Potions & Needles
Welcome to the Harmful eating and how to eliminate it podcast, I’m your host behavioural health and resilience coach Karen Bartle.
In today’s episode I’ll be sharing a current, real, and very raw experience I had this last week of dealing with a serious autoimmune disease flare and how when our body is subject to essential treatment and procedures, which have the potential to cause more harm and damage to the body, we need to have some go to healing solutions to help us recover as quick as possible to prevent more suffering.
Last week I received some devastating news. I had disease activity back in my eye from my AIBD after 4 years of my eye being disease free. I had only seen my eye surgeon 2 months ago and went to see him sooner than agreed to get some lashes lasered that were irritating my eye.
It was devasting for him to see, and to have to report that not only did I have inflammation, but that the graft we had put in to turn the lower lid out just over a year ago, had now been completely subsumed into the body as if it never existed, and it was no-longer providing any protection of keeping lashes away from irritating my eye.
This was serious and so disappointing to hear that after being on immune suppressant therapy for the last 4 years I was potentially back here at square 1 again only to have it all to do again. Remission and relapse are no uncommon with a lot of difference kinds of diseases that we have that are challenging to treat, but I felt that we had got this, so much so, that we agreed to skip a dose of the immunosuppressant therapy I had been receiving as things were going so well.
Whilst we can never know what the outcome would have been had we not skipped a dose of immuno-therapy, as we don’t have a time machine to go back and make that decision differently, discontinuing treatment too early can be crucial to enabling relapse back into disease activity.
The good and most important thing was I was admitted the next day to hospital by my immunology team to receive 3 days of intensive and heavy-duty doses of immunosuppressant and steroid therapy to get control of this disease before it could cause any further damage in the eye. I felt nothing in particular from the inflammation of the disease itself, but I did experience side effects from the therapy. Not surprising really given the intensity of the treatments that are given for systemic inflammatory diseases like mine, especially where there’s a risk of damage to the eye.
The main side effects I experienced were from methylprednisolone (meh·thuhl·pred·ni·suh·lown) which is a synthetic glucocorticoid, prescribed for its anti-inflammatory and immunosuppressive effects. It is either used at low doses for chronic illnesses or used at high doses during acute flares.
Due to the lack of sleep, I felt mentally and physically exhausted, had mind fog, and very painful arms as a result of having so many needles and cannulas inserted for the different infusions and bloods taken over the 3 days. My veins were so painful and each day I had to get the nurses to site a new insertion point for a new canular for the infusions. I felt like a pin cushion up both arms.
After going home, I couldn’t use my arms for several days as the bruising and swelling continued to develop where the cannulas had been placed. Even using the computer or making a drink was a chore and so I tended to sleep an awful lot of the time to rest and recover.
I thought back to when I used to have high blood pressure just a couple of years back, which seemed to reverse itself once I started a wholefood plant-based diet in 2022. It’s now normal and the nurses were so very impressed with my bp stats on the ward, congratulating me for having the health of a 20-year-old!
I also remember reading about the protective properties of kale, which we started to grow a lot of in our veg garden after learning about it from Dr Esselstyn in his book Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease. The two are very interconnected and here’s why.
If you’ve never eaten Kale, which I hadn’t until just a few years ago, it was never a go to vegetable in our household as I was growing up. It’s a dark green leafy veg dubbed the ‘queen of greens’ for its healing properties. It’s one of the most nutrient dense foods on the planet and a powerful antioxidant full of phytonutrients which mop up free radicals i.e., those unstable modules in the body which damage other modules and give rise to inflammation and disease.
I was astonished to learn that Kale preserves, promotes and restores nitric oxide which protects our endothelial cells found in most arteries, veins and capillaries of the brain, skin, lung, heart and muscle from injury and rupture thus preventing disease.
Well what d’you know! This was just what I needed to heal my hurts, and we had an abundance of different varieties of kale ready to pick in our own back yard veg patch. As my arms weren’t responding to other treatments and my sleep pattern was returning to normality, I set about doing some cooking, and putting kale into homemade wholesome vegan burgers, sausages, salad dressing, and stir Frys. I couldn’t get enough of it, and psychologically I felt different knowing that I was enabling my body to heal, and physically there was noticeable difference in my arms starting to feel much better too.
