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Anodyne

meditating through pain - how to do this?

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Hi all, I need some help with this one. I've got some unidentified arthritic condition, doctors have diagnosed a bunch of different things and keep changing their minds as new results (or lack of results) come in - latest consult was along the lines of "we can't figure out what's going on here, so just do whatever works for you". Which is not f*ing much, at the moment. I've got the fatigue under control with meds, so now my main problem is PAIN. Mostly in my spine, but other joints too, and piled on top of some recent poorly-healed injuries, it's all getting a bit unmanageable.

Now I love pharmacology, and my first thought with most health issues is nearly always: "drugs!" But I've been down that road before, recreationally, and while I know that it wouldn't be worst outcome, I'm a bit afraid that with a real reason to keep taking them it would be a one-way path this time around.

So I would like to explore some alternatives for managing pain. Solo meditation suits my temperament much better than any kind of group exercises. But I've never studied any kind of in-depth techniques or done any formal training, just simple breathwork/relaxation/visualisation stuff that I've picked up or figured out over the years. And while that's been good for all kinds of anxiety & stress, I find that I just can't focus well enough for anything to be effective when I'm already in pain. Of course, I can just take painkillers to get things down to a manageable level first, but then there's always the temptation to just take a *bit* more to get really comfy, and I've been there before, I know how that one ends.

So i'm hoping someone with some more experience in this area could give me some suggestions. The only idea I've come up with so far is trying to work up some kind of context-dependent-learning situation, where I practice a few simple pain-management-meditation techniques a lot when I'm not in a buttload of pain, and then try to re-create that same context ("set and setting") when I am in pain, in the hopes that even if I can't finish the exercise, it might trigger some of the same effects. However I have no idea if this would work, nor do I have any particular techniques in mind, and of course the whole thing depends on finding a fair bit of pain-free leisure time, which has been in short supply lately.

I'd be interested to hear what kinds of techniques other people have found effective, and how they manage overcome the mental focus problem.

p.s. sorry to make this a "me, me, me!" question - it 's just that I couldn't think of a generic way to ask it. But I hope that other people will also ask questions and benefit from this thread.

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Theres quite a bit of talks on managing pain in meditation and bringing that out of meditation [Here]

I wish I could give personal accounts of success using meditation for strong-pain management but historically whenever I got to that point I found the underlying cause of the pain and fixed it directly. Perhaps for me just thinking about meditating more gives me the mindfulness I needed to see the cause :lol:

The last example of that actually was arthritis. My history of sporadic attacks gradually became much closer together and in the end just eliminating nuts and potatoes from my diet broke the pattern (I had to systematically test my entire diet to find those). For nuts my reaction lasted just 36 hours but for potatoes the reaction took 10 days to fade, both of them working in tandem was apparently why I never saw the nuts relationship, theres been dozens of clinical trials showing different foods can trigger arthritis in some people and often it takes 5-14 days to see the clear improvement after eliminating the trigger food, important to remember if you look along these lines. More info [Here]

I hope your very actively looking for the cause. I know from an abundance of experience that doctors are near useless in matters like this so if they are inefficient or give up that should be your call to immediate action rather than a cue to give up and accept the problem as permanent.

But on the in-between, while your looking to heal, I hope meditation does help :) I know just my low level daily practice has led to mindfulness and healthier attitude that makes dealing with minor pain far easier.

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Reading this thread takes me back to a dark place where I don't want to go again, I feel for you mate.

When I broke my back I was in so much pain that I begged my mrs to kill me and I was dead serious. Drugs didn't work and meditation was my only escape. Some days I would meditate for up 8 hours a day mostly as an escape mechanism to detach myself from the pain.

I wasn't on the web in those days so I used the little I knew about transcendental meditation and applied that to my situation. For me meditation (for that purpose) was not about focusing on anything at all, it was about letting thoughts and feelings flow of their own natural accord. It's never about denial or trying to bypass any thoughts, just acknowledge them and let them flow.

At first my meditation didn't really do much, but after a while thought patterns started to become apparent and to achieve a meditative state they must be relinquished and no energy fed into those thoughts - after all thoughts are only as real as you make them. Don't pour any energy into them and let them go.

After a few weeks I started experiencing moments where I'd truly detach myself from those thoughts and just them flow and observe (without judgment) putting things into perspective should come after the meditation session.

