C-Word Health Optimization
It's More Than Awareness
Happy February Extension Day aka Leap Year! Since it was recently brought to my attention that March 15th is long covid awareness day, and I am already more aware of long covid than I want to be, and it is my personal observation that many people don’t even want to hear the word covid again let alone be more aware of it, and most people are so busy just trying to live their own everyday lives that they probably won’t really be as AWARE of long covid until it happens to them or someone they love; I have decided to go beyond making everyone aware of long covid because most of you are probably already aware that long covid is a possible outcome of covid infection for less than 10 percent of all of us. Frankly, the thought of taking over every year of March Madness basketball with another different and very subdued color of ribbon, to unite in long covid solidarity, makes me want to gag a little and before you judge me for being uncaring about overdoing pink October to the extent that it has become desensitizing; the people at the Stanford Social Innovation Review seem to agree with my thoughts-
It’s time for activists and organizations to adopt a more strategic approach to public interest communications.
One of the points that the awareness article makes is that there are now so many awareness days every month that many of you may have already tuned out and turned off at the mere mention of the word awareness day. One of my biggest concerns about long covid “awareness” and covid in general is that the political-covid battlefield has already caused too much political-covid, public harm. In my opinion, long covid “awareness” campaigns that center too much on government intervention research pie pieces and their political tax dollars will turn off a large majority of people in our politically polarized America who are already more covid aware than they probably ever wanted to be.
What I am going to do instead of making you more aware of c-words during this coming month of March is to give you some educational ideas. Ideas that can be taken to your own care providers and/or wellness coaches (if you are blessed with enough money and insurance to have them) that can be used to build your own health care protocol. Ideas that can be used to optimize your own health and minimize your own health risk which you most likely are already overly aware of. Ideas that can potentially improve your quality of life while living in a world full of covid and cancer c-words. Ideas that you can start learning about and start doing now that will not involve you waiting for acts of congress. Ideas that will not leave you waiting 20 years for conventional medicine to catch up with current research results that already exist in abundance so that a standard of care practice, that may not even work for you in particular, can be forced upon the highly managed and controlled healthcare system and funneled down to you i.e. your tax dollars at work.
All of the ideas we will be going over here should be of benefit to all of us since covid, long covid, and cancer are here to stay whether we have them right now or not. Some of the things we will be taking a look at are how to deal with the inflammatory and metabolic things that covid and other c-words like pre-cancer do to our bodies and the things we can possibly do to control the potential inflammatory metabolic meltdown. We will also be taking a look at the type of cancer that is most associated with long-covid, autoimmune, and other immune suppressive, post-pathogenic, conditions that can cause chronic fatigue syndromes.
And since we went over HVP (viral) associated cervical and colorectal cancers recently, I will leave you with these “awareness” backfiring campaign thoughts from the innovative Stanford people:
Raising awareness also gets dicey when issues have the potential to generate controversy. When issues are complicated by partisan politics, for example, the message may be vulnerable to backlash and slow down or halt progress on an issue. This was the case in a public policy initiative in support of the HPV vaccine………………If there had not been a high-profile lobbying campaign to fast-track Gardasil, the vaccine would have slowly been introduced to boys and girls through their personal physicians and existing programs that provide access to childhood vaccinations, a more traditional path for introducing new vaccines, similar to the introduction of the hepatitis B vaccine (HBV).10 In the end, the HPV campaign probably did more harm than good………..
Apparently, the political covid people didn’t get the Stanford awareness memo, which was written in 2017, so here we are, but let’s live and learn from our collective past mistakes. I’ll leave any HPV and vaccine associated decisions to you and your own thinking. I think using Gardasil or following the abstinence advice of St. Paul are both good options and that both options should be made available for us to choose from, while keeping in mind that both Gardasil and St. Paul’s abstinence teachings come with their own associated risks and that the political forcefulness of either of these options may most likely be a bad idea.
In other news, my dad, the cancer free walking miracle, is still doing great. Mom has had to have a tooth pulled but is doing much better following her recent bought with lingering Covid (many thanks to Dr. Wilson for his supplemental help and a local IV clinic where mitochondrial supportive supplements like glutathione and B12 were given). I am doing well and learning how to be a chicken person because my husband, the chicken whisperer, has taken to bringing home chickens, and he recently found a hitchhiking chicken in his work truck. She snuck in while he was doing some work, rode quietly for the 30-minute return ride home with him, then went on an after-work recreation ride before making her presence known. She also left him an egg in the backseat. Her owner was notified of her hitchhiking decision but has said that we should keep her.
As I wrap things up, I found another gut/GI healing nutritional protocol that I would like to share with our PAID subscribers. This protocol complements the PAID content we covered in the “GI Soothing supplements and other helps section” of the DNA, Epigenetics and Genetics (substack.com) newsletter.
More dancing ribbon thoughts- I loved dancing with my grandmother who had lots of oak trees, and I have a distinct memory of her and Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree from when I was around 2 years old. It’s as if my 2-year-old self knew that my husband’s family would be greeting us with yellow ribbons tied around their oak trees when he came home from a war, and that it was already probably written somewhere in my future. It’s weird to think about that now. As you may recall, a type of lymphoma took my grandma on my birthday. I can’t help but wonder if it will take me too, but she dyed her hair jet black for a very long time and hair dyes are on the lymphoma list. I do not dye my hair and have no plans on starting because grey hair is about wisdom and avoiding my grey hairs with hair dye may cause lymphoma.
