How Much We Know Ourselves By Science

Old Chinese medical chart on acupuncture meridians (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In her book "The fate of Chinese medicine" (temporary translation of 问中医几度秋凉), Ai Ning told the story of her father, who was doctor also a "die hard" believer of science and modern medicine. He got some disease when he was 60 year-old and did not get help from modern medicine. Out of desperation, he accepted treatment of Chinese medicine and he was "magically" cured. So his mind was in great confusion because he thought by theory he knew exactly what's wrong and believed that he should have cured by "science". After this experience, he gave up fighting against Chinese medicine. In conclusion, Author said this:

"If in this world we only had one medicine theory (implies modern medicine), he (father) would die without regret. But ironically, Chinese medicine let him lived with perplexity."

Contradiction Between Body And Mind

My state of life (of all these years): a passionate mind trapped in a lifeless body!

A Retreat After A Giant Step Forward - My Body Says No To My Passion!

English: Sleeping cat (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It seems I overdid again. Not sure how long this punishment would last, but certainly, it's not going to be just a few days, or a "minor step back", as I mentioned in my previous post.

I recently discovered my new passion: gardening. My front yard is getting beautiful. But it has been proven that gardening did more harm to me than good, even though I did not really "push" myself at all (only one of a few flowers a time!). I crashed again and again. My body simply says no to my passion!

Not only my health take one step back, my financial situation also suffers. Yes, I have to make very penny I spend, because doctors did not believe there is nothing wrong with me!

On the other hand, I have to focus on the fact that I had made the biggest improvement in recent 5 years. I need to be more patient, that's all.

Thinking carefully, these are the reasons I stumbled:
1. overly exercises. I did avaragely 3-5 times a week, which was fine first, but later after I increased the amount for each time, it was a little too much. Again, I wouldn't be able to tell how much was too much because when I was exercising, I felt fine.

2. The extreme humidity. For weeks we had extremely humid weather, it did not provide oxygen I needed when I exercised. So, I felt fatigue first, later on, symptom was triggered.

There are what I could think of now. Maybe there's more which I am not aware of. Well, what else I could do except going back living in my old "lifestyle" for a while.

A Minor Step Back

I hope it's just a "minor" step back. I had crash since last weekend. After two days rest, I was feeling good again, but, yesterday, gardening work seemed to be just a "little" too much, my heart is giving me trouble today again.
I already canceled my evening class. Hope I can be better tomorrow so I could hold my classes as usual. If not, it's OK too. I will NOT push myself again.

Rough Weekend

Sunday (Photo credit: _bobi + bobi)

I had rough weekend. It seems my increasing exercise overworked my heart, and during the past weekend I had crashed (heart malfunction, my old "friend"). I had to cancel one of my Sunday classes. I almost decided to push through, because my money is getting tight, but finally I decided to rest, because I reckoned that losing money was still better than suffering.

I am still on the "uptrend" since February. I had total about 4 or 5 medium scale crashes total, which is not bad at all. All I need to do is be careful with exercise. Rest is still more important to me.

3 Hours In Heaven, 3 Days In Misery. Yet There Is HOPE!

morning (Photo credit: Wolfgang Staudt)

Last Monday, which was 7 days ago, I woke up and felt like in Heaven. I went to bank and grocery store, then stopped by a coffee shop for a couple of coffee (hazelnut flavor with french vanilla creamer). I did all of these during one trip, which was quite an achievement to me! I found I was able to smile to people with ease (yes, even smile was energy taking for me for many years) and driving home with a feeling almost could be described as "euphoria". After I got home I turned music loudly and danced like when I was 18!

It was a few hours in Heaven! Really.

About 11 o'clock I went into kitchen to cook my lunch, and found I need some tomatoes. "Sure, I will go get them." I heard myself saying that with confidence. So I rushed out again to grocery store. Just when I was about to be impressed by the fact that I could handle all these things without a bed break, I realized I was reaching the limit of my energy. On the way back from grocery store I "prayed" desperately that my improved condition could keep me stay away from another serious crash, which I hadn't had one for a while. Well, it didn't. My heart started malfunctioning (felt like lack of blood or oxygen) around 3pm and it got worse and lasted for whole 3 days! I did not feel better until Thursday evening (my Wednesday class cancelled). Fortunately, I felt better on Friday, and during whole weekend I felt decent and was able to keep all my weekend classes.

Today is Monday again. Good news is, I have been feeling quite "heavenly" again. This time I was more careful to not have "too many" physical activities.

Living with unknown chronic condition is like walking on the thin ice, you never know when the ice would break. But, despite all of these, I still found my condition has been improved a great deal during the recent 2 or 3 months, first by taking the herbs (beginning of August), soon by completely eliminating regular outdoor exercise (I do yoga stretch daily, which helps blood circulation excellently).

