Everyday Bliss

This story begins with a sleepy if fascinating conversation with my late night study-buddy, Jan. We’re both night owls working on decoding certain levels of human experience that we wish to be able to change, enhance or amplify. Among my peers, he’s one of only a handful who really gets the more arcane things I’m into. And like few others, he always tells me something I never knew before which sparks intense debate, discussion, learning and more research.

Being a wizardly sort, Jan lives in Berkeley. If you’re a magically gifted world-changer in the San Francisco Bay area, and need help changing yourself, he’s definitely your man. I give him my highest recommendation and you a referral to his website here for more information.

A Little Night Music…

This particular evening, Jan was speaking of immortality and mentioned the cancer cells of Henrietta Lacks, branded “HeLa” cells by scientists. I’d never heard of Henrietta nor her world famous cell cultures and finding out about them makes me want to spread the word rather like HeLa cells have spread…worldwide.

Henrietta Lacks was a homemaker living in Baltimore in 1951 when she was diagnosed with, and died of, virulent cervical cancer. During diagnosis, cells were taken from her tumor without her knowledge or consent and grown in some of medical science’s first cancer cell research.

Researchers found that HeLa cells had extraordinary properties. Unlike cells from other donors, they grew on everything. They grew out of control. They consumed the growth medium in their test tubes and Petri dishes and grew outside of them to infect lab equipment, entire labs and finally, the world. HeLa cells can survive freezing, dehydration, starvation, radiation and deep space. They are known to be virtually indestructible.

(There could quite literally be some of Henrietta Lacks in that glass you’re drinking from, right now. Mind that small speck
on the rim there. Yes…that one.)

Because these were the first cells to be cultured for study, labs across the world wanted samples, which were grown and shipped to Russia, Paris, Chile, Amsterdam, London, Reykjavik and many other labs. And from there due to their extraordinary growth properties, they spread outward like a virus, worldwide.

HeLa cells were used to first culture then find the cure for polio and other diseases. They have learned to masquerade as cells from different parts of the body, and even as different diseases. In one notable incident, documented by author Harold Schmeck, American medical researchers had the unenviable task of notifying

“…Soviet scientists that the cells in which their viruses were growing were not even derived from Russian cancer patients. The cells actually originated from Henrietta Lacks…”

This interesting yet devastating property of HeLa meant that worldwide, contamination needed to be assumed, studies needed to be trashed, intense cleanroom protocols needed to be established and millions of dollars of research had to be done all over again. A commission was formed to contain the spread of HeLa, and today, genetic sequencing ensures the purity of research from HeLa contamination.

Now that you know some of the background, we’ll be picking up this thread in later posts. As Jan and I debated, immortality is in the eye of the beholder – be it the individual or the collective. But for now…

Enter the Goddess…

Crazy? No. While this may all sound like science fiction, it is most assuredly science fact. Though the woman herself perished, her cells have achieved true immortality. HeLa just can’t be stopped, so in a way, Henrietta Lacks has become the first known modern Immortal.

And in an interesting twist which brings in threads of my history in Northern European shamanism, Hela is also the name of the Nordic goddess of the Dead. She is many things but poignantly, presides over the realm of those who died disenfranchised, of disease or old age – not honorably as the ancients would have had it, in battle.

The Norse feared a death at Hela’s hands. In Odin’s realm of Valholl (Valhalla), a warrior would fight the good fight all day, eat, drink and carouse with comrades all night. What more could one want in the afterlife? Helheim was comparatively boring, and decrepitude was a dishonorable estate for one who previously went a-viking. The famous poet-warrior and Paget’s disease sufferer, Egill Skallagrimsson wrote bitterly in his old age, of relegation to shivering by the hearth, subject to the whims of mere women (in this case, his cook):

‘Old haltered horse I waver,
Bald-head I weakly fall:
Hollow my failing leg-bones,
The fount of hearing dry.
Blind near the blaze I wander,
Beg of the fire-maid pardon,
Crave for a seat. Such sorrow
From sightless eyes I bear…’

Though he feared Hela and what he would have seen as death without honor, Egill welcomed her embrace when family and peers began to die. In Sona Torrek, after the death and interment at Digra-ness (the Skallagrim burial mound) of his son Bodvar, Egill writes:

‘Hard am I beset;
Whom Hela, the sister
Of Odin’s fell captive,
On Digra-ness waits.
Yet shall I gladly
With right good welcome
Dauntless in bearing
Her death-blow bide.’

