Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Dr. Wahls' MS diet.

I hab been on it for about a week.

Starting on day 2 I felt better, but now I am not. I did some thinking about the differences in diet, and there are a few. For one thing, we are supposed to eat liver weekly and seaweed weekly, and I started out eating that aswell as a can of spinach,  and then I stopped for a week.That is what the diet said to do.

I might need to eat it more often than that. So, today I ate some seaweed,and also a can of spinach. The seaweed is strips of dried nori, which is meant to make sushi with I just tear off a piece, tear it into bits, and swallow it.

The Wahl diet is almost the same as the Caveman diet, with an exception or two. The reason that MS cripples is because the fatty myelin covering over the nerves is destroyed. Dr. Wahls' diet calls for the consumption of a lot of nutrients that are used to build myelin. To build myelin we consume vitamins B1, B9, B12, Omega 3 fatty acids, and Iodine. Much of this we are to get from the food that we eat.  To increase activity across the synapses (and give us more energy) we are to eat more sulfer and B6.

My short-lived improvement is enccouraging: I will tweek my diet some more. She said to eat seaweed and organ meats weekly, and I ate them on day 1 of the diet. I might eat them more often than that: it is possible that they did me a lot of good..

I do not have all of the info nailed down yet, but we are to eat a lot of dark colored vegetables as well as vegetables for the cabbage family. So, I make a large mixing bowl full of, basically, coleslaw and I eat it at every meal. She recommends large amounts of red cabbage, kale (a type of dark green cabbage), carrots, and so forth. With a little vinegar it does taste a lot like cole slaw, though,I need to brush my teeth AFTER breakfast instead of before it because vinegar after sweet toothpaste is not too pleasant!

Sunday, July 15, 2012

An update on the handicapped garden!



As I mentioned last spring, I am somewhat handicapped but I love to garden. I am seeking out an easier way. Here are the results so far:

How the large plants did: Corn, okra, watermelon, broccolli, sunflowers, 3 patches of mustard greens, and peppers.

As I mentioned last spring, I had my son help me roll out woven greenhouse flooring and I punched holes every 3 feet. This was not its intended purpose as I am not using it in a greenhouse, but in my outside garden.
More than one seed was put in each hole. It is working very well: only the pepprs are doing badly and that might be the record breaking heat. It might also be because the peppers are at the edge of the garden: they might be getting watered less.

The okra is doing exceptionally well: there are 4 holes of okra planted, with 1-3 plants in each. We are getting more okra than my family of 4 can eat. The mineature watermelons (Hime Kansen variety, from Kitazawa seeds) have been picked twice, and the plants look healthy enough to set more melons.
Tomatos and potatos.

I have gotten mixed results from the potatos, so I am not sure what to say. I will give an update this fall.

Tomatos are doing very well. Every now and then I take string with me when I care for the chickens, and I tie up a couple of branches. This is AMOST enough:not quite. However, the tomatos are delicious and I am not losing many to rot as very few are toucing the ground. The kids are snacking on the tomatos, and I am also cutting them into the salads. We are pretty much keeping them eaten. HOWEVER, the heat is hurting the pollination of the current crop of flowers: in a few weeks we might be low on tomatos! That is a problem for the future, however.

The small plants that must be weeded did:
As I had said in an earier post, an assortment of small plants were put in a raised bed with weed barrier below, perlite above, and a little fertilizer. Those plants did not come on as quickly as they would have if I had planted them in the dirt, but they are producing. The wind did bring weed seeds and it was hard to get them out wthout injuring the roots of the vegetables. My yield was about 3/4 of what I would have gotten if I had planted them in the ground, but if I had had to plan them into the ground I might not have gotten any harvest as I can no longer dig the roots up! I have harvested quite a few salad greens, and some raw carrots to munch on while I am outside. There are good looking beets in there, but as I do not cook beets very well I am using the greens for salads.

I also have flowers: California poppys are doing wonderfully well and they are still blooming, and I also got anenomes.

Weeds.

