Someone I love frightened me yesterday.
Someone I care about and really wish to spend more time with is playing with fire.
This person is doing an extended juice fast.
For one hundred and twenty days!
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In Italian culture, your mother raises you to understand, you only have one body in this life, you better take good care of it.
In my study of the human body, and the taking care of it, I have raised this philosophy up a notch:
- The human body is God's Machine
- It is given to you 'on loan' like a rental car to use, but it is not 'YOU' nor 'YOURS' although you inhabit it.
- I have spent a considerable amount of my life in service to the dying, the ones who are fighting for their life. In surgery I 'drive' this body for them, and I 'know' what different 'rental cars' are like. I know bodies like someone else would know some other area of expertise.
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Cachexia (Kah-kex-ee-ya) is the life-threatening loss of weight, usually by overwhelming burden of disease.
Signs that are ominous are bitemporal wasting (weight loss at the front top sides of the head, revealing the bones underneath), losing mass in the little hollows of the neck at the top of the shoulders, exposure of the ribs especially at the part where they join the sternum, and the interspinous processes being visible in the back. The hip bones also are not supposed to stick out but they do.
Imagine a cancer patient that looks like a concentration camp victim, and you have an idea of how it looks.
I want to cry because I saw with my own two eyes the changes that have taken place in my friend since I left for vacation about a month ago; and also since we met almost six months ago.
I don't know if this one will listen to what I have to say.
I feel powerless and since this one is an adult, I want to respect their life choices but I know they are messing with fire and have no clue.
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Ketosis is the 'fat-burning' mechanism in the body where the body eats itself in starvation.
Ketosis is when the ordinary 'life' metabolism that is based on sugar for energy, in the form of glucose, gets 'switched' so the body runs on ketones which are metabolites of I recall--man, medical school has been over twenty years ago--of free fatty acids. The only thing that is fueled by these free fatty acids in the first place, I believe is the heart.
This is normal metabolism:
Food is Digested into carbohydrate, protein and fat == the essential building blocks are made available to the body with the exception of essential fatty acids and essential amino acids that the body cannot make == the body runs in optimized mode. The WAY God MADE FOR IT TO RUN!
This is ketosis:
Food is not available == the liver makes GLUCOSE out of Glycogen (this lasts one day) == The liver 'burns fat' and makes FREE FATTY ACIDS into Ketones (ketosis) + the liver burns MUSCLE and makes it into GLUCOSE.
Why?
Because the brain can't run on anything else but GLUCOSE!
No sugar to the brain, you die.
Diabetics are 'starving in a sea of sugar'--although they have plenty of glucose in the body, due to the lack of insulin the body can't process it.
Diabetics are in a state of 'ketosis' all the time. That is why their breath smells fruity/yeasty.
Ketosis accelerates atherosclerosis in the heart. A diabetic heart is ten years older than its body.
This is why many people on the Atkin's diet (ketosis) have cardiac issues, too.
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When the body needs fuel, it is going to take it from your own body; In states of extended starvation, the body DIGESTS ITSELF.
It doesn't go through the stomach. The liver TAKES it, just the way a fetus 'takes what it needs' from the mother.
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Well, so what if they want to lose weight you may ask? They are their own person!
Because they don't know--as the body digests its own muscle, potassium, which is important for the body, comes out of the cells to support the heart.
Once the muscle is 'eaten' there is a 'reserve' of potassium in the body. It takes a lot of potassium depletion to make the values drop just a little in the lab values.
Once this is gone, there are arrthythmias in the heart, which, if not corrected, lead to electrical silence in the heart.
An electrically silent heart does not beat.
This is what happened to Karen Carpenter in the closet.
This is how almost all anorexics and bulemics die.
This is why I think my dear friend and One is playing with fire.
The amount of change in appearance makes me want to cry.
The decision to make this 'fast' without supervising medical support is in my eyes, like someone deciding to swim to Catalina without taking along the boat and crew to follow them in the water.
I don't know what to do.
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This isn't the first time I have seen this 'alarm' in a loved one.
When I came home from college intern year, my sister 'lost her butt' in between the visits at the beginning and end of summer.
I saw it because I had been away.
It turns out she was bulemic. Her 'going to the bathroom' after meals and throwing up was not a 'phase'. She needed help, medically, psychologically, emotionally, and she needed it fast.
My mother, a former anorexic and bulemic, 'didn't want to deal with a daughter with this problem'.
She told my sister, 'Why don't you take a gun to your head if you want to die, it's faster' and ignored the problem for another year in complete and total denial before seeking help for her daughter.
If mother had listened, my sister would have been spared the skin changes, the hair loss, the esophageal pathology, the erosion of the teeth, and the chronic bowel problems she is still suffering from today.
The bulemia is 'cured' but the damage and the scars from it remain!
