I survived another Year!

To me this is another miracle in my life! If you had talked to me and I had been honest with you in February 2013 last year likely I would have said to you, "I'm not sure I will live to see another year." However, some of the miracles that saved my life are just increasing knowledge about health that I have picked up along the way.

Here are some of the things I have discovered through various medical practitioners. Without all of them I likely wouldn't be alive or at least able to write this for you now. But, as a result of all these things I'm not only alive but still travel, ski, ride my dualsport, hike in the woods and along the beach with my dogs almost every day, and am relatively happy in my life!

The first thing I learned this year that kept me alive was after $1000 in blood tests I found I was extremely allergic to Gluten. Though it was difficult to give up all gluten in my diet what was the alternative? To be dead now or soon?

The next thing I learned was that my gluten allergy came from the same thing that caused me to be hypothyroid, likely helped cause my heart virus that I almost died from for 7 months in 1998 and 1999 etc. which was that I had had giardhea that I got in India, Thailand and Nepal in 1985. Because it is almost impossible to completely rid yourself of the protazoa in your intestines without completely destroying your liver, some of them stay there (even when you don't have symptoms). The eventually cause (by attacking your intestines to not process Gluten) you intestines to not be able to process gluten sugars and this makes you allergic to gluten even if you weren't before.

(So, if you were exposed to giardhea in any 3rd world nation or even here in the U.S. and didn't know it there is a good chance they will make you hypothyroid eventually (within 10 to 20 years) and if you still don't go off of gluten you will then get an auto-immune disease (like LUPUS or something like that).

Luckily, I stopped eating gluten before this happened so I don't have an auto-immune disease.

So, since October 2012 I have had to start using lisinopril, gave up all gluten (which also ended 90% of the pain in my body), then this fall I learned about the miracle drug Spironolactone which basically cures edema while you are taking it. And so far, I have no side effects from either medicine. So, I would call both Lisinopril and Spironolactone and Armour Thyroid for a hypothyroid condtion all "Miracle Drugs" when you are on the right dose (and doses change over time).

So, thanks to all these things and more that I learned I'm still alive. So, if you potentially fall into any of the categories I'm talking about: heart virus, low heart compression, allergy to gluten from exposure to giardhea, or edema in you feet and legs (swelling of feet and lower legs) you might be able to lengthen your lives and reduce your suffering too just by learning what I did.

Staying alive with all of one's mental and physical faculties intact is a miracle in itself.

For example, in March likely I will go to Hawaii with my family (5 of us) and snorkel in the ocean there with all the tropical fish once again. Another miracle!