Tuesday, September 30, 2008

further weight loss

I'm now down to 130!
Not my main goal, but a nice side benefit of my fibroid-shrinking regimen!

Sunday, September 28, 2008

two spices to avoid

This just in from my acupuncturist, she suggests avoiding black pepper and cloves while trying to shrink the fibroids, as they are too stimulating to the uterus. One of the teas I was drinking had these in them (so this means avoid anything like chai).

Thursday, September 25, 2008

delicious dish -- yellow lentil dal with fragrant basmati rice

Dug up this recipe I had clipped years ago but never made. With lentil as the protein, this is an excellent dish for fibroid shrinkers. It's from Food & Wine magazine, and meets their standards for deliciousness. A bit of fuss, but worth it. http://www.foodandwine.com/recipes/yellow-lentil-dal-with-fragrant-basmati-rice

borage oil

Another thing my acupuncturist recently added to my regimen is borage oil.

Borage oil is the best source of gamma linolenic acid (GLA), an essential fatty acid which has an anti-inflammatory effect. It has been shown to be helpful for PMS.

This page gives the best explanation of why GLA might be helpful for fibroid sufferers.

The brand I am taking is Pure Encapsulations Borage Oil.

My acupuncturist believes the borage oil will be helpful for both the fibroid and fertility.

There are two testimonials on this page of women who shrunk their fibroids with GLAs -- one with borage oil and one with evening primrose oil. And one who did it with borage oil here. And another here.

Wish I had found out about GLA sooner. I'm glad to be able to give this information to others though....

new additions to my supplement regimen

My acupuncturist has decided to add a few new things to my supplement regimen:

1. Homeopathics: Apex Energetics Female Balance. This is supposed to help balance my endocrine system and thus my hormones.
2. Homeopathics: I did a jar of cell salts (Melange by Seroyal) and then as a follow up my acupuncturist wants me to use Celtic Sea Salt as my salt in cooking and to drink a high mineral content mineral water (I am drinking Apollinaris which I got at Whole Foods). This is supposed to help my mineral levels.
3. Herbs: She has put me on Women's Precious, a Chinese herbal compound. This will be helpful for my fibroids but mainly is with the intention of helping with fertility.

Also she has added one more thing, borage oil, which I will write a separate post about.

Further, she felt I was not getting enough fats, and had me return coconut and coconut oil to my diet, which is a good source of long chain fatty acids. My last acupuncturist had wanted me to avoid coconut as he felt it was too cold energetically, but this acupuncturist doesn't feel it is a problem for my fibroids and wants me to get the good fats. A quick search on the web shows no evidence linking coconut and fibroids one way or another. And certainly I am glad to have the coconut back in my diet, I love it and also being able to eat coconut opens up lots of culinary possibilities...Meanwhile, my acupuncturist two acupuncturists ago (I have switched around a bit trying to find the right person to help with my fibroids) was a big fan of coconut and encouraged eating a lot of it. She recommended the book Eat Fat, Lose Fat which is full of coconut recipes. However, since coconut has a lot of saturated fat, probably best not to overdo it!

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

comment from my acupuncturist

I shared the results of my ultrasound with my acupuncturist, who was very pleased. I told her I was hoping for more shrinkage, and her response was:

Regarding the fibroids, the shrinkage that occurred in that last 3-4 month time frame is a very good result. It's important to consider that those "guys" have been growing in there for years and years, and to reverse a process takes some considerable effort. To break that cycle and see shrinkage in such a short time frame is great. Another 3-4 months should yield further shrinking. Your doc is correct about the response of different tissues/proteins to different substances and biotherapeutics. We can look into targeting those ones that got larger, or just upping some dosages. But the main point is that you are ovulating with good fertility mucus, which means that pregnancy is in the near future, and once you are pregnant, the rest of the fibroids will shrink on their own.

Will keep everyone posted on what additional things we add to the regimen. We already added one more, will report on that shortly...