(citation: W. C. Green, 1893, Kings College, Cambridge)

Hela is typically depicted, as in this image by the artist Thorskegga Thorn, as half white, living, and half black, dead. Nordic shamans befriend Hela and go through the death experience yet live to gain great knowledge for the Well of Wyrd (meaning Fate, and All-That-Is) lies in her underground realm. The parallels to the contemporary HeLa phenomenon are uncanny, and perhaps no coincidence.

Goddess, thy name is Henrietta Lacks.

Which brings me to the main theme of this afternoon’s symposium:

In what ways will you achieve True Immortality?

I’m not talking cellular immortality (which includes having children) but other ways. What will you leave behind you that will go on after your macrobody ceases to exist?

• As the great philosophers, what immortal thoughts, questions and other cognitions will you leave behind?
• As the developers of cures, what patterns or processes that help others will you bequeath the world?
• What other things will survive you – perhaps forever?

Here is a place to let the world know, and get the word out about the value you will leave beyond your physical death. You can do that in the comment form below and we can continue this most interesting and provocative discussion…

Breast cancer survivor Kris Hart, right, vice president of global brand management at (casino operator) Harrah’s Entertainment, was still breastfeeding when she found out she had breast cancer. In this month’s Pink Magazine email, Taylor Mallory interviews Kris. Here are a couple of relevant highlights:

Hart’s Advice for Breast Cancer Newbies

1. DO take a breath and come up with a plan. The cancer has probably been in you for years, so you can wait a week.

2. DON’T make emotional decisions about your care. Get all the info you can before you make a decision.

3. DO surround yourself with people who don’t make you feel like a victim.

4. DON’T be afraid to ask for support. Your friends and family want to help.

Hart also adds her greatest challenge dealing with chemo:

"I have always had an innate sense of organization in my head. Since the chemo, and even now as it’s still in my system, I’m fuzzy. I can’t retain things, and I’m not as quick as I used to be. I can’t remember names as readily as I could. That’s really frustrating."

Maryam’s Note: Kris Hart, if you’re out there reading this, please check out the energy therapies (no drugs, no needles, no hassle, easy to learn and practice) like ETHOS, EFT and ZPoint to help "get your brain back". This involves the energy in your body, not in a box or machine. You’re using the natural energy an acupuncturist manipulates by putting needles in the body, only with the new energy therapies, you only tap on the acupoints, hold them gently and breathe, or use the energy solely in your mind. No gadgets or drugs needed!

Anyone dealing with fuzziness like this can regains clarity by practicing a couple of simple exercises to synch the hemispheres of your brain back up. Go to my page on that here:

http://maryamwebster.com/stressrelief

Do every exercise on the page, especially the Cross Crawl. This highlights part of the Bliss Coaching Process that is laid out in full in my book, Everyday Bliss For Busy Women.

PINK asks: How can colleagues help when a co-worker has cancer?

Kris Hart: "Be specific about how you want to help. Everyone says, "I’m here for you." But very few people will ever take you up on that. So say, "I’d like to bring dinner for you on Wednesday." Also recognize it’s not only the physical victim but the whole family that needs support. Someone called my husband to go have drinks. He was thrilled to get away too."

Maryam’s Note: I’ll second the "be specific" part. When Mom was diagnosed with breast cancer in the 90’s she deteriorated rapidly, and the community troups were marshalled to provide friendly visits for she and Dad. The best visit they had was after dinner one Tuesday evening from Bill Hall, a buddy of Dad’s from Rotary Club. Though Bill offered, Mom refused to let him go into the kitchen and get her usual offering of lemonade and cookies – it was important for HER to "do for" visitors as long as she was able.

Bill visited with the family for awhile, drank his lemonade and nibbled his cookies, chatting easily on a variety of topics. The ease with which he carried on conversation soon put Mom and Dad at ease. They reported during this time feeling pressed to entertain people and alleviate their discomfort with Mom’s cancering*, which only caused them to feel more stressed and tense after friendly visits than not. Bill’s visit was a welcome exception, doubly so because of what he did next.