3/4 of my garden is weed free. I got a little grass when the wind blew seeds onto the top of the woven greenhouse flooring and the grass got some roots through when it rained, but I pulled the few weeds out when they were small and they have not come back. Unfortunately, where I did not get them when they were small, I now have long grass in about 1/4 of the garden. I am smothering that out, with reasonable success.

That is my vegetable garden so far.

I have planted the garden, watered it, and I have picked: that is all the work I have done. other than pullin a few weeds int he spring that is almost all that I have done, and the garden is doing wonderfully well. The rest of the work was just little things like tying up the tomatos as they grow. I had to weed a little as the grass seed was blown onto the top of the woven greenhouse flooring, but I did not get all of it and so I am smothering out some long grass with scraps of carpet, which does work. On the whole I am pleased with my no work garden. It has not really turned out to be NO work, but since I have not particularly had to weed it sure seems like it!

Friday, July 13, 2012

The Drought in he Midwest is Getting worse

We have not had rain for weeks,  and todays rain showers only added up to less than a inch. The plants might have gotten enoug moisture okeep them alive for the next 4-odd days, but then it will be gone and there is no more rain in theforcast.

The corn field around me ate starting to show yellow leaves. If we do not get rain soon, the corn in this part of Kansas may well be lost.

The winter wheat has already been harvested and it looked excellent, but if everybody looses their corn crop then the price of livestock feed will be very high!

The kids and I were SORT of able to keep my vegetable garden watered, even though it has hit 107 repeatdly It is yielding pretty well. I am getting more okra from my 6 plants then I got a few years ago from one and a half rows of okra! Okra LOVES! the heat!

It is cooler now, with highs in the 90's, so last night I went out at sunset, settled down onto the ground, and picked tomatos. It was lovely!

Monday, June 25, 2012

Pergo flooring does not belong in the kitchen!

Mine looks wonderfull, of course! Alas, my daughter spilled a little flour, which sifted between the cracks.

I immediately hit it with the vacuum, which, after some time, got up the little white line that was so very obvious....

I am lucky: my kids are teens. If I had a novice cook, thee WOULD be considerable spills and I would not be able to keep it looking nice!

And, it DOES look nice! But, flour shows up so terribly, and you cannot run a kitchen without flour!

Friday, June 22, 2012

Update on the no-work potatos!

I picked some potatos yesterday. I simply picked them off of the ground like they were pebbles.

These no-work potatos were the first ones that I had put in, and instead of burying the potatos I just covered them with newspaper. Well, we had a spell of bad weather this week and the paper shifted due to the wind, exposing the spuds. So, I picked the exposed potatos up.

Most of the potatos had a little green on them, but the spuds were tasty enough once I had removed all of the green area. Apparently the newspaper was not heavy enough to keep ALL of the light out! (For beginning potato growers, I will mention that if light hits a growing potato it will turn that spot green, and green spots on potatos are bitter).

I will DEFINATELY save some newspaper for next spring! Now that this method shows such promise, I believe that next year I will make an entire row of delicious potatos with newspaper over them! Though, I will make the layer of newspaper heavier. And, perhaps I will also lay in a supply of rocks to weigh the newspapers down as the wind in Kansas can be fierce!


Tonight I ate potato salad made with home grown potatos, eggs from my chickens, mayo, celery,  relish, and a little salt. It was delicious!

All the neurologist offered was vitamins and a consultation with a sleep study specialist

Dissapointing!

On the good side, the folic acid and the vitamin B12 has me feeling better already, so apparently he was correct when he said that MS patients were often low on both.

Monday, June 18, 2012

I see my neurologist, tomorrow. It is a strangely depressing thought, that.

Perhaps because I want to ask him a few hard questions? I both hope that he can help and I am afraid that he cannot.

I stopped by the raised bed on the way to shut the chickens in tonight, and I pulled a baby carrot. It was only one bite's worth, but it made me feel better, somehow. A carrot from the works of my hands.... perhaps it makes me feel less helpless?