activity record for past few days, and this week's stats

Came close but was not able to meet my goal last week.

Friday 1 hour 50 minutes hula hooping, yoga, and Miracle Ball Method
Saturday 4 hours 25 min kayaking, yoga, detox bath
Sunday 2 hr 25 min yard work, meditation, Chi Gong and yoga

Which left me a couple of hours short due to low days earlier in the week

My stats today not great, up .8 of a pound and metabolic age is up to 43!

Hoping to pick up the pace this week!

activity record for past few days

Overall doing ok this week, still behind but might still make it up!

Monday 1 hour 50 minutes yoga, Yamanuma walkers and Miracle Ball Method
Tuesday 20 minutes qi gong
Wednesday 1 hour 35 min qi gong, hula hoop, walking
Thursday 1 hour 50 min walking

won't say yet for today as I plan to do a little more yet tonight!

Making decisions about medical care

Heard this excellent program on the radio today. The points they were making about cancer patients (rushed into making decision on surgery while still in shock with their diagnosis) I think apply to many fibroid sufferers as well. Worth listening to.

activity record for past few days, and this week's stats

Unfortunately did not quite meet my goals from last week either, mostly due to something -- an allergy? fighting off a cold? detoxing? -- that has been bothering me since Thursday (tired, throat sore, just feel off), plus a sore ankle (flare-up of an old injury). And also am drowning in work which makes it hard to get away from the computer -- in other words my weekend days this week were more like regular workdays. So when I got behind, it was hard to catch up.

Thursday did just 15 minutes of qi gong
Friday did 1.5 hours of self massage, meditation, belly dancing and Energy Medicine for Women DVD
Saturday did 3 hours of self-massage, walking, belly dance and qi gong
Sunday did 2.5 hours of self-massage, qi gong, belly dance, detox bath while reading relevant book, walking, and meditation

Meanwhile, stats are slightly worse than last week, unsurprising:

weight 139.4 (minus .4)
fat % 33.1 (+1.8)
water 46.5% (- 1.2)
bone 4.8 (same)
metabolic age 42 (+4)

Going to try harder this week -- off to do some exercise right now!

too much email?

Excellent article from today's paper on the problems of email and too much fast communication. Helpful for getting perspective!

fabulous trio of blogs on fertility

Just discovered that fertility acupuncture guru Randine Lewis (author of The Infertility Cure) has a blog, and there are also two other ones on her site. Really excellent stuff in there that is a must both for fibroid shrinkers and fertility seekers! Including lots of good info on emotional issues. I can't link to it directly, you have to register on their site to read it, but it's worth the trouble. http://www.thefertilesoul.com/

revised supplement regimen

My acupuncturist feels I'm making progress, and that I don't need some of the things that I was taking. Completely revamped my supplement regimen.

New Chinese herbs are Gui Pi Tang. Notice in this description that it includes helping uterine hemmoraging. It mainly works on the spleen, and is indicated for fertility.

I'm taking Ultranutrient by Pure Encapsulations, 2 per day
Methyl-Guard by Thorne, 2 per day
DHEA .5 mg by Pure Encapsulations, 1 every other day
Ultimate Omega by Nordic Naturals, 2 per day
Fergon iron supplement, 1 per day
Bio-D-Mulsion by Biotics Research, 1 per day
Chlorphyll 60 mg by World Organic, 3 three times per day -- this is for the last bit of my heavy metal detox
Black Currant Seed oil by Pure Encapsulations, 1 per day
Calcium Magnesium Citrate by Pure Encapsulations, 2 twice per day
Glycine by Thorne, 3 three times per day. This is to help clear out an oral bacterial issue I have had, also glycine is an abundant amino acid in the female reproductive system and has been used to help with egg quality through stimulation of human growth hormone.
Tegreen by Pharmanex, 1 per day. This is a new addition to my regimen. See the comments section of this past post for a discussion of Tegreen for fibroids and fertility.
Vitalzym4 pills per day
Serraptase 2 pills per day
BioSet probiotic, 2 pills per day
Green Magma,6 pills twice per day

I also have a new combo of Bach flower remedies:
Walnut(for protection from unwanted influences)
Wild Rose (for drifting, resignation, and apathy)
Vervain(for perfectionism)

activity record for past 3 days

8/17 -- walking, situps, and Qigong -- 1 hour 15 minutes
8/18 -- meditation, Kundalini yoga, Life Force yoga, castor oil pack with meditation -- 2 hours 10 minutes
8/19 -- meditation, Qigong, hula hooping, walking -- 2 hours 15 minutes

This puts me at 1 hour 50 minute deficit so far for the week.