Looking back, since more than a year ago, gradually, I found most of my symptoms were gone: shortness of breathe (the worst), stomach disorder (not much better than the worst), back pain, arthritis, constipation (chronic, for over 3 years long!), and many more (yes, I was totally and chronically screwed!)! Now my heart condition (which was the root problem for all) is pretty much the only symptom that still attack me from time to time. However, during the absence of heart problem - which is still very serious, I definitely feel much more alive. I do hope, after this year - my snake year, my condition could be back to my own "norm", so I could start exercising (walking or biking) regularly. And if I could keep doing that for several month, I could have a "remanufactured" physical health condition!

Progress Made

Pictures of herb samples from categories of Chinese Herbs Tonifying Herbs: Herbs that Tonify the Qi (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I've been feeling decent for a while (more than half month), except Thursday last week, when I had crash due to cleaning the kitchen floor. It took a couple of days to recover. I think the progress was made by multiple efforts:
1, almost completely cutting off exercises (walking ad biking), only stretch everyday;
2, Chinese herbs;
3, good diet;
4, good rest.

I will keep going like this and see how far I could go.

I realized my "fighting spirit" is very harmful to my health recovering. All these years, as soon as I felt better, I went to walk, or bike, then crashed after. I know my problem is energy, so this means, whenever I had a little energy saved, I used it up by exercise. So basically, I need to stop pushing myself like I was so used to in my first half of my life. I was right to think that life style (even personality) was the primary cause of all this mess. Of course changing life style or personality is nothing easy, but not impossible. And there are always many "blind spots" to discover: first walking (over 10 years ago); second rest (sleep, about 4 years ago); third diet (about 3 years ago); fourth, Chinese herbs (over 2 months ago); fifth, quit exercise (now!). Interestingly, each time I found something I thought it was the "last piece of my health puzzle".

P.S. I was highly annoyed by an incident another day when I encountered a person, who showed a kind of attitude like: What? you are still not well YET? or didn't you mention how much you had learned about health? She didn't say those words, but I just "imagined" all of them by her expression. People just don't know how complicated the condition is. Well, I better not even mention it. But I did, in case someone read this blog, so at least more people would know a little more understanding toward this so called "invisible illnesses".

Exercise Needs To Be Stopped!

By all these years experience, I think I got enough failures to convince me that exercise is more harmful than beneficial to me, at least during this period of my life. It needs to be stopped. If I desperately need to go outside walking, maximum 15 minutes!

Astragalus is still working. I found it works better when I am not exercising, or more specifically, walking. Stretching is the only type of exercise my body allows me to do. So I should just respect that. 

Is Change Possible?

1986, Hua mountain in China. It is
one of the most dangerous places
in the world. I wish I could that now. 

Change is not an easy task, especially when we talk about the changes of our life styles. And if the lifestyles are directly related to our personalities, changing them would take a life time to accomplish, or, it's simply a mission impossible.

The reason I bring this topic is because it seems like I need to do some serious change in my life, otherwise I may forever live with my chronic illness.

Just a while ago, I discovered some Chinese herbs that made some tangibly positive effects on me. I am very certain about the effects and very happy about the discovery. However, my progress has not been a straight up line, but up and down. This, I realized, was caused by my personality: I always "overestimate" my condition, overdo what I am actual capable of, so at the end my actions overdraw my energy, lead to "crashing" down, for days, some time weeks. Unfortunately, this would happen even more often when my condition was improved.

Had I not taken all these risks would my condition be different? I simply don't know, because my condition is so weak that the "risks" I am talking about here were literally nothing by normal standards, such as walking 10 minutes more, or shopping one more store, etc. Also, the line between "able" and "not able" is extremely blurry during recent years of my illness. However, I do remember many time, when I reached a point that I hesitated about doing or not doing, continuing or not continuing, I usually choose former, and then suffered consequence later, almost without exceptions. So the question is, why couldn't I choose the latter?

There is a Chinese old saying: "changing the world is easier than changing a personality"(江山易改本性难移). I now have full understanding of this adage. I guess for all my first half of life I have accustomed to this "toughness", fearlessness or even recklessness, and fully identified myself with such character: this, is who I am and without being like this, I am nothing but a living dead. But now everything seems just opposite: I am half dead by being "myself". I even realized how lucky those people who do not need to change their personality are, because adventurous spirit is a quality so enjoyable to possess. Yes, I like to be adventurous, and I also had fun for 30 some years in my life when I was able to be like that, but now, the reality I am facing is, being myself, or suffering consequence. The truth is, I had already changed in a great deal, people who knew me 20 years ago (even 10 years ago) would hardly believe who I am now (of course, the "change" still is just physical wise, inside I am exactly the same person). But it seems not enough. My physical condition requires me to act like a complete reserved and "timid" person who must always choose not risking, always tell people and myself "no, I can't", instead of "yes I can!" (NO MATTER HOW TERRIBLE IT SOUNDS TO SOME "POSITIVE" PEOPLE).

Can I do that? I am not sure, but I like to try (guess I already made progress here :-), because this is by far the last hope I've got, if I wanted to live healthily, if I wanted to be that "original self".

Herbs Worked This Time!

