asked for a 1,25dihydroxyvitamind3 test, which came back extremely elevated so i discontinued the use of that product.

the most pronounced and amazing improvement i ever experienced was when i implemented a multi-faceted diet and supplement protocol. i'll never know which specific ingredient made the difference. at this point, i don't think there is supposed to be an answer like that. the human body is far more complex - if there was one single factor involved in chronic illness i am pretty sure it would have been found long ago. i don't think there is one solution for everybody, rather that everyone needs to identify the ways in which their daily routine detracts from optimal functioning. for some, it will be to stop being a strict vegetarian. for others, not to eat fast food every day. it's about restoring balance and with so many factors in play, the number of ways in which a specific individual can be imbalanced has to be pretty high. as i've said elsewhere, you could probably take 400 people with 400 different symptoms and they could all have one low essential nutrient manifesting in all these different ways based on all their other levels, as well as their genetic makeup.

i think it comes down to a pretty typical craving for the easy single magic bullet. the simple answer. but, that can create a sort of moving target situation in which new information becomes an all-consuming fad rather than a facet of the larger picture. emphasizing just one essential nutrient, especially when you're talking supplements, can wreak havoc on your system's overall balance. for example i once got extremely sick from taking too much d3 in relation to other mineral cofactors. yet another time, i got extremely sick (to the point of keeping my things organized to make cleanup easier for others if i suddenly died) from taking too much of the wrong form of magnesium at the wrong time of day.it's a delicate, complicated game all in all! and that is why high quality food should form the foundation of any preventative regimen. more on that to come!

[dana1985]

For my first 27 years of life i was never a pill popping person. I hate taking any medications for any reason and never really got into taking vitamin supplements. Two years ago i had awful back pain and was told it was from degenerative disc disease, osteoarthritis in my lower spine, two bulging discs and an annular disc tear. That is when the pills came into my life. Ive been on celebrex since and ocassionally tramadol for pain not controlled by the celebrex.

Then 8 months ago the cramping started and i began flexeril and they also experimented with a whole bunch of others..

I never enjoyed taking vitamins in pill form. I tried a womans multi vitamin a few times and it made me vomit. No idea why...

While my diet is not impressive by any means. It is the healthiest i have eaten in a long time.. When in college and up until i met my husband it was just cheese and crackers or a grilled cheese. I never touched a vegetable or fruit.. So there is some improvement. Hehe. Which begs the question still.. Why issues now?

[jimmylegs]

hi again, the degenerative disc disease and osteoarthritis do seem to point to a chronic nutritional situation. it's unfortunate that the mainstream approach is only to address with drugs rather than investigating the potential roots of the problem.

since nutritional issues can take a long time to manifest in a medically recognizable way, i'm not surprised that it's been some time for the wheels to come off in your case. in mine, i ate an increasingly nutrient poor diet for about 15 years before everything went crazy. in working to correct, i've been operating on the idea that i dug a 15-year-deep hole that i could expect to take 15 years to dig out of. i'm about 9 years into that climb so far

in hindsight, knowing what i know now, i was deficient in many essential nutrients long before i would have said i was anything but purely healthy. when i had crippling menstrual cramping, the doc prescribed ponstan and that was that. i would only learn decades later that my highly active lifestyle and low magnesium diet were playing into my agonizing monthly cycles.

if i were you i'd be looking hard at whether there could be any long term nutrient depletion consequences associated with the drugs they've been giving you for your spinal and other problems. drug induced nutrient depletion is well documented, and could help explain the changes you have experienced since adding tramadol, celebrex and more recently flexeril to your overall routine.

[jimmylegs]

eg: http://www.naturalnews.com/DrugWatch_Celebrex.html
"Patients in the clinical trial taking 400 mg. of Celebrex twice daily had a 3.4 times greater risk of CV events compared to placebo. For patients in the trial taking 200 mg. of Celebrex twice daily, the risk was 2.5 times greater."

related study:
Cardiovascular Risk of Celecoxib in 6 Randomized Placebo-Controlled Trials: The Cross Trial Safety Analysis
http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/117/16/2104.short

i'd be looking hard at possible electrolyte and magnesium impacts, if celebrex is linked to cardiovascular issues.

i can't find a study that measures before and after serum mag with celebrex treatment, but i did find this interesting little tidbit:

Celecoxib versus magnesium sulfate to arrest preterm labor: Randomized trial
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1 ... ated=false

the study found that celebrex and magnesium are equally effective at halting preterm labour, which suggests to me that celebrex is hanging out in the magnesium pathway and therefore it does seem reasonable that it could be interfering with normal magnesium interactions. and that's just the tip of the iceberg really - just one of say, 30 essential nutrients you could look at, for just the one drug.

[lyndacarol]

For my first 27 years of life i was never a pill popping person. I hate taking any medications for any reason and never really got into taking vitamin supplements. Two years ago i had awful back pain and was told it was from degenerative disc disease, osteoarthritis in my lower spine, two bulging discs and an annular disc tear. That is when the pills came into my life. Ive been on celebrex since and ocassionally tramadol for pain not controlled by the celebrex.

