The Ideal Protein Diet

The Ideal Protein diet is a low carb and low fat diet that relies heavily on protein supplementation.  The protein is designed to be easily assimilated to ensure as little muscle loss as possible.  The dieter makes the transition from burning carbohydrates to burning fat, a metabolic state called ketosis.

My wife started the diet on Thursday under the weekly care of a multi-specialist clinic that includes a nutritionist/cardiologist.  She's been having the diet drinks for breakfast and lunch, diet snacks plus a meat and vegetable dinner, which she prepares herself.  The meat portion is 8 ounces, and the vegetable portion is 2 cups cooked, plus some raw.  She must also drink 8 glasses of water each day, and she eat or drink anything else that's 0 calorie, such as tea, coffee, diet soda.  She's allowed to have skim milk.

How's it going?  She feels like shit.  Totally.  I've never seen her so inflamed.  We don't know whether the inflammation is due to the diet or from the undiagnosed MS-Sjogrens-Fibromyalgia-Lupus that has been torturing her since Fall of 2006.  The primary care doctor recently stopped prescribing the $3 prednisone, which allowed her to function well.  Instead, he wants her to undergo the $35-copay physical therapy and work with a $35-copay rheumatologist.  The most intense pain appears to be from flare up of sacrolitis.

Anyway, and inflammation aside, this diet seems to be a good fit for my wife because:

1. You pay a shitload of money upfront.  Anything that's expensive must work.
2. All literature and products feature a special logo and graphic layout with pleasing colors that must've allowed an advertising agency to buy its own tropical island.
3. The diet tells you exactly what to eat.  You don't need to think about it or know anything about the relationship between various foods and their impact on your weight and health.
4. You need to buy most of the stuff that you eat and drink.
5. You need to check in every week for evaluation.

The above list of reasons are the reasons it wouldn't work me.  Besides, the food they give you is highly processed.  The sweet desserts and snacks certainly use some artificial sweetener that will probably give you cancer or seizures eventually.

But if I had to choose between the Ideal Protein diet and, say, bariatric surgery, I'd pick the diet without hesitation.

And Now Fibromyalagia

This November posting frenzy would not be complete without an update on my wife.

The medical weirdness started when she was pregnant with a severe rash that covered her entire body but not her face. She described it as intensely itchy. To me, it looked like an episode of Star Trek when one of the "Away Team" contracts an alien virus and morphs into another humanoid species. There was no clear definitive diagnosis on that -- just some sort of vague reference to "pregnancy rash" and that it only happens once. It reoccurred four months later, although not a severe.

The next episode happened in 2006. Both parotid glands swelled. Again the medical community was stumped. One doctor even suggested that it was a stone, forgetting (or ignoring) the fact that both sides of her face were affected. Antibiotics were prescribed and taken with no improvement. Then it was determined to be viral, so treatment involved alleviating the pain. Then when she complained of dry mouth, a doctor suspected Sjögren’s Syndrome and prescribed prednisone. The symptoms went away but came back. The test for Sjögren’s Syndrome was negative.

We're still dealing with the after effects of the next event, the attack of Transverse Myelitis. It started when she woke me up to tell me that she couldn't pee. She was released from hospital four weeks later barely able to walk and with severe pain.

Fed up with allopathic medicine, we consulted with a Naturopathic Doctor who made a diagnosis of Hashimoto's Thyroiditis. Although he couldn't treat her pain, he suggested a variety of supplements, two of which were NatureThroid, non-synthetic thyroid extract, and Isocort, a non-synthetic adrenal extract. The supplements had a terrific effect on her mood.

Still, we needed pain relief so we stuck with the neurologist at the hospital that she was initially treated in. Concerned about leg weakness, they mentioned spinal stenosis and MS.


Well, I'm getting angry and upset again. Suffice it to say, some more bumbling doctors made some more diagnoses. And the latest of these is fibromyalgia. This diagnosis was based on tenderness of all the pressure points and a negative test result for anything else. (Thank goodness that she never got a false positive for Lyme disease as I did. Otherwise, she'd get a two-week course of antibiotics and a pronouncement of being cured.)