The rest of the yellow ribbon song story is a good one and can be found here-
Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree: Story Behind the Song (tennessean.com)
Long covid may be on the lymphoma list too, so I hope some of you are going to be paying attention to what’s coming to Leaving Death in the Dust in March. Maybe there are some things I can do to buy me a bunch of lymphoma free time with my new granddaughter, and I hope we never have to tie any yellow ribbons anywhere because I am not a fan of absences, not even if they grow fond hearts. I think yellow ribbons may work better than pink ribbon because we have not been desensitized to yellow ribbons like we have been to pink ribbons.
The first time I noticed that a mild case of Covid in the fall of 2021 really did something not so great to my body was when my hair began falling out.
Covid Hair, Chemo Hair - by Stephanie Schaible, MT (ASCP) (substack.com)
Yes, long-covid has aged me, but I’m over 50 and aging anyway, that’s natural. I have more gray hairs than I did before and my skin has aged a lot as well, but I have heard that aging, and gray hair, is associated with snowcapped mountains, something sacred, a place where pilgrims often go to find something.
A pilgrimage is a long walk that becomes a tough hike up a steep mountain. It’s not easy, but what you find at the top of that mountain makes it worth it. It’s about the journey and the destination and who you meet along the way and ___________.
Safely arriving at my intended destination has included struggling and suffering, but joy is here too. Keep shining light in those dark places. I am not my list of symptoms, and my symptoms do not limit my possibilities. Get up, and keep walking my friends.
As always-
*Leaving Death in the Dust is a newsletter and is not a replacement for professional, regulated, medical, healthcare. This is informational and educational. Some of us in this community may have worked in the healthcare system, but we are not your medical provider and whatever you find here is not the establishment of a professional medical relationship or medical advice. **That is an MT behind my name not an MD.
Best Wishes,
Steph
PAID Content
After our last newsletter was published, I stumbled across this interesting article from the Natural Medicine Journal and thought it could be helpful and worth sharing. Here is the article link and the protocol elements:
Nutritional Protocol for the Treatment of Intestinal Permeability Defects and Related Conditions, January 15, 2014
Antioxidant Supplementation
Antioxidant Combination to Provide:
Quercetin 400–800 mg
Ginkgo biloba extract (24% ginkgo flavone glycosides) 40–80 mg
Vitamin C (calcium, magnesium ascorbates) 1,000–2,000 mg
Vitamin E (d-alpha tocopheryl succinate) 200–400 mg
N-acetyl-L-cysteine (NAC) 150–300 mg Zinc (Zinc picolinate) 45–90 mg
(Consider copper supplementation at 0.75–1.5 mg in light of zinc intake.)
Targeted Mucosal Nutrients
Mucosal Nutrient Combination to Provide:
L-glutamine 750–1,500 mg
N-acetyl-D-glucosamine (NAG) 375–750 mg
Phosphatidylcholine 75–150 mg
Gamma-linolenic acid (GLA) 200–400 mg
Digestive Plant Enzymes
Acid-Stable Enzyme Combination Totaling 613 mg to Provide:
Protease 30,000 USP
Amylase 32,000 USP
Lipase 2,100 FIP
Lactase 1,600 ALU
Sucrase 300 INVU
Maltase 32,100 DPo
Phytase 1.7 PU
Cellulase 350 CU
Probiotic Intestinal Microflora
Probiotic Combination to Provide 1–5 billion CFU:
Lactobacilli: L. acidophilus, L. rhamnosus
Bifidobacteria: B. bifidum, B. lactis, B. longum, B. breve
Dietary Fiber Supplementation
Dietary Fiber Combination to Provide:
Psyllium Seed Husk 1-5g
Flax Seed 1-5g
Dietary Eliminations/Limitations that were shown to reduce GI symptoms-
wheat, dairy, eggs, and refined carbohydrate products.
More thoughts on the LC ribbon, see also my note on this for the visual aide.
Let’s start with an overview of it-
The three colors in the ribbon represent:
past present and future of Long Covid
Gray: Loss and Grief
Teal: Hope and Support
Black: Loneliness and Isolation
First of all, this is a spliced ribbon. I don’t have any ribbon in my house that has spliced color like this does.
Second-
Teal is not a primary color. It’s a blend of calming blue skies or the chaotic seas that can change from serene to chaotic in an instant. Green is vibrant, full of renewal and life.
The color yellow has traditionally been associated with Hope- joy, energy, light, life, vitality.
Grey/Black is associated with the absence of light, darkness, rest, sleep, sickness and death.
The movement of the LC color ribbon goes upward from grey to black at the top of the ribbon and then downward to teal, hope. But hope, looks up toward a higher thing in quality. You do not look down to something of lesser quality or move down to the ground for hope. Hope has a higher quality. The reach for something of better quality is up not down. The directional movement of this spliced ribbon is all wrong. The movement of aim for a grain of sand of lower quality on the earth is upward to that of a star high up in the sky.
The LC color ribbon is twisted in its symbolic meaning- it elevates grief and loss; it puts isolation and loneliness as it’s highest aim; it pushes Hope behind the darkness and moves it down into the ground, the place associated with death, not life.
Traditional People who better understood the Pinocchio, when you wish upon a star moral of the story, should be able to understand what’s really going on here.
Thanks Stephanie! Your words reflect many of my own frustrations about Long COVID politicalization and the apparent dead ends orientation of research that is coming out of the massively funded RECOVER project.
On a personal note, I wonder how many other people lost their hair, at least in part, during COVID? I did. It was about the same time that I lost my sense of smell. It took a couple of months to recover my senses of smell and taste, but my hair's revitalization is still in progress, now nearly 4 years along.