3 months of no treatment

I stopped taking antimicrobials at the beginning of May to get ready for my last SIBO test on May 15th when I was down in Portland.  That test was still positive but very low and when I met with Dr. Keller on the 18th we decided to just quit chasing after those last few points for a while.  Instead I decided to work on motility, trying to heal my gut lining, trying to get my good bacteria repopulated in my colon plus give my liver some time to recover from the assault it was under with that last 6 weeks of treatment.

It has now been three months, the longest I’ve gone without actively treating SIBO in the last two years and I feel really good.  Overall I have no symptoms at all most days and even on the days I have some symptoms they are very mild and late in the day.   My poops are back to normal and constipation is not an issue at all these days, I go very regularly several times a day.   I’m eating a pretty full AIP diet these days with some eggs thrown in there too and a few seeds and selective nuts occasionally.   I can now handle lots of sweet potatoes and plantains, things that would have killed me a year ago.  Better yet, I can eat chocolate and homemade Paleo ice cream!

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Quad Cities Paleo

I finally went back to Iowa to visit the family and was pretty worried about the food situation.   In advance I had ordered some staples on Amazon and had them shipped out – ghee, coconut oil, matcha, coconut milk, … and I figured that the fall-back plan was to drive to Iowa City to visit the Whole Foods there and load up on meats.   Boy was I in for a pleasant surprise.

The local Hy-Vee grocery chain has a huge Health Food section complete with a dietician on staff and a notebook full of their Gluten-Free products.  That section had things like Julian’s Paleo Bread, GT’s Kombucha, local farm-raised eggs, Bubbies kraut & pickles, uncured bacon, good dark chocolate and a host of GF products I’d never go near anyway.   Still, impressive, almost as good as PCC.  A huge organic produce section rounded this out, no problems getting good broccoli, chard, berries, bananas, avocados and sweet potatoes.

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Lord Hill 10k, SIBO has made me fast

The evil elevation chart from the route

The evil elevation chart from the route

Today was the “Pie High” Lord Hill 10k run from Northwest Trail Runs and I really wasn’t sure I was going to be up for it.  First off, this was going to be the longest distance I’ve run yet this year, I did one other 10k up Tiger 3 a few months ago but haven’t gone past 5 easy miles other than that.  Second, I ended up riding a  lot longer to and from the NW Roots Festival yesterday and had a sore knee by the time I got home.  Third, I just knew Lord Hill was going to be a mother from having done a previous 10k and half marathon there.

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Dongshan’s Illness, Tim’s Illness

Dongshan_LiangjieCatherine listens to a lot of podcasts and often recommends some to me.  A few days ago she recommended one on How Illness Deepens Us by Michael Stone.   I got through all the fluff yesterday and finally got to the meat of the talk today and could very much relate to one of the main koans used in the talk – Dongshan’s Illness.  This is Case #98 in Dogen Zenji’s collection of 300 koans – The True Dharma Eye or Shobogenzo (not to be confused with The Treasury of the True Dharma Eye also called The Shobo Genzo.   It is also found in several other koan collections and is Case #94 in The Book of Serenity.

 

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UPWC Chinook Pass Loop

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After our first two successful overnight trips to Mirror Lake and Rachel Lake/Rampart Ridge we decided to take on a  bigger challenge and do a 3-day trip.   We opted to do the 2015 Ultrapedestrian Wilderness Challenge Chinook Pass loop – a 32 mile long loop  that starts at Chinook Pass on Hwy 410, goes south on the Pacific Crest Trail, drops into Mt. Rainier National Park on the Laughingwater Creek Trail then takes the Eastside Trail north through the park back to Chinook Pass.   Most people are running this in 8-12 hours but we decided to take the slow approach and do it as an ultralight backpack trip in 3 days and adding in a few extra miles in order to camp and see a few more sights.

Day 1 – Chinook Pass to Three Lakes Camp (12.77 miles)

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Cholesterol Clarity and my numbers

After listening to a podcast with Jimmy Moore I decided to read through his book Cholesterol Clarity:  What the HDL is Wrong with My Numbers?   I did a skim read of the book but the real meat is the very end which gives you the testing guide and optimal ranges.  How did I stack up on my last test?

Standard Lipid Profile

The Total number and LDL-C numbers are really kind of irrelevant according to Jimmy, it is the Triglycerides, HDL-C and the ratio of the two that matter the most.  There I’m in good shape even though my total numbers look high.

Total Cholesterol    Mostly irrelevant but should be   254 a bit high
                     250 or below for women and 220
                     or below for men
LDL-C                130 or below but higher levels    155 a bit high
                     are not necessarily relevant to
                     your heart health
HDL-C                Above 50 is good but 70 or higher  91 great!
                     is best
Triglycerides        100 or below, under 70 is best     41 great!

Advanced Lipid Profile

This looks at the sizes of the particles

LDL-P             Below 1000 nmol/L                 1481 high
Small LDL-P       less than 200 nmol/L, and          148  good!
                   20% or less of total LDL-P         10% good! 

