JoeLitton.net

Chelation: Results after 10 IV treatments...

Joe Litton — Mon, 5 May 2008 20:12:40 -0400

Back in January, I discovered that I had extremely high levels of lead and mercury in my system. I don't know that I really had any symptoms, but with levels that high, I decided to begin chelation treatments. It's expensive (US$215 per treatment), and insurance doesn't cover it, so we're racking up a little debt. But health is worth it, right?

The pic on the left (click the thumbnail to see the image) shows the levels in January. Note that the lead and mercury levels are literally off the chart. Yikes!

This next image shows the report after the first series of 10 treatments. What I find interesting is that the mercury level is still in the Very Elevated range, even though it's been reduced to less than half of its earlier level. Guess I shouldn't have agreed to all that sushi with Duffbert during the Enron years! So...I was going to start the next series of 10 treatments next week. But then I realized that if I hold off until July, I can pay for this with pre-tax dollars and save at least a couple hundred dollars. For those outside of the USA, this has got to sound ridiculous, to need to spend hours of reading to figure out how one's health coverage works. Anyway, at my job the new "benefits year" begins in July, meaning that I can have a fresh Flexible Spending Account with which to work ...and that means I can use the health care debit card to pay for the chelation, and fund that account spread over the next year, using pre-tax funds. Man, this system of health care in the USA is whacky! But I'm extremely grateful to be in a position to be able to attend to the toxic metals, rather than go insane from the poisoning and do something irrational like install Vista on my home machines ;)

Ubuntu 8.04 ...laptop now works with WPA

Joe Litton — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 22:35:57 -0400

I'm now running Ubuntu 8.04 on my main (personal) laptop ....in dual boot mode. The big news to me is that I can finally easily connect to my wireless router. I'd had a devil of a time getting it to work in earlier versions ...had to really muck with things before it was happy. But with this latest version, the config was a snap, and things just work. The only real tests remaining are to see if I can connect to our wireless printer, and to see if by some miracle the old scanner will work. The printer is the only real must-have.

Assuming the printer connection works, I'll then wipe the drive, and install Ubuntu as the OS for this machine. But not tonight. It's late :)

Chelation: getting the lead out

Joe Litton — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 20:55:01 -0400

This is how I've been spending a couple of hours each Monday. I think today was the 8th treatment. I hadn't had any symptoms of lead or mercury poisoning, but some tests I'd had done just as part of my "half century tune up" (a year late) ...showed lead and mercury literally off the charts. My wife did not show similar levels. Weird.

The IVs are EDTA and glutathione, which together should be clearing out the toxins, and also having the rather nice side effect of helping clean out arterial plaque. There's been a lot of debate over the years about benefits vs risks of chelation. Obviously, I'm a believer in the positive benefits, but the real proof will be in test results. The next test for me will be after the 10th treatment in a couple of weeks. But others are most definitely interested in chelation. Here in the USA, the National Institues of Health is doing a current study of chelation at a number of sites throughout the country.

All I can say is that I feel 'clear' ...meaning that I've noticed even if I slack off on working out, it's much easier to get right back to it with no strain. I ran a few miles a week ago Saturday, did a milder workout on Sunday, and then was too busy to make the time to work out during the week. I did a few miles on the treadmill this evening, and I did not notice the sluggishness that I used to feel if I skipped even a couple of days of working out. Yes, it could be all in my head :)

So, like any good geek, I like the science aspect of it. My doc is definitely into evidence-based medicine. That's why there were hair, blood, and urine tests before starting the chelation program. The doc is an MD, board-certified in Internal Medicine, and has been for the past 25 years. I feel like I'm sitting back in a college lecture when I see him, as he gets into explaining things on the grease board :) ...not that I follow all of the biochemistry, but what I do understand is quite fascinating. So we'll see what the next weeks or months bring.

In the meantime, here's the lipid history for the past couple of years. The differences for these past months are pretty regular exercise (with occassional 'off' weeks like last week), a very low dose (10mg) of lovastatin - a US$4/month generic statin to soften the plaque and help the chelation remove it, and for many months now I've been off of cheese and generally going fairly light on milk products (and then it's only skim milk). I've been off of red meat for 30+ years.

So there's a ways to go, but optimal health is getting closer :)

Running gOS on the old laptop...

Joe Litton — Tue, 4 Mar 2008 21:43:51 -0400

So I've nuked my 7-yr old laptop to make it into a nice little loaner laptop for visitors. The drive is wiped, and it's now running the awesome gOS distro ~~from Google~~. It's Ubuntu, with links for the Google suite (GMail, Google apps, etc). It also comes with OpenOffice, Firefox, GIMP, Pidgin ...so there was literally nothing else I needed to install.

I'm blogging (via Firefox) with it now.
Bootup screen:

Desktop:

Very, very cool!

MAN, I wish Duffbert had been there...

Joe Litton — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 21:42:47 -0400

So last Friday i went for my first chelation treatment. It's an IV - a needle with a couple of bags of stuff to help flush the lead and mercury and other nasty stuff from my system ...and clean out the plaque from my blood vessels. But as the poor phlebotomist (she was filling in for the normal nurse, and I think she was fresh out of school) ...tried one arm with no luck getting the needle into a vein ...and then tried the other arm, and then the 3rd try, and then finally found a vein (with a little 'spillage' - LOL) on the fourth try ....I was looking at my arms thinking I should be a Band-Aid advertisement ...and mainly thinking that I really wished poor Duffbert were there. I don't mind needles at all ...I go for acupuncture regularly, and in college would help other students when they were reluctant to get their own blood samples :) ... but Mr Duff's one fear in the world is needles. And I do love to give Duffbert a tough time. So it was rather unfortunate that he couldn't be there to experience the four attempts at proper insertion of the IV needle ...since I would have LOVED to have captured the reaction for YouTube posterity.