"medical paradigm" and fibroids

An interesting story of a woman who successfully treated her fibroids with Chinese medicine, and the reaction of her western physician. Boy this sounds so familiar to me!

a well-written essay

A well-written essay about body image, family issues, and love. Happened upon it by accident today, brought a tear to my eye. And then another tear when I read that the author died earlier this month of a brain aneurysm. The essay was just published last winter, bringing her great attention and opening up a promising career as a writer, now sadly cut short. Her husband says that he plans to go through her files and look for other things she had written and have them published.

Although I weigh less than half of the 300 pounds that this author did, many of the issues dealt with in this essay feel relevant as I have been working through various emotional issues as part of the fibroid shrinking effort.

Zen Warrior Exercises

My husband picked out this cute little book, enticingly subtitled Zen Warrior Exercises, while we were poking around a bookstore on our trip this weekend.

What it turns out to be is some simple and nice qigong exercises. And I am on a big qigong kick, so was delighted. But even better is that HE picked them out HIMSELF and wants to do them with me! I think the whole zen warrior bit is appealing to guys. Hey, whatever works.

This is a small and appealing book, and the exercises are explained clearly with nice illustrations. The text talks about how these get your energy flowing, which is what we who want to shrink our fibroids and/or enhance our fertility need to do!

flatter stomach

Conversation between me and my husband a few days ago:

"I haven't lost any weight yet, but my stomach looks flatter I think. What do you think?"

"Yes, it does. Maybe all that walking is helping."

"Maybe, but it's only this week that I am really picking up the pace. And as I said, my weight has been the same the past month. Maybe all the pills I have been popping, including the Vitalzym, are working?"

It's true, I feel like my stomach looks flatter. And this is before really getting into my new exercise routine. Could it be the fibroids shrinking? Let's hope!!!!

activity record for past few days, and this week's stats

After three days of no activity, had 3 days of lots of activity as I went on a 3-day weekend trip with my husband.

8/14 -- 4 hours 20 minutes hiking
8/15 -- 5 hours 20 minutes self massage, stretch, walking, Himalayan salt bath, and dancing
8/16 -- 4.5 hours qigong, EFT, stretching, walking, canoeing, and listening to a meditation tape

This was not quite enough to enable me to meet my activity goal for the week -- came up 50 minutes short. This week will try to spread out activity more evenly over the week!

Have come up with an incentive system for myself -- as you may have guessed I love to buy books and exercise tapes and music, etc. No more buying any of these -- anything I want will go on a wish list, and every week I meet my activity goal I will allow myself to buy one thing from the list. Need to have some concrete incentive/reward!

Stats for this week's weigh-in:
weight 139.8 (up .6)
fat % 31.3 (down 1.4)
water % 47.7% (up 1)
bone mass 4.8 (same)
metabolic age 38 (down 3)

So, some progress!

activity record for today and yesterday

Ok, keeping this plan is not so easy when life gets in the way. I was not able to do any healing activities at all yesterday or today! So 5 hours TO DO carried over. Due to jet lag (returned from overseas trip on Sunday), all day meeting yesterday, conference call last night and meeting with insurance agent tonight. Am going on 3-day hiking trip with my husband this weekend so hope to make it all up then, we'll see! Maybe not the easiest week to start this plan, but the problem is that like Rosanna Rosanna Danna said, "it's always something" so might as well start now...

activity record for today

As promised, starting today I am posting my daily healing activities, aiming for 2.5 hours

Today did:

5 minutes meditation
45 minutes hula hooping
1 hour walk outdoors
20 minutes detox bath, while reading relevant books
20 minutes self-massage (femoral, abdominal, lymphatic drainage points)

total: 2.5 hours

Have an all-day meeting tomorrow will be harder to fill my quota but will try!

this week's stats

As promised in my post yesterday, am going to put my stats here every Monday.

Weight: 139.2
Fat %: 32.7
Water %: 46.7
Bone mass: 4.8
Metabolic age: 41

These measures have basically been stable since I got this scale a month ago. So let's see if my scaling up the activity has any impact!

avoiding the pitfalls when shrinking fibroids

Found this nice brief article on the above-mentioned topic. It's not clear who wrote it, but it seems to be pretty on-target. Indeed, in order to be successful a fibroid-shrinking program needs to have a multi-pronged approach and also to be followed consistently over a long period of time.

two excellent books, and my plan going forward

I have read two books lately that I thought were really excellent, and coincidentally both had the same theme -- that we need to free ourself of over-reliance on doctors, and instead learn to heal ourselves.