In general the markers that matter I’m good on, the ones that doctors look at but don’t seem to matter I’m showing high on.   It it crazy that doctors are still looking at bad information and prescribing statin drugs based on these numbers.

It looks like my high numbers could be high for a couple of reasons that relate to my health in general and not my Paleo diet.   In the Nine Reasons Why Cholesterol Levels Can Go Up chapter I have a few of them.  These include:

  • Consuming a low-carb, high-fat diet.  This is my diet these days thanks to SIBO.  Evidently there is a segment of the population whose LDL-P,  LDL-C and Total Cholesterol numbers will spike on this diet and they don’t know why it happens.  Still, it appears the Triglyceride and HDL-C numbers and particle size are the important numbers.
  • Chronic Bacterial Infections.  Well, yes, I have one and they have been shown to raise these numbers too.
  • Weight Loss.   Thanks to SIBO I’m still down 10-15 lbs from my optimal in great shape weight.  My cholesterol numbers may just adjust themselves once my body fully adapts to the new set point.

One other thing I learned from the book which I found interesting is that Dr. Ornish’s famous study that recommended a Low-Fat Vegetarian Diet to reduce heart disease was very flawed.   It was a 5-year study that never isolated diet since it also required lifestyle changes related to smoking and exercise that would have a huge impact. Not only that but 28 out of the 30 participants ended up having heart attacks or requiring heart surgery within the time of the study.  That does not sound like a plan that took care of heart disease.  I had just listened to Dr. Ornish promoting this study as part of the class I’m taking a few weeks ago.

 

 

 

A podcast for everyone with SIBO

A few days ago I listened to Dr. Ruscio’s summary of the SIBO Symposium podcast and in it he mentioned a previous podcast with Chris Kresser about how Chris turned his illness around by simply choosing to live again instead of being so focused on his health and illness.  I pulled that podcast down and listened to it yesterday, you can find the transcript here and the podcast in iTunes here.   In this podcast several examples are given of people who got better when they finally stopped obsessing about their health and just went out and lived.  One guy even got better on a beer & pizza diet, primarily because he was out living life and being social again.

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Rachel & Rampart Lakes trip

Rachel Lake from Rampart Ridge

Rachel Lake from Rampart Ridge

Second backpack trip in June done!  This time we decided to do a shorter but steeper route to Rachel Lakes, Rampart Ridge and Rampart Lakes.   There were some early morning thunderstorms happening up at Snoqualmie Pass yesterday so we waited until about 8:30 to leave and drove up I-90 to Exit 60 and finally up along Kachess Lake to Box Canyon Road and the trailhead.    We got our packs on and headed to the trailhead.

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So how’s that SIBO going?

It has now been 60 days since I took any antimicrobial herbs and I must say, I’m feeling pretty darn good.   Is the SIBO gone?  No, I don’t think so since I still get some symptoms if I eat a bit too crazy on the FODMAP scale but overall I’m doing well and out enjoying life every single day.  I had a few days where I considered starting herbals again but that passed and I blame it on a restaurant meal that just didn’t sit right with me.   My liver enzymes went back to normal after 30 days off the herbals, AST at 25 and ALT at 20 which was a big relief.  Everything is testing in a good range at this point.  I’m going to review my Organix test next week and expect that will just be adding in some vitamins and maybe a few supplements.   My weight is still on the low side but still I’m holding steady with a  hunter-gatherer BMI with typical up and down fluctuations based on what I eat or how active I am.

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Rattlesnake Ridge 5-Mile

IMG_0179When I signed up for the Rattlesnake Ridge run back in the winter I had hoped to be ready to do the half marathon up and over the mountain but that wasn’t going to happen so I switched over to the 5-mile run which isn’t even on Rattlesnake proper but instead does an out and back on the Snoqualmie Valley Trail.  Nice smooth, gravel bike trail with only a few hundred feet of elevation.  Pretty easy and fast.

I arrived at 6 a.m. to do setup and registration in the morning.  I got through the 50k people by 7:15 or so then the half marathoners began showing up and that went until about 8:30 when they moved the last of registration for that over to the start line.  Then I did the 5-mile registration and finished up just in time to go tear off my pants and jacket and get into my sandals.  The Lunas got a lot of comment from other runners, they could not believe anyone would run in sandals and this was the most sandal friendly course I’ve ever used them on.

We started out fast, I didn’t want to get behind a bunch of people.  On the way down to the turnaround there were 3 people in front of a pack of 4 of us and we just kept changing lead position but were not going to catch the leaders.   At the turnaround I was shocked, I’d been keeping a pace barely over 7 minutes a mile!  I climb better than many so the slight uphill was nothing and I got past two of the guys in the group easily while one passed me and continued gaining on the next guy.  I just kept going fast since I was feeling good and crossed the finish in 37:43, a 7:34 pace!  That is the fastest trail 5 mile I’ve ever run, the fastest road 5 mile I’ve run even.  5th overall, just like the Cougar 5k last week.   Next up, Lord Hill 10k in July.