Life is in the Blood: A Seven Year Journey

I am not an expert in today's subject matter. I am just a Journeyman. Just a storyteller and a witness along my path. From a particular perspective and world-view. Over the last seven years, part of my journey of self-discovery has been about my personal health.  I am dying.

But, dear Reader, that should not alarm you to any great extent. We all are. Every day, not just from the moment of conception, but from the Beginning. We are dying. From Adam. The first man. The Fall. It's been downhill ever since.

The Beginning
The Bewarning
The Beguilement
The Bewitching
The Becoming
The Bedevilment
The Banishment
The Bittering

So what is my story? Well, it's been a long time figuring things out. I ended up realizing in a physical sense, life is in the blood. We breathe in oxygen. We breathe out carbon dioxide. Our blood carries life-sustaining nutrients to our tissues and carries away the wastes and the toxins to our bodies. If we hold our breath or stop breathing, the pH of our blood turns acidic immediately, without oxygen, and loaded with carbon dioxide, creates carbolic acid. When we die, the body immediately starts to turn acidic.

Internet Fair Use - Acid-Alkaline Blood pH

The pH, or potential hydrogen, of any fluid indicates the concentration level of hydrogen ions. A neutral pH is 7. Higher, the fluid is alkaline. Lower, the fluid is acidic.

Internet Fair Use - Relative pH and Hydrogen Ion Concentration of Representative Fluids

Normal blood pH should operate in a narrow range of 7.35 - 7.45. Anything outside this small range indicates symptoms and disease. Blood pH much below 6.8 or much above 7.8 means that cells stop functioning and the person dies. Research indicates that unless the body is slightly alkaline, the cells, tissues, and body cannot heal itself. Amazing tidbits of information. But it has taken me a while to arrive at that knowledge in a personal, meaningful way.

Over the last seven years, I have had something increasingly wrong with me physically. It has been literally a Daily Walk. But there have been days when I could not walk. My blog icon shows my legs and feet in dungarees and hiking boots and raised up in repose. The first time I knew something was wrong was when I got out of bed one morning and fell on the floor. My legs would not sustain me. It had erratic symptoms.  It would come and go. Some days I would have to slide down the stairs on my butt to be safe. I had joint pain, leg and ankle pain, and bone pain. On a scale of 1 to 10, I would have frequent, routine chronic pain at a 5 - 6, occasional intense pain flareup at a debilitating ten. I couldn't exercise. I had to force myself to stretch the muscles, stretching into the pain but to little avail. The pain centers would migrate to different parts of the legs and feet. I would hobble about and sometimes have to use crutches. I would have redness, inflammation, and tenderness to the touch. I tried different shoes. Thicker socks.

Internet Fair Use - Gout and Inflammation

My dad had been diagnosed with gout at a fairly early age. Gout results from the buildup of uric acid crystals in the blood particularly in the foot joints. Dad has taken gout medication for years and then was able to eat his normal food selections. He has also had knee and hip surgery on his joints. I also thought that perhaps his condition was related to being a telephone worker and climbing telephone poles and worming his way through tight crawl spaces as an installer and repairman in his early career.  Maybe there was more to it now that I have done some research. I went to the doctor's to see if that gout-like history was manifesting in me. I did not have gout. There were no uric acid crystals in the blood. But what did I have?

Internet Fair Use -  Uric Acid Crystals in the Blood

Blood tests did reveal an acidic Ph in my blood. Acidic blood causes the red blood cells to clump together reducing their surface area, reducing their flow through the capillaries, reducing their ability to carry nutrients and remove toxins from cellular activity, and increasing the risk of clots.

Internet Fair Use - Uric Acid Heart Attacks

Conservatively, I chose not to use any medication and keep searching for the cause of my discomfort. I did research and started to use an anti-gout diet. Avoid things with purines, meat, seafood, beer, asparagus, mushrooms.

Internet Fair Use -  Acidic and Alkaline Bloods Cells

I drank a lot of natural black cherry juice, presumably the best remedy.  I experienced some minor occasional relief but not nearly enough.

I cut out most red meats, only having occasional chicken or fish. Mostly salmon. No seafood. No fried foods. No breads or wheat gluten.  No dairy products. No sweets or sugar. Stopped coffee and tea. Absolutely no foods or drinks with any corn syrup. Corn syrup or fructose seemed to be a particular inflammatory. No processed foods or fast foods.

