Vision and Balance

Hello, friends,

Whatever I did in Ireland, I must do again . . . for the sake of my vision and so many other physical blessings.

Would you care to join me on my journey of managing . . . diabetes?

As I'm in no position to declare any answers other than my own anecdotal experience, I expect that these posts will be filled with questions.

Having experienced a dramatic improvement in my vision and overall well-being within a two-week span in Ireland this summer, I experienced an equally dramatic regression in my vision -- noticed by me last week -- since I came home.  I ran to get a comprehensive blood test.  My eyesight has reverted to its worst lens prescription, and I have now been formally diagnosed with diabetes.

Upon returning home to the U.S. from my brief vacation in Ireland, I grew slightly lax with sugar, and especially lax with gluten   The gluten ingestion has made me feel quite bad and, usually, extremely sleepy.  (I'd had bloodwork for gluten intolerance in the early 2000s, and it came up positive for gliadin antibodies.  I had been in a toss-up over gluten -- should I eat it or not? -- ever since.)  The beneficial daily walking ceased, as well, since I returned from Ireland.

Clearly, exercise is an urgent necessity.  Upon receiving my diagnosis yesterday, I went right outside and began my walking regimen.  Now, for the rest of it . . .

I have serious disagreements with the typical protocol of managing diabetes the mainstream way.  Not only that, but I believe myself to be a poor candidate for diabetes medication due to my previously high degree of chemical sensitivity.  Also, I'm only too aware of the attendant risks that come with errors in diet while one is on diabetes medications:  low blood sugar, coma, and death.

Having been chemically sensitive for so long, I fear strange and unexpected reactions to such medication(s) posed by my body's inability -- even if this has lessened -- to tolerate many chemicals.

For these reasons, I'm aiming immediately at managing my diabetes through alternative means.

On July 18, 2015, I received my strongest eyeglasses prescription ever, as of that date.  This had been my second lens prescription in three weeks.  My vision had suddenly deteriorated just prior to June 26th, 2015.  Then, three weeks later (July 16-18th), I experienced an unquenchable thirst for a few days.  No sooner would I finish one bottle of water than I would have to stop to get another one.  My vision deteriorated further, and back I went to get new lenses.  The prescription had increased.

Suspecting a problem with blood sugar at this point, I immediately tightened up my diet.  By the time I flew to Ireland, I was feeling perky again and the eyeglasses felt good.

Within a few days of being in Ireland, however, my vision changed dramatically again.  At first, I wondered if I might be dying.  However, I'd then been walking a great deal for a few days and the rest of me felt quite well.  Unusually well.  Still, there I was in the Irish supermarket with huge halos around every light and exceptionally blurry vision through my eyeglasses.  I found that looking through the bottom section of my bi/trifocals helped.  This was the reading section of the lenses.  In the back of my mind, I began to hope that, this time, my vision had actually improved -- since my best vision through the lenses was now through the "reading" part of the trifocals ("distance" at the top, "computer" in the middle, "close reading" at the bottom).

By the time I returned home on the morning of August 8th, I could not bear to keep the eyeglasses on my face because everything I now looked at was distorted through them.  Within a few hours I was back at the optometrist.  My lens prescription had improved so much, the new prescription was weaker than any prescription I'd had since before 2013.  Since I don't have the prescription records in my possession for my lens prescriptions prior to 2013, I can only guess, by the weakness of my August 8th prescription, that the improvement took me back, perhaps, to my vision of 2000 or even earlier.

I was happy.  I was elated.

After that, I became engrossed in the busyness of life and . . . started having a few desserts and permitting myself a lot of gluten, especially on the road:  buttered (wheat) rolls.  This was to be the beginning of the end of my dramatic improvement.

The optometrist was not surprised at the dramatic fluctuations of vision -- which he believed, from the beginning, were due to diabetes.  None of this was out of keeping with the visual regressions common to high blood sugar and the remarkable visual improvements his diabetic patients had enjoyed upon stabilizing their blood sugar.

I was fortunate that he also agreed with me that, for a gluten-sensitive person, gluten could be especially devastating to the blood sugar and, by extension, to the eyes.

Here is where I begin.  Obviously, all traces of refined/granulated/honey sugar must go.  But, now, gluten -- I'm asking the serious question about its effects on vision.  Some literature states that it can have a direct impact on vision by affecting the sensory nerves.  Since my first symptom of gluten sensitivity, back in 2002 and 2003, was severe dizziness and ataxia at times, I have no trouble believing this.  I became aware of my need to do a gluten-sensitivity blood test when I read literature on autism and came upon the genius of Lisa Lewis* ("About Lisa") through Karen Seroussi's book about her son, Miles:  Unraveling the Mystery of Autism and Pervasive Developmental Disorder: A Mother's Story of Research & Recovery – by Karen Seroussi (January 8, 2002).  I wrote to Lisa Lewis (around 2002) about my symptoms and she advised me to test for gluten.  (Thank you, Karen Seroussi and Lisa Lewis, if ever you read this.)

If this post is a little bit rambling, it's because I'm looking at the page through (hopefully temporary) visual distortions; and it's a rather sweaty enterprise to organize thoughts while feeling, overall, physically awful.  It makes one feel queasy to post little links and such while looking through a blurry haze with tired eyes . . . almost like motion-sickness . . .  One just wants to get it over with!

I do want to mention that there is an increasing awareness that gluten can have a devastating effect on blood sugar.  I hope to follow up with more posts and links on this viewpoint.