After a polite amount of time had passed, Bill said to Dad: "Charlie, get your coat. You’re coming out bowling with me and the boys, and I won’t take no for an answer." Dad didn’t bowl, but he was too much of a gentleman to refuse such a public invitation. He went, had an excellent time, and Bill managed to wheedle him into coming to the "boys night out" from then on. It got him out of the house, Mom had a peaceful evening once a week to do as she liked, and Dad had a place to blow off steam and "be a regular fellow" as he put it. That’s important, and it was the best present a friend could have given him at this sensitive and crucial point in his life.

It doesn’t have to be a whole-hog fancy evening, any level of attention and caring is good. Just be there.

You can find out more and subscribe to Pink Magazine for Women Professionals here: http://www.pinkmagazine.com/index.html

Pink is about women having money and worldly power too – what activist and author Naomi Wolf calls "the last taboo". Canted towards C-level professional and executive women, Pink provides gathering opportunities at locations around America to help women network and excel in business.

* Cancering - Using the word "Cancering" creates a gerund, or non-finite verb form out of the noun, cancer. When you add the "-ing" to a word that is so definite, so negatively final, it transforms the disease into a process which can have a positive end – the disease process ends, but you go on. This is a form that I take from the teachings of Master NLP Health Coach, Suzi Smith, who reports that this simple linguistic change brings empowerment back into the equation for those living with this disease process.

CHICAGO – The first follow-up of a landmark study of hormone use after menopause shows heart problems linked with the pills seem to fade after women stop taking them, while surprising new cancer risks appear.

That heart trouble associated with hormones may not be permanent is good news for millions of women who quit taking them after the government study was halted six years ago because of heart risks and breast cancer.

But the new risks for other cancers, particularly lung tumors, in women who’d taken estrogen-progestin pills for about five years puzzled the researchers and outside experts….

….Dr. Nieca Goldberg, a New York University women’s heart specialist, said the study underscores that in addition to cancer screening, women who stop taking hormones need to find other ways to keep their bones strong, including getting more calcium and exercise.

Well we knew that ingested hormones were bad for you, but here’s even more proof. Get a bone density test if you’re over 35, don’t smoke or quit if you already do, exercise like a rabid rottweiler and drink your milk or oyster shell calcium with an acidic chaser like a shot glass of orange juice or a teaspoon of lemon juice, to help it absorb. Don’t forget if you’re taking a calcium supplement to make sure it has Vitamin D in it to aid assimilation of the calcium inside the body – milk in America already has Vitamin D added. And please do go read the whole article here

When I see disinformation, even very well-meaning disinformation, I’m passionate about correcting it if I can to spare someone some grief. Recently at LifeHacker, the very excellent blog edited by Gina Trapani, there was an article on "Combatting the Common Cold" that contained the advice to eat pasta with garlicky red sauce. Yes’m to the garlicky ragu, not so to the pasta. (about which read more, below)

Inflamed with all the passion of the recently converted, I wrote an off-the-cuff sermon on the evils of gluten which I also give you here. Please take heed. You cannot imagine how very much more healthy you will feel without the "glue" of wheat-based products gumming up your insides!

---

Exclude Pasta, make sure it’s gluten-free pasta or better – strands of spaghetti squash – over which you ladle that garlicky ragu. Pasta and other items made of glutinous grains such as wheat, rye, barley, spelt, kamut and millet all form mucus in the body. If your system is clogged with mucus to begin with, and a virus piles more mucus on, it takes you twice to three times as long to recover from ANY illness, no matter what enhancements you use. (Image courtesy of http://www.kidsaware.co.uk/ where you can get gluten allergy stickers and other gluten-free goods)

Researchers also posit mucus-filled intestines clogged with undigested food, (which can barely extract adequate nutrients from the food we take in) to be the primary source of most of the diseases we face as human beings. Where there is excess mucus present, digestion – and health – is a dicey proposition.

The 7-10 days doctors suggest is the "normal recovery time" for a cold is for the average American body clogged with mucus and fighting for health on several different fronts. Most Westerners are mucus filled due to the fact that the average American and European diet contains a disproportionately large amount of milk and glutinous grains. By "mucus filled", I don’t necessarily mean you have drippy sinuses (though this is certainly a symptom) – this kind of mucus is in the body’s cells and tissues inside organs, muscle and particularly, the intestines. When mucus fills the intestines, food is allowed to ferment, bacteria and parastic infestations can gain hold and low-grade inflamation moves over the body without our even being aware of it.