On a trip to the mid-west to visit family, I stopped at a health food store for some vitamins or remedies against muscle cramps in my legs during the long driving periods. The lady working the store was a nutritionist and a Christian. When I described my symptoms, she asked if I was eating in accordance with my blood type. I had never heard of such a thing. She encouraged me to research it on the web. I was blood type A. She said, "Oh, you're a natural vegetarian!"  I was super-surprised and replied, "Say WHAT?!" Upon further research to her recommendation, I added a vitamin regimen and adjusted my diet even further and saw a bit more improvement but still not enough. That lady was a blessing to me because she started me on the path I needed to go. The doctors were not helping. They kept advising me to exercise to reduce my weight even further.

All they wanted to do when I couldn't walk was x-ray my feet and knees to see if I was arthritic by evaluating the distance between the bones or to see if I had a hairline fracture. No findings of either. I wanted to exercise to keep the weight down but couldn't frequently enough or rigorously enough because of the pain.

Internet Fair Use - Arterial and Venous Blood pH as a Result of Exercise

Exercise can reduce the pH of the blood making it more acidic. Perhaps due to an increase of lactic acid during muscle use. Oxygenated arterial blood is more alkaline then venous blood with lesser oxygen levels. Both become more acidic with increased exercise. And it takes longer to recover from exercise if the overall body constitution is acidic. It made it even more painful to exercise.

Upon further research, I understood there to be be two types of blood acidosis, respiratory and metabolic acidosis. I had to have one or the other or a combination. And the resultant pH could be in a range for each condition based on a blood nomogram for the conditions. I suspected metabolic acidosis overall but needed to rule out respiratory acidosis.

Internet Fair Use - Respiratory and Metabolic Acidosis Nomogram

My discomfort was worse in the morning so I postulated that perhaps I had sleep apnea, or breathing difficulties, and was not getting enough oxygen at night. If my blood turned increasingly acidic during the night with a lack of oxygen, I would have increased discomfort in the early morning. Heart attacks in one's sleep may occur due to lack of oxygen, increased heart rate or blood pressure due to acidosis, or increased acidosis of the system overall. Upon my requested testing, I did not have sleep apnea or a sleep disorder. I was advised by the doctor to continue losing weight which would improve the sleep cycle, though.

Metabolic acidosis is related to the body being unable to process food nutrients in a satisfactory manner. I was already taking vitamin supplements. The doctor had advised Vitamin D in particular. I was not seeing any improvement related to the vitamin supplements per se.  A friend gave me a circa 1970 book on acidosis. The friend recommended I find something more current though. The bottom line on its advice was to eat more vegetables. Particularly leafy greens.  With web research, I found further information on foods that are acid-producing and foods that are alkaline-producing. There were many different depictions and variations but generally one could ferret out the essential information on food sources and proper selection. I also took the position that I would have to experiment a little bit and determine what seemed right and proper for me as I measured my pH on a daily basis as well.

Internet Fair Use - Acid-producing and Alkaline-producing Foods 01

 Internet Fair Use - Acid-producing and Alkaline-producing Foods 02

Internet Fair Use - Acid-producing and Alkaline-producing Foods 03

Internet Fair Use - Acid-producing and Alkaline-producing Foods 04

Internet Fair Use - Acid-producing and Alkaline-producing Foods 05

Internet Fair Use - Alkaline-producing Foods 01

This clarified the previous diet recommendations for gout and for blood type and pushed my diet selections even further in a vegetarian direction. For six months this year, from January to June 2014, I basically went on a strict vegetarian diet. My super-foods became fresh spinach, kale, collard greens, chard, carrots, cucumbers, avocado, and lime juice.  My snack food was baby spinach leaves. Grapefruit was also recommended as alkaline-producing and I had three a day, one at each meal. I drank lots of water. Lots and lots of water. I walked 2 - 4 miles per day, this being the only exercise I could manage.

In addition to the alkaline-producing food recommendations, I bought some pH litmus paper in a health food store.