I think her fibromyalgia is due to improperly managed pain. She was given too few quick-acting opioid pills and then left with no coverage at night. Thus she has been suffering from insufficient sleep for several months.

In his 2004 book, "Arthritis: Fight it with The Blood Type Diet Dr. Peter D'Adamo writes about people with type A blood, such as my wife,

One of the effects of high cortisol is a disruption of the sleep cycle, which, in turn, places extra stress on the body. Studies show that many people with arthritic conditions such as fibromyalgia experience a type of sleep disturbance called alpha delta sleep disorder. People with alpha delta sleep disorder experience a disruption in sleep patterns. They don't obtain enough deep sleep -- the phase in which muscles are repaired.

Anyway, even though this is yet another incurable disease that no one understands, maybe it will at least allow my wife to get better pain management.

April is [lots of stuff] Awareness Month

Today I had planned to repeat my April is Autism Awareness Month post. But then I recalled that April is also Sjogren's Awareness Month.

Curious as to how many things we're supposed to be aware of in April, I did a search on Yahoo. I figured I would include a list of all of them. But that was before I saw the search results, 64.7 million in all. And besides, there already is such a listing. Unfortunately, the authors of that list are not actually aware that April is Autism Awareness Month. Go figger.

What I found especially annoying was the top-most entry in the results is for Mathematics Awareness Month. It's not that I dislike math -- actually I think it's really neat. But it's the fact that someone decided it was necessary to devote an entire month to making us aware of it. Perhaps I'm mistaken, but isn't that what school is for? And besides, those of us in the engineering profession get only a measly week, and some folks still think engineers drive trains.

Your Sleep Has Been Delayed

"Your sleep has been delayed." Imagine hearing that as if it were announced in an airport. That's how I'm imagining it, anyway.

I'd be sleeping now. But an hour and a half ago my wife told me that she was having trouble swallowing. Turns out she just took a new-to-her med, Trazodone, to help her sleep through the night. The idea here is that maybe her extreme fatigue is due to her inability to get a full night's sleep.

Ironically, one of Trazodone's more common side effects is dry mouth, which is also a huge problem for folks with Sjögren’s Syndrome, which she may (or may not) have. And excessive dry mouth can lead to difficulty swallowing.

Another thing that can cause difficulty swallowing is swelling of the throat due to an allergic reaction, which, as you might imagine, requires immediate medical attention. My experience is that it's easier to seek immediate medical attention when you're awake.

Hence, the delayed sleep and a time-wasting post about it.

Anyway, she's sleeping now. I don't have to check on her breathing -- the snoring says it all.

Good night!

April is Sjögren’s Syndrome Awareness Month

Last year, I wrote that April is Autism Awareness Month. It still is. But April is also Sjögren’s Syndrome Awareness Month.

Sjögren’s Syndrome is an autoimmune disorder. It's characterized by dry mouth and dry eyes, because the body's immune system attacks the moisture-producing glands. But it can affect other organs and the central nervous system as well. Click here to read more about Sjögren’s Syndrome. The FAQ may be helpful, too.

About six months before my wife had her attack of Transverse Myelitis, she had swelling of both her parotid (salivary) glands. This was very painful, and it baffled her primary care doctor. Eventually, she found herself in the care of a rheumatologist who suspected Sjögren’s Syndrome. But the tests were negative. Researchers now know that Sjögren’s can cause Transverse Myelitis.

So the Grand Unifying Theory of What's Wrong With My Wife is most likely that she has Sjögren’s Syndrome. This would explain the dry mouth and the parotid gland swelling, the Transverse Myelitis, the instances of joint and muscle pain, the fatigue, the brain fog, the neuropathy. My guess is that it will eventually be linked to PUPPP (Pregnancy Rash), which my wife had about nine years prior to the start of this Nightmare.

As more patients and especially doctors become aware of Sjögren’s Syndrome, folks with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and/or Fibromyalgia might be properly diagnosed and find some relief with immunosuppressive drugs.