If you’re gassy after a meal including grain or dairy, this is why. If you have freakish amounts of gas and are wondering how to get rid of it – go gluten-free. Ditto infections that keep coming back and that you just can’t seem to cure. It’s no accident that the primary component of the cold cure above is garlic. Garlic wipes out intestinal parasites in large enough quantities, and is both a virucide and bactericide. Large enough quantities I should note, are quantities big enough to make you severely antisocial, and cause gas and loose bowels of their own. Don’t worry though, you’re excreting the toxins that were making you sick in the first place.

I would also add to the above 10 – 15 mg of zinc every three hours and Vitamin C to bowel tolerance (again, until it makes you gassy) every four hours and sambucus nigra – elderberry – extract, tablets or syrup which has been proven in European studies to fight even the flu virus. On a tertiary level, what a cold is trying to tell you is to slow down. We have cold and other viruses in our environment all the time. We become susceptible when we are stressed, hurried, not eating well or taking care of ourselves.

Ask yourself: "what is my body trying to tell me?"

More On Why You Should Consider Going Gluten-Free:
My pre and post-gluten-free recovery times for an average upper respiratory ailment are night and day different, as most who are gluten and dairy-free find. Unlike the most common of gluten ailments, celiac disease, I do not have serious physical problems – my body is simply allergic to gluten like most Westerners,  and produces gas and liquid in response to it. I had no idea until a naturopathic doctor pointed this out to me by looking at my abdomen girth and measuring it against the rest of my body. When I stopped eating gluten (which was easier than I thought it would be), I lost 3.5" off my abdomen in two weeks, from elimination of the gas and edema (excess liquids) that the allergy caused.

What a great benefit!

Like my "GF" (gluten-free) kindred, I also have by my own reckoning, about forty percent more available energy than I did when eating grains and dairy. I don’t miss grains at all. GF folks can eat rice, nuts, seeds and some of us can also eat corn. Ancient grains are also available to us, such as amaranth and quinoa and grass seed products that are used like grains, such as Ethiopian teff. None of these place the mucus burden on our bodies that wheat, rye, barley and the like do.

And on the virus front….most of the gluten-free find we either just don’t have colds anymore, or it’s a matter of a 48 hour recovery at most. I used to take two weeks to recover from a cold on average, when I was eating gluten. The American Academy of Family Physicians also links gluten with viral issues. (Source: http://www.aafp.org/afp/980301ap/pruessn.html)

YMMV, but when "conquering" a cold, at least for the time it takes you to get over it, consider going gluten and dairy free and taking more water than you think you need. Most Westerners are also chronically dehydrated as we tend to drink coffee, tea and soda over plain, pure water. You’ll get over your cold faster, and your body will appreciate the vacation!

Some sites you might like to visit for more info:

Shauna James Ahern’s awesome blog: http://glutenfreegirl.com
Wikipedia’s Explanation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gluten-free_diet
GF Diet Helps Autism (Aspergers, ADD and more): http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/001526.htm
Karina’s Kitchen: Gluten-Free Goddess: http://glutenfreegoddess.blogspot.com/

Or, simply Google "gluten-free" to get more information about this healthy and health-inducing lifestyle. Enjoy!

I’m a pink ribbon kid. Mom, grandma and two aunts on both sides of the family all either had or died of breast cancer. I’ve decided I won’t be doing the same, thank you very much. Tapping on the acupoints around the breast, including the thymus, helps keep the breasts free and clear of toxins, and the emotional issues can also be worked on by tapping as well using EFT, or Emotional Freedom Technique.

Wonder of wonders too, last night I heard on the news that a compound found in cannabis, CBD, greatly slows the spread of aggressive breast cancer cells without the painful side effects of other treatments currently available.

Researchers at California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco warn that this is not a recommendation to start smoking though, as you can’t get enough CBD this way. CBD, unlike that other cannabis compound, THC, does not get you high. The proposed CBD  treatment would be the first all-natural, non-toxic breast cancer treatment, without the serious side effects of radiation and chemotherapy.