Internet Fair Use - Litmus Paper

I could measure my saliva pH and my urine pH. Green or blue and I was in an OK range. Yellow-green or yellow and I was too acidic. Before starting the alkaline-producing diet, I was always very acidic. I thought that an acidic urine was a good thing because the body was excreting the acids. Not so. If the body doesn't excrete the acids, it stores them in the fat tissue. Not a good thing. The body requires salts....sodium, potassium, calcium, and magnesium to buffer the acids in the body during normal metabolism and excrete them in the urine. Resulting in an alkaline urine pH. If it doesn't get the necessary salts in the diet, it robs the bones of calcium to get it. We build the calcium into the bones when we are younger. Once gone, it's gone. Leading to osteoporosis. Contrary to this knowledge, the doctors had been advising to reduce sodium salt in the diet as a heart healthy approach. An alkaline urine indicates that the body is working appropriately. Salts are required to combine with and buffer the acids. I added those four salts to my vitamin regimen. It also appeared frequently in the literature that all of the major diseases and health-related disorders come from and thrive in an acidic body environment: heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, cancer, immune deficiency, arthritis, hormone unbalance, pain, discomfort, organ degradation, joint pain, etc.

For six months, I went on a strict vegetarian diet. When folks asked, I told them I was on a special diet, "if it tasted good, spit it out!" It wasn't easy, especially at first. My breakfast was a huge salad. My lunch was a salad. My dinner was a salad. I had to determine how much spinach to eat to move the body pH in an alkaline direction. But it slowly moved over to alkaline! And when it did, my discomfort level dropped! WOW! What a finding! The measured pH was directly correlated with my pain level. But it took lots of discipline and regimen to keep the pH in the proper range.

After seven years of asking, searching, inquiring, and experimenting, I had achieved some results without medications. The more I looked for related information, the more I realized was out there. But it wasn't the doctors, nurses, corporate nutritionists, health and wellness officers, or esteemed professionals that moved me in the right direction. Frequently I received poor advice or advice contrary to what would help me. Everyone had an opinion. And a different one. Many times, it was folks who, because of pain and disease, had the imperative to seek out a healthier diet alternative that were helpful with new tidbits of useful anecdote. And they were willing to share their useful knowledge and experience.

After six months. my pain level was consistently low at about a 0.5 on a scale of 1 - 10. I inadvertently ran out of grapefruit for a week or two and my pain level dropped even more. I stopped the grapefruit in the diet. Green tea was also recommended as alkaline-producing so I added that back in as my one alternative hot drink substitute. As an experiment after six months, I relaxed my strict diet regimen a little bit to see how robust my recovery was. When going to a restaurant, I was able to order something normal on the menu without fearing a relapse of symptoms. But I realized that I didn't need as much food and that I could reduce the portions I desired. I could enjoy some other "normal" foods as a special treat, not as a routine food requirement. Some have recommended that using an "80-20 rule" is useful: 80% alkaline-producing foods and 20% acid-forming foods.

Over the last two years of this Journey, I was able to lose 20 pounds and generally maintain weight even with a fairly sedentary office-type job. The primary goal during this pain-filled interval was not to lose weight but to manage through the symptoms of pain and discomfort.

Now, my aches and pains are more related to exercise and doing projects around the house. Maybe a little due to age. I can do physical projects again. The chronic pain, inflammation, redness, and tenderness in the joints, muscles, and deep bone pain is mostly gone. The discomfort seems more related to using muscles I haven't used in a while, which is OK. Chronic fatigue and discomfort are not part of my Daily Walk.  I can bend down, and kneel. And get up again. I am occasionally unsteady on my feet but much improved. But I remember.  I guard against the acid-producing foods in the diet.  It is a daily remembrance.

I can return to a goal of weight loss. Primarily through food selection, portion control, calorie- expending exercise, and drinking lots of water.

But this Journey has made me realize that I am dying every day. Seven years ago, my body constitution changed where I was not able to utilize the foods that I normally ate throughout most of my life. But I didn't know it at the time. Seven years is a long time to undergo a cumulative disorder. I cannot yet be sure of the longer term consequences, if any. I presume there to be some.

Most of the foods we eat, especially processed foods, allow us to remain alive, maybe with too many of the wrong calories and nutrients. It is deceptive. But we assuage the hunger and move on with our fast-paced lives. Perhaps when we are younger, we can eat these processed foods without immediate consequence. But perhaps they have a longer term effect. What about the preservatives, the additives, the enrichments? The toxins. The acid-producing foods. I know many have gone down this path before me. I know many in America are overweight. There are many that are much more knowledgeable or even fanatical about these things then I am. But I have learned a lot these past seven years. I am dying while I am living. Some moments are just more eloquent in speaking the message to me about the matter then others. This is Living the Moment. This is the Daily Walk. This is part of the Journey.

We never know how much time we have left. Live each day. Live in the Moment. Don't expend energy on things and people that don't matter. Energy and Life Force is so precious to the Journey. Life is too short. This impacts my thinking and my decisions in 2014. It has been a hard road.