The first was The Fertile Female, by Julia Indichova. Having overcome infertility herself after doctors told her it was impossible for her to get pregnant, she went on to start a support service for women struggling with infertility. This book contains the lessons learned from that work. It talks about key things like diet and the need to clear emotional blocks that are affecting our bodies -- what she calls "the issues in our tissues." But the main message is that you have to figure out what works for you, and take charge of your own healing process. I highly recommend for anyone who is working on their fertility.



The second was a more general book, The Healer Within. I had ordered this book a long time ago but never read it. When I picked it up this time, I thought "I've already read plenty of books about Chinese medicine, this is going to be a repeat." But instead I found it fresh and inspiring. Again, his emphasis is on how to heal yourself, and take responsibility for your own healing. He provides concrete techniques based on Chinese Qigong, self-massage, meditation and breathing techniques. They are very simple and non-intimidating techniques, and some were familiar frm other things I had read about and tried -- this book put them all into a framework, which was helpful. So in a sense it was good that I read it after other things, but on the other hand it would have been easier to have just started with this one! And the stories he tells particularly of a cancer survivor's group in Shanghai, are inspiring. It's all about figuring out how to activate the "medicine within", as he calls it, that all of us have. I recommend this for anyone interested in healing and health improvement, particularly if you are working on something as tough to deal with as fibroids. Wish I had read this when I was first diagnosed! It would have helped me get onto a good path more quickly, and would have been more empowering than some of the things I did read.

Based on this reading, and some other things I have investigated lately that I have not had time to write about yet here, I am now feeling like I really have all the tools that I need to do self-healing. My main obstacle is time -- I have a busy job that keeps me in front of the computer way too much. But if I am really going to make some progress with my self-healing, I am going to need to put more time into it. So I am setting some goals --

1. From now on, minimum 2.5 hours per day on healing activities. The healing activities will be from among the ones listed below. If I am busy at work and cannot do the 2.5 hours in a given day, then the un-done time will be carried over to the next day, and all time from the week will need to be done by the end of the day Sunday, no matter what. This could mean some Sunday evening activity blowouts, but that's ok if need be.

2. In order to keep myself honest and committed to this plan, I am going to post on this blog every day what I have done, under a header "today's activities". So you readers will all be helping me with my commitment to this plan.

3. As part of this plan, I will strive to reduce my weight and body fat percent, and my metabolic age. I just recently got a Tanita scale that measures these things, and I will post every Monday. I am aiming for 129 pounds and less than 29% body fat, and hey let's say metabolic age of 29 too (not sure if that is realistic but let's try!) Weight and body fat are of course not the main goals here, but since I can't check my fibroids myself this will at least give some measure of progress as to changes in my body.

The healing activities I will engage in will be a combination of the following (these are either things I have been doing already but not enough, some new things I learned about recently, and some things I used to do a long time ago that I am going to get started with again). Some of the ones not yet mentioned in this blog I will write about in more detail in future entries.

"Regular" exercise:
Walking
Bicycling
Weight-lifting (I plan to join a gym and get back into this after a few years hiatus)
Yard work

"Special" exercise:
Hula-hooping
Belly dancing
Yoga, especially fertility yoga and Kundalini yoga
Qi Gong, especially Fertility Qi Gong, and techniques from The Healer Within and Fertility Wisdom
Stretching
Pilates
Mini trampoline
Feldenkrais
Yamuna foot walkers
The Miracle Ball Method

Bodywork:
Acupressure, especially from The Fertility Cure, Fertility Wisdom, and Facelift at Your Fingertips
Moxibustion, from Fertility Wisdom
Abdominal massage
Castor oil packs

Energy work:
Exercises from Energy Medicine for Women
Jin Shin Jyutsu
Meditation (especially mindfulness, chakra clearing, and special ones received from advisors I have worked with)

Emotional work:
Working with various different books, many of which have been mentioned here previously
Emotional Freedom Technique

Yes this is a lot of techniques. These are the ones that I think have the most promise, based on my research and what I have noticed myself. But they are only going to be helpful if I spend more time on them! In other words, do them rather than think about doing them! A "home practice" as they say.

I am already doing really well I think being consistent and doing the right things with my diet, supplements, acupuncture, BodyTalk and BioSet treatments. What I need now is to pick up the pace on the self-care activities described above, which is what I think is really going to turbo charge my healing process!

check out inspiring comment on the last post

One of our readers wrote in to share her excellent progress using methods outlined in this blog. Very exciting and inspiring!

Just go to the last post and look at the comments!