Then after about 6 weeks or so I started to have out of body experiences where I was truly detached from my thought process and then I found that I could detach myself from physical pain and enter into a state where such things were irrelevant.

I also researched causes of inflammation and most of my research kept leading back to diet and in particular polyunsaturated processed oils. These oils weaken our cell walls to the point where normal cellular function is compromised. When the cell structure becomes compromised inflammation moves in and pain follows.

Eliminating these polyunsaturated poisons has helped me to an extent that I can't do justice to with mere words. Not just for my back but also for all the arthritic conditions I had in other parts of my body. Also including omega three oils in conjunction with a sulphurous protein (which makes the oils water soluble and absorbable) has greatly helped. I use flax seed oil blended with Kefir or cottage cheese.

If you have the time look into the work of Dr Johanna Budwig and Udo Erasmus and draw your own conclusions in relation to the disruption of cellular function caused by these oils.

Budwig has a book that explains this relation to polyunsturates and inflammation, the book has been translated from German & there are a few minor discrepancies in the book as a result, but the scientific explanation of cellular function is priceless.

The book is titled

Flax oil as a true aid against arthritis heart infarction cancer and other diseases.

I believe it could be found as a torrent.

Also look for a book written by one of the leading lipid scientists in the world - Mary Enig, the book is titled - Know your fats

Mary Enig is the reason we all know about the problem with trans fats and the vegetable oil industry tried to silence her for years. I've used what I've learned from her book to put those uneducated kiddies in their place (often drawing an audience) whenever I see those heart foundation fraudsters hawking their bullshit at shopping centers. Heart foundation propaganda both here and in the US is mostly based on misconceptions and outright lies.

I hope you can find some relief soon.

Edited by SallyD
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i've got chronic undiagnosed musculoskeletal pain also! i found it actually ended up being helpful to bring my awareness and mindfulness to every moment.

if you want to use meditation for dealing with your pain, be aware that that isn't really how it's going to work. you'll become capable of being more tolerant and accepting of your pain, rather than really diminishing the pain itself. in that manner, you'll be able to look instead for the cause of the pain, such that you can really eliminate it from the source (accept the symptom, treat the cause).

one of the key things involved in being in a meditative state is unconditional acceptance of whatever is happening in the present moment, and transcendence of the idea of past and future. i don't know if you know of Osho, but he has given great guidance on most subjects:

 

Once you dont think yourself separate from existence, problems simply evaporate, as dewdrops disappear in the morning when the sun rises, not even leaving a trace behind. They simply disappear.

Physical pain will remain, but again I will insist that it has never been a problem to anybody. If your leg is broken, it is broken. It is not a problem. The problem is only in imagination: If my leg is broken, then what am I going to do? And how am I to avoid, or how am I to behave and work my way so my leg is never broken?

Just watch life: life is never a problem. Man has tremendous capacity to adjust to the fact, but man has no capacity to adjust to the future. Once you try to protect yourself and secure yourself in the future, then you will be in a turmoil, in a chaos. You will start falling apart. And then there are millions of problems problems and problems and problems.

A problem needs space: in the present moment there is no space. Things only happen, there is no time to think about it. You can think about the past because there is distance; you can think about the future, there is distance.

A problem arises when something is not there and you want it to be there, or when something is there and you dont want it to be there. A problem is always psychological: Why is it there? Now this is all psychological. Who is to say why it is there? There is nobody to answer. Only explanations can be given, but those are not really answers. Explanations are simple. It is very simple: pain is there because pleasure is there. Pleasure cannot exist without pain.

If you want a life absolutely painless, then you will have to live a life absolutely pleasureless. They come together in one package. They are not two things really; they are one thing not different, not separate, and cannot be separated.

Thats what man has been doing through the centuries: separating, to somehow have all the pleasures of the world and not have any pain; but this is not possible. The more pleasures you have, the more pain also. The bigger the peak, the deeper will be the valley by the side. You want no valleys and you want big peaks. Then the peaks cannot exist; they can exist only with valleys. The valley is nothing but a situation in which a peak becomes possible. The peak and the valley are joined together. You want pleasure and you dont want pain.

For example: you love a woman or you love a man, and when the woman is with you you are happy. Now, you would like to be happy whenever she is with you, but when she goes away you dont want the pain. If you are really happy with a woman when she is with you, how can you avoid the pain of separation when she is gone and she is no longer there? You will miss her, you will feel the absence. The absence is bound to become pain. If you really want that you should not have any pain, then you should start avoiding all pleasure. Then when the woman is there dont feel happy; just remain sad, just remain unhappy so that when she goes, there is no problem.