So many more angles to explore . . .   I must, in my next post(s), discuss the diabetic diet regarding "beneficial fats" and the common reliance on "low-fat" foods . . . the potentially direct impact of gluten on vision . . . and the potential causing/worsening of high blood sugar through gluten ingestion.
 
In the meantime . . .

Cheers!

~ Carolyn


*"An Experimental Intervention For Autism" - by Lisa S. Lewis, Ph.D. 

"Neurologic and Psychiatric Manifestations of Celiac Disease and Gluten Sensitivity" - NCBI - PMC - US National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health 

"UNUSUAL CAUSES OF ATAXIA" - by S.H.Subramony M.D. Professor of Neurology University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, TX 

Getting Sick at the Doctor's

Good evening!

Busy day today, so I'm writing at the end instead of the beginning.

I'm often asked why I don't visit mainstream medical specialists (allergists being at the top of the list) to treat my MCS, and why I don't get a catheter ablation to remedy my supraventricular tachycardia.  My answers to both questions are connected by a common thread.

Firstly, I don't visit mainstream allergists to treat my MCS because MCS is not an allergy.  An allergy is an overreaction of the body to a natural substance.  MCS is a systemic reaction to an actual toxin, a poisonous chemical element. 

Secondly, I try very hard to avoid mainstream medical offices.  Many toxic chemical elements are rampant in the typical mainstream medical office.  

A few sniffles?  Nothing, to me.  Sinus congestion, all by itself?  A joy compared to a migraine.  Watery eyes? This passes.  Uncomfortable, like a fly on the nose.  But nothing catastrophic.

The real trouble comes when, to take one example, acerbic, peppery, sharp, burning laundry fragrance on someone's clothes wafts to this angle and that angle, radiating outward, filling rooms, catching breezes . . . . .

I focus on "getting through."  I sit through the gathering haze of mind and body, that intangible "fuzz" that thickens around attempts at motion and cognition, telling myself it will only be one or two more days like this, trying to stay alert while feeling more and more drugged, face and nose burning red hot . . . plus another fairly frequent and perilous-feeling reaction involving multiple disturbances of my heart rhythm.

However, when one is so busy coping with simple consciousness, with the "how to's" of staying alert and alive, there is simply no room for the kind of reflection that could usher in phobias and existential terror.  Better said, there is just no spare energy for it.  All of my energy, frankly, goes into not being snuffed out.

Now imagine the absurdity of going into an ear/nose/throat specialist's office, sitting in the waiting room, and feeling a distinct "puff" of strong irritant fragrance with thickness and texture rise literally into your nose.  This once happened to me.  I was there to get some ear wax removed.  A very inane and finite job.  Neat and clean.  In and out.  I felt fine and balanced when I arrived.  Then, the fragrance puffed . . . from somewhere.  Somewhere close.  I looked around like a spy, e.g, trying to look as though I were not looking. Because I could see no surreptitious mini-aerosols poking out of clenched hands or purses, I sat there debating with myself instead of doing what I should have done:  Move immediately.  Every few minutes of intense exposure to a formidable trigger toxin can rack up an entire new day of suffering.

After a few minutes of cluelessness, I finally moved my seat. As I glanced around absentmindedly, my eyes happened to settle upon the culprit.  A pink plug-in air freshener just below my old seat!  The pain had well begun above my nose by then, the deep, thick fog and swollen feeling had already "moved in," my face was heating up.  I felt as though I'd been both hit in the head and treated with a narcotic.  I felt . . . injured.

I told the ear doctor about it when he took me into his office, stating simply that plug-ins can give his patients migraines and sinus trouble, as I now had from his plug-in.  He said something to the effect of a quick "Oh."  To his credit (or someone else's), there was no plug-in apparent by sight or by scent the next time I visited that office.

However, on the day that I was thus afflicted by the puff of the plug-in, it was very hard to drive home.  The nerves behind my eyes were vibrating with the familiar pulse of a chemical reaction, and my vision was literally shaking.  I saw the "whole picture" before my windshield, but various pieces of the picture were wobbling by the millisecond at different levels, each piece somewhat "out of line."  I felt sideways, crooked in my seat, as though I were tilting.  So I tilted my head to compensate.  I drove home with my head tilted in order to straighten out my eyes.  My face, nose, and jawline were cloaked in red by the time I arrived home, migraine headache well underway.  I'd been cooked.  My husband, seeing the damage, was incensed on my behalf. 

This from visiting the office of an ear/nose/throat specialist, of all things!  (So, why don't I go to mainstream medical specialists unless I absolutely have to???)

When patients are incidentally subjected to plug-ins and equivalent deodorizing/cleaning toxins in doctors' offices, when the medical establishment fails to disseminate essential information about the severe damage these items can do when implanted near human beings, uninformed patients will return "ad infinitum" to chemically contaminated offices for more and more medication and one surgical intervention on top of another.

Those patients who are directly affected by these chemicals might actually believe it's a mighty handy thing to be experiencing their primary inflammation, coincidentally, at the exact time they have to explain their symptoms to the doctor.  If patients only knew the types of neurotoxic chemicals that were either assisting or frankly causing their misery -- both in the medical offices and in their own homes and workplaces!

If more doctors only knew . . . .  If more doctors only cared to know . . . . . .  If  institutions of higher learning would actually dispense the necessary information about neurotoxic and carcinogenic chemicals to medical students . . . . . .  If medical offices would only be constructed with truly "green" materials . . . . .

Then, medical offices -- as well as hospitals and operating rooms -- wouldn't also have such potential to bring on heartbeat irregularities in susceptible individuals.

More on that topic . . . tomorrow.

Cheers!

~ Carolyn