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From: Batsheva <[log in to unmask]>
To: Belinda Lawson <[log in to unmask]> 
Sent: Wednesday, January 11, 2012 10:13 AM
Subject: Re: Supplements


Hi Belinda and Others,
 
Thanks for the thoughtful replies.   I don't mind Geoff, actually.  He's given us lots to retort to, and much to think about.    I'm intrigued actually by people who are radical in certain ways, including that he does raw paleo, if my memory serves me correctly.  I was raw for 6 months, myself, so hats off to someone who can sustain it .  He did apologize, so I am fine now, and will continue to enjoy his posts.  It just hit a nerve being called an idiot, because I found a similar obnoxious attitude within the macrobiotic community back  when I was really deserving of the word  idiot to be eating that way.... LOL. 
 
  I think fear of death  is what  drives probably 90% of the advertising for the natural foods/dietary supplement movement, as well as creates the "in the know"  arrogance I was referring to yesterday. I was diagnosed with second stage Hodgkins Lymphoma when I was a week shy of turning 40. The very same year I was diagnosed, 12 high school kids 400 miles away were admitted with the same issue to my hospital (Sloan Kettering).  Turns out their school drinking  well had become contaminated from overhead crop dusting for the burgeoning viniculture agribusiness on Long Island.  To support myself through college, I worked outdoors picking vegetables while the farmer sprayed atrazine on the adjacent fields.  Who thought about such stuff at 18?   I had a mediastinal tumor the size of a grapefruit lodged in and around all the places in my chest, pressing on my heart and the doctors told me it was inoperable, highly malignant and growing
 fast.  So, radiation and chemo cocktail for me from my chest up to my bottom teeth.  That's where the thyroid issues began.    Thanks to  the big hunter in the sky,  excellent medical attention, my diet, adjunct supplements,   and  most importantly, my will to hold tight to my small kids, I pulled through.  When I came back from the big city with "the cure", everyone wanted to pin my recovery on their own spin -" it must have been the blue green algae, the accupuncture, the years of eating well, Celtic Salt, etc."    I remember lying in the hospital about to get my neck cut open,  on a guerney with a plastic drainage tube going into my pericardium.  It was one of those epiphanic moments when you sum up your entire life into one image -    PLASTIC!!!!   Up until that moment,  my entire adult existence  was devoted to my strong belief system that natural diet  & lifestyle could heal anything.  I lived in a house we built
 made entirely of non synthetic - stick and stone,  birthed both my kids at home biting on a stick for pain management,  ate only what came from the land, only had handmade wooden toys for the kids, and was now reduced to this one plastic tube keeping me alive.  It was a moment of irony, but at the same time,   a huge release  from all the fear I realized I carried for years about  eating the forbidden foods, sucumbing to the lifestyle of modern civilization with all its poisons.   Afterall, nothing could possibly get worse, as  I was facing the devil right in the eye, so  why worry about the small stuff... LOL.
 
 
I assume we are all on this list because we march to the beat of a different drummer, and a few of us are smart enough  to write books that set or upset  the tempo.  Neanderthin, and Weston Price's book ( the latter, taken with a fair bit of salt)  were two  books that took my breath away and made me rethink my existence.   I would like everyone on this list to give those of us who have the courage to contribute and ask inane questions at times,  the benefit of the doubt that we are doing our very best.  Knowlege can be divided into  3 categories:  That which we know, That which we don't know, and That which we don't even  know we don't know.  Its when we can get enlightenment from others on all 3 fronts that we benefit as individuals, members of this listserve, and ultimately human beings.
 
Sorry if this is off topic to paleo issues.  And to correct myself from yesterday, I do believe it was Chief Dan George who spoke the line in  the film Little Big Man, not Dustin Hoffman.  
 
And to finally answer your question, Belinda, I have not taken any conventional thyroid medicine ever... just Thyroid Plus, which is bovine thyroid mixed with some B Vitamins put out by a company called Priority One.  For now, I just eat handfuls of Maine Dulse and Kelp powder sprinkled on my greens.  I try to eat seafood whenever I can get to a Chinese buffet and gorge on crablegs, mussels, clams and shrimp (yes, I know they are from toxic waters, farm raised.....).  I'm doubling up on the Thyroid Plus to see if I can lower the TSH and raise the T3/T4 in a month for my next round of blood work, and am going to take Ben L's lead on K-2 Menatrenone.  I'm toying with the Lugol's solution for boosting iodine/iodide figuring that sometimes drastic times require drastic measures.  I'm not sold on it quite yet.  For what its worth, the secretary who picks up the phone at the Naturopathic Doctor's pharmacy office where I order my stuff  says they've been
 selling potassium iodine pills like crazy ever since the nuclear meltdown in Japan.  
 
Warmly,
Batsheva


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From: Belinda Lawson <[log in to unmask]>
 I am wondering if I should be supplementing with iodine, based on the posts that have been flying across the list.  William's comments kind of have me leaning that direction.  When you had your thyroid trouble, did they have to remove it completely?  Are you on partial or full thyroid supplementation and/or iodine right now?  When you started having thyroid problems, were they also accompanied by an inability to lose weight or a tendency to gain it?  Thanks for contributing to the list.