~Osho

once you get to being more "in-the-now" during your daily life, it will be easier to realize the real source of your pain, and then you can do something about it if you feel like it.

for me, my pain is caused by inactivity (sitting too long on a computer and not really moving) and exacerbated by certain drugs (pretty much the only other thing i did other than sit on a computer for a very long time), esp. caffeine, alcohol and smokeables. so it's clear now what i need to do if i feel the need to avoid my pain; be more active, and indulge less...

so my pain is not really a problem any more because i know what the cause of it is, and can make my own trade-offs. i'm exercising more (because really that's more enjoyable than sitting on my ass all day), but continuing to indulge occasionally (because i enjoy it).

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Hi Anodyne -- to give a quicky reply -- try googling "Shinzen Young pain"

You can probably find a torrent of his "Break Through Pain" book/audio book with guided "meditations" (I have downloaded the audio book, so I know that can be found online).

Or you could look at/buy the book from Amazon.

It seems he also has a (newer) title called "Natural Pain Relief: How to Soothe and Dissolve Physical Pain with Mindfulness" on Amazon, but I'm not familiar with that one....I'll look into it.

for an overview:

I have what I would probably call a mild condition (causing pain) & I know how much it affects me -- I really empathise with anyone dealing with 'real' pain...I respect and admire anyone who's dealing & coping with this... I'm sure it might sound trite -- but I do hear many times over that these kind of conditions can be great life-transforming teachers.
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Hi Anodyne,

Can I please ask for what your diet is? The route I want to explore is whether or not you're deficient in certain lipids (omega-3 is a common deficiency) or low on complete protein, or have a lack of minerals.

Secondly do you consume caffeine, or smoke cigarettes, or drink heavily (the former two are vasoconstrictors, and with prolonged usage will heavily slow healing in areas where the blood-flow is slow as shit - mostly through diffusion, such as joints) - the latter depletes your body of vitamins which can retard growth) ?

I know you asked for meditation advice, but it would be nice to get a complete picture too.

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Secondly do you consume caffeine, or smoke cigarettes, or drink heavily (the former two are vasoconstrictors, and with prolonged usage will heavily slow healing in areas where the blood-flow is slow as shit - mostly through diffusion, such as joints) - the latter depletes your body of vitamins which can retard growth) ?

that sounds like me... i'd tick "all of the above" and "yes i have terrible blood circulation"

i find it funny that no GP or physiotherapist or any other health practitioner could give me this information.

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that sounds like me... i'd tick "all of the above" and "yes i have terrible blood circulation"

i find it funny that no GP or physiotherapist or any other health practitioner could give me this information.

Most doctors these days aren't really interested in what's causing the problems, they just want to suppress the symptoms.

Another thing that is greatly understated is stress, when we are stressed our cells almost shut down and can't cycle nutrients or remove wastes efficiently. It's a viscous cycle where the pain causes stress and stress prevents healing leading to more pain.

The meditation should help there too.

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To be fair to GP's -- I would like to say this: while it may seem that they have no interest in underlying causes, etc., from my viewpoint where I still see GP's as ppl that really care about their patients' health, who are themselves, constantly frustrated by their own limitations -- I think the reason they don't get in to diet & alternative medications, is because the science/evidence is often lacking, and mostly because they have years of experience of making lifestyle recommendations to patients who just ignore their advice & keep getting sicker & sicker....so they get to a point where they have given up on that, and feel that addressing the problem with medications is a quicker way to get things on track, rather than see a patient arrive in another 6 months with ulcers/gangrene, etc. I sometimes get really tired of the anti-doctor perspective that a lot of ppl have - it's a popular mainstream idea now (that doctors are only in it for the bucks, etc.) - however valid it might seem sometimes. Especially when ppl start going on about big-pharma kick-backs -- as if big-pharma care about community gp's. This rant is a bit off-topic, but just something on my mind...

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btw - I can email/snail mail files/audio cd's

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Wow everyone, just wow. Many thanks for all of the thoughtful & caring replies. :wub: I will respond more later, but for now...