Astragalus membranaceus--黃耆/北耆 (Photo credit: jennyhsu47)

Auguest 2nd, 2013, Friday, was the day I like to remember. On that day, I started taking some herbs that I had hitherto not "believed": astragalus root (黄芪), Chinese dry red dates (红枣). Before that day, for years, I often suffer serious shortness of breath. Even overall condition improved during recent years, but I never found a way to get rid of them completely. During the past several months, ever time after I walked about 30 minutes, sometime even only 25 minutes, I crashed with breath and heart problem. I also had talking issue, feeling extremely difficult to speak, almost each class was a (more or less) struggle. But on the second of last month, after I made tea with these two herbs, I felt these symptoms were immediate relieved (I was be able to talk on the phone all the afternoon). And that weekend (Sat and Sun) I finished all my classes without much difficulty. The following week I had a serious crashes but the fault was mine: I overestimated my condition and went out with a friend. After that I learned to be careful and since then, I felt better and better each day, no crashes, all my daily routine works were handled with ease. And most importantly, I could walk at least 30 minutes without any crash!

It was about 3 years ago that I gave up Chinese herbs. I found they weren't helpful. I tried all kinds of Chinese herbs include these two (astragalus and red dates), together with many others, some by my own researches, some by Chinese doctors' suggestion, but never felt any discernible effects. What made this time so different? I have been wondering. Honestly I do not know for sure, but these are what I could think of right now: first, my condition back then was extremely bad, herbs alone might not be enough. I was probably right by focusing on diet and rest, because those are so essential to all our physical function. Secondly, I believe how I took those herbs back then was not "right". What I did mostly was putting them in soup, so basically I only had them when I ate my meals, thus the amount might not enough. Also herbs could be over cooked with soup. In case I was prescribed Chinese doctors, there were always many different kinds, and I drank only two or three times a day. I never really focused on these two herbs alone.

The way I take these herbs this time is super simple: just put them in a big thermo bottle, pour in boiling water and wait for about 10 minutes, then pour half the tea out of thermo into a cup (ready to drink), and refill thermo with hot water (This is how Chinese people drink tea). During morning I would drink about 3 cups of it, afternoon, another 2 or 3 cups. As I keep refilling water, the herb tea gets thinner and thinner toward the end of day, so I pretty much finish my "ritual" around dinner time.

I also put some other type of herbs in the tea, such as lycium (枸杞) and ginseng. For red dates, I like to eat them separately more than with tea because they really taste good. All these additions, I did it based on some researches and my "hunch". Not sure if they worked the way they should, but I was sure astragalus root and red dates worked.

My taking action on Chinese herbs this time, caused by a conversation I had with a Chinese friend who knows Chinese medicine in good deal. I told her how I gave up with herbs and only believed in diet. She disagreed and insisted that herbs were nutrition, not "medicine". And she insisted astragalus root should be good for me. After thinking of my condition, reckoning about the fact that I had been focusing on diet for almost 2 years, still nothing fundamental occurred, so I decided to open my mind again, trying something I didn't believe. And I am glad I did!

What astragalus (or together with red dates) does to me is enhancing my immune system. At least this how I feel like. It this sounds abstract, let me put it this way: astragalus obviously stopped my hunger problem. For all these years, if I didn't eat right or enough, I would feel extremely weak. And when I felt hungry, I felt I was dying (heart function would be messed up, shortness of breathe would occur, and dizziness), instead of just hungry. Now, after drink this herb tea, I do not feel I need eat much. As matter of fact, I started eating very little, and still feeling energetic. This change was so drastic and so "concrete" that I could not deny the fact by assuming it was my mental illusion (needless to mention that I did not believe it before I tried). Astragalus also "accidentally" cured my UTI - the symptom that brought me to ER, because two or three days after I took herb tea my UTI symptom was gone completely (antibiotics worsened my heart and breath problems so I had to quit it). By the English documents I read online, astragalus can be poisoning and has some side effects, but some Chinese documents suggest the side effects of astragalus are very little (probably it has the least side effects among all known herbs, or not any more poisoning than some foods or daily drinks, such as coffee and tea!). For these 30 days, my experience told me that I did not feel any  side effects (I take ~30 g each day).

Red dates, by Chinese medcine, is good for people who have anemia. Though I was never diagnosed of anemia by modern medicine, I was always "diagnosed" of anemia by Chinese medicine. Regardless the conflicted interpretation about anemia, eating lots of red dates indeed made me feel different. Overall, these two herbs together seems to be the best for women who have general energy problems, as traditional Chinese medicine believes.

I really feel my energy rushed back to me during the past month. I have reason to believe, had I tried these herbs by this way (tea) 2 years ago, my past 2 years would be different. Of course, other than taking herb tea, I believe lots of other things I did also worked: low carb diet, getting rid of coffee, tea, and spicy foods, lots of water (of course I had to reduce water intake after I started drinking herb tea). However, the drastic energy change took place precisely on the day I started this herb tea!

I would not say I am recovered totally. No, far away from it. But good thing is I can exercise daily now, and I know by doing this, my heart condition - the root problem of all problems - would eventually be solved! I will reduce the amount of astragalus root (from ~ 30g to ~20g each day) for this month, and see what would happen this month.