Then 8 months ago the cramping started and i began flexeril and they also experimented with a whole bunch of others..

I never enjoyed taking vitamins in pill form. I tried a womans multi vitamin a few times and it made me vomit. No idea why...

While my diet is not impressive by any means. It is the healthiest i have eaten in a long time.. When in college and up until i met my husband it was just cheese and crackers or a grilled cheese. I never touched a vegetable or fruit.. So there is some improvement. Hehe. Which begs the question still.. Why issues now?

As jimmylegs wrote in her earlier post today, Feb 22, 2015: "nutritional issues can take a long time to manifest in a medically recognizable way."

I have read, for example, that the human body has a stored amount of B12 in the liver that can supply the body for 5-7 years (if B12 cannot be absorbed in the digestive tract, it can be withdrawn from the liver). It seems entirely possible to me that you had adequate B12 at one time; then, something changed and you began drawing down the B12 in your liver.

The "something changed" could be any number of things:

Nitrous oxide, given during dental surgery or other surgery, inactivates vitamin B12 in the body making it unusable.

Many medications (such as oral contraceptives, antacids like TUMS and Rolaids, PPIs like Nexium, Prilosec, Prevacid and other medications) block the absorption of vitamin B12.

A young woman's growth spurt and even pregnancy are huge drains on B12 stores in a woman's body. (Prenatal vitamins do not have an adequate amount of B12; and the very large amount of folic acid in them makes the situation even more imbalanced.)

For some people, gluten damages the intestines where B12 is absorbed.

There are many other reasons that a person can have a B12 deficiency.

[jimmylegs]

i would also like to emphasize by underlining three times in red that although i personally had such a serious chronic b12 deficiency that i have one test on record where NONE could be detected at all, i still refuse to focus on B12 to the exclusion of everything else.

my laboratory evidence has clearly pointed up a wide range of other problems over time. although it is complicated, i feel it does a disservice to those seeking information on health, to oversimplify. although b12 deficit is definitely the oldest and best known differential diagnosis for ms, research shows that b12 is not the only nutritional issue for ms patients. i have also noticed that i am not the only member who resents the constant banging on this single gong.

further, nothing academic leaps into the foreground when searching the literature on celecoxib and cobalamin, as it does when running a search on celecoxib and magnesium.

moving on to tramadol, scholar search turns up the following for a search on tramadol and magnesium
https://scholar.google.ca/scholar?q=tra ... _sdt=0%2C5
-A comparative study on the analgesic effect of tramadol, tramadol plus magnesium, and tramadol plus ketamine for postoperative pain management after major …
-Intravenous magnesium sulphate decreases postoperative tramadol requirement after radical prostatectomy
-Wound infiltration with magnesium sulphate and ropivacaine mixture reduces postoperative tramadol requirements after radical prostatectomy

compare findings re tramadol and cobalamin
https://scholar.google.ca/scholar?q=tra ... _sdt=0%2C5
nothing stands out from the resulting research titles.

if researching the nutritional impacts of celecoxib had turned up side effects that red flagged cobalamin issues, this post might look different. but instead the increased cardiovascular risk flagged possible mineral problems which does seem to be borne out in the literature.

going back to bone/pain origins of the complaint, musculoskeletal health in general depends on more than vitamin b12. related research:

from a search on cobalamin and bone health:
Vitamins and bone health: beyond calcium and vitamin D
http://nutritionreviews.oxfordjournals. ... 4.abstract
"Excessive, as well as insufficient, levels of [vitamin A] intake may be associated with compromised bone health. Deficiencies in vitamin B, along with the consequent elevated homocysteine level, are associated with bone loss, decreased bone strength, and increased risk of fracture. Deficiencies in vitamins C, E, and K are also associated with compromised bone health"

magnesium and bone health research titles:
https://scholar.google.ca/scholar?q=mag ... _sdt=0%2C5
-Dietary influences on bone mass and bone metabolism: further evidence of a positive link between fruit and vegetable consumption and bone health? (fruit and veg don't contain b12)
"intakes of nutrients found in abundance in fruit and vegetables, namely, potassium, β-carotene, vitamin C, and magnesium, were positively associated with bone health" (note that these are not foods that contain any vitamin b12 whatsoever)
-Potassium, magnesium, and fruit and vegetable intakes are associated with greater bone mineral density in elderly men and women (again, not b12 foods)
-Calcium, phosphorus and magnesium intakes correlate with bone mineral content in postmenopausal women

hope that helps add perspective

[jimmylegs]

more thoughts on adding nutrient density in the morning - you could consider having bite sized blocks of frozen veg on hand, for a quick addition to a morning egg. suppose you had an egg 2 to 3 times a week, then you could probably set yourself up for a few weeks of pretty instant whole food breakfasts with a single prep session. i always have cut up chopped frozen spinach chunks in a bag in the freezer, generally 9 chunks from one box, although i got 12 from the one i divided and froze yesterday. at my local grocery store the box of spinach costs $1.89 so divided by 9, the spinach component adds 20 nutrient-packed cents to that breakfast option.

i typically nuke a frozen spinach mini for 30 seconds then add it to eggs and sauteed veg already going in the pan. for you, to save time and energy, it could be an idea to have prep an ice cube tray filled with bite-sized servings of sauteed mushroom, and bell pepper (peppers have high vit C, helps you absorb the iron from the spinach) for the freezer as well. then all you'd have to do in the morning is nuke two bites of veg in a bowl, then crack in an egg, mix a bit, season, nuke again til the egg is cooked, and there you go.

i thought of it just now because i'm making dinner and decided to add a mini block of spinach to my main

[dana1985]

Thank you for all the information and ideas!