Auxin, that's very interesting about your dietary triggers. It's not something I've looked into in detail yet, but I recently had to fast for a few days prior to a medical procedure and noticed a definite improvement, followed by an awful return/worsening of symptoms in the following week when I started eating again. So that made me suspect a dietary link. Do you know if there are particular blood markers or the like that would indicate that the body is responding in this way? That is, is there any way to confirm a dietary problem other than elimination dieting? Good links too, really nice to see some studies supporting that theory - they can be hard to find when looking into alternative medicine.

SallyD, this really chimed with me for some reason:

At first my meditation didn't really do much, but after a while thought patterns started to become apparent and to achieve a meditative state they must be relinquished and no energy fed into those thoughts - after all thoughts are only as real as you make them. Don't pour any energy into them and let them go.

It seems to fit in with the techniques that coin mentioned. And while on the topic, thankyou for the links coin! That BreakThrough Pain book looks like it could be very useful. I was interested in the suggestion to treat the pain as a kind of entity, isolated in your awareness as you would isolate individual body parts during relaxation exercises... I had never thought of doing it quite like that. Also good advice about resistance being the source of suffering, which gives me a nice segue into Scarecrow's advice...

Yep Scarecrow, I know that absolute pain relief is not realistic. But the stress & anxiety is often more disabling than the pain itself, so I think that if I can get that side of things under control, I think that I will be able to manage the problems caused by actual physical limitations much better.

For CBL and the others who asked about my diet - it is vegetarian, though fairly low in animal products (a bit of yoghurt & cheese, few eggs & milk). Protein mainly from soy products and legumes/grains, sometimes from soft cheese (paneer, ricotta etc) and only a little from nuts and seeds. I could easily be short on protein - I seem to remember my blood tests indicating it was a little on the low side(?) I would say that the bulk of my diet consists of cooked vegetables, grains and legumes. Like many vego diets it's fairly starch-heavy. I cook most of my food myself and don't use a lot of oil/fat, but EVOO would be top of the list, also coconut cream (yeah, it's a bad one I know) & sometimes mustard or sunflower oil - I rarely use butter/ghee. I don't really like sweet things, so there are very few soft drinks, cakes, biscuits, etc, but also not a lot of fruit. I don't eat a lot of raw food - I also have some kinda IBS thing going on (almost certainly linked), and cooked stuff is just easier for me to digest. I do prepare most of my own food and have a reasonable understanding of food content, so it shouldn't be too hard to make changes once I have an idea what the likely culprits might be. Just slow - I had no idea that food triggers could have such long-lasting effects as Auxin mentioned!

I don't smoke. I have never been a heavy drinker, but over the last few months my intake has dropped from 1-2 glasses (wine, beer) per night to 1-2 glasses per week. Just seem to have lost the taste for it lately. Caffeine is pretty low I think, mainly from tea - coffee and other strong stimulants really disagree with me, so I avoid them.

It's really good to hear that others have been through stuff like this and have managed to work it out and improve. Very encouraging. Thanks again to everyone for their time & effort responding here, I really appreciate it and you have given me a lot of good avenues to explore. :)

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Your diet sounds quite low in omega-3s and other fatty acids, so things like flaxseed oil, and SallyD's other recommendations - are fairly pertinent. Something my brother alerted me to was that it's not enough by itself to consume enough omega-3 - the ratio of of omega-3 to omega-6 must be protected as well. I think the ratio was about 6:1 in optimal conditions (this is just from memory, could be entirely wrong - worth checking) - but this is certainly less of an issue than being deficient in omega-3.

According to this list...: http://nutritiondata.self.com/foods-000140000000000000000.html
Flaxseed oil is indeed the best. So I would start with taking a supplement of that , or even just grinding up your own flaxseeds with a coffee grinder or something and chugging them in water (they're nearly impossible to digest without grinding). Things like avocados and other oily fruit and vegetables are for the most part very desirable too. Increasing eggs (they have a lot of good cholesterol) perhaps too.

Secondly, your protein intake sounds on the borderline. Do you feel that you take a while to heal from strenuous exercise? Like say if you went on a hiking trip all day long, or dug holes all day, or lifted weights - would you take longer than 2 days to more-or-less fully heal from those? This is a really wishy-washy question, but ideally it would gauge how well you're healing muscularly. This is basically a direct measure of whether or not your protein intake is sufficient. If your muscles heal relatively quickly, then you're more-or-less fine for protein (as long as the sum total of your vegetable proteins is complete, and not deficient in any aminos). But it's still highly worth experimenting with increased protein and over a week or so - seeing how you feel. Personally I know I feel substantially weaker without protein, and I can feel it (my diet is a bit erratic, sometimes it's good, sometimes it's horrid).