Having watched strong and precious women in my life become shrunken shells of their former selves while on radiation and chemo, this news comes as a great comfort. This herbal form of medicine may in time come to replace chemotherapy if all test results pan out.

My grandmother, Grace Evans Ratliff, a natural herbal healer who herself battled breast cancer, said that there is no disease known to man that God did not put a plant in the ground to either help or cure.

How sad that the plant in question happens to be illegal. Perhaps this research will at least see cannabis admitted once again, to the American Pharmacopoeia and world-wide materia medica – as it has been, safely and effectively for thousands of years.

Read the full article here:

http://cbs5.com/health/breast.cancer.marijuana.2.571109.html

Just read about this at Sandra Ghalinger’s "Tittyology" website courtesy of Suzanne’s ezine – thanks, Suz!

Again scientific confirmation comes for a syndrome most have long known exists – stress at work = anxiety and depression. Family troubles. Failures in business. And there doesn’t seem to be much difference in occupation studied from this quote:

"The most toxic factor here is high psychological demands. That can be present in multiple professions: the media are always working under time pressure;  doctors, firemen, nurses, builders, plumbers – it applies across the board."

From New Zealand, generational research proves the  link between high stress on any job and the mental illnesses of anxiety and depression. Other studies have linked such stress to chronic pain perception as well. Keeping in a stressful situation does more damage than you may have thought. Just look:

Now the proof: Work Stress Makes People Mentally ill Work stress is making people from doctors to plumbers mentally ill, new research has found. The Dunedin-based study found that 14 per cent of women and 10 per cent of men who were stressed at work suffered depression or anxiety when aged 32. They had not had these conditions before. They were among nearly 900 people Otago University has been following since they were born in 1972-73. For the latest paper, they were asked at the age of 32 about psychological and physical job demands, the level of control they had in decision-making and social support structures at work. The paper, published in the British journal Psychological Medicine, found that women who reported high levels of psychological job demands – such as long hours, pressure or lack of clear direction – were 75 per cent more likely to suffer from clinical depression or general anxiety disorder than women who reported the lowest levels…

Jeepers. But then, we already knew this…didn’t we?  Click to read the whole article here  and click to get relief here

Haven’t we been telling them this all these years? Well just recently, the docs and scientists finally wised up in this article from CNN:

You know you’ll get killer cramps or that nasty headache any minute now, but nothing you take seems to help once the pain hits.

You’re not alone: Many women have a tough time finding the right kind of relief for their pain –and for good reason: Until recently, experts hadn’t actually studied women’s pain specifically, and most research wasn’t conducted with a woman’s hormones and physique in mind. All that’s changing, though.

Docs now know that to banish our aches, they must develop treatments formulated for women’s bodies. What’s more, researchers are also looking for — and finding — ways to head pain off at the pass, so those of us with chronic troubles such as migraine, fibromyalgia, or backache don’t have to be hobbled by pain on a daily basis. Here, the new research will help you live an (almost) pain-free life.

Maryam’s take: If you’d have asked us, we could have told you – right ladies? So you can use epidural blocks and the like suggested in this article, or you could simply do what I did when faced with pain so gaspingly disabling from a broken back I could literally not get out of bed: Energy therapies.

Whether you turn on Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), Tapas Acupressure Technique (TAT) or the point-free ZPoint Process (a little ZPoint humor there – wink), they all work well for pain and symptom relief once you understand how  to work them, and without the side effects of Oxy-Contin or other commonly prescribed "killer" pain  relievers.

The article goes on:  What should have been a relatively simple injury became an odyssey that had Weiner visiting specialists all over San Francisco. She finally found a podiatrist who "took a detective-like approach to the problem," Weiner says, by exploring and treating each joint and tendon in a methodical search for the pain’s source. Thanks to this care, which includes regular pain-preventing cortisone shots, the 55-year-old mother of one has been able to resume her hobby of salsa dancing.

Very important in your care to find someone who (1) Believes in you  and (2) Is willing to take the time to be a detective and find out what’s really wrong, instead of shopping you every pain pill in creation without doing the sleuthing first. And, to be a sleuth in your own body, for what bugs you, what is good for you and what you notice that’s different.

In the middle of pain and physical drama? Notice what’s happening from a deep place inside the felt-sense of your body. Take notes and start a journal of your symptoms, precipitating foods, events and people. Be a body detective…

To be continued…