And I diagnosed that BEFORE I was even a doctor...you can imagine my sorrow over what I saw as a physician yesterday.
Being a doctor never turns itself off. You see EVERYTHING. You just pick and choose when you wish to say it. At work, sure, speak up. But with a loved one, the dearest friend you know, the one you want to spend more time with in the future and get to know even better because they make your heart sing, the one you can be yourself with but it just hasn't gotten to that kind of friendship yet?
What do you do?
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I see more.
I have eyes of Spirit!
I 'get' that this beloved 'One' wants to ramp up the Spiritual Power and Clarity by going through this fast. This is like Jesus in the desert only THREE TIMES LONGER! There is juice, but it is the same one for like three weeks at a time.
I saw it marked on the calendar. RED blocking out three weeks and then GREEN. I would have asked about it the minute I noticed it if I had understood. I thought it was a JUICE SUPPLEMENT program, not a JUICE FAST.
Well how is the Spirit?
It feels like a patient.
It isn't healthy, it isn't strong. Ordinarily this person's energy feels like warm agave syrup with tiny little bubbles in it like champagne.
I could see them interacting with others, and the heart center could 'boost up' the energy for a brief 'spike', but then even when next to me or walking by, it was 'quiet'. The only time I felt anything was a strong will energy and focus when I was teaching them how to use a pendulum.
Do I talk with Spirit about this One? Each and every day. Am I talking with Spirit about this Here and Now? You bet! I am also tapping into every body I ever had to extract my Healing Art from every dimension to summon forth in the service of my beloved friend who might be my Twin Soul, whose Vibration is in the same incredibly high rate as my own, my fellow worker in the Light!
I don't know if this person is going to make it through the rest of this incarnation so I can get to know them: through the juice of this fast, through their own 'power of mind over body' at the expense of spirit--and at the expense of unknown damages to the structures such as the kidneys and heart and brain.
The only reason I know there is a fast and how long it is because a mutual friend told me.
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The benefits of fasting are touted throughout the RAW vegan and 'green' movements. The thought is that the 'toxins' are stored into the fat cells, and by 'burning through the fat' the 'toxins get released' and 'the liver gets to process it'.
I humbly submit that the liver needs to eat; without proper nutrients from the GI tract being transported from the brush-border lining of the gut through the Portal Vein directly into the Liver, the liver is denied the very nourishment that is needed for it to optimally work.
Intermittent fasting is 'okay'. Extended fasting, in my book, is no bueno. : (
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Being a doctor is painful, especially when things happen to you or to those you love.
You see and know too much.
And that is a burden to the heart.
Others in their lack of knowledge of medicine do not 'understand' your concerns when you as a loved one want to share what is on your mind with them just on your everyday stuff that happens at work. Your coworkers understand, like brothers in battle, but only one friend, my lady urologist friend, understands the toll it takes on me to watch mother through her prolonged illness. My friend listens and gives me hugs and shares from her heart and her fund of urology knowledge!
Except for her, people in my immediate circle don't 'understand' and so I carry a lot of this on my own.
My work with Reiki and Spirit helps. They 'get it' and I also feel like I am 'doing something' where prognosis is poor and not much else 'medical help' can be given. Reiki helps me cope with this responsibility of 'knowing too much'.
But for this friend? The one that gave me the nicest hug I ever had that makes me think about it every day and want more? The one where yesterday I rested my head on their shoulder, briefly, but still there, for the first time in ages? Someone I trust and listen to and respect and admire?
They are cachetic.
They don't even know what that word means.
And they sure don't trust doctors. Except for me as a friend, but not someone to treat them, ya?
I wish everyone could send healing energy to this situation.
I have had so many lifetimes of this--so close and yet so far--that I don't know what to do.
Positive thinking will help. I will envision this one nourished and strong with muscles where the bones are right this minute. Strong enough to hug just like they did when I said, 'I love RAW and everything about it!'
Love is the Solution For Everything. I will Love from a distance, from up close, and through my messenger angel.
I will ask Spirit for Guidance on When To Speak, if ever. (spirit encourages me to write today--thank you spirit : ))) )
And I will Let Go of the Desired Outcome and allow The Universe to step in and do what it does best.
My teacher and this person got introduced to each other yesterday. She says this person is 'really nice' and 'felt their energy' and 'approves' of our friendship.
At least 'we' made it to that. Usually those close to me never 'approved' of anyone I was interested in before. I am healed emotionally and it is a first to get a 'green light' and 'okay' from someone close to me to 'go for it'.
Mahalo and Aloha,
I will stop--I have to go. I am first call and could be up all night with work. It is when they can make me come back in the middle of the night from home if someone is in need of emergency surgery.
Wish me luck and send Reiki!
Namaste,
Reiki Doc