I think as long as you eat enough green vegetables, and don't cook them in such a way to make them pale and then throw away the water - then you are fine for magnesium intake.

Food triggers can be related to allergy, but there's other causes - one of which is that certain foods, such as grains - contain binding chemicals, such as phytin/phytic acid (from grains). Basically if you eat grains concomitantly (at the same time) as other mineral-rich foods, the phytic acid will bind to minerals in the food. And then your digestive tract may be unable to get those minerals back again. Eating a shitload of grains could very well be putting all those minerals you eat into an unavailable form. Relatedly, some forms of IBS are caused by carbohydrates - it is definitely worth reading up these links (would be an entirely new topic in itself to discuss)


Lastly it sounds like your caffeine/nicotine/ethanol levels are perfect. :P


So basically - I think you do indeed have a shot at getting some significant long-term pain relief from your diet. :)

And just to be clear - everything I have written here is more or less intended as starting points for your own research and understanding.

Edited by CβL
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If you do a websearch on inflammatory markers you will be confronted with a list as long as your arm. It's a specialist field where a GP isn't normally qualified to interpret the results from such tests. They tend to look for the more common markers such as homocysteine & C reactive protein (CRP) and only a few others when they have a suspected cause of inflammation as the tests can be inconclusive and very expensive.

Your own body is the best indicator in my opinion, a food diary could be of great assistance here.

As CBL stated your ratio of Omega 3 to Omega 6 could well be out of balance, this is very common with diets rich in processed vegetable oils. The world had never seen this 100 years ago when most of our lipids were in the form of grass fed sources of saturated fats. Ancient diets included many sources of protien with perfect levels of Omega threes in the form insects and freshly harvested leafy greens - something often lacking in a modern grain based (synthetic fertiliser fed crop) diet.

If you don't have enough saturated fat in your diet your body cannot metabolise minerals properly and most of the minerals in your diet will just go to waste.

Saturated fat is also high in fat soluble vitamins which are vital for calcium metabolism and the manufacture & maintenance of chondrocytes (cartilage cells), fibrochondrocytes (meniscus and labrum cells), synoviocytes (cells that line the joint), myocytes (muscle cells) and fibroblasts (ligament and tendon cells).

Dentists were amongst the first to observe the effects of diets low in saturated fats. From the time of conception to early childhood if the mothers and childs diet is low in saturated fat, these children have been proven to have malformed dental arches, low bone density and high levels of tooth decay. This carries over to all the other mineral rich tissues in our bodies.

Diets low in saturated fat are also proven to statistically show higher instances of intestinal inflammation and cancers of many types.

All this demonisation of saturated fat is the product of fraudulent science and vegetable industry propaganda.

Polyunsaturated lipids in their natural form (cold pressed or in the form of fresh leafy greens) are amongst the healthiest lipids we can consume, it's the rancid heat processed oils (almost everything in the supermarket) that our cells are damaged by.

Sorry for the rant but lipid science is one of my favourite topics.

Anyway I hope I didn't offend you with my opinion, I'm not casting any judgment on dietary choices.

I forgot to mention before

Have you considered any of the moving meditations such as Tai Chi or Qi Gong ?

From my perspective those methods are an excellent starting point for anyone considering meditation.

With all my musculo skeletal problems I find such practices are an excellent way to increase blood flow to injured or inflamed tissue. When I do my Qi gong I find it will inflame the injured areas when I do it and cause some pain in the hours following the practice, which is actually a good sign to me that's and it's an indication of increased blood flow, waste removal and healing.

It's also a good time to include mantras that are specific to your own particular problems and is a very effective meditation in it's own right.

A few examples being.

I forgive all transgressions

I release all tension and blockages

I flood my body with clean natural healing energies

Or anything else you can think of that may be beneficial.


Edited by SallyD
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Do you know if there are particular blood markers or the like that would indicate that the body is responding in this way? That is, is there any way to confirm a dietary problem other than elimination dieting?

C-reactive protein should be a marker for food triggered arthritis (its elevated in rheumatoid arthritis and in heart disease, the latter made the test for it available) but I dont know if its been confirmed.