An evening with Symfoni

Joe Litton — Wed, 6 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0400

No, not 'Symphony' ...that's either music or a suite of office productivity applications available for free. Symfoni is an IBM business partner in Oslo, Norway (and also serving Denmark, Sweden, Iceland, and Germany). Trond from Symfoni has been kind enough to invite me to their Lotusphere dinner each of the past several years (along with some others from the community: Bruce, Gayle, Vince, Julian, John...)

Aside from meeting so many wonderful people from across the ocean (including getting to meet Norwegian Domino blogger Arne Nielsen!), I've also been struck by the dramatic growth that Symfoni has seen. A few years ago, it was a healthy-sized group at the dinner - all from Norway. Last year, the group was very definitely larger, and the Symfoni people and clients were from Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. This year, the group was so large that the restaurant had to offer a buffet, stating that there was no way they could take individual orders from so many people.

The point? That my very UNscientific analysis indicates that Lotus software business is growing! ...and the hospitality of the good folks at Symfoni is truly wonderful. Many, many thanks to Trond and the Symfoni team for allowing me to share your evening.

In pursuit of optimal health...

Joe Litton — Wed, 6 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0400

Curt has posted about his reduction campaign, and Duffbert had done the Jenny Craig program (which is working well for my wife, currently). I've been using a secret program that I've discovered to get in better shape: eat less and exercise more. For the first time in many years, I'm below 150 pounds (148 as of Saturday). I was 145 when my son was born 23 years ago. That's down about 20 pounds from several months ago.

I'm also starting a chelation program. The goal is to clean out some toxins (blood, urine, and hair tests showed high levels of lead, mercury, arsenic and a couple of other nasty things), and to clean plaque out of the blood vessels. My dad had a couple of bypass operations and a couple of heart attacks before he died (played tennis regularly all his life), his dad had multiple heart attacks, my mom's dad and mom both died of heart attacks, my slightly older brother (life long runner and eats organic diet) just had a stent put in to deal with blockage. So there's some hereditary factors working against me. And that's confirmed by pretty high cholesterol numbers :) ...I'm looking at this (adjustments to diet and exercise, and the chelation) as my half-century rebuild. It'll cost about US$2,000 for the chelation, but that's a lot cheaper and easier to handle than a bypass or dying or some other inconvenient interruption.

So we'll see what improvements I feel in a few months. I'll be doing one chelation IV treatment each week for the next 10 weeks. I feel great right now (and treadmill stress tests and echo cardiogram and other tests confirm that things are functioning well), and should be in better shape as I continue working out with the treadmill and weights. So what I'm aiming for is truly optimal health - which translates to better productivity, and most importantly to me, being around for my wife and son :)

Lotusphere health results...

Joe Litton — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 21:59:29 -0400

Considering that I was sick much of the week prior to Lotusphere, I'll mark the week down as a success healthwise. I'm now almost completely over the cold/flu that slammed me just before the conference. And this past weekend I weighed in at 150.4 pounds, which is the lowest I've been in years, and down about a pound and a half from the start of Lotusphere. I'm expecting to soon be down in the 140's, and I've not seen that weight range in quite a while. Fat percent fluctuates between 21-23 percent, which is not near down to the goal of 15 percent, but is at least below the 25 percent guideline that the health pundits recommend to stay under.

So I continue to try to get plenty of sleep, I'm still taking lots of vitamins and other supplements, and I'm also trying to spend a little time each day going over my notes from sessions and the vast amount of downloads, presentations, handouts, etc. ...to get the brain in shape along with the bod'. Hmmmm.... Maybe it's time to open that bottle of homebrew that Spanky so kindly gave me! Cheers :)

Lotusphere health plan

Joe Litton — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0400

One of my goals this year is to leave Lotusphere healthier than when I arrived ...and hopefully down a pound or two. As many other recommend, I've brought a couple of pairs of good walking shoes, and alternate which shoes I wear each day. This year I brought along a pedometer, to help me ensure that I walk at least 10,000 steps each day (usually not too hard at Lotusphere :)

Sunday steps: 12,155
Monday steps: 10,482

Now as far as leaving healthier at the end of the week, part of that stems from the fact that I was sick much of last week, and so arrived here still recovering (cold/flu kind of thing). So I've been taking vitamin C, garlic (please accept my apologies if you are sitting near me and find yourself suddenly craving Italian food), and other supplements. And I've been drinking plenty of water, going easy on the alcohol, and also allowing myself to keep a slightly less hectic schedule than the dawn to post-dusk madness that is my usual conference experience. For example, I'm skipping the early morning BOF session today to catch up on doing session evaluations, while enjoying a peaceful cup of coffee here in my room.

On Friday or Saturday I'll post the weight results (good or bad) when I step on the scale at home.

You WILL want to check the Lotus911 booth

Joe Litton — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0400

So I was walking over to the Lotus Stuff Store (wayyyyyy over in Yacht and Beach hotel this year). While still on Dolphin premises, I happend by Nathan's room (btw, he lucked out with one awesome location!).

Two things:
1. One look, and it is obvious that Nathan does more than BLEEDYellow
2. I don't know if it's proper for me to disclose what Nathan demoed and described, but Nathan and Tim and the rest of the magicians at Lotus911 have been doing some amazing things! Things with UI, things with tools ...I was blown away!

So... You will absolutely want to check out the Lotus911 booth (235-236 on the showcase floor). If you're not at Lotusphere, don't worry. These guys have proven that they know how to get the word out (have you seen the bus?)