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

ultrasound today -- mixed results

Had my ultrasound/sonohist today to see what's been going on with my fibroids. Results: one shrunk a lot, one shrunk a little, one stayed the same, one grew a lot and one grew slightly
Sounds like a wash, but actually it’s not as the one that shrunk a lot was one of the larger ones and is in a particularly bad place so shrinking it is especially valuable.

The two my gyn is most concerned about are the ones that are impinging into the cavity
Of those, one is the posterior which shrunk from 4.8 in May (5.0 in December) to 3.2 -- so that’s 33% shrinkage since May, and 36% shrinkage since December. This is helpful since it makes more room in the cavity
The other one impinging into the cavity is the submucosal, which grew slightly from 2.5 to 2.7 (8%)

Then the other three are ones that are outside the uterus or inside the muscle:
A subserosal that was unchanged from May at 5.2 (was 5.7 in December)
A second subserosal that shrank from 3.1 in May to 2.8 (9.7% decrease)
A "mid" one that increased from 2.5 in May to 3.5 (40%)

(By the way, the reason I only have stats on two of them for December is because at that time my uterus was so distorted that my gyn didn't bother trying to measure all of them. Only in May when things were looking better did she start to attempt to map and measure beyond the two biggest ones.)

How is it that the shrinkage/growth for each fibroid is so different? My gyn had two explanations. First, the ultrasounds are rather murky and it’s difficult to measure easily or accurately and sometimes when they are close it’s hard to distinguish them from each other to tell where one starts and one ends. Second, she said “each one can have a different DNA composition so they can respond to different things.” For example, some fibroids might be more or less hormone responsive than others, and some might respond to certain treatments while others don’t. Sounds like that’s what is going on here….

Monday, September 1, 2008

Frontier Bean Soups

Beans are an excellent nutrition source for fibroid shrinkers. But to be honest sometimes I run out of ideas what to do with them.

I've been weeding through the food my husband brought to our new home from his batchelor pad (out with the StoveTop Stuffing, laden with hydrogenated oils and MSG...). Came across a mysterious plastic bag with Frontier Soups Indiana Harvest Sausage Lentil Soup mix in it, and the ingredient list did not look scary so I made it for dinner tonight, sans sausage. It was delicious! Usually I avoid soup mixes like these because they are so laden with salt, but not this one -- I actually ended up adding salt at the table!

I went ahead and ordered a few more from the site just now:

California Gold Rush White Bean Chili
Holiday Gathering Cranberry Bean Soup
Louisiana Red Bean Gumbo
and
Chicago Bistro French Onion Soup

Don't those sound yummy?

Something good to have in the cupboard when there's no time to plan a meal. They also will send a free recipe book on how to do these in a crockpot.

Amaranth, excellent protein source for fibroid shrinkers

One of the biggest challenges I find in my diet for shrinking fibroids is getting enough protein, since I'm avoiding dairy, poultry (except turkey), meat, fish that have high mercury content, and most soy products. That doesn't seem to leave much left! And there is only so much quinoa one can eat!

So I'm delighted to have discovered a gluten-free grain that is high in protein, amaranth. It also contains five times more iron than wheat. This page gives the lowdown on its nutritional features and on its interesting history when it was one of the favorite foods of the Aztecs.

I've been making it for breakfast, and an added bonus is that my husband loves it!

According to the page cited above, the protein in Amaranth, when combined with the protein in rice forms a complete protein as high quality as fish, red meat, or poultry. So I created the following recipe which includes some rice cereal. This recipe also includes some fruit for both flavor and added nutrients.


Breakfast Peach and Berry Amaranth

1/2 cup amaranth
2 and a 1/4 cups water
a small handful each dried blueberries, dried cherries, goji berries and raisins
1 peach, chopped
3 tablespoons rice cereal (such as Lundberg Purely Organic Hot 'n Creamy Rice Cereal)

Put all ingredients except the rice cereal in a pot. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to low, cover and cook for 20 minutes. Mix in the rice cereal, put the cover on, and cook for an additional 6 minutes. Serve hot. Makes two large servings.