Elimination diet isnt really very hard, you can eliminate things in groups with similar items eliminated together (like wheat+barley, tomatoes+eggplant+potatoes, etc) and still have a fairly diverse and satisfying diet the whole time, and you might discover new foods and recipes you like. My oatmeal evolved :lol:

From my readings for a given person any food can cause it but the most common offenders are meat, dairy, gluten grains, nuts, corn, and potatoes. The calorie dense foods that have almost never been observed triggering arthritis include brown rice and sweet potatoes. And greens rarely seem to cause problems.

GP's... I think the reason they don't get in to diet & alternative medications, is because the science/evidence is often lacking, and mostly because they have years of experience of making lifestyle recommendations to patients who just ignore their advice & keep getting sicker & sicker....so they get to a point where they have given up on that.... I sometimes get really tired of the anti-doctor perspective that a lot of ppl have - it's a popular mainstream idea now (that doctors are only in it for the bucks, etc.)

Many of the more honest doctors freely admit they started in on it for the money, your right that it doesnt mean they dont care about people tho. Not everyone who wants to be prosperous is a sociopath.

In the US, at least, two big reasons a doctor doesnt get into diet and lifestyle health are 1) If doctors do anything not part of standardized practice they can be successfully sued, even if the doctor was unequivocally correct in his actions. 2) doctors constantly have to keep learning from material published by the drug companies through the universities. They dont have the energy or brain power left after working and that to do independent study. I knew one doctor well who was obese and was proud that his cholesterol was 'only' 185, he had heart disease and was going impotent. He took early retirement and was finally able to start reading about medicine for the sake of healing (as opposed to healing-with-patented-drugs that he had to learn), 4 years later I saw him and he had dropped almost 20 kilos and the heart disease was in remission. His skin even looked better. He finally had time to learn that diet mattered.

And yes, doctors do get burned out watching so many patients not listen. Its still patently immoral for them to never even give a patient the option to begin with, tho.

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Well since this is turning into such an interesting nutritional discussion, I'll share the results from the gut doctor I saw today. Apparently I have mild lactose intolerance, and a suspected gut infection (giardia?). From what I've read this afternoon, the two could be linked (the infection damages the wall of the smal intestine so that it produces less lactase). So... antibiotics and hope. Also tested negative for coeliac & Chrohn's.

Your diet sounds quite low in omega-3s and other fatty acids, so things like flaxseed oil, and SallyD's other recommendations - are fairly pertinent.

Secondly, your protein intake sounds on the borderline. Do you feel that you take a while to heal from strenuous exercise?

Thanks for all the advice CBL! And don't worry about disclaimers, I'm incapable of doing anything without researching it to death first :lol:

Yes, I should really get on top of the flaxseed/omega ratio thing. It used to be part of my anti-depressant regime, but I got slack lately. No more! - I have some flaxseed soaking in the kitchen right now. The phytic acid thing is interesting - I don't eat shitloads of grains, but it's an angle I hadn't considered much, and I am interested in getting into fermented foods more. My overall protein intake could be a bit low (I'm pretty sure I've got the "complete protein" thing under control though) - definitely an area for improvement. But no, skin & muscle injuries seem to heal ok. When I mentioned slow-healing injuries I was referring to tendon problems, which apparently is normal due to their low circulation. And my gut doctor gave me some stuff to read about the carbs/IBS thing, I remember there being a good thread in the Pharmacology section too.

If you don't have enough saturated fat in your diet your body cannot metabolise minerals properly and most of the minerals in your diet will just go to waste.

Saturated fat is also high in fat soluble vitamins which are vital for calcium metabolism and the manufacture & maintenance of chondrocytes (cartilage cells), fibrochondrocytes (meniscus and labrum cells), synoviocytes (cells that line the joint), myocytes (muscle cells) and fibroblasts (ligament and tendon cells).

Sorry for the rant but lipid science is one of my favourite topics.

Don't apologise, it's a good rant! Are there particular fats/oils that you would recommend? And yes, I've thought about tai chi/etc, but decided to try a sitting-still type first :) Sometimes I feel like I'm pushing my body too far with my current levels of activity, and while I know those forms of exercise are supposed to be gentle, I don't like arguing with my body. Plus I would need some practice at the mental discipline before I'd be able to work it into exercise anyway. Thanks for the suggestion though.

btw - I can email/snail mail files/audio cd's

Cheers coin, if I have trouble tracking anything down I may take you up on that generous offer. The links you gave have already given me plenty to think about.