I definitely will have to look into ways to imcorporate more nutrients and good foods in my daily routine and work hard on expanding my tastes.

[jimmylegs]

no problem

i was also thinking of salads that hold up for a long time, so that you can prep a lot and then coast on it for a few days. tabbouleh salad made with quinoa is a high quality protein option, and the parsley in it is full of vit K, and the lemon/spearmint combo is just delicious

this recipe is close to the one i make http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/ ... leh-395939
exceptions: i just cut up a tomato rather than halving a bunch of cherry tomatoes. i also don't bother with scallions - just dice up a little vidalia onion. we always have one on the go in the fridge. rather than measuring tablespoons of lemon juice, i usually just squeeze the juice of one lemon into this salad. when there's not a lemon in the house, plain white vinegar is a totally fine alternative. we tend to make this more in the summer, when the garden is full of parsley and mint. in the winter, it can be tougher to find the right mint (spearmint!) in the store - and peppermint just tastes wrong in savoury dishes!! lastly, depending on how the flavour works out, sometimes a little sprinkling of sugar can bring this one together nicely.

quinoa details http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tnam ... nalprofile
parsley breakdown http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tnam ... e&dbid=100

a double batch would definitely keep you going for a few days!

also here's an idea for a nutrient dense greens soup recipe that would be really simple to make a lot of so that you could just freeze servings for easy use later:
http://www.thisisms.com/forum/undiagnos ... ml#p223022

that's it for now - i'm kind of procrastinating right now b/c food is fun lol

[dana1985]

Really appreciate the recipes! I have recently signed onto allrecipes.com to try to find more ideas. I have always been a huge baker, but starting to try more real cooking when I can.

If i could get all the nutrients from cakes and cookies i would be set though. Hehe

[jimmylegs]

you can do it! i bet you can have a bit of fun experimenting with healthier baking too. maybe goji berry trail mix, mixed berries, flax and dark chocolate chips in whole grain sprouted flour muffins?
you might enjoy making these too - probably cheaper than granola bars
http://www.gimmesomeoven.com/no-bake-energy-bites/
(there are tons of pages on these out there but this one didn't have an ad pop up right away!)

[Luongo]

I definitely can relate to your situation.

Had symptoms. Went to my doctor who referred me to a neurologist. Neurologist examined me and said 'possible MS'. MRI's for spine and brain came back clean. Told me it can't be MS and that I must just be stressed. Saw another doctor who said ON only causes double vision so I don't have it. Alright then. Referred to an MS specialist. I told the MS specialist that I have paresthesia and she LITERALLY laughed in my face and said "that's not a symptom of MS" and walked out of the room.

I was fed up. After the neurologist said 'possible MS' I found this site and a couple others and honestly, jimmylegs and others here have provided better guidance for me than anything these well-paid professional shoulder-shruggers have offered. The difference being that I think these folks, although not doctors, actually cares to help. My eyes are still a mess, I still have hyperreflexia, and I still have other issues. But I look past them because it's easier to my mental well-being and bank account than to continue this non-stop onslaught of stress and heartache dealing with medical boobery when these professionals probably won't have many helpful things to say even if they DO know what they're doing and DO care. Enjoy things as they are and if the other shoe drops and you get a second-wind to keep going, do so.

"What do they call a doctor who nearly failed medical school?"
"They're called 'doctor'."

[dana1985]

Well blood work came back from infectious disease specialist and it's not lyme or mono or any other viruses...

So another doctor simply says "we don't know what could be causing your symptoms"

And they just leave it like that... like there isn't even a human on the other side of those test results...

Can't any of those darn doctors care more than the "I don't know whats wrong with you, but have a nice life.. "

Ugh....

[jimmylegs]

ugh sorry to hear :S

well, if you want to start getting nitty gritty with some diet work, you could start with one mineral that is broadly involved in a huge number of different body systems and which is known to be suboptimal in standard western diet. also one that has been linked in research to pain, sleep issues, and at the risk of re-offendings :S even mood disorders. namely, magnesium.

you could start off by comparing your daily dietary routine to this healthy mag food list. http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tnam ... #foodchart
according to published recommended daily amounts, you want to aim for at least 300mg-400mg for maintenance purposes. you could expect to need more like 400mg-500mg if levels have been depleted.

it could be highly informative to evaluate your current daily mag intake via diet, then work to maximize intake from food, add a supplement to top up if needed, and see whether any of your symptoms start to improve.

might be interesting to peruse that entire magnesium info page. the interactions with other nutrients info is incomplete, but still good. hope that helps you feel more positive for the rest of your monday