C-reactive protein should be a marker for food triggered arthritis (its elevated in rheumatoid arthritis and in heart disease, the latter made the test for it available) but I dont know if its been confirmed.

I know my CRP levels are always normal when they test me, but I assume that this doesn't rule out food-related stuff, it's just that elevated levels would support it?

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If you were on an omnivorous diet grass fed beef would be a good choice as it has perfect ratios of Omega3 to Omega6 along with the saturated fats needed for the metabolism of minerals, but for people on a vegan or vegetarian diet coconut oil is possibly the best choice.

Raw coconut oil is sometimes called "virgin" oil which is a bit of a misnomer as most coconut oil isn't pressed it's simply skimmed off the top when they produce coconut milk . It's an amazing substance with a myriad of health benefits - this applies to people who aren't on a vegetarian diet too.

Coconut oil is high in medium chain fatty acids and in particular lauric acid which has powerful anti bacterial, anti fungal, anti parasitic and anti viral properties which could help with the intestinal problems you mentioned above.

Coconut oil also has analgesic and anti inflammatory properties

Although unrelated to your issue Coconut oil contains a good amount of glycerol monolaurate (GML) which has been proven effective in treating some resistant strains of tuberculosis. http://avrotor.blogspot.com/2009/06/by-dr-abe-v-rotor-virgin-coconut-oil-is.html I just included that to exemplify the anti microbial properties of the oil.

I mentioned Mary Enig before in an earlier post in this thread she has a great website dedicated to coconut oil and her site has links to many peer reviewed papers on all things related to coconut oil.

http://coconutoil.com/

And the vital Omega 3 oils should be investigated.

Personally I'd avoid fish oils and Krill oils as they are in a refined form that lack the essential protein that omega 3 needs to make it water soluble and bio-available. In wild harvested fish these oils come pre-packed with the protein they need proper assimilation, but the refined products have to be taken in large doses to be effective or most of it will simply get flushed down the toilet. Factory farmed fish is commonly fed grain based diets which alters the natural ratio of essential fatty acids in much the same way as it does for grain fed beef fed - so I'd avoid those fish and chose wild harvested every time.

Flax oils in the form of gel based capsules has been proven to be rancid more often than not and is considered by some to be more harmful than beneficial so I'd avoid them too.

Flax oils are a great choice, The book I mentioned in my first post by Johanna Budwig can explain that much better than I can in my intoxicated state at the moment.

Flax oil should only be consumed if it has been kept under refrigeration and has not exceeded its use by date. This is because polyunsaturated oils become rancid very quickly and once they are rancid they become as poisonous as any other rancid vegetable oil. The bonding of the fatty acids in the flax to a sulphur based protein (such as cottage cheese) cannot be understated, as this bonding makes the oil water soluble and easily absorbable and much more beneficial.

Here's a quote from Budwigs book " Flax oil as a true aid against arthritis heart infarction and cancer" in relation to heat processed polyunsaturates and in relation to the association of fatty acids and protein

These fats are no longer active at the surface and capillary
level that means they can no longer flow into the capillaries.
Medically speaking, one says "the blood needs thinning". The
solid fats which are not water soluble and cannot associate
with protein are no longer capable of circulating through the
fine capillary networks. The blood thickens and circulation
problems arise

Budwig rescued many cancer patients from their deathbeds after they had been given weeks or days to live & she did this by administering essential fatty acids and cottage cheese, the cheese provided the sulphurous protein I mentioned above.

Edit: I mentioned something in my last post about the vegetable industries propaganda, I meant to say the vegetable oil industry. I have no issues with vegetables and the natural oils they contain. I should go back and edit that part.

Edited by SallyD
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Just a few more points of interest

If you can find a source of hemp seed or cold pressed hemp seed oil, that will be a better source of essential fatty acids, maybe not as cost effective but very effective none the less.

Hemp seed oil has a bias towards omega 6 fatty acids, but the amino acid profile and other nutritional qualities make it a worthwhile addition to most diets.

& avoid any form of fatty acids that come in pre-ground "meal"

EFA's oxidise and become rancid in as little as 15 minutes, so anything that is to be consumed in the form of a meal product should be freshly ground yourself and consumed immediately unless preserved in an oxygen barrier like honey.

& Anodyne you mentioned earlier that soy constitutes part of your diet. Soy contains several known allergens that affect the lining of the gut and can cause compromised intestinal & immune system function. I wouldn't even consider it safe for human consumption unless it was fermented.

The toxic effects of soy products

Namaste

Edited by SallyD

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IMHO just take an animal derived EPA/DHA concentrate....plenty of people don't metabolize plant based omega-3's very well.

If you choose animal-free for ethical/spiritual reasons -- take flax products, or there are now algal-sourced omega 3 concentrate products.

if you choose animal-free for health -- at least look at these most bio-available omega 3 products available.

Personally I use "Jarrow Epa Dha Balance"

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The benefits from a diet change on these tissues will take quite a while to be felt significantly, as the tissues are so slow growing. But to get it under control before you age - is a huge deal, as once you're old - even if you change your diet, your healing rate slows down, and it will not be sufficient to heal properly. Once you're past the age of about 40-60 (somewhere past there), your ability to create bone is heavily reduced, and it becomes more a case of stopping the bone you have from leaching away too quickly. I would wager it's similar with tendons and ligaments and cartilage. I know they did a study and found that the Achille's tendon basically cannot even heal from a young age: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/02/130212112019.htm

Something I only realized recently. The kind of realization that slaps you in the face for sticking to your assumptions. Basically I'd assumed that meditation was like "levels", and that until you'd finished a level - you couldn't go to the next. While I can't "prove" this is not the case, I can say that for me I realized it was not as helpful as having a few techniques, and practising them in rotation. So I might do breath-counting for a few days, then just plain breathing (imagining the words in and out), and then I might perform completely silent-thought meditation, where I'll focus solely on the tiny sensation of air flowing through my nose. It is like levels in that the order I've listed the techniques here seems to be the logical progression to encounter them - and in order of least to most difficult, but that's all. I pretty much stopped my daily meditation habit because I was doing way too much breath-counting (like for months), and it took away my enthusiasm for meditation. But now I realize I should've then focused more on the other techniques - there is no "you have levelled up to the next most difficult meditation technique" unambiguous sign.
:P

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on regards meditation and pain, a good technique is to actually focus your entire psyche on the spot of pain with increasing acuity and attention. The pain actually dissolves! The theory is that a lot of pain is caused by the psyche avoiding awareness.

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IMHO just take an animal derived EPA/DHA concentrate....plenty of people don't metabolize plant based omega-3's very well.

If you choose animal-free for ethical/spiritual reasons -- take flax products, or there are now algal-sourced omega 3 concentrate products.

if you choose animal-free for health -- at least look at these most bio-available omega 3 products available.

Personally I use "Jarrow Epa Dha Balance"

Yeah I'd have to agree with coin, animal sources of fatty acids would be my first choice every time. Polyunsaturates all fall under the broad classification of poisons once they are metabolised.

The so called essential fatty acids are not really as essential as we were led to believe 30 years ago as our bodies can synthesize them in the required amounts once some of the suppressive mechanisms have been removed from the diet.

I only mentioned the flax oil as Anodyne is on a vegetarian diet and some vegetable sources can restore the balance of fatty acids quickly.

They are more of a stop gap measure rather than a long term prospect.

Edited by SallyD
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on regards meditation and pain, a good technique is to actually focus your entire psyche on the spot of pain with increasing acuity and attention. The pain actually dissolves! The theory is that a lot of pain is caused by the psyche avoiding awareness.

Yes I am coming around to this approach, which fits with the ideas others have mentioned above. Basically that the really distressing part of pain is linked to resisting the sensation - if you can eliminate the emotional upset, it becomes just another sensation like heat or pressure. This also ties in with some studies I've been reading about, where antidepressants and anxiolytics were used for chronic pain and sometimes worked better than straight-up analgesics.

At the moment I've been playing with a visualisation technique: I picture the pain as a separate entity inside my body, a bit like some horribly-malformed version of those sensory homunculi. And you're right, when you focus hard on it, it feels like it becomes detached or something. It's easier to accept the pain if I picture it as a complete & separate creature which I can isolate, rather than thinking of it as being a dysfunction of parts of my body. As the "pain critter" becomes more fully-formed in my awareness, it becomes easier for me to think "you are a complete being, perfect just the way you are & all that - but you are not me". Probably not explaining it well, but I am having some success already. :)

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I think Shinzen Young has 1-2 videos where he's working with someone, working with pain - and IIRC, it is all about intensely focusing in to pain, where it becomes deconstructed

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